Frederick Law Olmsted to Harold Carter Brown, September 11, 1894

823

To Harold Carter Brown

Harold Brown, Esq.,
Newport, R. I.
Dear Sir:-

11th September, 1894

We are sending you a tracing designed to aid consideration of the variation which you suggested to Mr. Codman from the study already sent you.

In discussing the advisability of this variation we shall assume that a dwelling is wanted in which shelter and other requirements to be supplied within the walls of the house may be so combined with provisions for certain other requirements not to be supplied within the walls of the house, that the result will be one of artistic unity. The word rural will sufficiently describe the character of those other things not to be supplied within the walls of a house, [824]

Preliminary Plan for Grounds of Harold Brown Esq. Newport, R.I., Aug. 30, 1894

and the word villa may be used with reference to the required unity between the rural and the building elements which are to be so associated.

The house as it has been built is well placed and well designed in itself for the end in view. The terrace we suggest may be regarded as an intermediate feature by which the house and the rural elements of the combination may be morticed together. The garden is another such feature. The walls about the service and laundry yards separate, seclude and subordinate these purely utilitarian provisions.

On general principles applying to the primary organization of a villa, the more the processes of bringing in its supplies and of the removal of its wastes shall have been kept out of sight from those parts of it in which the family comes together and receives its friends, the better will this organization have been.

On general principles, also, if no refreshing outlooks to a distant background from the more important apartments of the house part of a villa can be permanently commanded, it is best that these apartments should look out upon fine masses of foliage, and the further such masses are from the eye, provided the intermediate space is pleasingly occupied, the more agreeable will be such outlook.

Apart from this consideration and having regard only to an ultimate provision, through the growth of trees, of a landscape background to your house in the view toward it from Bellevue Avenue, it would seem to us a waste of opportunity to take the piece of ground in question, as you propose, for an approach to your kitchen when more convenient access for wagons to the kitchen can be had in the manner proposed in our first study. The road as [825]

Preliminary Plan for Grounds of Harold Brown Esq., Newport, R.I., Sept. 11, 1894

you propose to make it would practically obstruct a space of about fourteen hundred square feet of land otherwise to be used for supporting a plantation which we think an element of the general design of much importance. We do not think that anything to be thus gained would compensate for what would be lost.

Yours Respectfully,

Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot.
L. A.

[826

]