A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent

by Rybczynski, Witold

  There was no time for a honeymoon. Olmsted, who had been working all-out for the last year, could not get away. The board demanded visible evidence of progress. The skating pond was completed in only six months, in time for the winter of 1858; the Ramble was finished by the following summer. To maintain public order, Olmsted organized a force of twenty-four park keepers—one of the first uniformed and well-disciplined police forces in the nation. He devised a panoply of regulations: commercial vehicles were prohibited from using the drives, for example; speed limits discouraged racing; animals were forbidden to graze in the meadows; gambling and prostitution were energetically excluded; the park was closed after nightfall.

  Opening parts of the park to the public was politically expedient, but quickening construction raised costs. So did the changes to the original plan, such as the many new bridges. Much of his time was spent explaining and justifying these rising costs to the commissioners. The two years that he had spent working on the park since becoming superintendent, adding to the sudden duties of parenthood, proved too much even for the indefatigable Olmsted. His energies flagged. He and Mary went to Saratoga Springs for a few days, but the waters failed to work a cure. “I feel just thoroughly worn-out, used up, fatigued beyond recovery, an older man than you,” he wrote his father. In September the board voted him a six-week leave of absence. He was to go on a tour of European parks. To facilitate matters, the grateful commissioners also voted him the princely sum of five hundred dollars for his expenses. On September 28, 1859, three months after his wedding, he sailed from New York; Mary and the children did not accompany him.

  • • • •

  Olmsted wasted no time. The very day that he landed in Liverpool he revisited Birkenhead Park and obtained “full particulars of its construction, maintenance, and management.” Two days later he was in Birmingham looking at the sewage works. He met the mayor and interviewed him about Aston Park, the newly opened city park. He dropped in at Chatsworth, hoping to meet Paxton, but the famous gardener was not at home. He visited the Derby Arboretum, designed by the Scottish horticulturist John Claudius Loudon.

  And so it went. He toured country estates and the great parks of London. He was taken around the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew by their superintendent, the famous botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. In Paris he met Jean-Charles-Adolphe Alphand, the chief aide of Baron Haussmann, who was then rebuilding Paris for Emperor Napoleon III. Alphand, an engineer, was responsible for the Bois de Boulogne, a vast two-thousand-acre public park in the suburbs of Paris. Olmsted also found time to tour parks in Brussels and Lille. He talked to engineers, gardeners, administrators, and police commissioners. The personal contacts he made would prove invaluable. The firsthand information he gathered was likewise priceless: he collected books, plans, and technical information, and hired a photographer to document some of the parks. He purchased trees and shrubs to be sent back to New York.

  He brought a critical eye to these visits. He was not impressed by the current English fashion for gardening. The taste for elaborate flower beds and specimen gardening, which he termed “botanic beauty,” seemed to him misguided. Writing to Sir William Hooker, who had sent him documentation of Kew Gardens, Olmsted confessed: “I find that the simplicity without refinement of art, if indeed not without art, of Stoneleigh and Charlecourt, and the fine artistic simplicity of Trentham, give me a much greater pleasure, and that it seems to me far more worthy to be striven for than the beauty for which certainly much greater study, skill and labor has been expended.” Olmsted was telling Hooker that he preferred the old to the new. The grounds of Stoneleigh Abbey had been redesigned by Humphry Repton in 1808; Charlecourt (Charlecote) Park and Trentham were older than that—they had been laid out by Repton’s predecessor, the eighteenth-century gardener and architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown.

