A Publication of the

Foundation

for Landscape Studies

Volume ııı | Number ıı | Spring 2008A Journal of Place

Essays: After Industry: Transforming Landscapes 3Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other Great American Cities

Elizabeth K. Meyer: Recycling: Landscape Architecture’s New Frontier

Ethan Carr: The Hudson River Waterfront:Experience and Transformation

Kenneth I. Helphand: Promenades andPromenading: San Francisco’s Crissy Field andPortland’s Eastbank Esplanade

Julie Ann Grimm: The Santa Fe Railyard:Changing Place, Keeping Space

Book Reviews 15Galen Cranz: Large ParksEdited by Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves

Leslie Rose Close: A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place EraBy Robin Karson

David Schuyler: City Trees: A HistoricalGeography from the Renaissance through theNineteenth CenturyBy Henry W. Lawrence

Robin Karson: Jacob Weidenmann: Pioneer Landscape ArchitectBy Rudy J. Favretti

Awards 22

Calendar 23

Contributors 23

Today the profes-sional frontier forlandscape archi-tects has becomeurban brownfields,

scarred and treeless sitesthat are the opposite ofgreenfields, developable landthat has not been polluted.Whereas scenic potential wasformerly a consideration inthe selection of land forparks, today the availabilityof a growing inventory ofobsolete landscapes is amore prevalent criterion. Inmany parts of the UnitedStates and Western Europe,abandoned industrial plants,factories, warehouses, andcommercial waterfrontsalong with decommissionedmilitary bases and formerairfields have created a sup-ply of land ripe for redevel-opment. Site selection in thecase of such “found land-scapes” is not so much amatter of choice as a given.

The question is how best totake advantage of vacancyand location. The noticeabletrend toward making citiesgreener by enlarging theirpark systems is one answer.

Maritime commerce isnowadays mainly restrictedto a few major seaports withdocking facilities for con-tainerships, military carriers,oil tankers, and large vesselscarrying raw materials formanufacture elsewhere. Theshipping traffic that onceplied rivers and canals hasbeen supplanted by overlandtrucking. In addition, withthe general decline of basicmanufacturing in developedcountries, many waterfrontsequipped for loading andunloading large vessels havebecome idle. The conversionof obsolete piers, plants, fac-tories, and warehouses andtheir related urban water-front real estate to new non-industrial uses has becomeprevalent as cities seek neweconomic identities. Histori-cally themed districts withshops, restaurants, and

entertainments designed to attract tourists are a com-mon form of waterfrontrecycling. The creation ofnew parkland is another.

Besides the natural attrac-tion of the water itself,waterfronts offer opportuni-ties to create linear land-scapes serving popular formsof contemporary recreationsuch as running and biking.Being continuous and fre-quently adjacent to residen-tial areas – especially oneswhere old warehouses, nowabandoned like the water-front itself, are being con-verted into apartments –they also serve as neighbor-hood parks. Moreover, theyare tourist attractions in anage when cities are trying torevitalize their failing oldeconomies. For this reason, ahistoric urban landscapeamenity, the promenade, isbeing revived, as Kenneth

Helphand and Ethan Carrpoint out in this issue.

Other kinds of brown-fields are more problem-atic. Converting abandonedindustrial property anddecommissioned landfillsinto parkland often entailsdecontaminating the site byremoving toxic wastes andother dangerousresidues ofpast pollution. This neces-sity has pointed landscape architects in the direction ofenvironmental science andmade their plans moreprocess-oriented and open-ended than they were whenform and function were theparamount considerations.Ecodesign and sustainabilityare relatively new terms in the professional parlance,signalling an attempt tobring a brownfield site fullcircle from its technological-ly inscribed, denaturedappearance to its presumedoriginal state as meadow,forest, or wetland.

The word disturbed isheard a great deal in discus-sions of former industrialsites, and there is a general

presumption that the conversion of brownfield togreen field is inherentlybeneficial. To be sure, ourexpanded consciousnessabout the perils of environ-mental contamination andacceptance, confirmed bylegislation, of the need toclean our land, water, and airhas been one of the greatsalutary cultural shifts of thelast fifty years. However, associologist Galen Cranzremarks here, the consider-able improvements that havebeen made in this countryand in Western Europeshould not be seen as any-thing but local victorieswhen the pollution thataccompanied the building ofindustrial America has merely been shifted to nowrapidly industrializingnations such as China. Norcan the effects of the disloca-tions brought about by global flows of capital on

native workforces be dis-counted. Further, one shouldreckon as a cost the loss ofhistorical memory caused byeradicating the industriallandscape as material cul-ture, a testament to nationaland urban histories, a themethat Elizabeth Meyer touchesupon in her essay.

The problems of simulta-neously sustaining both ahealthy world economy anda healthy natural world pre-sent a far greater challengethan can be addressed by anysingle profession. The recy-cling of postindustrial land-scapes, however, is a task forwhich landscape architectshave a unique set of skills. In this issue of Site/Lines, we look at some of theirresponses to this challengingnew professional frontier.

Good green wishes,

Elizabeth Barlow RogersEditor

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Letter from the Editor

On the Cover:

Overhead Crane for Stripping Ingots,

c. 1930. Photograph by Luke Swank.

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After Industry: Transforming LandscapesThe Life, Death, and Rebirth of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other Great American Cities

In America the founding of new cities and their subsequentindustrialization is part of the epic story of the settlement byEuropeans of a historical frontier of continental dimensions.Today’s frontier, fueled by new technologies, is one of globalcommerce and the large-scale industrialization of countries

such as China. The landscape consequences of shifts in howraw materials are manufactured and transported are integral tothe economic histories of all cities, particularly those of theAmerican Midwest. Cleveland and Pittsburgh, for example, arepalimpsests of their successive transformations from competi-tive commercial hamlet to exuberant industrial metropolis to struggling post-industrial city.

For both these cities, geographical location was the para-mount prerequisite for commercial success and the growth ofheavy industry. The mouth of the Cuyahoga River and LakeErie for Cleveland and the confluence of the Allegheny and theMonongahela in the case of Pittsburgh gave them importanttransportation advantages. These water routes and the pres-ence of nearby sources of coal made it logical for them tobecome producers of steel after the discovery in 1866 of ironore in Minnesota’s Mesabi Range. The demand for steel at acritical moment in the nation’s history in order for other citiesto also construct large industrial plants and manufacturetracks, railroad cars, automobiles, and various additional steel-based products ensured their prosperity.

Capitalist entrepreneurs amassed extraordinary wealth inthe two cities: John D. Rockefeller started his Standard OilCompany in Cleveland in the decade following the discovery ofoil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859; Henry Clay Frickformed the H. C. Frick Coal and Coke Company in Pittsburghin 1871; and Andrew Carnegie organized the Carnegie SteelCompany, the predecessor of U.S. Steel, in Pittsburgh in the1870s. The era of prosperity ushered in by these and otherbusinessmen lasted from roughly 1870 until the GreatDepression of the 1930s. During this period Cleveland andPittsburgh, along with many other Midwestern cities such asChicago, Toledo, Akron, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Milwaukee,and Detroit, epitomized growing America’s industrial might.Municipal governments, spurred by leading citizens, commis-sioned landscape architects to design parks, parkways, andrural cemeteries. They hired architects to embellish their cities

with bridges, fountains, and buildings of neo-classical architectural magnificence. Captainsof industry and their heirs became philan-thropists, established foundations, andbestowed on their own cities and othersimportant cultural institutions housing greatcollections of rare books, manuscripts, andold-master art works. Although wealthy fami-lies began to exchange their grand residencesin the heart of the city for ones in leafy sub-urban enclaves such as Shaker Heights andSewickley, they still sustained, as many dotoday, the symphonies, museums, hospitals,and libraries their forebears founded.

