Genius of Place

by Justin Martin

  When Olmsted encountered resistance, his energy, ordinarily focused and constructive, could curdle into something maniacal. He bombarded the commissioners with angry letters. He adopted the same wounded tone that had characterized the end of his tenure at the USSC, or the worst of his dealings with Andrew Green on Central Park. Underneath the rain of verbiage hummed a constant, pained insinuation: You aren’t merely deviating from a plan. You’re hurting me!

  Finally, in the autumn of 1877, Olmsted arranged to travel to Montreal and take his case directly to the public. This had worked in Buffalo. He’d dazzled a large audience, setting the stage for a park-making coup. Maybe, he figured, he could sell the good citizens of Montreal on the merits of his plan and, in so doing, rescue some of its best elements.

  Olmsted was scheduled to speak in a hall with a capacity of eight hundred. At the appointed hour, only about ten people had shown up. Another thirty or so trickled in during his speech. He described the exercise as a “farcical failure” in a letter to John.

  Like the Capitol grounds, work on Mount Royal would stretch out over many years. But here, many of Olmsted’s ideas were not adopted. His intricate tree scheme was mostly ignored. The gentle-grade walking path, suitable for the feeble folk, was never laid out. Sometimes the world understood. Sometimes the world was blind to Olmsted’s vision.

  VII

  “I Have All My Life Been Considering Distant Effects”

  SUMMITS AND SORROWS, 1877–1903

  CHAPTER 26

  A Troubled Wander Year

  OLMSTED WAS PLEASED that his stepson had joined the practice. Now there was the possibility of passing his firm along, keeping it a family business when the time came, not to mention a chance to ensure a future for landscape architecture, the profession he had pioneered in America. But John Olmsted had a lot to learn. If he was going to be more than a draftsman, if he was going to design landscapes, he needed to broaden his horizons.

  Time and again, when Olmsted was a younger man, he had taken breakneck tours abroad careening from park to park, soaking up knowledge and ideas. In a pre-Google era, when images weren’t widely available and were often of poor quality, it was highly necessary to go see things in person. In fact, visual artists such as painters and sculptors were in the habit of taking dedicated sojourns, typically through Europe, to view the great masterpieces. Such a trip was sometimes called a “wander year,” though the time allotted might be less than twelve months.

  In 1877, it was decided that John should have a wander year. He’d devote some months to visiting England and France, places from which Olmsted had drawn ample inspiration. “I could not keep down my own excitement in sympathy with him,” Olmsted confided to Mary after seeing off their eldest.

  John departed with six pages of written instructions from his stepfather, to be “read over and committed substantively to memory while at sea, re-read in London and again in Paris.” The instructions included a list of parks John should visit as well as assorted estates, castles, and cathedrals. Olmsted also provided the names of various people he knew in London and Paris; John might benefit by making their introduction. The instructions, on all points, included an incredible level of detail and demand: “Everywhere examine closely and accurately all small architectural objects adapted to park-work—pavilions, lodges, entrances, chalets, refreshment stalls, bridges, conservatories, plant-stands, fountains, drinking fountains, lamps, flagstaffs, seats, railings, parapets, copings, etc. If you find anything novel and good, especially in plan and arrangement; take sketches & notes & be prepared on return to make full drawings.” Olmsted was anxious that John make the most of this opportunity. “Steep your mind as much as possible in the scenery,” he urged, “so as to fix strong, permanent impressions.” That’s how Olmsted had always worked, and he expected nothing less from his stepson, his employee.

  Upon arrival, John wrote to his stepfather nearly every day, providing full accounts of his doings. Olmsted seemed pleased with the initial dispatches. “They show that you were well prepared to profit by the journey; better than I had supposed,” Olmsted wrote back. “ . . . Your notes are just what I want; full & nothing redundant. I look with great interest for what are to follow.”

