SUMMER 2004 NUMBER 4

FROM THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE HISTORY VIEW FROM THE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

t is great to be writing to you again with news of LALH books Iand the preservation they support. The LALH mission—to educate and thereby promote thoughtful stewardship of the land— is being accomplished with your help. Thank you for your generous donations during the past year and for your dedication to helping us recover the work of America’s forgotten landscape practitioners. In this issue of View you can read about several extraordinary landscapes. Catherine Howett’s forthcoming monograph on the country estate and village of Reynolda, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, looks at the conjunction of landscape design and the new southern woman in the person of the feisty and imaginative Katharine Reynolds, wife of the famed tobacco magnate. View also profiles the new reprint from the ASLA Centennial Series, New Towns for Old (1927), by John Nolen, which includes case studies of several towns from Kingsport, Tennessee, to Mariemont, Ohio. Other pieces in View look at recent meadow restoration projects at Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City, renovations to Skyline Parkway in Duluth, Minnesota, a new museum wing for Reynolda Museum of American Art, and the opening of a remark- able private garden in Jackson, , created by Chestina redesigned reprint of The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman for Welty and cared for by her daughter, Eudora. 2006. We are pleased to announce the addition of a distinguished University of Massachusetts Press and University of Illinois member to the LALH Board of Trustees, Charles C. McLaughlin, Press have announced new paperback editions of the popular titles who has long been a valued adviser and friend. We are thrilled that A Modern Arcadia, by Susan L. Klaus, and Midwestern Landscape Charlie will serve LALH in this official capacity and look forward Architecture, edited by William H. Tishler. That these LALH titles to working with him as LALH grows. Sadly, we have also lost a have found such sustained readership—and a place on several dear and spirited adviser who lent support and encouragement to university course lists—tells us that we are on the right track with LALH over many years. Dan Kiley, one of the twentieth century’s our high standards for research, writing, and editing. preeminent landscape architects, died on February 21, 2004. We These successes fulfill our mission of developing insightful, will miss him. accessible, and affordable books about America’s landscape history. Congratulations are due Oldfields, the country estate owned Although this mission is straightforward—and unwavering since by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, for achieving designation as our founding twelve years ago—seeing it through requires planning, a National Historic Landmark. LALH has worked for more than commitment, and substantial financial resources. Please help us a decade with the dedicated and sophisticated staff of this beautiful continue our important work by donating generously to LALH. estate to reveal the genius of Percival Gallagher’s plan. Last year, LALH published a revised and expanded, paperback edition of the 1989 biography Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect. The newly designed, larger format shows the old photographs to Robin Karson, Executive Director wonderful advantage, and we have begun planning a similarly

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(413) 549-4860 See “LALH BOOKS” for information on (413) 549-3961 fax how to order. Among the highlights of the LALH spring board meeting in Charleston, S.C., was a visit [email protected] to the highly acclaimed restoration of the c. 1820 garden of Margaret and John Thornton. HELP US EDUCATE AND THEREBY PROMOTE LALH board members and historian C. Allan Brown on site of the former kitchen garden. THOUGHTFUL STEWARDSHIP OF THE LAND.

On the cover: Reynolda, waterfall from Lake Katharine. Photograph by Carol Betsch. 2 VIEW A WORLD OF HER OWN MAKING: Katharine Smith Reynolds Johnston and the Landscape of Reynolda By Catherine Howett

ot long after marrying tobacco magnate R. J. Reynolds, Katharine Smith Reynolds N(1880–1924) began to dream of a new home. Her vision coalesced gradually, as she and Dick traveled widely, through New England and to Europe. She delved into farm journals and new home magazines, and she visited other estates, such as Biltmore in Asheville. In time, Katharine decided that, unlike Biltmore’s palatial residence, her home would be a welcoming bungalow. She pictured it in a landscaped park, set amid thriving farm fields and pastures, Prize-winning Jerseys of Reynolda. Courtesy Reynolda House Archives. with its own village of homes and gardens, church, and school.