The Great Depression, which halted thecountry’s economic momentum, was felt withparticular severity in cities whose industrialbases were undermined, with resulting massunemployment and social unrest. DuringWorld War II, American industry played amajor role in bringing about the Allied victory through the rapid production of ships,tanks, and other military equipment.Although industry remained strong in the decades immediate-ly following the war as the pent-up demand for building mate-rials and consumer goods soared, demographic shifts spawnedserious urban problems. Immigration, which had alwaysaccounted for the bulk of these cities’ population growth, wasaccompanied by the accelerating departure of the middle class to new developer-built suburbs. The loss of blue-collarworkers of European ethnicities was accompanied by theinflux of poor blacks from the South, which created a greaterneed for social welfare services than could be adequately covered by diminished tax revenues.

Civic pride waned as center-city and inner-city neighbor-hoods became desolate and crime-ridden. Schools declined,and federal public housing programs and the Highway Act of1956 had unintended negative effects. High-rise projectsreplaced old dwellings in deteriorating neighborhoods, andexpressways carrying heavy motor traffic into the hearts ofcities changed the complexion of downtowns. Old trolley lines

ceased to operate, and com-muters living in the sprawlingsuburbs drove to work.Competition from outlying shopping centers caused manyfashionable center-city department stores to close, and seedi-ness replaced elegance as grand boulevards and commercialcynosures such as Cleveland’s famous Arcade turned fromglamorous to tawdry. As industry slowed in the 1970s, manymills and factories shut down. Waterfronts no longer teemedwith dockworkers. Trash-strewn vacant lots multiplied, andparks became dangerous dumping grounds. In Cleveland,municipal finances were in such disarray that in 1978, evenwith two-thirds of its budget coming from the federal govern-ment, the city was forced to default on its municipal bond payments.

The service economy that began to replace the old industri-al one in the 1980s did little to help the remaining blue-collarresidents of industrial cities as service jobs only generate lessthan one ancillary job compared to three for manufacturingjobs. Gradually, however, urban physical deterioration began tobe reversed, thanks to overall national prosperity as well as tothe concerted efforts of citizen associations and civic leaders.As a new consumer economy became a dominant factor in

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Filling Molds with Molten Iron I,

1934. Photograph by Luke Swank.

American life, abandoned industrial areas began to be convert-ed into entertainment districts and shopping malls designedto lure tourists as well as regional residents. The site of U. S.Steel’s Homestead Works on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, whereCarnegie and Frick’s historic battle with the AmalgamatedAssociation of Iron and Steel Workers took place in 1892, isnow The Waterfront, an open-air super-mall.

Urban memories die hard, and historic preservationistsfight to save symbolic portions of the past. In Cleveland acommittee campaigns to keep the city’s four remainingHuletts – 880-ton, electrically powered ore unloaders namedfor their inventor and unique to the Great Lakes – from beingturned into scrap metal. Meanwhile, their opponents wish to clear the Flats, as the low-lying banks of the Cuyahoga arecalled, in order to advance economic development projects.Today the Nautica Entertainment Complex, a half-mile-longboardwalk combined with a 5000-seat amphitheater, restau-rants, and sports and special events facilities, occupies thewestern part of the Flats. On the other side of the bridge-lacedriver, abandoned steel mills in the eastern part of the Flatsawait demolition or conversion into new uses. As is true else-where, city officials anxious to replenish tax revenues tend toside with investors in redevelopment projects.

Although reliance on tourism as a city’s economic backboneis precariously dependent on the relationship between foreignand domestic currency values and the state of the nationaleconomy, the competitive frenzy to build “starchitect”-designed museums and performing arts centers – sometimesthought of as the “cathedrals” of the twenty-first century – issymptomatic of efforts to shore up ailing urban economies bycreating attractions that will bring in outside visitors. It is also a means of reasserting civic importance and generatingservice jobs. The construction of sports stadiums such asJacobs Field in Cleveland is another form of pump-priming,but a questionable one. In spite of the boost they give to acity’s reputation, they create very few jobs for local businessand lay a deadening hand on the surrounding neighborhoodby depriving it of active street life.

Also in Cleveland, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame andMuseum designed by I. M. Pei on the shore of Lake Erie is theresult of a successful bid to obtain this major tourist-luring

institution. In Minneapolis, below the Mississippi River’s onlyfalls, once the power source of sawmills and flourmills, a smalllocal history museum acknowledges the bygone industriallandscape. It occupies one of several recycled buildings besidethe new Guthrie Theater designed by Jean Nouvel. Developersare buying up adjacent real estate and building high-rise con-dominiums, and upscale shops and restaurants have begun tospring up in former warehouses and company offices. Besidethe river below the bluff on which these buildings sit joggersand strollers can be seen on a recently created trail.

The creation of linear waterfront parks is occurring inother Midwest cities. Cincinnati Riverfront Park, White RiverState Park in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh’s Alleghany RiverfrontPark, and Louisville’s Waterfront Park, are among the most significant. But the reinvestment in historic waterfronts is notlimited to the industrial Midwest. New York’s Hudson Riverand Brooklyn Bridge Parks and Commons Park along thePlatte River in Denver are examples of a ubiquitous trend.Where these projects are coupled with commercial redevelop-ment, an uneasy relationship exists between historic preser-vationists and public park advocates on one side and realestate developers and government officials on the other.Boston’s Quincy Market, New York’s South Street Seaport, andBaltimore’s Harborplace areconspicuous early examplesof commercial recyclingdone in the name of his-toric preservation. Individualurban pioneers, usuallyartists, have started theincremental rebirth of manyold industrial neighbor-hoods, but in the case of thehistoric districts mentionedhere it is safe to say that theywould have continued tostagnate without developerfinancing.

One may deplore thetheme-parklike repackagingof history, but it is impossi-ble to ignore the realities of modern urban economics.The unequal job equation

between a manufacturing and a service economy reduces thenumber of taxpayers, thereby diminishing city coffers. As debtservice, pension payments, and social welfare expendituresballoon, the percentages of municipal budgets that cities oncespent to build, maintain, and repair parks, not to mentionbridges, water tunnels, roads, streets, sidewalks, and otherforms of infrastructure, have drastically declined. Becausebudgets for parks are usually the first to be cut in times ofretrenchment, the concept of self-financing is growing. Thiscreates an obvious tension between citizens who believe that parks should be publicly financed and maintained by gov-ernment through tax revenues (with the assistance in somecases of not-for-profit organizations like the Central ParkConservancy) and city officials responsible for preparing parkdesign guidelines and issuing permits and leases for lucrativeconcessions to independently sustain them.

Battery Park City in New York provides a successful prece-dent for integrating residential development with the creationof a tenant-supported waterfront promenade. Additional operating funds come from concession fees. However, thiscommendable example is spawning more ambitious and questionable strategies of generating revenue. As an example, agroup of neighboring Greenwich Village residents is contest-

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South Cove, Battery Park City.

Battery Park City is supported

through maintenance charges to

tenants in the adjacent buildings.

ing the commercial development of Pier 40, part of HudsonRiver Park immediately to the north of Battery Park City. Thegroup opposes the Related Companies’ proposal to build a$600 million entertainment complex with a permanent homefor the Cirque du Soleil and the Tribeca Film Festival, which isexpected to draw 2.7 million visitors a year. The partnership,modeled on the Central Park Conservancy and the Randall’sIsland Sports Foundation, represents the current users of thepier’s playing fields. The group seeks to raise $30 million torepair the rotting piers and preserve the fields as a publicamenity for which it would pay rent. The Hudson River ParkTrust, the entity appointed by the mayor and the governor tobuild and manage the park, is obliged by legislation to fund itsannual budget with on-site concession revenues. The Trust’srequest for proposals in 2003 was clearly in line with thisobjective. The compromise solution it is now considering is areduction of the size of the entertainment complex and thesubstitution of nine additional public basketball courts, morecommunity space, and a museum instead of the originallyplanned 1,800-seat music hall. A farmers market, a 1.5-acreopen space on the south side of the pier, and new rooftopplaying fields are further community-oriented amendments tothe original plan. In spite of the opposition of some electedofficials and the Pier 40 Partnership, the $5 million in rent thatRelated Companies would pay will obviously influence thedecision.