  Meanwhile, Olmsted’s longtime position as landscape architect to Central Park was experiencing one of its periodic flash points. Boss Tweed was safely behind bars in the Ludlow Street Jail now, and Spider Sweeny was hiding out somewhere in France. But Tammany had reconstituted as a political force that was still plenty corrupt, just not as visibly, publicly so. As always, Central Park was viewed as a patronage gold mine. The park’s board had lately been reduced to just four members, three of whom were Tammany loyalists. Once again, they had designs on the park such as building a horse-racing course.

  The machine took shots at Olmsted, whenever and however it could. For example, the New York Evening Express, little more than a Tammany house organ, carried an article that attacked Olmsted from an absurd revisionist perspective. The piece claimed that the Tweed Ring’s approach to Central Park had upheld the public trust, while Olmsted was actually part of a “Greensward Ring” that for years had cynically exploited the citizens of New York. Here’s a typical passage: “The Greensward Ring, whose babble in the papers and Society Circles, about aesthetics and architecture, vistas and landscapes, the quiver of a leaf and the proper blendings of light and shade bamboozled the citizens of that day. These were the Miss Nancies of Central Park art, the foes of nature, and the aids to money-making.”

  Olmsted was directed to contribute $112 to a Tammany reelection fund. He refused. At another point, the board refused to pay his salary for several months, claiming that he had too many professional obligations besides Central Park. Olmsted would have conceded as much himself. (Tellingly, the commissioners didn’t claim he was abdicating his duties, only that he was frequently occupied with nonpark matters.) Olmsted was forced to sue to collect the money that had been withheld.

  No doubt, all this contributed to another run of poor health for Olmsted. During the summer of 1877, New York was hit with a heat wave, and he had developed a mysterious illness characterized by fever and chills. As the fall drew on, his relations with the Central Park board grew increasingly strained, and Olmsted grew peevish.

  He barraged John with letters on an almost daily basis. John was methodically working his way through the six pages of instructions. But now Olmsted demanded to know whether he was actually appreciating the things he saw. Perhaps his stepson was “too much in haste to get with the mood of enjoyment.” What about all the various contacts Olmsted had provided? Had John connected with Mr. Brale, the barrister who was an accomplished amateur geologist? Why, he might prove an invaluable contact. What about Leopold Eidlitz, the noted New York architect? Eidlitz was visiting London at this very time; had John managed to look him up? And why hadn’t John spent more time at the British Museum? Why was his lodging arrangement so unsatisfactory? The place did not even serve breakfast. Olmsted worked his way up to a seventeenpage letter that included the following:When I have reminded you that (so far as your letters indicate) you have failed of enjoying more of the great things you have seen, I do not in the least mean that you have not enjoyed them as a child enjoys a show or as a school girl enjoying jewelry & nice dresses, much less that you have not enjoyed the freedom and stir and novelty of traveling in foreign lands, nor that you have not enjoyed the observations you have recorded, but that you have not had that enjoyment of them which an artist’s imagination could have given him. There is no sign that they have taken possession of you and enlarged your artistic capacity. I want you to recognize that if they have not it is because you have not studied them or contemplated them from the right point of view. You are not a man of genius in art, a man of less artistic impulse I never knew. You have no care to produce anything—to carry to perfect realization any conception. Consequently, as you have insisted on making yourself an artist, you must spend great labor, years of study with litt
le satisfaction of any worthy contribution—of all this I thoroughly warned you.

  The letter was simply cruel. When John wrote back, he avoided the harsh glare of his stepfather’s assessment, confining himself instead to setting straight a few small points: “I have been to the reading room of the British Museum, but they close at 4, as there are no lights allowed in the building, so I have not time to read much.”

  John’s strategy was to remain dutiful, almost to the point of masochism. He continued to write letters home, cataloging the parks and art he saw, going now to great self-conscious lengths to express how these things moved him. This succeeded in appeasing Olmsted somewhat. “It is evident that there was little occasion for the long letter which I wrote,” he indicated to John. And that was the end of the matter: no apology, no reassessment of John’s abilities, at least not at this point.

