Genius of Place

by Justin Martin

  James Ellsworth was president of a Chicago-based coal-mining firm and a member of the fair’s board. While on a business trip to Maine, without first consulting any of his fellow forty-four directors, Ellsworth dropped by Brookline to meet with Olmsted. He asked Olmsted to help select a fitting site in Chicago and to landscape the fairgrounds. Olmsted said no. He was far too busy. Furthermore, the grounds of a fair would be temporary, making this a highly unappealing proposition. Ellsworth begged Olmsted to reconsider, adding that he would drop by again on his return trip from Maine. Ellsworth was insistent, even going so far as to play on Olmsted’s sense of patriotic duty. The fair would exist only temporarily, that was true enough, conceded Ellsworth. But during the fair’s brief life, thousands of people could be expected to visit. The grounds would help form a lasting impression of Chicago, not to mention America.

  On his return trip, Ellsworth stopped again in Brookline. Apparently, while Ellsworth had been in Maine, Olmsted had been thinking the matter over. Olmsted was far more receptive this time around and agreed to take the job. Back in Chicago, Ellsworth secured permission from the rest of the board to hire Olmsted. On August 6, 1890, a telegraph arrived at Fairsted: “When can you be here?”

  Three days later, Olmsted was in Chicago. He brought along Codman, figuring his partner would be an invaluable resource. Codman had devoted much of 1889 to a wander year in Europe, visiting various parks to gather ideas for his work with Olmsted. He’d spent three months in Paris on the grounds of the fair. Young Codman, age twenty-six, could provide an edge on this particular project. He and Olmsted visited seven different potential sites in Chicago. At each successive one, they grew more convinced of the city’s manifold scenic disadvantages. Chicago was so unrelievedly flat. There was a paucity of natural scenery, to Olmsted’s eyes. But there was one feature that he thought suitably grand. Chicago sits on the shores of Lake Michigan. As discussed earlier, Olmsted and Vaux had designed a park system for Chicago back in the early 1870s. Their design had played off the lake. But then the Great Fire had raged through the city, disrupting everything.

  Although the city had rebuilt, taller than before, progress on their park system had been slow. The inland part, known as Washington Park, had actually been completed, though it had taken many years. But the waterfront portion, known as Jackson Park, was in an arrested state. A little work had been done, such as building some piers, but it was only about 10 percent finished. As for the Midway Plaisance, the mile-long connector between the two parks, it was nothing but a vacant strip of grass.

  Returning now after so many years, Olmsted felt certain that this was the spot. Never mind that Jackson Park was a wasteland, a mix of sand hills and swamps with a few unloved trees thrown in. Never mind, either, that Jackson Park was about seven miles from downtown Chicago. A striking setting was needed for the fair. To Olmsted, all other problems were mere details, easily surmounted. Moreover, rail lines traveled directly past the uncompleted park, making it possible to convey large crowds to the place.

  Still, it was a hard sell. Jackson Park was in such a pitiful state that it was difficult for anyone else to grasp Olmsted’s logic. He had to write two separate reports, but he managed to convince the directors. “We have carried our first point, that of tying the Fair to the Lake,” wrote Olmsted to John.

  F. L. Olmsted and Company was given the official title of consulting landscape architects to the World’s Columbian Expo. Olmsted and the directors agreed to terms: $22,500. It was a hefty fee to accompany a huge job. Olmsted told John that it would be necessary to reapportion their workloads. Codman would need to devote 100 percent of his time to the fair; Olmsted planned to put in 50 percent, and John would need to allot 20 percent. Olmsted also intended to devote at least half his time to the Biltmore Estate. That left 0 percent for Rochester, Atlanta, and all his other current and future jobs. But Olmsted wasn’t one to let a little thing like math get in the way of his big plans.

  Olmsted began to work out a landscaping scheme for the fair grounds. Essentially, he revived his nearly twenty-year-old plan for a waterfront park, featuring a series of winding lagoons and waterways. To create these, it would be necessary to cut channels through roughly a square mile of soggy land. But earth removed when the channels were cut could be hauled to other spots, tamped down and shaped, thereby creating solid land. Lake Michigan would form a sensational backdrop and would literally flow, via the waterways, right onto the fairgrounds.

