Summer 2020 Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Volume 23, Number 3 JOURNAL OF THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN & LANDSCAPE HISTORY SOCIETY EDEN EDITORIAL BOARD Editor: Steven Keylon Editorial Board: Keith Park (Chair), Kate Nowell, Ann Scheid, Susan Schenk, Libby Simon, Jennifer Trotoux, Noel Vernon Consulting Editors: Marlea Graham, Barbara Marinacci Regional Correspondents: San Diego: Vonn Marie May San Francisco Bay Area: Janet Gracyk Sacramento: Carol Roland-Nawi Graphic Design: designSimple.com Submissions: Send scholarly papers, articles, and book reviews to the editor: [email protected] Memberships/Subscriptions: Join the CGLHS and receive a subscription to Eden. Individual $50 • Family $75 Sustaining $150 and above Student $20 Nonprofit/Library $50 Visit www.cglhs.org to join or renew your membership. Or mail check to California Garden & Landscape History Society, PO Box 220237, Newhall, CA 91322-0237. Contents Questions or Address Changes: [email protected] CGLHS BOARD OF DIRECTORS President: Christine E. O’Hara From a Renaissance Villa: Vice President: David Laws The Italian Landscape Style in America Part Two Recording Secretary: Nancy Carol Carter Nancy Carol Carter ................................................................................................................................. Membership Officer: Antonia Adezio 4 Treasurer: Judy Horton Directors at large: Kelly Comras, Keith Park, Ann Scheid, Libby Simon, Jennifer Trotoux, Janet Gracyk The Forgotten Landscape: Past President: Steven Keylon Exploring the Influence of Arthur G. Barton in the Archives: Using Geographic HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS Information Systems to Resurrect a Long-Lost Landscape Architect VLT Gardner Ella Ban ............................................................................................................................................... 28 Marlea Graham, Editor emerita William A. Grant (Founder) Barbara Marinacci The Elusive Mabel Symmes David Streatfield Janet Gracyk ......................................................................................................................................36 The California Garden & Landscape History Society (CGLHS) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization devoted to celebrating the beauty and diversity of California’s historic gardens and landscapes; promoting wider Saving a Mabel Symmes Garden in Berkeley knowledge, preservation, and restoration of California’s historic gardens and landscapes; organizing study visits to historic gardens and landscapes as well Carolyn Fitzhugh McNiven ................................................................................................................48 as to relevant archives and libraries; and offering opportunities for a lively interchange among members at meetings, garden visits, and other events. Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society (ISBN 1524-8062) Legacy of a Thomas Church Garden is published quarterly. Subscription is a benefit of CGLHS membership. Harley Jessup ..................................................................................................................................... 56 © 2020 California Garden & Landscape History Society California Garden & Landscape History Society P.O. Box 220237, Newhall, CA 91322-0237 Wealthy film star Harold Lloyd hired landscape architect A.E. Hanson to design the gardens of his 16-acre property in Benedict Canyon. Above: Agapanthus bloom in a Thomas Church-designed No expense was spared in creating a grand Golden Age estate. Postcard from the author’s collection. garden from 1956. Photo by Harley Jessup. www.cglhs.org 2 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Summer 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 3 3 Architect Guy Lowell designed an unusual half-moon pool with Roman columns at Ca’ di Sopra, built in Montecito in 1916. Author’s collection. FROM A THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE STYLE VILLA: IN AMERICA NANCY CAROL CARTER 4 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Summer 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 3 5 Part 2: Origins and Adaptations of the Italian Style in California Introduction period of 1910 to 1930 “could be properly called Mediterranean” because architectural This is the second part of an article explor- elements from different traditions were read- ing the origins and adaptations of the Italian ily combined.4 landscape style in the United States. Part 1, Jere Stuart French diagrams California’s published in the Spring 2020 issue of Eden,1 garden ancestry in his garden history, tracing describes the long-term and wide influence two lines of descent. One begins in Mesopota- of Italian Renaissance villa design, its early