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CHAPTER XI
JANUARY 1882-MARCH 1882
This chapter marks the completion and publication of The Spoils of the Park, Olmsted’s parting shot concerning Central Park and his final effort to win support for its proper administration. The “Central Park Circular” that he wrote at this time to enlist testimony from qualified experts was never circulated. The final letter in the chapter, to his old friend Charles Loring Brace, reviews the effect of The Spoils of the Park and expresses his pleasure at living and working in the new setting of the Boston suburbs.
Other documents in the chapter describe important ongoing design work. The letter to John C. Phillips explains the importance of forest planting on his country estate and stresses the need to avoid “the ease of a costly commonplace result.” The report to Edward H. Rollins accompanies and explains a sketch-view of the U.S. Capitol with the proposed terraces as Olmsted strove to secure funding for their construction.
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To Edward Henry Rollins
| To the Hon. E. H. Rollins, Chairman Senate Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds: Sir: |
WASHINGTON, January 7, 1882. |
I respectfully ask your consideration for the fact that the air of the Capitol is always, during the larger part of the year, charged with poisonous miasma.
If the fact is questioned I will submit reasons for asserting it. For the present I assume it, and also that no session of Congress can be carried into the spring, or held during the summer or fall, without a distinct impairment, because of this miasmatic poison, of the health, vigor, and ability for their duty of its members, while, in the usual interval between the sessions of Congress, the efficiency of all who are employed in the business of the Capitol is lessened by it.
The source of the poison is the low ground lying from half a mile to a mile south of the Capitol. Rising from this locality it is floated northward by the summer winds to the Capitol.
The evil may in time be cut off at its origin by embankments and drainage, but adequate operations for the purpose will be costly, and are likely to be prolonged. While in progress their immediate effect will be an aggravation of the evil.
The movement of the poison may, however, be arrested by means, which will not be costly, of planting the strip of land now held by the United States along the base of the Capitol Hill on the south. The situation and the scope of the planting required are indicated on the subjoined map.
Should there be doubt with your committee of the value of the purpose of the expedient thus proposed, it is respectfully suggested that it might be removed by inquiring of the National Board of Health.
The proposition originated in a question addressed to me in 1879 by Mr. Edward Clark, the Architect of the Capitol, my reply to which, attached to the map below, more fully defines the very simple scheme. I will add here that the trees required to carry it out could probably be obtained without cost from the overstock now in the nurseries of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia; that the proposition is in all respects a frugal one, and that it would have very desirable incidental advantages, which, should your committee be pleased to entertain the question, I would ask the honor to be allowed to explain from the windows of the committee room.
FRED’K LAW OLMSTEAD,
Landscape Architect of the Capitol Grounds.
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