  From the outset, Olmsted and Codman worked closely with Daniel Burnham and John Root. Burnham, age forty-four, was director of the fair. Root, age forty, was his longtime partner in an architectural firm that had designed some of Chicago’s most notable buildings. In his younger days, Burnham had failed the entrance exams to both Harvard and Yale before setting off for Nevada mining territory, hoping to strike it rich. In other words, he was Olmsted’s kind of guy. The two developed an instant rapport. Over time, like Olmsted, Burnham had discovered where his real talents lay and had learned to focus them. He was a brilliant businessman, and his organizational skills were unrivaled. Root, by contrast, was the artist: inspired, spontaneous, erratic. They made a dynamic team, and one observer likened their partnership to “some big strong tree with lightning playing around it.”

  Olmsted and Codman opened a Chicago field office in the Rookery, a building where the firm Burnham and Root had its headquarters as well. One day late in the autumn of 1890, the four men were together, discussing their scheme for the fair. Root laid out a huge piece of heavy brown paper, forty feet square. Then he began to sketch on it furiously, capturing their ideas. He drew the waterways to Olmsted’s specs, and he indicated where various buildings would sit. Root also sketched out a Court of Honor, a formal space with exhibition halls arranged around a basin and presided over by a large statue. Root gripped his pencil so low and tight and sketched so rapidly that it “looked as if he were drawing with the tips of his fingers,” according to historian Donald Miller. When he finished, he had produced the fair’s master plan.

  Burnham and Root agreed not to design any buildings. Every ounce of Burnham’s organizational skill was needed; it was agreed that partner Root wouldn’t design any, either, as it would show favoritism. Instead, Burnham opted to assemble an all-star team of architects. In close consultation with Olmsted, Burnham began approaching various candidates. Hunt, Olmsted’s Biltmore collaborator, was a natural choice. So was Charles McKim of the New York firm McKim, Mead, and White. McKim was the son of James McKim, leader of the friendly Nation faction, the one that had supported Olmsted’s catholic approach during the publication’s earliest days. Early in his career, the younger McKim had worked for H. H. Richardson. Other possibles included Boston’s Robert Peabody as well as Chicago’s own Louis Sullivan and William Le Baron Jenney. Jenney had worked with Olmsted on Riverside. Vaux wasn’t even considered. Four decades earlier, at a time when American architects were in short supply, he’d been a groundbreaker. It was a testament to how far he had fallen.

  On January 10, 1891, the architects from out of town met in Chicago and traveled to look at the Jackson Park site. Landscape architect Olmsted was present, too. The temperature was frigid, the sky overcast, and Lake Michigan roiled and pitched. Far from providing a striking backdrop, the lake merely looked ominous. The architects were soon overcome with pessimism.

  Peabody walked out onto a pier. He turned to Burnham. “Do you mean to say that you really expect to open a fair here by ’93?”

  “Yes,” answered Burnham, “we intend to.”

  “It can’t be done,” said Peabody.

  “That point is settled,” rejoined Burnham.

  That evening, the skeptical architects convened at the University Club. Olmsted was present once again. Lyman Gage, president of the fair’s board, sat at the head of the main table, Olmsted and Hunt in places of honor on either side of him. The architects were no doubt happy just to be somewhere warm. Burnham plied his guests with vintage Madeira, fine cig
ars, and green-turtle consommé. When the moment was right, he delivered a rousing speech: “Gentlemen, 1893 will be the third great date in our country’s history. On the two others, 1776 and 1861, all true Americans served, and so now I ask you to serve again!” Burnham’s patriotic appeal reached the architects, just as Ellsworth’s earlier one had reached Olmsted. They committed to the project.

  Olmsted no longer required such goading. By now, he had a clear idea of what was possible on the soupy piece of land slated for the fair, and his vision grew more intense with each passing day. One of his principal features, captured in Root’s lightning sketch, was a wooded island. Creating it would involve taking an existing lonely hillock and bulking it up with dirt dredged in the course of making the lagoons. Despite being man-made, it would serve as the primary naturalistic feature at the fair. The event was sure to be crowded and hectic. Olmsted conceived his wooded island as “a place of relief from all the splendor and glory and noise and human multitudinousness of the great surrounding Babylon.”