To realize this dream, as (Outdoor recreation was one of her many winding through acres of woodland, Catherine Howett observes keen interests.) She read the Progressive past orchards and cultivated fields; in a forthcoming book for Farmer religiously and queried the local and finally, a large “farmhouse”— LALH, Katharine Reynolds extension office for the latest advice on Katharine’s bungalow—close to a drew on “the liveliest and what crops to plant, what breeds of cows, cluster of farm buildings in a village most progressive ideas of chickens, and hogs to raise, and what of quaint cottages. her era—political, econom- new food processing methods to adopt. ic, agricultural and environ- Katharine arranged classes so her workers Katharine turned to the Philadelphia Katharine Smith mental, social, artistic, could learn these things directly. The scope architect Charles Barton Keen to design Reynolds, c. 1914–16. and religious.” Howett’s of the enterprise was vast and complex, and the Arts and Crafts–influenced home that Courtesy Reynolda elegantly rendered tale while managing it all, Katharine coped with would nestle into the rolling site. Keen also House Archives. places Reynolds’s achieve- frequent episodes of ill health and the birth designed many of the uniformly white ment firmly within the history of American of four children. stuccoed village homes and farm buildings. landscape architecture and planning. “During these early years of engineer- The repetition of visual elements, such as Howett begins her story with ing the site,” writes Howett compellingly, the stone foundations, served to integrate Katharine’s childhood in Mt. Airy, North the range of structures in the small commu- Carolina, and the defining southern values the gully-riddled fields of the old farms nity. The green clay-tile roofs also tied it that framed her experiences there. She fol- were scoured even more deeply by to the larger, wooded landscape. In 1914, lows the young girl through her transforma- teams of mule-drawn “drag pans” and the Philadelphia-based landscape architect tive education at the state Normal School, squads of laborers with shovels digging Thomas Sears was commissioned to founded and run by Charles Duncan McIver underground tunnels to carry the vital redesign a plan for the four-acre formal and his ardently feminist wife, Lula. The arteries of pipe and wire. Tons of garden, which was to be sited near the values instilled in Katharine Smith during native “blue granite” rock excavated public road. Katharine was so impressed these early years guided her, a new woman during grading and construction were by Sears’s work that she hired him for all of the New South, in all that followed. reserved, at Katharine’s instigation, additional landscape architectural services. Few young women of the day found to be used in walls, piers, foundations, Continued on Page 10 themselves, as Katharine did, poised with and chimneys. Cleared fields intended almost unlimited wealth to construct their for cultivation were enriched with domestic dream. But Katharine’s sense of manures and cover crops. Elsewhere, purpose for her vast resources was even huge expanses of ground were cut into more unlikely: the founding of a model or filled; the earth itself was recon- community that would emphasize health, toured, sculptured into new forms modern technology, mixed-crop scientific to produce a “recreation and pleasure farming, education, and beauty. She accom- ground”— a landscape transformed plished her goal with the unfailing support by art into something more like a park of her husband, who died in 1918, barely than a piedmont North Carolina farm. seven months after the family had moved into the house. Katharine remarried in The imagery guiding the new landscape 1921, but she, too, died an untimely was Olmstedian. “Rather than a state of death, only three years later. untouched nature,” writes Howett, The estate project was launched in 1904, when the Reynoldses began to pur- the landscape was meant to convey chase adjacent parcels of rural land on the a dominant visual impression of edge of Winston. Eventually, the property serene and pastoral rural scenery— would comprise 1,000 acres. Katharine an expanse of lawn resembling open hired the engineering firm of Buckenham meadows picturesquely framed by Reynolda farm buildings. Photograph by Carol Betsch. & Miller to help her plan the location of groves of trees; meandering streams all elements of the estate, including the and a natural-looking manufactured golf links, one of the first areas finished. lake and pond; narrow roads and paths VIEW 3 NEW TOWNS FOR OLD: Achievements in Civic Improvement chapter on Cohasset, Massachusetts, in Some American Small Towns and Neighborhoods for example, Nolen invokes the spirit of Charles Eliot and the Trustees of By John Nolen Reservations as he writes of preserving s Katharine but Nolen did more than persuade beachfront. Elsewhere, he writes in AReynolds and convert, he sought to realize the Olmstedian terms about the importance weighed decisions dreams and eliminate the nightmares of setting aside land for active recreation about the layout of he saw woven into the fabric of to spare parks that “furnish broad, restful, her barns and how American cities, towns, and villages. open spaces.” large to make her His idea of reform was pragmatic, Nolen addresses the advantages new school, John accommodating plans to realities of organic street plans rather than rigid Nolen (1869–1937) without losing sight of temporarily grids and of the pitfalls of developing was planning new elusive ideals. His successes and fail- grand architecture that does not reflect the American towns. In ures are recorded in the landscapes specifics of place. The social imperatives John Nolen. Courtesy these projects, he and the cityscapes he left behind. embedded in Nolen’s planning treatise, Cornell University Library. established residential, however, raise more difficult issues. business, agricultural, and industrial zones At Kingsport—whose development was Unquestioned racial segregation character- and determined the locations of streets, contemporaneous with that of Reynolda ized both planned and unplanned develop- parks, and buildings, from the city hall —Nolen was hired by the chairman of the ment in Nolen’s and Katharine Reynolds’s and library to the jail. Reynolds was an Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway day. Like Reynolds, Nolen considered him- amateur, using consultants to help create to replan a town that would capitalize on self an enlightened progressive, providing her estate and village (she actually contact- the rich natural resources of the area and separate but equal houses, playgrounds, ed Nolen’s office for assistance in drafting whose population would utilize the new schoolhouses, and churches for a black a constitution for a civic improvement line. Similarly complex financial motivations population that were, as he wrote, “com- league for Winston). Harvard-trained spurred the creation of other towns, such as mensurate with the advanced standards set Nolen, however, was one of a new breed Venice, Florida, where the business would be for the rest of the community.” The notion of professionals who conceptualized the providing accommodations for the “going- that separate is inherently unequal had not city as a system of interrelated components. away winter,” or Kistler, Pennsylvania, yet taken even theoretical root. He is considered a founder of the planning where it was housing brick workers. “Concern with foreign workers comes profession. In many passages, New Towns for Old up in discussions of Walpole, Mariemont, In his classic treatise, New Towns reads like an earnest American novel, filled and Kingsport, too,” writes Warren, “indi- for Old (1927), Nolen writes with flair with high hopes for the new small town as cating how troubling the foreign domestic of several communities that he planned an alternative to increasingly sordid urban habits of impoverished newcomers were to and many that he “reshaped.” The book’s life. With its motion pictures, motor buses, third-generation Americans, such as Nolen, chapters discuss the details of individual “chain stores,” and “last, but not least, or old Yankees, such as Baxter.” That these projects, such as the neighborhood develop- radio . . . [which] gives to suburban homes biases often shape the present as well as the ments of Myers Park, North Carolina, and the finest city lectures and music,” the past of American towns is beyond dispute. Union Park Gardens, Delaware, and the small town was seen to have access, at last, In 1912 Nolen described the goal of industrial towns of Kistler, Pennsylvania, to the amenities of the urban center and so town planning as the endeavor “to establish and Kingsport, Tennessee. One chapter is provide the perfect balance of urban and the individuality of a city,—to catch its devoted to the story of Nolen’s best known rural life. peculiar spirit, to preserve its distinctive town, Mariemont, Ohio, an experiment But the text also was intended as a flavor, to accent its particular physical underwritten with funds from the wealthy warning cry, motivated by a sense that a situation.” New Towns for Old gives philanthropist Mary M. Emery. deluge would soon burst from the over- tangible form to these ideals. LALH is reprinting Nolen’s book as crowded cities— part of the ten-volume ASLA Centennial thanks, in part, Reprint Series, with a new introduction to Henry Ford’s by Charles D. Warren, an architect and his- “flivver”—and that torian who brings his experience designing this flood could in more recently planned towns to bear on result in “beautiful Nolen’s life and work. The LALH edition landscapes despoiled, will include a list of Nolen’s projects and mutilated, scarred, a new index. and either abandoned Warren’s introduction provides vivid or covered with insight into the period and the circum- shacks,” in words stances behind the publication of Nolen’s that were almost book, including the journalist Sylvester certainly Baxter’s. Baxter’s role as ghostwriter of some sec- New Towns for tions of it. “Both Nolen and Baxter spent Old integrates impor- much of their lives proselytizing for the tant principles gleaned new civic ideals,” writes Warren, from distinguished predecessors. In a Venice Boulevard, Fla., town plan by John Nolen. Photograph by Robert Robinson. 4 VIEW