Permanent economic stagnation is one means of historicpreservation, and the villages and towns left behind by timecan profit from the faded allure of their former selves. Largecities with highly visible obsolete infrastructures cannot. Theirpopulations may shrink, but those who remain must find newlivelihoods. Therefore it is incumbent on these cities to attractprofitable urban land uses and successfully compete withinthe global economy. There will be winners and losers in thisprocess. The only thing that is sure is that cities continuallychange and that their futures depend to a large degree on justhow their landscapes are reshaped. The burgeoning “greencities” ethos, which fosters ecological regeneration while alsoserving recreational needs, is resulting in an array of projectssuch as rails-to-trails, rooftop landscaping, and the imagina-tive conversion into parks of several kinds of urban infra-structure, including former garbage dumps and land withinhighway rights-of-way. Regardless of the question of who pays and how, this is surely a move in the right direction. – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

Recycling: Landscape Architecture’s New Frontier

As a teenager growing up in Virginia Beach,California, in the early 1970s, I often gazed from thebackseat of the family station wagon at the largelandfill beside the new expressway. As seagullsswooped towards the garbage mounds not yet

capped with clay, bulldozers moved across this curious terrain,regrading its contours to form the hill and lake of a new park.How out of place the large hill appeared in that flat coastallandscape! Years later, as a landscape architect, I asked myselfwhether it was deceitful to conceal a trash heap under a recre-ational park or resourceful to recycle the garbage dump intosomething new.

Recycling both garbage and landscapes was a novel conceptin 1973 when Mount Trashmore Park opened to grand pro-nouncements that it was the first park in the world to be builton a landfill. Then I did not know enough about the history oflandscape architecture to be skeptical of such a bold assertion.A few years later I visited Parc des Buttes Chaumont, whichBaron Haussmann had constructed on the site of a formergypsum quarry and refuse dump as part of his massive trans-formation of the city of Paris in the 1860s . I also saw howmore than a century later Paris had furthered its reputationfor innovative urban planning by holding design competitionsfor the sites of the former Citroën automobile factory on thecity’s southern edge and the relocated slaughterhouse districton its eastern perimeter. These competitions resulted in radically recycled landscapes with major parks as their center-pieces.

A seminal experience for me as a student was hearing land-scape architect Rich Haag lecture. From him I learned about a more ambitious, and now much revered, recycled landscape,Gas Works Park, which opened in 1975 on an abandoned power plant site beside Lake Union in Seattle. Design journalsaround the world noted Haag’s originality in celebratingrather than disguising the industrial history of the site byretaining the gas generator towers, colorfully painting theexhaust-compressor, and reusing the boiler house as a picnicpavilion. Haag also reshaped the capped waste into a sixty-foot-high sculptural earthwork.

Three trends that emerged in the 1970s account for the recy-cling of former industrial sites into public parks. The first one consisted of the closing of obsolete early-twentieth-centu-ry factories and the relocation of American manufacturing to other countries with less stringent environmental laws andlower labor costs. The second trend was the shift from rail to truck transportation, which decentralized shipping. Since new plants could now be located practically anywhere, abettingthe galloping pace of suburban sprawl, large industrial siteswithin cities were abandoned. The third development was theinclusion of landscapes as well as architecture within thepurview of historic preservationists. Preservationists furtherbroadened their scope to encompass vernacular buildings,including industrial buildings.

The convergence of these three trends resulted in numer-ous opportunities to recycle not only brownfields – abandonedurban sites awaiting development – but also old docks andpiers, former airfields, and defunct rail yards. Creating newparks on brownfields became a frequent and popular sugges-tion. Nevertheless, people were ambivalent; brownfields were simultaneously feared because of their contaminationand loved because of their embodied memories. At the same time, they were often the only large parcels located closeto inner-city neighborhoods and to the warehouse districts and downtown commercial areas undergoing conversion toresidential use.

Earthworks artist and industrial landscape aficionado RobertSmithson died the year Mount Trashmore opened. Many land-scape architects have subsequently discovered the postindus-trial landscape as a locus for practice through Smithson’scopious writings on the subject, his “non-site” installations,and the earthworks he constructed or envisioned. Books suchas John Beardsley’s Earthworks and Lucy Lippard’s Overlayexposed an even broader audience to his and other artists’works. As the number of former industrial sites in and close tocities increased, the contingent of artists and landscape archi-tects interested in industrial landscapes grew. Smithson’sworks provide a critical hinge between site-specific art usingindustrial detritus and the innovations of late-twentieth-cen-tury landscape architectural theory and practice.

Over thirty years have passed since Smithson speculated about the artistic possibilities of remaking industrial sites andsince Haag transformed a refuse mound and remnants of a

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gas works plant into a park that has become a touchstone forpostindustrial landscape design. Since then, my generation of landscape architects has come of age. Many of us find dis-turbed sites a more intriguing design challenge than otherkinds of commissions; indeed, we are eager to regenerate whatwe experienced as students only through books and periodi-cals or in our imaginations as we gazed at the NortheastCorridor’s industrial wastelands through Amtrak windows.

From abandoned railroad right-of-ways to obsolete facto-ries, from cramped urban waterfronts to sprawling decommis-sioned military bases, these odd and frequently contaminatedlandscapes are filled with indecipherable building fragments,unexpected juxtapositions of scale, emergent vegetation, andmemories of human toil and invention. They can be read astexts in which the histories of technology, society, and ecologyare intertwined. They challenge us because they make usreconsider existing tropes for conceptualizing nature and con-structing landscapes.

Contemporary landscape architects have been involved in theregeneration of several kinds of industrial landscapes andhave developed various means of perceiving them. First, theyhave studied or participated in design competitions. Amongthe most prominent were those held for Parc de la Villette andParc André Citroën in Paris in the 1980s, and those conductedmore recently for Downsview Park in Toronto, and the HighLine, Governor’s Island, and Fresh Kills Park in New York City.

Second, students and professional practitioners have visitedor read about other new parks on waterfront sites in landscapemagazines and journals (see Kenneth Helphand’s and EthanCarr’s articles in this issue). Two notable examples in rapidlydeveloping China are Margie Ruddick’s 1998 Living Water Parkin Chengdu, Sichuan, and Kongjian Yu and Turen DesignInstitute’s 2001 Zhongshan Shipyard Park. There has beenconsiderable interest in Barcelona’s recycled landscapes: Parcde la Creueta del Coll and Fossar de Moragues, both withinabandoned quarry sites; the Botanic Garden on Montjuïc’slandfill; and Parc de la Trinitat within the terrain vague of ahighway exit ramp, transit station, and high tension utilityright of way. In this country, a decommissioned marine base

in southern California is being transformed into OrangeCounty Great Park. Designed by a team of landscape archi-tects, engineers, and ecologists led by landscape architect KenSmith, the plan capitalizes on a sixty-foot-deep, two-and-a-half-mile-long canyon enlivened with pools of water and fast-flowing streams. It also calls for a 70-acre botanical garden, a165-acre sports park, a 122-acre terrace for cultural attractionsand events, an air museum, a golf course, and a three-mile-long protected corridor for wildlife migration.

Third, during the past decade landscape architects havelearned from several kinds of publications on the postindus-trial landscape. From monographs on a single artist to conference anthologies to personal manifestos to exhibitioncatalogs, this varied literature shows how postindustrial sites are understood by nondesigners, as well as how they have been altered by designers.

In light of today’s heightened environmental concerns, wemust ask ourselves what role the landscape architect shouldplay in remediating and regenerating biophysical systems aswell as in harvesting and recycling the energy embodied informerly contaminated materials. Should we go beyond trans-forming brownfields into new parks to work with environ-mental scientists and engineers who deal with dangerousmaterials and processes that continue to exist within recycledlandscapes? The answer to this question has profound aesthet-ic, ethical, and contractual implications. It is important there-fore to examine the decisions made during the design process,understand the importance of collaborating with experts suchas soil scientists and ecologists, and appreciate the necessity ofeducating others about the nature of site evolution. In aneffort to provide a working outline of this kind of landscapedesign, I offer here four ways of pairing a site reading with asite response. These are identified by labels intended as ashorthand means of categorizing diverse approaches to theproblems posed by different kinds of sites.