  The prolific Brown built more than 170 private parks and gardens in his long career. His work is simple, large scale, and sublimely beautiful. Brown wrote no treatises or books, and he was not well-known to Olmsted. The landscape writers who had influenced the youthful Olmsted—William Gilpin and Uvedale Price—considered Brown old-fashioned. Price, who wrote in the 1790s, criticized both Brown and Repton for their lack of variety and intricacy. He argued the merits of an accidental picturesque landscape: “In hollow lanes and bye roads a thousand circumstances of detail promote the natural intricacy of the ground: the turns are sudden and unprepared; the banks sometimes broken and abrupt; sometimes smooth, and gently, but not uniformly sloping; now wildly over-hung with thickets of trees and bushes; now loosely skirted with wood: no regular verge of grass, no cut edges, no distinct lines of separation.” This is the precise opposite of Brown’s carefully composed groups of trees, and undulating swathes of lawn sweeping down to the smooth curvature of the lakeside.

  Trentham, which Olmsted visited in November, has all these ingredients: turf, trees, water. The centerpiece of the Staffordshire estate is a man-made, three-quarter-mile-long lake, complete with several islands and bordered by a large wood. Brown, who “improved” the estate for Lord Gower between 1775 and 1779, also rebuilt the house, although the building that Olmsted saw in 1859 was constructed later, as were the formal parterre and a terrace overlooking the lake. At the head of the terrace stood a bronze statue—erected by Gower’s grandson—a replica of Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa.

  The statue is still there, its back turned to the beautiful lake, gazing across the parterre to an empty square of lawn where the grand house once stood. The estate is now a campground. It appears a rather down-at-heel operation that has, thankfully, not greatly impinged on Brown’s park. The overcast September morning I was there, my only companions were several fishermen. Except for the disfigurement of a water-ski ramp, the lake was pretty much as Olmsted had seen it. The artful curve of the shoreline and the positioning of the islands create a sense of limitless expanse. The beauty of this landscape is natural, but it is not an imitation of nature. It is a work of art. As a young man Olmsted had imbibed Gilpin and Price’s romantic notions of country scenery, and the Brown-designed parks that he later visited during his English walking tour—Chatsworth, Eaton Park, and Wynstay Park—made only a slight impression on him. As a practitioner, he was now in a better position to appreciate Brown’s achievement. He called Trentham “the best private garden in England.”

  The country estates that Brown worked on were large. At three or four hundred acres Trentham is relatively modest; the park of Blenheim Palace, Brown’s masterpiece, covers more than two thousand acres. A modern landscape scholar has characterized Capability Brown’s method as a “standard formula of artificial water, clumps and belts of trees . . . stretched over a landscape as far as funds and property would allow, and clearly at a lower cost of planting and maintenance than a formal style.” That makes it all sound a little too easy, but it is true that Brown, who was responsible for building—and not simply designing—the parks, was concerned with maximizing his clients’ budgets. He invariably adjusted his ideas to the “capabilities” of the topography—hence his nickname. He was an experienced plantsman, but his interest was the landscape, not the garden. He was concerned with creating a unified experience, just like Olmsted and Vaux in Greensward. Like them, he built on the natural advantages of a site but did not hesitate to radically rearrange nature. He referred to this as “place-making.” Greensward was not directly influenced by Brown, but in the work of this great gardener, Olmsted—likewise a park-builder—discovered a precedent for the soundness of his own views.

  Olmsted was broadening his tastes. He was impressed by Brown, but in France he admired the late-seventeenth-century formal gardens of Versailles and Saint-Cloud, both the work of the celebrated André Le Nôtre. He examined the great boulevards and rond-points that Haussmann was then building in Paris. He visited the Bois de Boulogne eight times. All in all, it was an intense journey. Olmsted’s itinerary, which he later dutifully reported to the board, listed more than thirty individua
l parks, estates, arboretums, and zoological gardens; he also saw many “public and private grounds of lesser importance.” The six-week tour stretched to three months. There was little time for rest, and the cold, damp fall weather was not ideal. Yet, on his return, Olmsted assured the board that he felt himself in “greatly improved health.” As would happen again in years to come, he was invigorated by a European visit. No doubt, the absence of day-to-day responsibilities and decisions lifted a heavy burden. More than that, he was enjoying himself. Central Park was known to British and European landscape gardeners, and he was received as an equal by the small fraternity of park-builders. When he started to work with Vaux on Greensward, he had been a novice. Now he was becoming a recognized expert.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Comptroller Green