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OLMSTED’S NEW YORK PARKS: in 1980, seven ballfields Protecting Passive Scenery occupied the south end of the Long Meadow, Dame Nature is a gentlewoman. No guide’s fee will obtain you surrounded by high her favour, no abrupt demand; hardly will she bear questioning, fencing and bleachers. or direct, curious gazing at her beauty; least of all will she A backstop in the reveal it truly to the hurried glance of the passing traveller, middle of the open while he waits for his dinner, or fresh horse, or fuel and space blocked off all water, always we must quietly and unimpatiently wait upon it. north-south views. Gradually and silently the charm comes over us; the beauty has Thomas approached entered our souls; we know not exactly when or how, but going John Cortese, the head away we remember it with a tender, subdued, filial-like joy. umpire for the neighbor- —Frederick Law Olmsted, Walks and Talks of an American hood leagues. “I told Sheep in Prospect Park. Courtesy Prospect Park Alliance. Farmer in England, 1852 him, ‘baseball has a short season, but the views up and down the meadow are blocked all The English pastoral landscape left such a year,’” she recalls. “I assured him that I never wanted to get rid of strong impression on the young Frederick Law baseball.” Cortese replied that he loved umpiring in the park because Olmsted (1822–1903) that he tried to re-create it was the most beautiful place in the world—he wanted to help. its effects, albeit on a smaller scale, in parks he Thomas pitched a plan to move the playing fields to the built later in America. “These Emersonian or extreme ends of the meadow and push the backstops to the edges, Thoreauvian moments were what, through the restoring the long views. She also proposed taking down all bleachers art of careful design, he wished later to make and fencing, painting the backstops black to make them less visible, possible for everyone to experience in the reseeding the grass in the infields, and planting deciduous trees in broader pastoral stretches of his great parks,” the south end of the meadow, as Olmsted had planned. Cortese Charles C. McLaughlin observed the Olmsted scholar Charles C. in Central Park meadow. approved, and the changes were finished in 1984. “It’s wonderful McLaughlin in a paper he delivered in 1991. now . . . the views are grand,” Thomas says. “No one’s ever “These moments were what he called . . . ‘unconscious, or indirect complained, and the ballplayers love it.” recreation,’ when all the jarring sights and sounds of city life were A similar scenario played out in Central Park’s thirteen-acre obscure and muted in an illusion of limitless countryside.” Great Lawn, where in the 1950s the city built eight ballfields. In its early years, the Long Meadow in Brooklyn’s Prospect Though the perfectly flat, Beaux-Arts oval, built on the site of the Park, designed by Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 1860s, embod- former Croton Reservoir in the 1930s, was not in the Olmsted ied one of the purest examples of this illusion: the gentle slopes and design vocabulary, “it did provide an opportunity to open up more swales, broken only by clumps of deciduous trees (and originally, landscape,” notes McLaughlin. A small pond, known as Belvidere grazing sheep), allowed the eye to rest on the distant horizon. Yet, Lake, anchored the oval’s south end, balanced by two playgrounds despite visitors’ appreciation of these sweeping views, such pastoral at the north end. From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, the scenery and the concept of “indirect recreation” have been the most greensward became a massive concert venue, and crowds gradually difficult features to preserve in Olmsted parks. trampled the lawn into hardpan. During his lifetime, Olmsted passionately defended his open Such was the state of the Great Lawn when Elizabeth Barlow spaces against encroachment by concessions and recreational Rogers, now a trustee of LALH, became park administrator and amenities. As McLaughlin notes, Olmsted did not necessarily object president of Central Park Conservancy in the mid-1990s. One of to those features; he included bathhouses and playgrounds, concert her first projects was to develop a restoration and management stages and parade grounds in his parks. “The important difference plan for what New Yorkers had dubbed the “Great Dustbowl.” between . . . later proponents of active sports and recreation and The plan called for shrinking the oval, enlarging the lake (now Olmsted,” McLaughlin wrote in a speech upholding the value of called the Turtle Pond), and creating a more irregular, picturesque these passive open spaces, “was that his designs displayed greater edge along the water. All the ballfields were retained, but rearranged aesthetic sensitivity, and his proposed facilities did not interfere to create a more generous passive area for sunbathing and picnick- with tranquilizing vistas of park scenery.” ing. The New York philanthropist Richard Gilder pledged one-third After Olmsted’s death, advocates took up the defense of his of the $71 million needed to fund the project. Over time, the city, open spaces in the face of a rising clamor for recreational develop- the conservancy, and other private donors supplied the rest, and ment. At times the fight grew ugly, as when, in the 1930s, social the restoration wrapped up in 1998. reformers agitating for ballfields in Central Park spun the issue as These projects have gone a long way to restore the largest “art on one side, boys and girls on the other,” says Central Park grassy expanses in two of Olmsted’s oldest and best-loved parks. historian Sara Cedar Miller. By the mid-twentieth century, baseball They have also validated his embattled concept of contemplative had won the day in both Central and Prospect Parks: ballfields leisure. “Properly and sensitively restored and intelligently used, the spanned the Long Meadow and clustered in Central Park’s Great Olmsted parks will again be delightful places to jog, ride horseback, Lawn. But park advocates of the 1980s and 1990s, seeking to stroll, or congregate,” McLaughlin observed in his speech. “Then reopen views and the sense of infinite space Olmsted had envi- they will serve the gregarious, athletic, and poetic sides of our sioned, had learned from the polarizing tensions of the past. nature, brightening our lives and those of generations to come as Tupper Thomas, Prospect Park administrator and president of Olmsted hoped they would when he designed them a century ago.” Prospect Park Alliance, a friends group, says that when she arrived