Collective Amnesia | Tabula RasaPerhaps the most common form of recycling a postindustrialsite is to clear it, erase its former patterns of development anduse, and start over. This approach views underutilized postin-dustrial sites as real estate valued for their locations but for lit-tle else. As the memory of former appearance and functionfades, collective amnesia regarding what now appears as a tab-ula rasa sets in. The tabula-rasa mentality is in a sense a con-tinuation of modernist architects’ and landscape designers’treatment of all sites as amorphous, empty parcels waiting tobe given form. Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in Paris isa more recent example this kind of site reading and response.The competition brief depicted the site as cleared; its formerslaughterhouse history was all but forgotten. The designer didnot challenge this, and his scheme did not acknowledge any of the prior uses of the site.

Cultural Memories | Physical TracesPostindustrial sites may be valued for varied reasons: theirphysical appearance, their associations with the history ofindustry and labor, or their connections to local communitieswhose families worked and lived in and around them. Manyhave remarkable structures and infrastructure: canals, sluices,filtration ponds, treatment tanks, coke ovens, furnaces, andgasometers. Often landfill mounds or quarry excavations canbe capitalized on as ready-made earthworks.

Some projects seek to recycle as much of the extant struc-ture as possible while still transforming the site for a new use.A surreal beauty results as unexpected juxtapositions of age,scale, and function are created and site memories are pre-served by inscribing the ghosts of former forms in a newdesign. The parks that result are, in the French sociologist andphilosopher Henri Lefebvre’s term, full spaces, not open sites.They evoke memories of the past and function as an inventiveand playful postmodern recovery of history.

Encapsulated Danger | Enigmatic FiguresMany postindustrial sites are polluted due to a toxic spill, theundocumented burial of chemicals, long-term accumulationof residual contaminants in the soil, or undetected under-ground flows called plumes. The environmental history ofthese places demands something other than the preservationof memory through landscape design. The health of the localcommunity depends on limiting the impact of future contam-inant release, but sometimes it is impossible to remove conta-

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In their impressive recent book, Living Systems: InnovativeMaterials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture, LiatMargulis and Alexander Robinson address the many reasonswhy on-site regenerative techniques are gaining favor overclearing, capping and hauling. Some are market-driven, inas-much as environmental regulation has increased the cost andliability of removing materials from a site. But others arebased on environmental ethics. In either case, when it is nolonger possible to dispose of garbage and toxins elsewhere,they either continue to degrade on-site with possible harmfulresults or enter into a system of recycling and recirculatingwaste ecologies, to use a phrase of Toronto landscape architectPierre Belanger.

Slowly, provisionally, and tentatively, disturbed sites will beredeveloped. Landscape architects working out the challengespresented by the extreme situations of postindustrial land-scapes have invented new theories, techniques, and tactics thatare applicable to other project types and sites. The value of

these projects is as much inthe ways they have posed the problem and redefined the relationships betweenecology and technology as in the ways they have proposedto contain, regenerate andrecirculate post-industrialsites and systems.

I am intrigued by thisdirection the landscapedesign profession has takenbecause I believe these pro-jects, some built and somestill proposals, will resonatewith a public concernedabout the effects toxic wastesare having on their personalhealth, as well as on theenvironment. I shouldquickly add that habits ofconsumption have yet toalter in ways that are com-mensurate with this chang-ing attitude toward the

relationship between human beings and nature. Yet, lookingback at how far we have come, I am hopeful about the future.Recycling our litter was a novel concept to my brothers andsister and me in the 1960s. Converting a garbage dump intoMount Trashmore Park seemed bizarre. We could not haveimagined the creative possibilities of regenerating and recy-cling landscapes nor the educational value of allowingprocesses of environmental cleansing and regeneration to bewitnessed by, worked on, and confronted by local citizens.Forty years later, these projects are not yet mainstream, butthey are receiving considerable critical attention. They are thereason why many current students of landscape architectureare drawn to the profession – and perhaps why US News andWorld Report lists landscape architecture as one of 2008’s BestCareers. – Elizabeth K. Meyer

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minants from a site. Contain-ing and controlling toxic material on site throughencapsulation is one option, but landscape architects are currently exploring safer and more imaginative alternatives to“capping and covering.” In some cases, however, they areforced to adhere to design guidelines that mandate retentionof already contained and presumably decontaminated land-forms, and this demands creativity as well.

For instance, in their winning design in the competition toconvert New York City’s Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Islandinto a park, James Corner and his associates in the firm FieldOperations were constrained by the prohibition against pene-trating the landfill’s clay cap. This meant that they could notpropose reconfiguring the enormous mounds into dramatical-ly sculpted earthworks. Instead, they proposed a strategy basedon ecological processes, subtly reshaping the mounds’ surfaceto guide the flow of surface water in ways that promote soilaccretion and plant succession. Legible neither as landfill noras contemporary earthworks, for future visitors the mounds,incongruously higher than any other point along the north-eastern coast of United States, will be enigmatic figures in thelandscape.

Ecological + Technological Flows | Regenerate + Recycle + Recirculate The last category in this working analysis of postindustriallandscape design commits to ecological and economical on-site regeneration of systems. This approach focuses uponindustrial landscapes as biophysical environments. As anexample, at Reclamation Park in Vintondale, Pennsylvania,Julie Bargman of DIRT Studio, in collaboration with historianT. Allan Comp, scientist Robert Deason, and artist Stacy Levy,aerated and filtered surface water contaminated with acidmine drainage by pumping it through a series of limestone-lined treatment ponds. Cattails and other plants along thewetland margins reduce the water’s acidity and extract heavymetals. As the water moves from one basin to another itchanges in chemical composition and also in color, fromorange to yellow to green and blue.

Capping Fresh Kills Landfill, Staten

Island.

The Hudson River Waterfront: Recollections and Observations

Even as the region’s economy has moved into itspostindustrial stage, New York Harbor remains oneof the busiest ports in the world. Tankers, containerships, and barges still ply the waters near ManhattanIsland. But today the ships are likely to be headed

for modernized port facilities in New Jersey or elsewhere.Manhattan’s working waterfronts, once teeming with long-shoremen and crowded with goods from around the world,fell silent decades ago.

The transition from busy docks to abandoned piers had adramatic effect on adjacent neighborhoods, including theWest Village where I lived as a child and went to school. Mychildhood in fact coincided with the containerized shippingrevolution of the 1960s and 1970s, which finished off olderport facilities such as those on Manhattan’s West Side, wherethe acreage for stacking and moving shipping containerswas unavailable. While such analysis escaped me at the time,I did experience the effects, which were pervasive and palpable and had everything to do with the conditions thatcreated a certain sense of place. For those old enough to remember, the vacant buildings and quiet streets of theabandoned waterfront pro-vided a strong contrast to thenoise, dirt, and truck trafficof the past. But, for postwarchildren and for the newwaves of adult residentsmoving into the old neigh-borhoods, the waterfront wasrarely perceived with a senseof change or loss. Disuse, in fact, made it available tous, and decline fostered itsown sensibility. The HudsonRiver shoreline became anew kind of experience, oneimprinted with the specialappeal of ruins.

The geographer J. B.Jackson was writing at aboutthis time on the “necessity

for ruins,” evidence of dramatic discontinuity with the past, asa precondition and incentive for reanimating old places withnew uses and meanings. The vacated Hudson River waterfrontwas in this light a ruin ripe for transformation.