  Because water was such a key element in his landscape, Olmsted also came up with the idea of offering boats for hire. Most people could be expected to traverse the fair on foot, but this would provide an elegant alternative. Olmsted was downright obsessive about these boats. Not just any type would do. They needed to be small craft, geared to intimate groups of passengers. He was also dead-set on using the new breed of electric launches rather than boats powered by steam. These would glide over the water, almost silently. Olmsted even had strong notions about the boats’ appearance. They should feature brightly colored awnings, modeled on the sampans that he remembered from his voyage to China, half a century before.

  On February 24, 1891, another architects’ meeting was held in the library on the top floor of the Rookery. This time everyone was present: the out-of-towners and the local architects such as Sullivan and Jenney. They gathered to present their designs for the major buildings such as the exhibition halls.

  Olmsted watched as each architect walked to the front of the room and unfurled his blueprint. Weeks before, the architects had agreed to work in the same style, giving them a kind of common visual vocabulary. They had lit upon classical architecture, a fitting choice. Many of the architects were either French trained or devotees of the beaux arts, a neoclassical style then in vogue. From a practical standpoint, the choice guaranteed a unity of design. Even so, the buildings showed dazzling variety. “You’re dreaming, gentlemen, dreaming,” said Expo president Lyman Gage. “I only hope that half the vision may be realized.”

  The buildings were huge, big as the architects’ egos. Yet the plan was to make these structures out of simple skeletons of wood and chicken wire, overlaid with staff. Staff is a kind of glorified papiermâché. It’s durable, thanks to its hemp content, yet highly malleable. It can be shaped to mimic a marble column or a terra-cotta frieze. Almost all the major buildings were to be painted white. When the fair ended, almost the whole set of them was meant to come down. There was one last consistent feature, and it pleased Olmsted mightily. Each building featured two entrances, one by land, the other by water to accommodate his boats.

  As the weather grew warmer, Olmsted began working on a planting scheme. He intended to line the banks of his waterways thickly with foliage. But to survive Chicago’s climate, Olmsted knew he’d need to go with indigenous plants, throwing in a few exotics. Under his direction, foraging parties were dispatched to lakes and rivers throughout Illinois and Wisconsin to gather cattails and rushes and willows. The plants arrived at the grounds by the trainload. Olmsted also planted honeysuckle and other fragrant plants so that fairgoers would have something to smell as well as see. He was contemplating a full sensory experience.

  Rick, preparing to be “leader of the van,” came out from Harvard after his freshman year to spend a summer working on the grounds. He’d spend the next summer here, too, finding it a great experience.

  As the fair drew closer, Olmsted engaged in assorted battles, as per usual. Everyone wanted a piece of the Wooded Island. It represented 16 pristine acres in the center of what was certain to be a very crowded fairgrounds. Participating countries wanted to place their pavilions on the island. Companies thought it an ideal spot for promotions. Burpee Seed suggested a display garden of marigolds and petunias. Olmsted’s response to this request is unknown but can probably be summed up as Perish the thought!

  Even Theodore Roosevelt had designs on Olmsted’s island. He wanted to build a model hunting camp to demonstrate the woodsmanship of his Boone and Crockett Club. Olmsted gave a flat no to the future president. Still, the clamor eventually grew so intense that Olmsted had to relent. He agreed to share his island with the Japanese government, which proposed to build something called the Ho-O-Den, a replica of a temple near Kyoto. The temple would be modest, low-rise, and integrated into the scenery.

  Olmsted also got into scrapes over the boats. No one seemed to grasp his small-quiet craft fixation, not even his staunch ally Burnham. Olmsted was troubled when he learned that Burnham had entertained an offer from a steamship company that promised to cheaply convey large numbers of fairgoers. “I suspect that even Codman is inclined to think that I make too much of a hobby of this boat question,” he wrote Burnham in a memo, “and give an amount of worry, if not thought, to it that would be better expended on other more critical matters, and I fear that you may think me a crank upon it.”