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SKYLINE PARKWAY: Changing Prospects parkway. “In some places the shoulders are so narrow that the congestion of walkers, runners, cyclists, and cars is pretty bad,” Horace William Shaler Cleveland (1814–1900) was at the pinnacle says Nancy Nelson, the unofficial leader of the Skyline Planning of his career when he visited Duluth, Minnesota, in the 1880s. He and Preservation Alliance, a volunteer advocacy group. had published his influential book, Landscape Architecture, as Today, partly because of such user conflicts, only about 25 Applied to the Wants of the West, a decade earlier. When he came miles of the parkway remain open to automobiles, and the road to Duluth to speak in support of a scenic parkway being planned bed, shoulders, walls, and bridges are in need of repair. A lack of by the new city park commission, he was in the midst of designing coherent signage causes drivers confusion and frustration. Aesthetic a sweeping park system in Minneapolis. The comprehensive network issues—oversized houses, tour-bus parking, trees blocking vistas, of urban green spaces, linked by lakes and parkways, embodied and trash dumping—have undermined the route’s scenic value. some of the central ideas expressed in his groundbreaking book. These were among the problems reported in the Skyline Duluth was then a raw boomtown at the tip of Lake Superior Parkway Corridor Management Plan, released in 2003. The plan, near the mouth of the St. Louis River. When railroads opened a commissioned by the City of Duluth Department of Planning and direct connection to the vast interior riches of lumber, iron ore, Development, set out to identify features that would qualify the and wheat, the city’s growth skyrocketed. So did the ambitions of parkway for designation as a national scenic byway—it was named Duluth’s civic leaders, who called their prospering port the “Zenith a state scenic byway in 1998—and to recommend management City of the Unsalted Sea.” strategies. In his speech, Cleveland bolstered the notion that the nascent “Proponents from parkway befitted this vision of grandeur. The park commission’s the city and the state proposed route followed the elevated rim of a glacial beach, the think it’s suitable prehistoric shoreline of Lake Superior. The curving roadway provid- for national scenic ed expansive views of the lake, its growing harbor city, and the St. byway designation, Louis River Valley. “Cleveland told the group, ‘Those long views are and we agree,” says pretty special—we don’t have anything like that in Minneapolis,’” Steve Durrant, one says the Minnesota-based historian and preservation planner Patrick of two landscape Nunnally. “The city fathers probably didn’t mind hearing that.” architects from the Construction on what became Skyline Parkway started in Minnesota office the 1890s, but the 1920s and 1930s saw the biggest growth of the of URS Corporation parkway system, guided by a visionary mayor, Samuel Snively. By Postcard of Minnesota Point and the Aerial Bridge from who helped produce the 1940s the road was complete, winding 46 miles through wild Skyline Parkway. Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society. the plan. But the and urban landscapes viewed from a series of scenic turnouts—a parkway’s unique character, defined in large part by the diverse carefully orchestrated Picturesque design. The route linked every scenery along its route, complicates preservation efforts. For major public park and forest in the city, more than a dozen open example, the plan identifies six segments with different paving, spaces in all. Builders incorporated native stone in bridges and widths, and viewsheds. Nunnally, one of several consultants who walls, giving the road a unique character and underscoring its contributed to the plan, describes the parkway as “a whole greater relationship to the wild landscape. than the sum of its parts.” How to unify the quality of each section “The parkway, without altering the changing experiences is one of the chief ques- though a designed tions the management plan tackles. historic landscape, Although the plan incorporates a historic-preservation perspec- is unusual in that it tive throughout, Durrant points out that what the city ultimately wasn’t ‘authored’ by decides to do will depend on funding, as well as on which of many a famous designer,” public viewpoints holds sway. For example, he says, “some people observes Nunnally, see it as an important commuting road, which is not always who has completed compatible with a historic parkway.” three historical Charles Froseth, a senior planner with the city’s Department studies on Skyline of Planning and Development, says the plan is under review by Parkway. “It was Bridge over Amity Creek on Seven Bridges segment of the Duluth Heritage Preservation Committee, a citizens’ advisory set out as a concept Skyline Parkway. Courtesy URS Corporation. group. The city has kept up ongoing bridge repairs and mustered with a general a grant to study the way-finding issues raised in the plan. But with alignment sketched by supporters, then designed and laid out funds in short supply, the bulk of the plan’s recommendations may by the city’s public works department over 50 years.” be shelved for the foreseeable future, Froseth says. During the second half of the twentieth century, the city’s Nelson agrees that immediate action seems unlikely, but feels focus shifted from maintaining the parkway to building ballfields hopeful about the plan’s longer-term prospects. After SPPA defeated and other recreational amenities. Skyline Parkway evolved into a a former mayor’s plans to raze part of an old-growth forest to build heavily used corridor for commuting, sight-seeing, and pedestrian a golf course near the parkway, Nelson says advocates are pleased recreation—running, cycling, roller-blading, even cross-country ski- to see a new administration reaching out to citizens on a variety of ing. The increased use, while attracting new advocates, also created planning issues. “[The situation] looks much more optimistic than more automobile traffic and maintenance issues, not to mention it used to,” she says. conflicts among pedestrians, motorists, and residents along the