Despite its awesome scale and close proximity, the riveritself had been off-limits and therefore no more than a distantview for West Villagers. Both Riverside Park and the Battery,the nearest points with waterfront access, were too distant tovisit often. But by the late 1960s, the decrepit West 10th StreetPier and other abandoned piers along the Lower Hudson had become favorite haunts for neighborhood residents. Myschoolmates and I would make our way through collapsingfences and out onto the rotting, hazardous deck still suspend-ed over the river. These after-school trespasses became regularevents in good weather. Here we discovered that Manhattanwas indeed an island and that the estuary of the Hudson as itopened into New York Harbor was a sublime landscape of sun-shine, breezes, and watery expanse, all set in a rough fore-ground of industrial decrepitude.

At that time the West 10th Street pier was becoming a sceneof gay culture and a gathering point for political protests ofmany kinds. Although the nude sunbathers made an impres-sion, as children we had little appreciation of the profound

social and personal liberations taking place around us. Yet weexperienced the heady atmosphere of rebellion in the air, withthe waterfront literally and metaphorically expressing the col-lapse of old institutions and attitudes. Environmentalists ofthe era experienced the same spirit of destruction and renew-al, and they had their own reasons for being drawn to theriver. One of the richest and most scenic estuaries in theworld, the Hudson had become a byword for industrial abuseand unchecked pollution. The movement to prevent furtherdesecration of the river led to legal precedents that helpedlaunch the modern environmental movement in the mid-1960s. When Pete Seeger and the sloop Clearwater sailed by theWest 10th Street Pier, we all got a free concert along with thesense that things were really changing. April 22, 1970, the firstEarth Day, saw the closing of 14th Street to traffic and its tem-porary conversion into the setting for a crosstown environ-mentalist demonstration. It was hard not to feel the exuberantidealism and hopefulness of the era, and the transformingHudson River waterfront was both the location and the mani-festation of the new consciousness taking place. Through it all, the power of the river’s natural beauty had a special appealin the context of industrial decay. The Hudson’s shoreline was sloughing off its port infrastructure as a merely temporaryindignity as the great river continued its ancient business oftides and currents. The rest of us, and society as a whole, couldhope for our own rebirth.

Little changed along the waterfront for years, although the infamous collapse of a section of the old elevated highwayalong the shoreline in 1973 indicated that decay could beallowed to go only so far. After it was closed to traffic, the road-bed began to support windblown soil, volunteer plants, andinevitably another kind of surreptitious waterfront experience,at least for those of us who found our way past the traffic bar-riers and up its steep ramps. Although hailed as a historicpiece of urban design when it first opened in 1929, its granite-block pavement and rigid, railroad-style engineering lackedthe elegance of the Henry Hudson Parkway that Robert Mosesbuilt a few years later north of 79th Street. But even as itsdemolition was proceeding apace, it made a magnificent and

8 Hudson River Park Bikeway.

evocative promenade. I doubt that the recentinterest in preserving the abandoned HighLine, the elevated rail spur paralleling thesouthernmost stretch of the West Side High-way, would have occurred if not for thismemorable, ephemeral experience of prome-nading in a ruined roadbed.

Years later, when I began working as thepark historian for the New York CityDepartment of Parks & Recreation, I becameless parochial and learned to appreciate otherwaterfront neighborhoods with comparablepasts, such as Brooklyn Heights and LongIsland City. But I still lived in Manhattan,now further uptown, and I began to frequentthe abandoned rail yards along the Hudsonbetween 59th and 72nd Streets. For those whoslipped through the broken fences – a miscel-lany of dog walkers, urban explorers, andhomeless persons – the rail yards were a kindof southern annex to Riverside Park. Thislandscape embodied the same appeal as theabandoned waterfront I had frequented as aboy, but on a larger and more self-contained site. A collapsingworld of rotting piers, twisted gantries, and half-burned ware-houses loomed just out of sight of the more organized chaosof the city. The old landfill that composed its shoreline beganto reappear as bits of gravelly beach here and there, with vol-unteer ailanthus, sumac, locust, and grasses finding their wayinto every crevice where soil accumulated. Impervious to man-made order, this naturally evolving landscape made entropyand decay into something romantic, inevitable, and beautiful.But New York has never really succumbed to picturesque andpoetical ruin, and in the minds of city planners and develop-ers the abandonment of the Hudson River waterfront byindustrial uses created a void to be filled.

I have always been grateful for the fiscal and general may-hem of the 1970s that seemed to stymie large-scale urbanrenewal. However, such paralysis was not the case downtownwhere big plans were afoot. These were given a strong chanceof success because material from the 1966 excavation for thefootings of the World Trade Center had been used as landfillto create 92 new acres next to the financial district. Withstrong backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, this project

was assured of success. Because of its scale and location nextto historic Battery Park, it was named Battery Park City.

The original master plan set forth by the Battery Park CityAuthority, a subsidiary of New York State’s newly formedUrban Development Corporation, called for “pods” of high-rise residential and commercial development within a mod-ernist footprint of superblocks. Wisely, this mundane plan wasscrapped, and in 1979 architects Alexander Cooper and StantonEckstut produced a new master plan connecting the streetswithin Battery Park City to the existing street grid. Flanked bythe World Financial Center and over twenty residential build-ings, 28 acres – nearly one-third of the site – was slated forparkland along the water’s edge.

Opened in 1983, the park designed by landscape architectsHanna/Olin is an esplanade running the length of the site.Bordered by trees and well-tended planting beds, it features

familiar New York City parkdesign details and materials:

the benches designed for New York’s 1939 World’s Fair andused widely in city parks thereafter, hexagonal paving blocks,and iron railings similar to those of the Carl Schutz andBrooklyn Heights promenades. Other landscape architectswere hired to design parts of the Battery Park City waterfront,and public artworks were commissioned to enrich the designs. One notable example was the 1988 collaboration oflandscape architect Susan Child and artist Mary Miss withEckstut on the design of South Cove. A poetic evocation of thenaturalizing, postindustrial Hudson River shoreline, SouthCove created a different sort of waterfront space that neverthe-less seemed familiar and contextually appropriate.

The complex of corporate and residential buildings makingup Battery Park City did not achieve all the goals set forth inthe Cooper/ Eckstut master plan. After the West Side Highwaywas torn down, traffic had continued at street level along the old route of the highway. By preventing the connection of its streets with those of the surrounding neighborhood, thisimprovisational traffic artery effectively cut off Battery ParkCity from the rest of the city. Its proposed replacement with adifferent kind of highway had been a contentious causecélèbre in the annals of New York City planning history.

Back in 1974 planners had conceived of Westway, a bold planof commercial, residential, and park development that calledfor landfilling north of Battery Park City out to the legal bulk-head line. It envisioned putting the replacement highway in a submerged five-mile-long tunnel just offshore. The nameWestway quickly became an anathema for West Village residents. “Westway Will Never Be Built” was a mantra of myyouth. Community advocates perceived the expensive andelaborate scheme as nothing less than the complete destruc-tion of their historic neighborhoods by the population andtraffic the new development would bring. Environmentalistsopposed the new highway because they did not want furtheraccommodation of automobiles in the city. They wishedinstead that the federal money appropriated for the highwaybe fungible so that the city could spend it on the deterioratingsubway system. Westway opponents strengthened their argu-ment by focusing on the potential ecological damage that themassive extension of landfill would have on the Hudson Riverestuary. Although New York had been extending its shoreline

9

Hudson River Park.

since the seventeenth century, in 1985 the predicted environ-mental impact of continuing this process helped bring aboutthe judicial ruling that put an end to Westway.

As Phillip Lopate observes in Waterfront: A Walk AroundManhattan, for a project that was never implemented, Westwayhas cast a long shadow. Judicial decisions could proscribelandfill operations, but they could not specify what to doinstead. For the next decade, city and state governments, theWest Side Task Force, community groups, and myriad inter-ested parties negotiated over what guiding vision shouldreplace Westway as a general strategy for the redevelopment ofthe waterfront. By the early 1990s the various parties had finally outlined the contours of the future landscape. No majorlandfilling and no new highway construction would be part of the plans. Instead, a four-lane surface boulevard would carrytraffic along the same right-of-way as that occupied by thedemolished elevated highway. The remaining area, a thin stripof land and thirteen piers that retained enough structural integrity to be rehabilitated,would become Hudson River Park, a 550-acre strip of which400 acres were open water between the remaining piers. A five-mile continuous bikeway was also to be squeezed in along thelength of the site between 59th Street and Battery Park City.