  Olmsted was feeling worse. In December 1877, a doctor advised him to take some time off to recuperate. Olmsted lit upon an idea: He would join John overseas. Together, they would visit some of Europe’s finest green spaces, and Olmsted could direct his stepson’s appreciation of these masterworks. He requested and was granted a leave of absence by the Central Park board. He laid out an ambitious itinerary that included Amsterdam, Munich, Vienna, Pisa, Turin, Florence, and Dijon, just to name a few stops. Given his stepfather’s current mood, the idea of traveling across Europe together filled John with dread. This time John wrote directly to his mother: “His mention of a long string of cities he intends visiting fairly makes my head swim.”

  Then the other shoe fell in Olmsted’s Tammany fracas. The Central Park board announced that it was eliminating his position. The board slyly timed the decision to fall right as Olmsted was preparing to leave. He asked the commissioners to table the matter until after he returned, but they refused.

  Olmsted sailed on January 8, 1878. While he was away, his friends and colleagues rallied to his defense. Virtually every New York daily including the Times, Herald, and World published editorials calling for Olmsted’s reinstatement. Godkin, Olmsted’s onetime Nation collaborator, voiced his outrage in a piece that appeared in the New York Tribune. A petition decrying Olmsted’s dismissal was signed by 158 prominent citizens, among them banker Morris Jesup, editor Whitelaw Reid, painter Albert Bierstadt, and Willard Parker, the doctor who had both instructed John and treated Olmsted after his carriage accident. The petition included the following passage: “It is not unnatural that we, as taxpayers, should ascribe the successful management of the Park for the last twenty years largely to Mr. Olmsted’s connection with it during the greater part of this period.”

  Notably absent from all this activity was Vaux. The outpouring of support for Olmsted opened an old wound. Vaux was particularly irked by Godkin’s piece, which treated Olmsted as Central Park’s sole creator, while failing to even mention his name. Vaux wrote a furious rebuttal to the Tribune, asserting that Godkin’s “greedy misrepresentations” had ignored his role. He also contacted Mary directly, requesting that the record be set straight. Since Olmsted and John were both overseas, she asked Owen to pen a brief statement for publication. The statement asserted that Olmsted and Vaux deserved equal credit for Central Park. But Mary was rankled by what she termed Vaux’s “chivying English disposition.”

  Olmsted did his best to ignore the hubbub. For this trip, he made a point of not even picking up a New York paper. He was determined to enjoy the wander year, this one intended for John’s edification as well. Early on, he succeeded. They visited Regent’s Park in London, and on the Continent, they particularly enjoyed the Englischer Garden in Munich. Olmsted filled his pocket notebook with copious scribblings on all he observed—trees, gateways, shelters, fountains—and John recorded his parallel impressions.

  But as time went on, Olmsted found that he was unable to shut out the worry. Mount Royal had gone badly, and now his consulting role with Central Park had ended. He was anxious about the lost income. Olmsted had other work such as the ongoing Washington, D.C., project and service on an advisory board regarding the New York State capitol at Albany. But he was concerned about the future of his business. John found his father increasingly quiet and brooding. Olmsted even started to pare back the ambitious itinerary, striking Berlin, Vienna, and several other places. “He is continually fearing that he will never be able to work again at all,” John wrote to his brother Owen. “In fact there is no anxiety that he could imagine that he is not thinking about all the time.” John added: “ . . . Half the time he pays no attention to my remarks about things we are passing.”

  Olmsted maintained the Italian leg of the trip. Maybe the warm weather would do him good. In Venice, according to John, his stepfather passed an entire gondola ride in silence but appeared soothed by the rocking motion. Then it was on to France. In Paris, John described the previous night’s stay at the Hotel de Lille et d’Albion as “one of the worst nights he has had, more depressed thoughts & less sleep, so that today he is despondent.” John added: “A good hearty 1 o’clock breakfast made him feel better but he does not know what to do. He has bought a novel by Miss Thackeray [Anne Thackeray Ritchie] but finds it hard to keep his mind to it.”