  OLMSTED RETURNED a week before Christmas 1859. Work on Central Park was proceeding at an astonishing pace. Soon the portion south of Seventy-ninth Street and the old reservoir would be substantially complete. The board’s strategy of garnering popular support had paid off—the park was already a great success. The first winter that the pond froze produced a mania for ice-skating in the city. The bridle paths drew upper-class horseback riders. The so-called carriage parade became fashionable. The rich had their own coaches (and sleighs for the winter); the middle class could rent a hack for one or two dollars an hour. Others came to stroll, feed the swans, or boat on the lake. Starting in July 1859, the board inaugurated free Saturday-afternoon band concerts, attracting throngs. Attendance skyrocketed; Olmsted estimated that some days as many as one hundred thousand people were in the park. A contemporary description sets the scene:

  Few landscapes present more attractive features than that of the Park on a music day. Thousands of brilliant equipages throng the drives. The waters of the Lake are studded with gaily-colored boats, appearing now and then in striking contrast with the green foliage that fringes its banks; the water-fowl float proudly over its surface; children play on the lawns; throngs of visitors from divers climes move among the trees, whose leaves, fanned with the soft lays of the music, wave silent approval; all seems full of life and enjoyment; and as some familiar strain breathes a sweet influence around, the whole appears like some enchanted scene.

  If this breathless portrait sounds too good to be true, one must remember that for mid-nineteenth-century Americans, Central Park really was a magical place. Not just a pretty setting for recreation, it was an aesthetic experience. A few years later an enterprising photographer published an album titled The Central Park, consisting of fifty-two plates that took the reader step-by-step though the park.1 The accompanying text explained each tableau in such elevating sentiments as “atmosphere,” “sublimity,” and “character.”

  Olmsted should have been basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. Yet all was not going smoothly. He was under fire from the board to cut costs. The commissioners cannot be faulted for worrying about expenses. The sum originally authorized for construction was $1.5 million. A year later, as the result of the amendments to the plan, this was increased to $2 million. In January 1860 the state legislature was asked to approve an additional $2.5 million, which raised the total cost to about three times the initial estimate. Some speculated that by the time that the park was finished, the total cost might be as much as $13 million; others put the figure even higher.

  Costs were raised by the commissioners’ demand to accelerate the work and to increase the size of the labor force (Central Park was the largest public works project in the country at a time of recession and high unemployment). Then, as now, large construction projects had cost overruns. Vaux and Olmsted had understandably been optimistic in their first estimates. In truth, neither they nor anyone else in the United States had experience building such a large park. The standards of the Engineer Corps were high—and hence costly. A Swiss engineer who was brought in by a state Senate committee to make a detailed evaluation of the work attested to the high quality of the construction and to the excellence of the overall organization. “Much better than any other public work in the United States,” Herr Kellersberger reported.

  Still, the legislators in Albany, while supporting the park, pressured the board to reduce costs. Some of the work on the northern portion of the park, such as two sunken roads, was postponed. Bridge materials were changed from expensive quarried bluestone to fieldstone and wood. The elaborate flower garden was deferred—indefinitely, as it turned out; it was eventually replaced by the Conservatory Water. Vaux convinced the commissioners to keep the Terrace as he and Mould had designed it, but plans for the music hall, the palm house, and the conservatory were shelved. Now Olmsted found his independence curtailed. The board demanded that he prepare detailed cost estimates in advance, and that he seek prior approval for expenditures.

  It fell on Commissioner Green to enforce this new regime. On October 6, 1859 (while Olmsted was sailing to Europe), Green had been appointed comptroller of the park. Andrew Haswell Green has sometimes been portrayed as a penny-pinching bureaucrat. That is unfair. He was a man of substance, as his later career demonstrates: he served as comptroller of New York, rebuilding the city’s finances after the disastrous reign of Boss Tweed; he initiated and led the movement to consolidate the five boroughs into greater New York; he played an important role in the formation of the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; he was a trustee of the Brooklyn Bridge; and he founded the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society.