The potential environmental damage of the new highway-width boulevard designed for heavy traffic was minimized by the park scheme, and budget impacts were designed to beminimal as well. The state and city governments would notassume new fiscal burdens for the park’s maintenance. Whilethe boulevard would be maintained through tax dollars, thepark was expected to cover its own operational costs throughleases with park concessionaires and private investors. Theredevelopment of Chelsea Piers, the passenger line piers builtbetween 23rd and 17th Streets in the early twentieth century,soon showed the way. In 1995 the piers were converted into atwenty-eight-acre sports and entertainment complex. A finan-cial as well as a popular success, Chelsea Piers provided aneconomic model for the kind of revenue generation thatwould help the park pay for itself. Nonetheless, some com-plained that even though they were recreational in nature, thefee-supported athletic facilities prevented public access to thewater, just as the industrial port had done when the piers werepiled with cargo.

In 1998 the Hudson River Park was officially createdthrough a partnership between the city and state. Neither gov-ernment was charged with the management of the park. TheHudson River Park Trust was therefore created and empow-ered to design, construct, and operate the park’s recreationalpiers, bikeway, seating areas, gardens, and concessions. Asidefrom the bikeway, the bulk of the park was to be located on theremaining former piers, including my childhood haunt, theWest 10th Street Pier. A lot of imagination, community organi-zation, and creativity was employed as landscape architectsand engineers prepared final designs. Construction on thepark is ongoing, but significant portions are now complete,including the boulevard, the bikeway, and the section of thepark adjacent to the West Village.

Although influenced by my own memories and sense ofplace and identity, I have tried as a landscape historian toobjectively consider how the Hudson River Park now emerg-ing compares to what might have been had Westway beenbuilt. I find that I am glad the history and ecology of thewaterfront have not been eradicated. The twentieth-centuryshoreline and the interpier marine habitat zones remainintact. Much of the old industrial infrastructure of the water-front had disappeared before the creation of the park, but theremaining now-stabilized fragments hint at the city’s industri-al past. Even if they are too preciously framed by railings,lawns, and planting beds, they still preserve some aspects oftheir appeal as ruins. If Westway had gone forward and thehighway had been encased in an offshore park- and prome-nade-covered tunnel, the park, rather than the dauntingly wideboulevard-style highway, would have bordered adjacent neigh-borhoods. This may seem like a good thing, but the scale and amount of residential and commercial development theWestway planners envisioned would have overwhelmed theWest Village and Chelsea. Westway was predicated on the eco-nomic potential of the real estate development its landfillwould have created. In comparison, the concept of a conces-sion-supported Hudson River Park is a more desirable alterna-tive from my point of view.

It is unfortunate that the Westway planners did not looknorth of 79th Street for inspiration. Riverside Park, originally

designed by Frederick LawOlmsted and Calvert Vaux inthe 1870s, was extended by

Robert Moses in the 1930s through the addition of a broadswath of landfill extending from the shore to the bulkheadline. Instead of calling for private development alongside thepark as the Westway planners did, Moses converted the entirelandfill area into new parkland whose landscape is well inte-grated with the contiguous Olmsted and Vaux park. He alsobuilt the Henry Hudson Parkway. While it prevents pedestrianaccess to the river in some places, it does not separate the parkfrom its surrounding neighborhood, and several passagesbeneath it carry park visitors to the water’s edge. As a drivingexperience it can be delightful; from the north it is one of themost dramatic automotive entrances to any American city.

Overall, I am glad New York City ended up with HudsonRiver Park rather than Westway and that it was intended to preserve the utilitarian character of the cultural landscapeas well as the river’s natural ecosystems. I like to ride along the bikeway, which provides experiences not usually availableto parkgoers. These include municipal garages, ferry landings,and the city’s remaining passenger terminal for large ships. I often wonder what tourists must think when, drawn by theIntrepid Museum or the Circle Line, they continue south for a walk in Hudson River Park and encounter the sanitationdepartment piers with garbage trucks and scows plying ineither direction or the municipal pier used for storing towedand impounded cars – all sights of the working city.

10

A narrow stretch of lawn in

Hudson River Park.

Now, when I revisit the West Village waterfront of my youth,I find few traces of the place I remember. The renovated West10th Street Pier, where under hazardous circumstances I firstexperienced the exhilarating spectacle of the river, has beenopen to the public since 2003. Despite the preservation ofnearby pilings and other bits of the former industrial shore-line, it would be impossible for it to possess either the poeticsof its ruined state or the rough atmosphere of its maritimepast. It is a well- designed, thoughtfully built place to stroll,play games, and sunbathe – not a bad thing.

Judging the landscape design of the new Hudson RiverPark is difficult. The role of design was conceived early in theplanning process as a matter of stabilizing existing conditions,and the planning strategy for Hudson River Park was based on preservationist intentions. But the meanings, evocations,and sensibilities of the place that were once there could not besustained by simply maintaining a few relics of the old com-mercial waterfront amidst an array of tasteful amenities. Eachsection appears reasonably well executed by its own team of consultants. But in the context of the entire park, these dis-crete landscapes, though pleasing, fail to add up to more thanthe sum of their parts.

A ruined state, as Jackson observed, is necessary for therebirth of a landscape. But so is a strong, unified vision forwhat the new meanings and appearance of the reborn land-scape should be. A stronger creative vision for the HudsonRiver Park would have required more willingness to go beyondthe notion of historic preservation. The planning vision wasdriven by mandates regarding what not to do: not to createnew acres with landfill; not to build a new highway; not toremove piers and other historic structures; not to take on newfiscal burdens for maintenance. But good historic preservationhas never been accomplished by decisions about what not todo but rather by the creative transformation of places. Preser-vation demands a central role for design based on an overall,unified vision. I cannot escape the feeling that the park that isemerging today amounts to landscape design as placeholder –an interim, transitional treatment of a place that is waiting tobecome something else. Compared to Riverside Park to thenorth and Battery Park City to the south, Hudson River Park isa splendid site still lacking a truly grand vision. – Ethan Carr

Promenades and Promenading: San Francisco’s Crissy Field and Portland’s Eastbank Esplanade

The deindustrialization of old railroad, port, andindustrial facilities along urban waterfronts hassparked the revival of the promenade as a civic andrecreational amenity. A generation ago most indus-trial waterfronts were inaccessible, with people

excluded by custom, law, barriers, or dangerous conditions.Now that many of them are defunct the opporunity exists to return them to public use. Because these sites are often cut off from their surrounding neighborhoods, forging a recon-nection to the city and providing public access is a challengingproblem in urban landscape design.

The physical reclamation of abandoned industrial sites andwaste areas as waterfront promenades has catalyzed the revivalof a dormant social and cultural practice. The word “prome-nade,” which is both a noun and a verb, denotes the space forand activity of urban strolling. In the eighteenth century,promenading became a pleasurable use of the tops of city wallswhose defensive functions had become obsolete. As these walls were subsequently demolished, the land where they had stood was converted into boulevards, where the tradition of promenading continues. Today, as industrial waterfrontsbecome as void of purpose as the militarily obsolete walls of the past, they offer a similarly grand opportunity for theconstruction of promenades.

Historically, boulevard promenading involved a leisurelyand oftentimes ritualistic walk, a back and forth perambu-lation. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century promenades weregenteel spaces for social display. In spite of their aristocraticambiance, they were frequented by the demimonde as well asthe upper classes. In the late eighteenth century, the wordpromenade acquired the specific meaning of a “walkway by thesea.” This type of promenade was also called an esplanade, a term that continues to be applied to seaside boardwalks andrecreational riverside embankments.

Although contemporary promenading in the U.S. takesplace at a few successful outdoor pedestrian malls such asSanta Monica’s Third Street Promenade and Boulder’s PearlStreet Mall, most promenaders gravitate to enclosed shoppingmalls. Their atriums act as indoor Main Streets for strollers.An atavism, this kind of promenade is a place to see and be seen, and it has developed it own social code and rituals.

