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CHAPTER III
DECEMBER 1890-MARCH 1891
As 1890 drew to a close, Olmsted addressed a number of matters he had put aside temporarily while finalizing the firm’s position with the World’s Columbian Exposition. His letter to Charles A. Roberts expresses the importance of community in laying out the Lake Wauconda resort. In a poignant letter to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney, whom he had courted almost forty years earlier, Olmsted describes her importance in his intellectual development and eventual success. Olmsted’s letter to William Noble, meanwhile, shows his openness to women entering the professional ranks of landscape gardeners, as he recommended the employment of Elizabeth Bullard to take up her deceased father’s position as superintendent of parks in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Writing to Frank Baker, Olmsted argues for the potential of the National Zoo in merging beauty of scenery and the exhibition of animals while also cautioning against the effects that sporadic federal funding would have on the zoo’s development. To the citizens of Marblehead, Massachusetts, Olmsted recommends the creation of a road close to the shoreline before escalating real estate values make the option an impossibility. As 1890 drew to a close, Olmsted looked back to his efforts with the U.S. Sanitary Commission, donating a large collection of materials related to his time there to the Library of the Massachusetts Commandery of the Loyal Legion. In his introductory letter for the collection, written to Arnold A. Rand, Olmsted explains the significance of the commission and his hopes for what its legacy will be.
Many of the letters in this chapter illuminate the refinement of plans for the World’s Columbian Exposition in early 1891. In letters to Daniel Burnham, Clarence Pullen, Frederick J. Kingsbury, and Henry Van Brunt, leading
[237]up to and following the week-long meeting in Chicago in January with the architects and planners of the fair, Olmsted outlines his vision for the grounds and his hope to transform “a desert place of drifting sand and water” into a site worthy of a world’s fair. His memorandum of March 1891 outlines his plans for the lush planting for the lagoon district that would prove so successful. Other letters show Olmsted’s attempts to ward off unwelcome intrusions and alterations to parks in Boston, Brooklyn, and New York, and his special attention to Biltmore’s Approach Road, where, as his letter to James Gall, Jr., reveals, he hoped to create a luxuriant, mysterious effect for visitors arriving at Vanderbilt’s estate.
To Charles A. Roberts
| Dear Mr. Roberts:- | 9th December, 1890. |
On returning from a long journey in the South and West, I have read your note to us of December 1st. Mr. Codman is attending to the matter of the plan, and I only wish now to make one observation. You write as follows:-
“Your ideas are very sound as to the width of lots, but occasionally we are liable to sell to a party who is perfectly able to pay for the things you mention, and he is the one who wants the room.”
It is evident from your saying this that you still do not quite understand our ideas. Our entire plan is based on the conviction that, under the circumstances of the case, the settlement will, in the end, be a great deal more attractive if it produces very distinctly the impression of a community in which the private dwellings are brought as closely together as practicable, without appearing crowded, and without an absolute denial of any private grounds about the house, while each family is allowed equal enjoyment of more extensive pleasure grounds held in common. We consider that, with this object, you cannot, at any price, afford to allow any single family to monopolize a large extent of ground as private property. The expense of providing so large an extent of public ground, including the ornamental waters, as you propose to provide, can only appear justified when you shall have this ground surrounded by as large a number of family residences as is practicable. Any single large place will be an injury in this respect to the general effect desired, and, considering the question to be in a great degree one of the effect of what is seen upon the imagination, we do not think that you can afford to have wide lots, even if you
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“Design Map of the Village of Lake Wauconda in Perry Park, Douglas County, Col.,” Mar. 28, 1890
Yours Very Truly.
Fredk Law Olmsted.
Mr. C.A. Roberts,Denver, Colorado.
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