  Olmsted returned to New York in April after nearly four months abroad. He was stunned by his situation: His work on Central Park was truly over. It was twenty years since he and Vaux had submitted the Greensward plan. Going forward, he’d have no official say in the fate of the park, although he would still weigh in with his pen. He’d even write a pamphlet called The Spoils of the Park, a double entendre, one edge dripping with bitterness. A couple years hence, he’d also be treated to the absurd spectacle of Egbert Viele finagling his way onto the board for a brief spell, while he was left to watch helplessly from the sidelines. Still, he’d remain forever protective of his creation. “It all makes me sick and keeps me sick,” he would later say, describing this lifelong vigil.

  On returning to New York, Olmsted also received another piece of discouraging news. The Boston commission was going forward with plans for a park. It was just one park; there wasn’t sufficient funding at this point for a whole system, which was what he had earlier discussed. What’s more, the chosen site for this lone park was a swamp in Boston’s Back Bay section, a place where city residents dumped their sewage. One contemporary account described it as “being without a single attractive feature. A body of water so foul that even clams and eels cannot live in it.”

  This was one nasty spot for a park. Uglier still, from Olmsted’s standpoint, was the fact that the commissioners had not chosen him for the job. Rather, they had decided to hold a design competition. Adding to the slight, Olmsted received a letter in which commission head Charles Dalton inquired whether he would act as a judge in the contest. He shot back an angry reply, flatly refusing.

  The competition received twenty-three entries. First prize went to Hermann Grundel, a florist. Ignoring the realities of the site, Grundel simply designed a pretty ornamental garden—somehow to be superimposed onto the swamp. The American Architect and Building News declared Grundel’s design “childish.”

  For Olmsted, there had been plenty of unhappy endings of late. It would have been hard for him to believe that a fresh beginning was to be found in all this mess.

  CHAPTER 27

  Stringing Emeralds

  OLMSTED’S ANGRY LETTER to Charles Dalton had an unexpected result. “They must have you and they would have you,” architect H. H. Richardson wrote to Olmsted in May 1878. Olmsted’s friend and onetime Staten Island neighbor had moved to Boston after receiving a prestigious and lucrative commission, designing Trinity Church. He knew Dalton and some of the other park commissioners. He knew, too, that they had quickly grown disenchanted with Grundel’s design. The commissioners paid the florist the $500 prize he was due and sent him packing. True to Richardson’s word, an offer soon came Olmsted’s way. The commissioners wanted him to prepare a preliminary design for the Back Bay park.

  For the summer of 1878, Ol
msted and his family left New York and moved in with the Godkins on Kirkland Street in Cambridge. This temporary arrangement made it possible for Olmsted to visit the site daily, familiarizing himself with the project’s dimensions and demands.

  The future Back Bay park was a thin strip of land, roughly 100 acres, containing a swampy stretch of water that connected with the Charles River. In the 1800s, this section of the Charles River was a tidal estuary. As a consequence, the swampy stretch often backed up during high tide, overflowing its banks. During low tide, the water receded, leaving behind a fetid plain strewn with the waste of the city’s residents. “Offensive exudations arise from the mud,” Olmsted noted, “when exposed by the falling tide to the summer’s sun, which are perceptible at a great distance.”

  As unappealing as these grounds had become, Olmsted immediately recognized what they had been. This was a salt marsh—a particularly vile specimen to be sure—but a salt marsh nonetheless. Salt marshes were a staple landscape when America was young, though they were fast disappearing as the country became more urban. Growing up, while ambling around Connecticut, Olmsted had seen plenty of salt marshes. He had always found them achingly beautiful. Now they reminded him of his departed father and of home in Hartford, where ties had been so cruelly cut by the estate battle.

  Salt marshes were also untamed places, suggestive of nature’s abundance, very much in keeping with his artistic vision. He was never one for manicured gardens. The presence of saltwater made ornamental flowers, per the discarded design, a ridiculous notion anyhow. Olmsted knew that he would need to select plants that could grow in this specialized environment. Olmsted also recognized that this design job was largely a sanitation job, something with which he had ample experience.