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REYNOLDA: A History of Change says Thomas. Preston Stockton, superintendent of Reynolda Gardens, agrees: “Bringing it back as close as possible to the origi- Beginning in the 1940s, the descendants of R. J. and Katharine nal plan allows the whole garden to make sense, and we get much Reynolds sold parcels of the Reynolda estate land to private owners more of a feel for when the family lived here.” and gradually donated most of the property to educational institu- Planning for the Reynolda House addition began in the late tions, primarily Wake Forest University. In 1946 a Reynolds family 1990s. Millhouse says the process was informed by the work on foundation gave Wake Forest University a large donation and 350 the formal gardens, as well as by consulting from LALH, The acres to build a campus on the property. Jaeger Company, and HERITAGE LANDSCAPES, a landscape architecture and planning firm. “I came to realize that the land- scape was as important to the interpretation of the property as the rugs on the floor,” recalls Millhouse. “In particular, the consultants identified important views and helped me see them as an extension of the house.” Millhouse credits The Jaeger Company and the architects, Beyer Blinder Belle of New York City, for making the new wing as inconspicuous as possible. “Our addition is so neatly snuggled into the hill behind the house that from the front you can’t see it,” she says. Thomas says his team is working to maintain the informal, naturalistic character of the rest of the museum grounds. That includes extending the plantings of camellias, azaleas, rhododen- drons, dogwoods, and viburnums around the new wing, which lies on the building’s east side. The team is adding to the woodlands of Reynolda formal garden after restoration. pine and mixed hardwoods to screen views of the museum addition Photograph by Chet Thomas, courtesy The Jaeger Company. from popular nature trails. Millhouse expects Howett’s book will excite interest in the In time, family members also donated Reynolda Village and property and its visionary founder. “It is so moving that it can’t help Reynolda Gardens to the university, a gift comprising four acres of but create a sense of admiration for Katharine Reynolds,” she says. formal gardens, greenhouses, many of the original barns and other For her part, Howett hopes the book will help visitors tune into outbuildings, and 125 acres of wetlands, woods, and fields. In 1964 the reforming spirit that underlies the appearance of the landscape. the family of Charles H. and Mary Reynolds Babcock incorporated “The beauty,” she says, “was meant to serve a very idealistic vision. Reynolda House into a nonprofit organization that became Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, with Barbara Babcock Millhouse as president of its board of directors. The museum, on 19 VISITOR INFORMATION: Reynolda Gardens of Wake Forest University acres of surrounding land, remained independent until 2002, when Open to the public free of charge during daylight hours year-round. it became affiliated with Wake Forest University. Educational programs are offered for children and adults. Today, the Reynolda landscape is in a state of guided change. Volunteer groups assist with garden and educational activities. The three chief parcels of the original estate, about 177 acres in all, Reynolda House, Museum of American Art were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. All 2250 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem, NC but one of the thirty original support buildings still stand, although (888) 663-1149; [email protected] Reynolda Village now houses shops, offices, and restaurants. The Open Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 AM–4:30 PM; Sunday, 1:30 PM–4:30 PM university rehabilitated Reynolda Gardens, a popular visitor attrac- Admission: Adults $8, seniors $7, children and students free tion, in 1998, and Reynolda House will open a new exhibition wing in 2005. Chet Thomas, principal landscape architect at The Jaeger Company of Athens, Georgia, oversaw the rehabilitation of Reynolda Gardens from 1996 to 1998 and the landscape design for the new wing at Reynolda House. In the gardens, much of the work focused on the Greenhouse Garden, a sunken rectangle divided into quadrants by intersecting lawns; an adjoining vegetable and rose garden also received attention. “Retaining-wall restoration was a major part of the project,” Thomas says. A team of Jaeger and Reynolda Gardens workers also repaired other structures, replanted the lawns, restored grass paths, and refurbished Sears’s planting scheme in the Greenhouse Garden. The most visible changes, however, resulted from restoring the spatial relationships in the Greenhouse Garden. When the team replaced a towering allée of cryptomeria (Cryptomeria japonica lobbii) with younger specimens and pared overgrown boxwood hedges, the gar- den assumed its original proportions. “It’s also a more open, enjoy- able space to walk through, and easier to read and understand,” Roses now fill several beds in the formal garden at Reynolda. Photograph by Carol Betsch. VIEW 7 PRESERVATION

EUDORA WELTY’S GARDEN: box on an overnight train, Southern Revival and Eudora would some- times send camellias to Mrs. Larkin’s garden was a large, densely grown plot running her agent in New York.” downhill behind the small white house where she lived alone. . . . The restoration has The sun and the rain that beat down so heavily that summer been a labor of love led had not kept her from working there daily. Now the intense by Haltom, who wrote a light like a tweezers picked out her clumsy, small figure in its cultural landscape report old pair of men’s overalls rolled up at the sleeves and trousers, in 2001 based on interviews separated it from the thick leaves, and made it look strange with the writer, Welty’s and yellow as she worked with a hoe—over-vigorous, photographs, and a trove disreputable, and heedless. of Chestina Welty’s garden journals, plant lists, and This excerpt from ’s short story “” Eudora Welty working in the rock diagrams. Along the way, is just one example of how the writer wove the themes of gardening garden. Courtesy Eudora Welty, LLC. Haltom says she has had and gardens into her work. As for the over-vigorous gardener, “that help from many sources, including LALH trustee Michael Jefcoat sounds like her mother,” says Susan Haltom, a garden restoration of Laurel, Mississippi, who, with his wife Evelyn, has been an active consultant at the Eudora Welty House in Jackson, Mississippi. supporter. The foundation contacted Jefcoat after discovering a let- Haltom recalls that Eudora Welty (1909–2001), even in her later ter from him to Welty, saved among her private papers. Jefcoat now years, referred to the garden as “my mother’s garden”—and to serves on the board of the garden committee. herself as “my mother’s yard boy”—despite the fact that the author The garden restoration began in 1994, several years after lived in the house for seventy-five years, nearly fifty of them by the elderly Welty, who had deeded her house to the Department of herself. Archives and History, had lost her longtime gardener and the yard The garden, restored to the period from 1925 to 1945, when had been in decline. “She was sitting in an easy chair,” Haltom the garden and Welty were both coming into their own, opened to recalls, “and she had big china-blue eyes, which she rolled toward the public for the first time in April 2004. The Tudor-style house, the window and said, ‘I can’t bear to look out there and see what’s built in 1925 by Eudora’s parents, Christian and Chestina Welty, become of my mother’s garden.’” Haltom started pulling out the will open as a literary museum in late 2005. honeysuckle and poison ivy that covered many of the beds. “Then Mary Alice White, Eudora Welty’s niece and the director of I’d go home and read her stories, and I began to see how much this the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, describes the place influenced her work, and how important it was to restore it,” garden as “typically southern,” divided into “rooms” and planted she says. “When Eudora died she knew we were working on this, with natives and popular old-fashioned perennials. Designed by and she was pleased.” Chestina Welty on three-quarters of an acre, the garden surrounds the house. Two backyard rooms, the upper and lower gardens, are Preservation profiles written by Jane Roy Brown bounded by privet hedges and separated by arbors, trellises, and steps. The upper garden contains a perennial border and a cutting VISITOR INFORMATION: The Garden of the Eudora Welty House bed, and the lower garden is given over to Chestina Welty’s favorite 1119 Pinehurst Street, Jackson, MS roses. Spigelias and a native azalea line the west side of the house. (601) 353-7762; [email protected] A camellia room, containing about thirty varieties, lies on the Open for tours Wednesdays, 10 AM–2 PM, March–October. east side. “Camellias were Eudora’s favorite,” White says. “When Reservations required. Admisison is free. The Eudora Welty House opens to the public in 2006. Eudora traveled, her mother would ship her fresh camellias in a