mia, moving to Persia, then to Moorish-Spain, adaptation in England and the arrival and then to Old California. With origins in the maturing of the Italian style in the United modern Middle East, this tradition perceived States. Leading scholarship on the British and the garden as an earthly paradise where green- American reception of Italian landscape design ery and precious water could be enjoyed was reviewed and the earliest Italian gardens within sheltering walls. Islamic colonists car- in the United States were identified. ried Persian garden influences to North Africa, Part 2 focuses the story on California, where and then to Spain which was occupied by the the Italian style found a natural home. The ter- Moors from 711 until 1492. Moorish garden rain and growing conditions in some parts of design was a high art reliant on Islamic sym- the state could support its pure form. Italian bolism and advanced water engineering. In the design was introduced to California along- classic Moorish garden, geometric symmetry side an existing vernacular design tradition. was achieved with a cruciform dividing the By the time California became a state in 1850, garden into four equal sections representing three hundred years of Spanish and Mexican life, growth, death and rebirth. The Moorish- influence had been present. That heritage was Spanish garden traditions that came to the largely undervalued in the earliest decades of Americas with the Spanish colonists evolved statehood, but a late nineteenth-early twenti- over more than 300 years into the gardens of eth century reassessment and romanticization Old California. brought the Spanish style to the fore in Califor- The second line of descent in French’s nia. Interest in Old California and its cultural diagram is a simpler one, starting with the legacy burst forth at the same time that Charles Visigoths and Romans and moving to the Ital- A. Platt2 and other East Coast practitioners ian Renaissance. The western Roman Empire, were successfully adapting the Italian style of extending into Spain and Britain, declined estate-scale landscape design (along with its under pressure from nomadic tribes. The northern European Renaissance French and Germanic Visigoths pressed in, eventually English counterparts) to the United States and sacking Rome in 410. The cultural and artis- propelling geometric neoclassical villa design tic influence of classical antiquity was slowly toward its American zenith. arrested; the medieval Middle Ages began. Californians were not design purists. Centuries later Italy became the center of a Rather than being forced to a choose among rebirth of classical culture and knowledge. appealing and appropriate styles, owners, and Fully blossoming in the 1400s, this Renais- designers happily fused Italian, Spanish and sance influenced education, culture, art, Near Eastern design elements into the “Medi- architecture, economics and politics, leading terranean style.” The Montecito home of James Europe into the modern era. In Part 1 of this Left: Riverside Waldron Gillespie, El Fureidis, designed by article, notable characteristics of the Italian County capitalized on Bertram Goodhue and built in 1905-06, is Renaissance garden are identified, including trendy comparisons identified as the first example of a Mediter- a wholeness in the composition of house and of California and ranean-style estate in California. It features a garden, a formal axial design, an emphasis on Italy with its own 3 1908 promotional mix of Italian, Persian and Spanish elements. outdoor living, and moving water. In French’s In Memoriam of Pamela Seager, 17 July 1944 – 14 September 2019 publication. Author’s Architectural historian David Gebhard sug- “family tree” of garden lineage, the marriage Executive Director of Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch & Gardens for 33 Years. collection. gests that even the Spanish Colonial Revival of Old California and Italian Renaissance 6 Eden: Journal of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Summer 2020 • Vol. 23, No. 3 7 influences produces the California garden.5 Opposite: San Diego’s Chamber Yet, amidst the mix of design traditions of Commerce claimed a Mediterranean kinship in this 1895 and the domination of Mediterranean style, a promotional pamphlet. Courtesy few owners, architects, and landscape design- San Diego Public Library. ers continued to look to the Italian Renaissance villa as a model for the ideal California home Left: Jere Stuart French provided and garden. This article recounts the his- this “family tree” in his book The California Garden. tory of “California as the American Italy” and Mesopotamian Visigoth Roman traces the Italian style into twentieth-century California. California: Our Italy When explorer John Charles Frémont (1813-1890),6 made an enthusiastic report Persian