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CHAPTER V
NOVEMBER 1891–APRIL 1892
The letters in this chapter document a flurry of activity from Olmsted before traveling to Europe in early April. Olmsted’s two letters to Francis Newlands of mid-November 1891 on the planning of streets in the Chevy Chase residential subdivision show his prescience regarding the growing importance of suburban communities and the need to plan carefully the outward extension of urban areas. Moreover, Olmsted’s consultation with Newlands led to another important commission—with the federal government for the planning of the extension of the District of Columbia streets—which he describes in his “D.C. Streets Memorandum” of December 30, 1891.
Several letters in this chapter address work at the World’s Columbian Exposition. The boating arrangements for the Fair, with its Lagoon district and numerous waterways, proved especially interesting to Olmsted. In letters to Daniel H. Burnham, Henry Sargent Codman, and Miles G. Nixon, Olmsted outlines the types of launches he wanted and their importance to the overall scenic composition of the Lagoon. Olmsted’s insistence on lean, quiet, and elegant launches—and his desire for exotic boats with similar qualities—indicates the centrality of boats to the fair’s design. Even as Olmsted made his case for these boating arrangements, he anxiously entreated the firm’s primary representative at the site—Rudolph Ulrich—in March 1891 to better delegate his responsibilities so that an injury or illness to him would not cripple the firm’s capacity to realize its designs.
In addition to his work on the exposition and in Washington, D.C., Olmsted consulted on a number of other projects. His November 10 letter to Peter White calls for the preservation of Presque Isle in Marquette, Michigan, as a rural retreat for town residents. His November 27 letter to George W.
[411]Vanderbilt recommends the hiring of Gifford Pinchot to direct Biltmore’s forestry operations, and his December article, “George W. Vanderbilt’s Nursery,” makes the case for the scientific significance of the horticultural operations on the estate. A December 30, 1891, letter to Henry Sargent Codman shows the challenges of working with wealthy client Hamilton Twombly, and also Olmsted’s clever adjustments of the design of the mansion’s terraces to meet Twombly’s demands. A lengthy letter to Boston parks commission president Thomas Livermore, written in 1891 after several groups protested the ban of public rallies in Franklin Park, expresses the belief that large rural parks, free from noise, clamor, and vigorous activities, held special value in urban areas, especially as metropolitan growth more and more cut off access to the countryside. On a similar topic, two February 1892 letters to Livermore and fellow commissioner Francis A. Walker express the urgent need for the park commission to purchase additional land expressly meant for active sports and public rallies—the land that would become Franklin Field. Three letters of late January and early February show Olmsted’s desire to help a new protégé, William Platt, as he embarked on a European trip with his brother. And, just prior to Olmsted’s own European departure, he wrote two letters related to his work in New York: the March 30, 1892, letter to John Jay Chapman calls on New Yorkers to protest the intended construction of a speedway in Central Park; the April 1, 1892, letter to Ridgeway Tiers describes the difficulty and frequent failures of urban streetside tree planting.
To Henry Sargent Codman
Dear Harry:-
I enclose draft of circular. It is but a draft for consideration; requires putting in official shape and may be essentially improved, perhaps. A similar circular with reference to nation plots is not needed. A copy of this circular can be given to the few officials concerned, and each could be advised verbally of the desirability that the same general principles apply to his plot. And similar use can be made of it, I suppose, in some other cases. I think it rather important to get the principles fixed in the minds of the Exposition Committees and other officials, and this is a good way of moving to that end. Get it adopted if you can.
Please remind Burnham of the importance of obtaining by any means possible (an Act of Congress, if necessary) such control over the Lake near the Exposition as will be necessary to forbid and prevent its being occupied
[412]by advertising boats. Otherwise, they are sure to be a disgusting nuisance and injury to the undertaking.
Remember that a dockyard for laying up and overhauling {…} of {…} is a necessity. Consider definitely whether {… basin . . . . . . . . .} of the great court may not be adapted to this purpose. Otherwise, the best plan I think of would require a large floating stage with workshop and office on the north side of the outer basin.
Please observe condition and appearance of the cane that has been exposed during the Summer. I doubt if you are right in thinking that it cannot be made use of to advantage on the banks back of the aquatic, reedy planting at the water’s edge. Mind it does not require water at its roots, therefore can occasionally be used to give depth and breadth and height to strips of such other reedy plants.
I feel that I am more sure than I have yet shown myself to be, or than I can account for by statement of reasons and arguments, that it would be a great misfortune to have a music hall, or any occasion for drawing crowds to the Island, especially the south end of it. It appears to me that if Mr. Burnham, the Committees, and Mr. Thomas himself, will try to get their minds away from the standpoint of studying the special question of a place for music, and to the contemplation in imagination of the Exposition as a whole, they must feel that nothing else possible to be done on the Island will be worth nearly as much as to have it so treated as to coax the imagination to see in it a place of relief from all the splendor and glory and noise and human multitudinousness of the great surrounding Babylon.