  In a follow-up memo to Burnham, Olmsted laid out his objections. Yes, a big, honking steamboat could convey the masses. True, small boats could carry only a handful of people at a time. But watching small, colorful boats glide over the lagoons would create a memorable experience for everyone. What’s more, he proposed that if small boats proved a big attraction, if more people started lining up for them, it would make sense to hike the fares. Counterintuitive though it was, Olmsted’s premise was curiously democratic since it promised to extend the greatest benefit—enjoying the ambience of a small collection of boats—to the largest number of people. He reminded Burnham that his aim—the aim of all the great artists working on the fair—was to create something of beauty: “You know that if boats are to be introduced on these waters, it would be perfect nonsense to have them of a kind that would antagonize this poetic object.” Burnham was convinced and agreed to give Olmsted his boats.

  The major points were now settled. In the spring of 1892, with Codman holding down the Chicago project, Olmsted set off on an ambitious business trip that took him from the Biltmore to Knoxville, Louisville, and Rochester, among other places, and on to Brookline. He was nearly seventy. He covered nearly 3,000 miles.

  He returned in terrible health, racked by conditions old and new. He was suffering from insomnia and neuralgia, and there was a constant ringing in his ears. He’d also had a recent bout of what he thought was arsenic poisoning. He believed that the culprit was the new “Turkey red” wallpaper in his Brookline home. For Olmsted, about the only good health development was that his damaged left leg, an ancient injury, was feeling better. During one of his constant trips, the train on which he’d been traveling got into a minor accident, and this, bizarrely, appeared to be the cause of the improvement. He was walking with greater ease now, feeling less pain. It wasn’t exactly a medical diagnosis, but Olmsted thought perhaps the crash had succeeded in stretching out some of his tendons. Otherwise, he felt wretched.

  Olmsted decided to make a trip to England and France. He could visit various sites and gather ideas, while regaining his health in the process. At least, that was the plan. On April 2, 1892, Olmsted sailed to Liverpool accompanied by Rick, Marion, and Philip Codman, Henry’s younger brother. He stayed briefly with relatives of his wife in Chislehurst, on the outskirts of London. Then he traveled to Paris with the two young men. Marion remained behind in Chislehurst.

  In Paris, Olmsted walked over the grounds of the recent Exposition Universelle. He soaked up every last detail, as was his wont. The ornamental gardens left him unimpressed, and he wrote
a letter to John back in Brookline, containing a strong reminder that such “petty effects and frippery” must be avoided in Chicago. But the fact that the Paris buildings made ample use of color intrigued him. In fact, it left him downright worried. He wondered whether the Chicago buildings were too severe, too bound up in “grandiloquent pomp,” too ... white.

  He grew more aware that he was the fair’s color man. He’d selected the site, and on a clear day Lake Michigan would offer a sea of blue. Any other colors would flow from him as well. At the same time, Olmsted had a well-honed aesthetic that didn’t conscience gaudy palates. He valued subtlety. Green, in the form of impossibly lush greenery—that was the way, he was certain, to offset the unremitting whiteness of the architecture.

  Almost as an afterthought, Olmsted went up in the Eiffel Tower. Then he left Paris for the Loire Valley, where he visited some châteaus, gathering ideas for the Biltmore Estate.

  Then it was back to England, where his health took a bad turn. He had a flare-up of facial neuralgia. Insomnia, his old foe, returned with a vengeance. He tossed in bed deep into the night, worrying about the Expo and the Biltmore and other jobs and his legacy and the future and ... as the sun rose, he would snatch a few hours sleep, if he was lucky. That was his pattern.

  Henry Rayner, a friend of Mary’s London relatives, dropped by the house in Chislehurst. He simply wanted to meet the great Olmsted, celebrated American landscape architect. By sheerest coincidence, he also happened to be a doctor who specialized in nervous disorders. Dr. Rayner was astounded by Olmsted’s haggard appearance. He asked if Olmsted would submit to a physical. The examination found no “organic trouble,” Olmsted reported, but the doctor also concluded that “it is a peculiarity of my case that over-exertion does not produce the sensation of fatigue.” Dr. Rayner suggested that Olmsted stay at his home in Hampstead Heath, where he could personally oversee his care.