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CHAPTER IX
DECEMBER 1893–MAY 1894
As 1893 drew to a close, Olmsted turned his attention to Biltmore, where he spent approximately three weeks in late November and early December. The Biltmore Village Memorandum of December 9 presents Olmsted’s vision for the village as a community independent of the estate, with its own civic space and businesses. The April 1894 letter to Charles McNamee refines this initial plan, with Olmsted criticizing the location for the estate office chosen by George W. Vanderbilt and Richard Morris Hunt and instead proposing an alternate location adjacent to the train station. Olmsted’s letters to Vanderbilt of December 30 and January 9 present his preliminary plans for the size, scope, and character of the Arboretum. The letter to Édouard André chronicles Olmsted’s continuing efforts to create a garden of choice espaliered fruit at the estate.
The first three months of 1894 saw Olmsted engaged in a mixture of projects, new and old. His letter to John Charles Olmsted of January 25, written after visiting Cincinnati in early January for a possible role in revising the city’s parks, contains his insistence that park commissions be free from the influence of patronage and political pressure. Olmsted’s letter to Boston City Architect Edmund Wheelwright proposes to limit the role of architects in designing structures for parks, while his letter to Paul Kendricken differentiates between parks and other public grounds in that city, identifying the distinct roles that large public grounds such as Franklin Park were meant to play in contrast to smaller and less scenic grounds such as Boston Common. The March 11 letter to John Charles Olmsted contains Olmsted’s admiration for Milwaukee park commissioner Christian Wahl, who was energetically leading the work at Lake Park. Letters to his partners of February 19 and to Calvert
[723]Vaux on March 31 detail the firm’s engagement with the Brooklyn park commission, with Olmsted expressing his desire to return Prospect Park as much as possible to his and Vaux’s original design.
The most significant new project begun in this period was the redesign of Chicago’s Jackson Park and Midway after the close of the Columbian Exposition. In four letters to Chicago South Park commissioners in April and May, Olmsted presents his argument for the necessity of controlling the water levels in Jackson Park’s lagoon and in the proposed canal in the Midway. These projects, he concluded, would enable the South Park to become “the finest domestic boating park in the world.” In addition, Olmsted presents the firm’s preliminary plans for the redesign of the northern portion of Jackson Park, where the Palace of Fine Arts would remain as a permanent structure. The chapter concludes with a letter to architect Henry Ives Cobb regarding a private estate in nearby Lake Forest, Illinois, in which Olmsted emphasizes the importance of a large terrace as an outdoor room for the family.
[Biltmore Village Memorandum]
| [December 9, 1893] |
Note:
The drawing to which this note is attached is a suggestion for laying out Biltmore Village.
The village is to be situated at a junction of several public roads, including two public railroads. An entrance to the approach of Biltmore estate will open from the village, but it is not advised that the main characteristic expression of the village as a whole should be that simply of a dependency of the private estate. Rather the effect should be that the village is obviously occupied by a community, the members of which are engaged, independently of the owner of the estate, in various kinds of business, the pursuit of which requires that they should be in intimate intercourse, commercially and otherwise, with people at a distance from the village. Hence, for instance, the main streets of the village should appear to have been laid out with a view to convenience of such intercourse. They should not seem to have been laid out simply or mainly as accessories of the entrance to the estate.
The station at the junction of the two public railways being assumed to be the centre of business, convenience requires that there should be an open place connected with it, and that there should be shops, stores and offices opening upon this place. It is desirable however, that the village should have a social centre other than this business centre; a centre further removed from the noise of trains and the bustle of traffic. The principal features of this social
[724]
Study of Skeleton Plan for Biltmore Village, Dec. 9, 1893
The study shows no particulars except such as are necessary for illustrating general principles. Details can be introduced in an advanced study if the general principles are approved. Looking at this primary study, it may be observed that the first street crossing the railroad on the right of the station corresponds with the existing “Hendersonville Road” which is legally fixed.
[725]The next street on the right is laid out to follow nearly parallel with the base of the wooded hill along which the temporary railway of the estate is now laid. Space is left between this street and the base of the hill for a series of small houses with gardens in their rear. Corresponding streets are planned to be laid out on the left of the mid-line of the plan, with convenient cross streets. Eight blocks are thus formed, to be divided into building lots having some variety of size and suitable, some for shops, and some for dwellings. The lot lines are omitted in order to avoid complicating this preliminary proposition.
From the station views are arranged to be kept open, one through a street in front of it to the church; another, diagonally on the right, to the gate lodge of the approach road of the estate. This lateral street runs clear of the brick works, which it would be well to have divided from it by a high wall, but room is left for a tier of dwellings between this street and the steep hillside opposite the brick works.
The streets are laid out favorably to good sewerage and drainage.
Space on the river bank is reserved for a public promenade, bath house and laundry should they be desired.