NEWS

Oldfields Listed as National Historic Landmark Oldfields, the former home and estate of the late Indianapolis businessman, collector, and philanthropist Josiah K. Lilly Jr., has been designated a National Historic Landmark. Oldfields was selected for this prestigious designation because it embodies distinguishing characteristics of the American Country Place Era, including a landscape designed by Percival Gallagher of Olmsted Brothers. If travel takes you to the Midwest this summer, please plan to visit—and while you are there, see A Genius for Place, American Landscapes of the Country Place Era, on view at Oldfields, Indianapolis Museum of Art, through October 10.

Oldfields. Photograph by Carol Betsch.

8 VIEW

LALH BOOKS

LALH books are intended for both professional and general readers.

ORDER INFORMATION

University of Massachusetts Press: Order by phone (800) 537-5487 or online at www.umass.edu/umpress University of Illinois Press: Order by phone (800) 545-4703 or online at www.press.uillinois.edu McGraw-Hill: Order by phone (800) 262-4729 LALH: Order by phone (413) 549-4860

FORTHCOMING A WORLD OF HER OWN NEW TOWNS FOR OLD: MAKING: Katharine Smith Achievements in Civic Reynolds Johnston and the Improvement in Some Landscape of Reynolda American Small Towns Catherine Howett and Neighborhoods John Nolen (ASLA Centennial The compelling story of the young Reprint Series, reprint of wife of tobacco magnate R. J. 1927 edition). New introduc- Reynolds and the estate, farm, and tion by Charles D. Warren village she created in Winston-Salem. Long out of print and increasingly rare, this illustrated study will Richly illustrated with historical and be of great interest to planners and urban historians. Individual new photographs. Spring 2005. chapters examine different communities, suburbs, and parks UMass Press/cloth. Price to be planned by Nolen. December 2004. UMass Press/cloth, $34.95. determined.

RECENT RELEASES

Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect: Walks and Talks of an American Farmer An Account of the Gardenmaker’s Life, in England 1885–1971 Frederick Law Olmsted (reprint of 1852 edition) Robin Karson. UMass Press/paper, $34.95. New introduction by Charles C. McLaughlin, Winner of the ASLA Honor Award UMass Press/paper, $24.95 (cloth, $50.00). One of the “75 Great Garden Books” of the “This book is the work of a generous-minded American Horticultural Society man who sought to bring aesthetic access, “Every thought projected onto these pages decency, and the benefit of agrarian improvement in quote and sketch and photograph should be to humankind.”—Peter Reading, Times Literary of use to anyone planning to convert a barren Supplement lawn or an untidy patch of woodland into something graceful, natural or grandiose.” A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. —J. Peter Bergman, The Berkshire Eagle and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens Susan L. Klaus. UMass Press/paper, $24.95 Midwestern Landscape Architecture (cloth, $39.95). Edited by William H. Tishler. Winner of the Historical Preservation Book Prize, Univ. of Illinois Press/paper, $19.95 (cloth, $37.50). Mary Washington College Winner of the New York Society Library Book Award “Written by a talented cast of landscape schol- ars, the chapters are well researched, well docu- “Klaus has produced an exemplary short mented, and well written.”—Heidi Hohmann, architectural monograph: succinct, eloquent, Landscape Journal contextual, and copiously illustrated.”—Choice

LALH members receive a 30% discount on LALH books ordered from University of Massachusetts Press.

VIEW 9 LALH BOOKS

BACKLIST LALH Board of Trustees John Franklin Miller, PRESIDENT Pioneers of The Muses of Gwinn: The Gardens Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. Charles D. Warren, TREASURER American Art and Nature in a of Ellen Biddle New York, N.Y. Landscape Garden Designed by Shipman Ann D. Wilhite, CLERK Design Warren H. Manning, Judith B. Tankard. Ann Arbor, Mich. Charles A. Platt, Michael Jefcoat, Laurel, Miss. Edited by Charles LALH/cloth, $39.95. Charles C. McLaughlin, A. Birnbaum and and Ellen Biddle “It is a handsome Chevy Chase, Md. Daniel J. Nadenicek, ASLA, Robin Karson. Shipman book, valuable McGraw-Hill/cloth, $59.95. Clemson, S.C. Robin Karson. LALH/cloth, $39.95. not only to historians and garden Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Recipient of the ASLA Merit Award Winner of the ASLA Honor Award designers, but also to every garden New York, N.Y. Nesta Spink, Ann Arbor, Mich. “Pioneers of American Landscape “Karson’s examination is thorough maker.” —George Waters, Pacific Nancy R. Turner, New York, N.Y. Design . . . makes a compelling and scholarly . . . [and] includes Horticulture case that landscape architects penetrating and illuminating essays.” LALH Consulting Committee were far more important than —William Lake Douglas, Journal Carol Betsch, Amherst, Mass. architects in shaping America’s of the Society of Architectural Dean Cardasis, Amherst, Mass., designed environment.” —James Historians FASLA S. Russell, Architectural Record Linda Florio, New York, N.Y. Julia Gaviria, Somerville, Mass. Barbara Shear, New York, N.Y. Colin Thomson, New York, N.Y. Molly Turner, Brooklyn, N.Y. ASLA CENTENNIAL REPRINT SERIES Bruce Wilcox, Amherst, Mass. LALH Board of Trustees, ex-officio Landscape Architecture, as Applied Landscape-Gardening to the Wants of the West; with an O. C. Simonds (reprint of 1920 edition) LALH Advisers Essay on Forest Planting on New introduction by Robert E. Grese. Julius Gy. Fábos the Great Plains Professor emeritus, University of UMass Press, $29.95. Massachusetts, Amherst, FASLA H. W. S. Cleveland (reprint of 1873 edition) Dan Kiley (deceased) Keith N. Morgan New introduction by Daniel J. Nadenicek The Spirit of the Garden Boston University and Lance M. Neckar. UMass Press, $29.95. Martha Brookes Hutcheson (reprint of 1923 edition) Witold Rybczynski University of Pennsylvania New introduction by Rebecca Warren Davidson. Robert A. M. Stern The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening UMass Press, $34.95. Yale University David C. Streatfield Wilhelm Miller (reprint of 1915 edition) University of Washington New introduction by Christopher Vernon. Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect William H. Tishler University of Wisconsin, FASLA UMass Press, $34.95. Charles W. Eliot (reprint of 1902 edition) Suzanne L. Turner New introduction by Keith N. Morgan. Professor emerita, ASLA, Louisiana State University UMass Press, $50.00.