Two recent award-winning waterfront promenades areCrissy Field in San Francisco, a project of George HargreavesAssociates (designers George Hargreaves and Mary MargaretJones, project manager Kirt Reider), and the Vera Katz East-bank Esplanade in Portland, Oregon, designed by the Portlandfirm of Mayer/Reed. The Eastbank Esplanade is a componentof the Willamette River Eastbank Riverfront Master Plan, pre-viously developed by Hargreaves Associates. Crissy Field issubsumed within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a collection of sites on the northern tip of the San Francisco

peninsula and the southern tip of MarinCounty.

Crissy Field is a decommissioned militaryairfield that was once part of the PresidioArmy Base, now a national park. Thanks to itsproximity to the Golden Gate Bridge, it pro-vided an unusually fine opportunity for con-version into a park and restored wetland inthe 1990s. In contrast, the site of the EastbankEsplanade was originally deemed impossible.It is located beneath an elevated portion ofInterstate 5, the West Coast freeway runningthrough Portland along the bank of the

11Eastbank Esplanade, Portland.

Willamette. At first there appeared to be no room to build arecreational corridor here. But the landscape architects ingeniously created a park under the freeway, constructing a linear promenade that incorporates the remnant of an old seawall and periodically cantilevers over the river, thereby providing n outstanding example of learning to live with thetransportation infrastructure choices of the past. While thepromenade and the floating dock they placed in the river areelegant pieces of contemporary engineering, the designers alsosought to ensure that much of the bank would be devoted tohabitat protection.

The designs of both the Crissy Field promenade and theEastbank Esplanade capitalize on their spectacular views. AtCrissy Field a line of trees directs the eye towards the water, asdo steeply sloped, turfed mounds. The view is of the unfoldingpanorama of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, Angel Island, and,most dramatically, the orange span of the Golden Gate Bridge.In Portland, the view reaches across the river to the fine TomMcCall Waterfront Park, created in 1974 after the demolition of the riverbank highway, an initial step in the city’s long-termproject of reclaiming the riverfront for recreational use.Behind the McCall Waterfront Park looms Portland’s compactskyline and the western hills beyond. Looking back across theriver, the view is still dominated by Interstate 5, but the East-bank Esplanade now snakes beneath it.

Because waterfronts are typically long, narrow strands, themost appropriate and logical response to their redesign capi-talizes upon, and even dramatizes, their linearity. They serve asspines giving structure and unity to the disparate elements ofthe site. Crissy Field and the Eastbank Esplanade are designedin this way, as a collection of individual parts united by their promenades. The mile-and-a-half-long, paved EastbankEsplanade is a series of links in a chain designed to connectthe downtown bridges that are icons of Portland’s urban land-scape and make passage beneath and across them accessible to all, including handicapped persons. In one section, wherethere was no buildable shoreline, a continuous seventeen-foot-wide, twelve hundred-foot-long floating walkway provides arare opportunity to be in intimate contact with the Willamette.Designer Carol Mayer-Reed describes this gracefully bowedpart of the promenade as the place where one “feels the river.”She looks out at the Esplanade from her downtown office window and monitors its activity. “Even in the worst weather,

there isn’t a time when it is not in use,” she observes. “Thatcontinuous activity keeps it healthy.” The project has spawnedadjacent economic activity, and a walk after dinner from near-by restaurants has added what Mayer-Reed calls a new “pulse”to the site.

At Crissy Field, the mile-long promenade that runs throughthe park has the beach and bay on one side and, on the other, arestored tidal wetland and the former airfield, which has beenconverted to a plain of grass. The promenade itself is soft-tex-tured, decomposed granite, a surface that mediates betweenthe grassy field and the sandy beach. The parking lot, whichdoubles as an important social space, allows automobile accessto the bay’s edge. The promenade was the first stage in theconstruction of the park and was opened with much celebra-tion. In fact, it was so successful that Hargreaves Associatesimmediately redesigned it and expanded its width.

Both Crissy Field and the Eastbank Esplanade are subject tothe vicissitudes of weather – the climate of each city is anaspect of its distinct identity – but neither promenade offersmuch shelter from the elements. In Portland the pervasivenessof winter rain diminishes but does not halt outdoor activity,while the dry summers and northern latitude make it possibleto frequent the esplanade during the extended daylight hoursand stay to enjoy the late sunset. In San Francisco the daily

meteorological drama of advancing and receding fog and thewinds off the bay are famously characteristic of the city. TheCrissy Field site is perhaps the ideal area to experience theseever-changing phenomena. Hargreaves Associates SeniorPrincipal Mary Margaret Jones notes that wind direction is animportant factor and, depending on which way one is walking,the experience can be “completely different.” She goes on to describe the park as a “fabulous mixing bowl of everybody.”She and Hargreaves see the promenade as modern in itsdesign of lines and planes, with the promenade as the “regu-lating line.”

Although both Crissy Field’s bayside walkway and theEastbank Esplanade stretch a mile or more, most people visitonly a particular area. They come alone or in small groups:saunterers, joggers, rollerbladers, skateboarders, bicyclists, dogwalkers, and parents pushing baby strollers. People meander,stand, sit, and watch the flow of this communal procession.They become flâneurs, joining in the urban parade but alsoacting as observers of the scene.

Although their clothes are different and their recreationalpursuits more varied, I am reminded of the people seated onbenches watching the parade of carriages and walkers inMaurice Prendergast’s (1858-1924) watercolor paintings of theCentral Park Mall. Before motion pictures, he captured the

kinetic beat of park activity.The parade continues there and elsewhere as acontemporary version of acenturies-old promenadeculture. It inspires documen-tation as well, in the digitalmedia of our day. YouTube,for instance, offers suchimages as bike activists,skateboarders, fire dancersand drum circles enliveningthe East Bank Esplanade; at Chrissy Field there arekite fliers, windsurfers, andschoolchildren, along with a violin performer, a babytaking his first steps, and someone “just chillin.” – Kenneth I. Helphand

12 Chrissy Field, San Francisco.

The Santa Fe Railyard: Changing Place, Keeping Space

The history of the Santa Fe Railyard occupies a spanof just over 120 years, a fraction of the time sinceSpanish explorers joined the indigenous populationand founded Santa Fe in 1690. Today the capital cityof about 65,000 people in the high country of north-

ern New Mexico has one of the oldest historic preservationordinances in the nation.

At the center of the downtown area, where land-use regula-tions limit building height and exteriors, is the Plaza, a townsquare surrounded by a shopping and museum district thatdraws an estimated two million visitors annually. Just outsidethis historic core, the city become less homogeneous inappearance as other styles are interspersed with Santa Fe’s sig-nature adobe architecture. In this combined residential andcommercial quarter the railroad tracks cut a north–south linebordered by vacant land, corrugated metal buildings, and otherstructures built from rail cars. Known as the Railyard, the areaserves commercial and artistic uses while also providing shel-ter for the homeless. Today more than fifty acres of tracksideland are in the process of becoming a lively new district ofcultural, commercial, and recreational attractions. This project,funded through a public-private financial partnership, echoeswhat is going on in many other cities as abandoned industrialsites are yielding up properties for redevelopment.

The Santa Fe Railyard exists because of a major public invest-ment in 1880 of $150,000 to build a spur connecting Santa Feto the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, newly arrived inLamy, fifteen miles south. The railroad shipped freight on the spur for the next hundred years, supplying outlets for theregion’s timber, coal and mineral industries, and deliveringgoods and news from back east.

After the construction of the Interstate Highway System,train service ceased and the site was partially abandoned, leav-ing dirt lots and large patches of wild plants. In the 1980s the railway company decided to seek a more profitable returnon the fifty-acre site than the revenue generated from a hand-ful of tenants that it had allowed to set up businesses. The

13

state has also appropriatedfunds for sidewalks and otherforms of infrastructure.