  Two years older than Olmsted, Green was a large, handsome man of energy, intelligence, and probity. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Despite his lack of a formal education, he determined to follow his father into the law. At age twenty-two he came to New York and apprenticed with Samuel J. Tilden, who operated one of the most successful corporate practices in the city. Green was admitted to the bar only two years later; Tilden made him his partner—and his protégé. He was appointed to the Board of Education and in only four years was its president. Thanks to Tilden, who was then in the state legislature, Green was made a Central Park commissioner. His rise there was equally rapid. He became treasurer and served as president. When the board felt the need to assert a greater control over finances, it created the new position of comptroller specifically for Green. He was “to act as treasurer, and carry out the orders of the board, and devote his entire time to the duties of the park.” The latter point was important. Green was the only commissioner who had a full-time, paid position. This effectively made him the chief executive officer of the park.

  Green and Olmsted had much in common. They were old-stock New Englanders from small towns. They had little formal education. They had been farmers (as a youth Green had spent almost a year helping to run a Trinidad sugar plantation). They loved the outdoors. They believed in the primacy of efficient planning and organization. They argued strenuously that the public service should be independent of patronage and politics. They were scrupulously honest. They were ambitious, self-made men, engrossed in their work and devoted to the success of the park.

  They began as friends. Green actively supported Olmsted’s candidacy as superintendent and championed Greensward. It was during Green’s presidency that Olmsted had been appointed architect-in-chief. In the early days of the park the two bachelors were often in each other’s company. After Olmsted married, Green, who remained single his entire life, regularly came to Sunday dinner. He visited Mary often when Olmsted was in Europe. When Green became comptroller, the friendship soured. He bombarded Olmsted with letters, demanding explanations for the slightest expenditure, questioning decisions, on occasion even countermanding his orders. Green became overbearing. This rankled Olmsted, who was never good at taking orders. The comptroller was parsimonious in public as in private life, demanding to know where every penny was going. Olmsted, who tended to be large-handed, wanted discretion to spend as he pleased. Green did not understand technical issues. He sometimes demanded foolish economies. Once he objected when Olmsted
ordered some willow trees cut down. “It is quite expensive to get trees on the Park,” Green complained. It took several letters from Olmsted to convince him that willows were not particularly expensive trees, and that the removal was ordered to avoid their roots clogging adjacent underground drains.

  Both men were right in their own way. Green feared that if costs were not brought under control, the park might not be completed; Olmsted was concerned about posterity and wanted everything done properly, which often meant expensively. Theirs was an uneasy collaboration: both were somewhat imperious; and their management styles were at odds. Green formed his opinions carefully and stuck to them; Olmsted made long-range plans but also made last-minute changes in the field. He once explained to the board, “The best conceptions of scenery, the best plans, details of plans—intentions—the best, are not contrived by effort, but are spontaneous and instinctive.” Olmsted appointed able assistants and gave them a free hand; Green liked to exercise personal control over every one of his subordinates. That included Olmsted.

  Mount Saint Vincent, Central Park

  Sunday, October 21, 1860

  It is a brisk fall day and the trees are already starting to assume fall colors. This low hill overlooks 106th Street, the park’s present northern boundary. A flat area on top of the hill is the site of a group of three-story wooden buildings surrounded by large verandas. One building, of brick, capped by a tall spire, resembles a chapel. Until four years before this was the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity, who run St. Vincent’s Hospital on Eleventh Street. Now the buildings belong to the Park Commission. Since shortly after their marriage, Frederick and Mary Olmsted have occupied several rooms in the empty convent; Vaux and his family live nearby in what had been the priest’s residence. The offices of the superintendent and architect-in-chief are also here. On Sunday the offices are closed. Instead of the usual commotion, there is quiet.