ASLA Centennial Reprint Series Selection Committee Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA Catherine Howett, ASLA Professor emerita, University of Georgia Marion Pressley, FASLA Pressley Associates, Cambridge, Reynolda | Continued from Page 3 Mass. David C. Streatfield University of Washington Over the next four years, an increasingly inventive design emerged. By 1918, Reynolda had evolved into a vibrant, working community that fulfilled the mission its creator LALH Donors had embraced many years before. 2003 through March 2004 The complex process of planning Reynolda paralleled Benefactors similarly fervid efforts in other parts of the United States, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jefcoat Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. usually on a smaller scale, during what is known as the McLaughlin American Country Place Era. The over-arching principles Mrs. Richard Turner that influenced the design of these estates were the same Mr. and Mrs. Clayton Wilhite Viburnum Foundation ones that influenced the design of small towns, suburbs, Viburnum Trilobum Fund, parks, and institutional grounds. Through detailed studies New York Community Trust such as Howett’s on Reynolda, we gain new insight into the Patrons cultural realities of the period, as well as new appreciation Garden Club of St. Louis for the remarkable landscape designs it produced. Mary Carter McConnell John Franklin Miller View to Lake Katharine, Reynolda, 1948. J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation Courtesy Reynolda House Archives.

10 VIEW ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Peter Newton Joe and Robin Reed Joel E. Tomlin III Earle Shettleworth Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Nolen Charles H. Sawyer William and Rose Vetter M. Edward Shull Nancy Pendleton Adrian Scott Nancy J. Volkman Linda Skaar Charles D. Warren Mr. and Mrs. Edwin A. Seipp Jr. Jeannette Walker, in honor of Louise Taylor Smith Diane T. Spencer Michael and Evelyn Jefcoat Jerrold Soesbe, FASLA Mrs. Anne Felton Spencer Katy Moss Warner Trent Spence Sponsors Nesta and Walter Spink Wheat Landscape Design Steve Sperotto Anonymous Edward Straka Scott White Katherine Spitz Robert and Carolyn Marsh Mrs. Jessie P. Woodward Lindsay Bonj Szczygiel E. Jeffrey Stann Dr. and Mrs. James Yoch Keith N. Morgan Joseph Tyree Kent Steinriede Dr. and Mrs. Hugh H. Young II Mrs. George Numrich Jr. Larry D. Walling Erik Bradford Stocker, Mr. and Mrs. John H. Lloyd P. Zuckerberg and in memory of David Alan Mrs. Richard Turner, in honor Charlotte Triefus Alexander of Gail Griffin Whitworth Jr. Dan Kiley (1912–2004). Rolla J. Wilhite Edward D. Stone Jr. Photograph by Felice Frankel, Samuel V. Stone Jr. Susan Wood and Ernest May Members 1988. Sustainers Joanna L. Tilghman Arnold Alanen, ASLA, and Mrs. Jonathan Bush Kristy Trevathan Supporters Lynn Bjorkman Mr. and Mrs. James Cooke III Thomas Trombley Nesta and Walter Spink Eldon W. Beck, FASLA Phyllis Andersen Madison Cox Dorothy H. Baldini Meg Turner Mrs. Katherine S. Taylor Nicholas and Maureen Katanic Annaliese Bischoff Elizabeth Vizza Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Bolger Morton J. Baum, ASLA Mr. and Mrs. William C. Heritage Landscapes John Ross West, ASLA Warren III Florence Boogaerts Chris and Suzanne Baxter James F. Olmsted David G. Westmoreland Mrs. Carolyn S. Wolfe, Terrence Boyle Sylvia Demonte Bayard Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Mr. and Mrs. John Bierwith Mrs. John T. Woodhouse in honor of Nancy R. Turner Peardon David M. Burkholder Sarah B. Worm Susan Chappell Mrs. E. C. Broderson Brian Pinnola Jackson and Martha Wright, Steele Supporters Lucy Day Judith Chatfield Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and in honor of Ellen Manchester Jack Ahern, FASLA Theodore Rogers Marjorie Denzin-Stewig Mrs. B. Caulkins Clark and Bob Dawson George W. Curry, FASLA Prof. and Mrs. George B. Tatum Marilyn F. Di Toro William Clendaniel Mrs. Minturn Wright III Marilyn S. Cranin Tanya Cushman Victor J. Walker, FASLA Catherine Donovan Linda Yang Elizabeth Hope Cushing Dr. David Mactye and Mary and John Wight Rudy Favretti, FASLA Sue Heinz Dana Woody William L. Flourney Jr. J. Brian Devlin, ASLA The following individuals David Dickenson, in honor Mrs. Joseph H. McGee Virginia B. Fox generously helped underwrite Eleanor McQuilken of Katharine Dickenson production costs of the paper- Charles Gleaves Flora May and Ralph D. Friends Harry Dodson, ASLA back edition of Fletcher Steele, Fayal Greene Nyland E. D. Alyea Jr., ASLA Carol Grove Barbara Dunsmore Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker’s Dr. G. Porter Perham Carol Betsch James F. Haden Angela Dye Edward L. Blake Jr. Barbara Eannace Life, 1885–1971. Marion Pressley, FASLA David Heller Mrs. Arnold Weissberger Dean Cardasis, FASLA, and Mrs. William Stark Hickey Elisabeth C. Miller Library Elizabeth Thompson Liz and Blair Hines Carolyn and Don Etter Steele Benefactors Susan Cohen, ASLA Judy M. Horton Elsbeth T. Falk Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jefcoat