I cannot state the grounds of my conviction, but the more I contemplate the question, the stronger it grows, and so I think it will with Mr. Thomas, or any other man of artistic habits of thought. I don’t wish that we should be put in any apparently stubborn or assuming attitude. If the calamity is inevitable, we will accept it and make the best of it with a good grace. Yet I think that in justice to ourselves, we must do our best to secure from Mr. Burnham, from Mr. Thomas and from the Committees and the Commission and Directors, thoughtful consideration of our protest and of all forms of protest from the Board of Architects, or members of it, that can be obtained. And we must take care that these protests are made matters of formal record.
Yours Truly
Fredk Law Olmsted.
Mr. H.S. Codman,1145 Rookery, Chicago, Ill.
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DRAFT OF A CIRCULAR PROPOSED TO BE
ISSUED TO STATE COMMITTEES
A plot of land upon the Exposition Ground has been provisionally assigned to each State with a view to the building of a house upon it, to be used as that State’s “Head Quarters” during the time of the Exposition.
As you have already been informed, before the work of building these houses can be begun, plans for them must be approved by the Director General and the Chief of Construction.
Plans for the treatment of so much of the ground of each plot as is not to be covered by the Head Quarters House must also be submitted and approved by the same officials, and the present circular is prepared with the object of providing those having to devise these plans with certain information as to the topography of the premises, and as to what is to be permitted and what disallowed in dealing with them.
The surface of nearly all the plots is flat. The sub-soil is a loose and permeable sand thrown up by the Lake. Upon it a surface soil of fairly good clayey loam has been spread to a depth of from one to two feet. Upon this soil a well-knit, lawn-like greensward, mainly of Kentucky Blue Grass, has been already established. In most of the plots there are, also, already growing, a few of the native forest trees of Northern Illinois; most of them from fifteen to twenty-five years old, of tolerably good form and thrifty.
One of the main walks of the Exposition Ground will give access to each plot; there is to be no fence between this main walk and the building. There will generally be trees standing irregularly within the plot near the main walk. The Head Quarter houses are to be set as far back from the main walk as may, in each case, be found practicable. In all cases, a space of at least twenty feet, generally more, must be left between the main walk and the house. There should be a broad and direct, substantially flagged or finely graveled passage between the main walk and the principal entrance to the house. Its course should be direct, unless a tree or some other obstacle makes a slight curve desirable.
If the present turf shall have been well preserved while the house is building, or if, where slightly injured it shall have been mended before the end of the year 1892, nothing more than has been above prescribed will be necessary in the laying out and furnishing of a State plot.
Breaking up the turf with a view to “ornamentations” in the form of beds and walks {of} fanciful pattern will not be allowed. Nor will the introduction upon it of statues, figures, {…}, pictures, inscriptions, “ribbonds,” “embroidery” or of manufactured articles of metal, stone, artificial stone or
[414]terra cotta, or of bedding plants, or any other materials, be allowed. It is desired that the arrangements should be simple island spaces {as practicable be} left of undisturbed turf. All things tending to produce fussy, incongruous, meretricious, {…}, grotesque or undignified effects will be excluded.
But at suitable points, generally near the edges of the turf areas, a few objects may be placed that will be illustrative of the botany or geology of the State occupying the plot (such as a pillar of metal-bearing rock or an interesting petrifaction or fossil of suitable size and form.) Small trees of the State, or bushes or plants in tubs set in the turf or on simple block pedestals, may desirably be used in the same manner, but only if each of such plants is a very fine specimen of its kind and can be presented and maintained in thoroughly thrifty condition during the entire period of the Exposition. (Young spruces or other conifers from the Pacific States, if of perfect form, would be suitable to the end in view, or tall specimens of several of the larger species of Cactus from the States bordering on Mexico.)
All such contributions to the interest of the Exposition that can be so placed as not to have a crowded, or a scattered desultory influence on the general effect of a State plot, and that can be presented and maintained in perfect condition, will be gratefully welcomed.
Small, modest signs may be placed before notable plants or other objects on State plots, giving their names and stating the locality from which they have been taken.
It is suggested that the selection and preparation of trees for the Exposition will be desirably begun as soon as possible, but that it will not be well to bring them to the Ground before April, 1893.
These restrictions upon planting above prescribed do not apply to the use of plants on porches, balconies, {terraces}, window-gardens or roof-gardens of the house, nor to patios or interior courts. Nor are they intended to prevent any vegetation that will be so grown as to be in contact with the walls of the house, or that will occur in narrow, trim beds bordering the approach to it, always providing that such planting is well devised {with a motive} to have the effect of supporting, bearing out or adding grace to the controlling elements of the architectural design.