Steele Members Frederica Cushman Ann Floyd Catherine Howett, ASLA Jane Roy Brown Robert Dash Paul J. Foster Mary Dewart Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Steele Patrons Alan Emmet Hudson Jr. Carolyn Gaines Bradford Greene, FASLA Elizabeth Eustis Linda Gheesling The Blackhaw Fund of the Robert and Jean Robinson Carol F. Hutchins Calvert Foundation Ann Granbery, ASLA B. K. Godwin III Mrs. Douglas Rollins Richard Johnson Mr. and Mrs. William Robert Grese Marlea Graham Perry Carpenter Wheelock, ASLA Susanne Stamm Knisley Frederick Jr. Craig Halvorson, ASLA John M. Groff Steven Krog, ASLA High Meadow Foundation Esley Hamilton Jonathan Lippincott Mrs. Nathan V. Hendricks III Grant and Siobhan Holcomb, Charles and Ann McLaughlin Martha H. Lyon, ASLA Adrian Higgins in honor of Nancy R. Turner Mrs. George Numrich Jr. LALH is a publicly supported Lynn Marsh and Doug DeLong Gavin Hilgemeier Mary Anne Hunter, ASLA Mrs. Richard Turner charity with 501(c)(3) status. Carol C. Mather B. L. Homsy Christian Huntress James van Sweden, FASLA The LALH mission is to Virginia McCormac IBM Corporation Kevin and Cheryl Hurley William Blake Webber educate and thereby promote Silas R. Mountsier III Dr. Richard L. Ingraham thoughtful stewardship Barbara Israel Robert Ohlerking John Jakle of the land. Peter Jessop Kirk J. Olney Jane Johnson Steele Sponsors Russel O. Jones, ASLA Thomas F. Knapp Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and C. W. Eliot Paine Your donations support the Pat Kaplan Annetta H. Kushner Theodore Rogers Mrs. William Palmer LALH publishing program and Steven Kelley and Mrs. Peter G. Smith Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Panella Donald O. Lamport are tax deductible to the extent Arla Carmichiel Ben Land Charles D. Warren Deborah S. Kern Kristin and Stephen G. Pategas, permitted by law. We gratefully in honor of Harold Mosher Ann Leone accept appreciated stock. Please Mrs. Henry M. Kuhlman Dr. G. Porter Perham Steven Logoluso Steele Sustainers call for information at William M. and Marion D. Gretchen Stranzl McCann (413) 549-4860. Leach, in honor of Charles Mrs. J. Duncan Pitney Mr. and Mrs. Douglas F. McLaughlin Carol Pope Carole McElwee Roby Jr. Henri J. LeClerc Miss Priscilla M. Porter Lisa Miller Ted Collins Associates, Ltd. Robin Karson, Caroline Loughlin Jon Powell, ASLA, and Jeri Kent M. and Dorothy Miner LALH EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Mrs. William Low Jr., Deneen Ruth Murayama, ASLA Tanya Cushman, ASSISTANT TO in honor of Nancy R. Turner Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Gary L. Murphy Steele Friends THE DIRECTOR Winton H. Manning Quennell Christopher Patten Carol Betsch Joel and Marilyn Ray Dan Paul Carol Booth and Linda Fidnick, Dennis McGlade, ASLA LALH consulting editors: Mrs. Ewing W. Reilley Leila and Bob Peck in honor of Robin Karson Elizabeth McLean Carol Betsch, Amherst, Mass. Millard F. Rogers Jr. Ellen Petersen and Carol Betsch Mrs. John S. McLennan, W. Lake Douglas Jane Roy Brown, Conway, Mass. in memory of Louisa Rosenthal Kent Petterson Julia Gaviria, Somerville, Mass. John S. McLennan Robin J. Roy Alice Page Pickman Robert and Maurine Hausser Joel Ray, Ithaca, N.Y. Mrs. James Thayer McMillan II Mrs. George Rublee Mrs. Eben Pyne Mary H. H. Hayden, in honor of Nancy R. Turner Mary Eugenia Myer Dr. David Schuyler, Dr. Ellen Reeder Grant and Siobhan Holcomb Denise Otis in honor of Robin Karson Georgiana Reynolds View design: Florio Design, NYC Susan L. Klaus, in honor of Mrs. Jane Blaffer Owen Barbara Shear Sarah Richardson Joseph Peter Spang Robin Karson Leslie Peoples Robert and Jean Robinson Madison Cox Designs, Inc. Managing editor: Julia Gaviria Jon A. Peterson Barry Starke, FASLA Ann Scheid Suzanne Sweek Mrs. James Thayer McMillan II John W. Rae Jr. Pamela Seager John K. Notz Jr. Mrs. Clara Rankin Rodney Swink, FASLA Christina Selvek

VIEW 11 LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE HISTORY

In this issue of View, you’ll read A Genius for Place is on view at about: Oldfields, Indianapolis Museum of Art, through October 10, 2004. A forthcoming book on a remarkable building project, “This really is a show that fills a gap in Reynolda, in Winston-Salem, our knowledge. It’s especially illuminating N.C. about the accomplishment of designers we will be hearing about increasingly, New Towns for Old by John as the new field of landscape—still an Nolen, the sixth volume in the obscure subject for most of us—begins ASLA Centennial Reprint Series to be sorted out. Excellent show.” New, affordable paperback —The Philadelphia Inquirer editions of A Modern Arcadia and Midwestern Landscape Architecture

Preservation reports from Duluth, Minn.; Laurel, Miss.; Winston- Salem, N.C.; Indianapolis, Ind.; and New York City

How you can become a member Val Verde, Santa Barbara, Calif. of LALH! Photograph by Carol Betsch.

Non Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Library of American Landscape History New York, NY P.O. Box 1323 Permit No. 757 Amherst, MA 01004-1323