Cultural, social, and commercial uses, which include thecontemporary art museum SITE Santa Fe, art galleries, antiqueand craft businesses, and a community center, have establishedthemselves in the newly desirable location even as the publicplanning process has continued, much encumbered by localpolitics and city bureaucracy. All agree, however, that a perma-nent designated space within the site for the Santa Fe’sFarmers Market, a popular longtime occupant of the Railyardarea, is a boon.

In order to advance beyond its own tortuous planning efforts,the city collaborated with the American Institute of Architects,the Trust for Public Land, and the Land Use Resource Center,a grassroots nonprofit organization. This initiated an eighteen-month democratic process involving 6,000 city residents. Afternumerous community hearings, seven hundred people votedin an election to determine which visions for the Railyard best

company formed a development corporationand proposed to demolish and replace theconverted industrial buildings on the sitewith two six-story structures containing morethan a million square feet of retail and officespace. The plan was so incongruous in thecontext of Santa Fe’s architectural characterand so at odds with community visions forthe area that city leaders rejected it in 1992.The alternative advanced was for the city tobuy and redevelop the site.

While city officials were debating theRailyard’s future, the Trust for Public Landwas eyeing a large tract within its boundaries.The director of the Trust’s Santa Fe office,Jenny Parks, recently reflected, “It really fitour mission, which is to provide land for peo-ple, and there was the desire on the part ofthe community to see that land becomesomething other than hotels and retail. Therewas always the intent on our part to have alarge part of the site become public space and parkland. It wasone of the last places in downtown Santa Fe where that waspossible.”

History, too, was at stake when it became apparent that therailroad tracks and the 1910 mission-style depot were in danger of disappearing. A salvage firm made a cash offer to therailway company, proposing to tear out the eighteen miles of track between Santa Fe and Lamy and sell the steel forscrap. Fortunately, local entrepreneurs stepped forward andformed the Santa Fe Southern Railroad corporation, whichsaved the line and the depot. Today the line provides a limitedamount of freight delivery and is a popular tourist attractionoffering passenger excursions.

In 1995, Santa Fe City and the Trust for Public Land pur-chased the Railyard property for approximately $21 million,and Governor Bill Richardson revived the idea of regular com-muter rail in New Mexico. Richardson obtained federal andstate money to buy the Santa Fe Southern tracks and made anagreement that allows the privately operated excursion line to continue in business. In 2006 the New Mexico Rail RunnerExpress began shuttling commuters between Santa Fe andLamy. The line is being extended to Albuquerque and the gov-ernor has declared that commuter service will begin in 2008.Because the Railyard will serve as the terminus of the line, the

Santa Fe Southern train at the

Railyard.

matched community desires.The majority consensus wasto keep the railroad opera-tional and preserve the his-toric depot, followed byrequests for a large park andspace for local businesses,galleries, and cultural orga-nizations.

Architects and plan-ners were hired to create aconceptual master plan.Although controversial insome quarters, the plan gar-nered City Council approvalin late 1997, the same yearfunding was assured by ear-marking a portion of futuretax revenues to write downseventy percent of the city’s debt on the purchase of the land. The Santa FeCommunity Corporation, a not-for-profit organization, wasformed to implement the plan. Addressing arguments formaximum economic development advanced by real-estateentrepreneurs, architect Steven Robinson, the president of thecommunity corporation’s board of directors, maintains, “Thisis about short-term vision versus long-term vision. If your primary interest is what the real-estate industry calls highestand best use, you are required to get the greatest return onyour investment as soon as possible. That’s not our goal. Ourgoal is to create a community asset. What it says is that we area community that cares enough about its people to take along-term view. The financial returns will take time, but theywill be there.”

Data on today’s financial picture confirms Robinson’s posi-tion. The city is scheduled to make its final payment on thepurchase debt in 2010, and the private sector has developmentapproval for about $60 million worth of new buildings. Strictdevelopment regulations regarding the massing and align-ment of buildings are aimed at protecting the Railyard’s opencharacter and views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Situated on the edge of the property, the ten-acre RailyardPark is likely to be the most visible part of the project and themost valuable to the people of the city. The Trust for Publicland is overseeing its construction, along with a three-acrepaved plaza in the redeveloped part of the site. The park willbe linked to a network of area trails and walkways. In 2002 theTrust held a design competition in which the team of land-scape architect Ken Smith, architect Frederic Schwartz, andartist Mary Miss was chosen from among several other nation-ally prominent entrants.

Because of community desire to ensure a final outcomehonoring both the special nature of Santa Fe’s existing land-scape and the recreational needs of its diverse population,Smith met many times with city residents. He redrew the parkterrain, depressing the grade near its center to define anarroyo, a ubiquitous feature of the historic landscape. In addi-tion, the plan calls for low walls along the streets that borderthe park. In the interior there will be long, linear gabion walls invoking railroad track siding and gardens with drought-tolerant plants. A water-harvesting system will provide most of the needed irrigation. A holding tank has been made aprominent design feature in order to reinforce the importanceof water as a basic human resource. Steel tracks will echo the old rail spurs that cut across the Railyard to former ware-houses in the loading area, and a geometrically designed garden to be planted beside them will resemble in plan theboxcars that once lined the tracks. The park will contain

both bike trails and footpaths. Over four hundred native treespecies will be planted – cottonwood, ponderosa pine, piñon,juniper, elm, and ash – along with an orchard of apricot andapple trees. A children’s play area will contain boulders andslides and an outdoor performance space with a turf-coveredhillside for audience seating.

The nonprofit organizations that are current tenants make upone-fifth of the leased space. All were established on Railyardproperty before the city’s purchase, and each has had to adaptto the new plan. For example, a teen center had flourished in acheaply rented, dilapidated building that was slated for demo-lition, and the Farmers’ Market occupied the site designatedfor the park. In order to build new structures, these groups arenow engaged in fundraising. In addition to lobbying the statelegislature for a budget appropriation, teen-center supportershave asked for private donations. Although the center has notyet met its campaign goal, construction crews began workinglast summer on the shell of a new structure a few feet from the center’s old site. The Farmers Market is not completelyfunded either, but it is also proceeding to build. The Trust forPublic Land is missing final funding to pay for the park, yet ittoo has broken ground. Private development is also under-way. One large national chain store is nearing completion and several smaller projects, including a number of new art gal-leries, are already occupied. Unfortunately, the city govern-ment appropriation needed for the preservation of the historicdepot has not yet materialized.

The same ambivalence that is often expressed elsewhereabout the renewal of old industrial sites was recently voiced byone local observer, who said, “In some ways, I think the pennyloafers won. They are getting more uptight about having everything sparkling and neat and clean, even though peoplewanted it to be gritty. Every time I turn around I am gettingsqueezed by developers. ‘Can we put our building a foot closerto the railroad?’ It’s not being treated like a railyard, it’s beingtreated like a high-end redevelopment project. But it is stillgoing to be good. I think it unequivocally, absolutely is a bene-fit to our community and it’s absolutely the right way to dothis kind of project, with people with different perspectivesand different objectives.” – Julie Ann Grimm

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Water Tank and Farmers Market,

Railyard Park, Santa Fe

Ken Smith Landscape Architect.

Books

Large Parks Edited by Julia Czerniak andGeorge HargreavesPrinceton ArchitecturalPress, 2007

Large Parks, acollection ofseven essays anda foreword, edited by JuliaCzerniak,AssociateProfessor ofArchitecture atSyracuseUniversity, andGeorgeHargreaves,Professor ofLandscapeArchitecture at HarvardUniversity, addresses theproblem of how to turnabandoned industrial sitesinto parks. In so doing, theseessays advance our collectiveunderstanding of a new parktype, the Sustainable Park.

In my 1982 book, ThePolitics of Park Design, I char-acterized park design asfalling into four eras: thePleasure Ground (1850-1900),characterized by large parks,such as New York’s CentralPark, built near the urbanperiphery as counterpointsto the stresses of industrial-izing cities; the Reform Park(1900-1930), typifying theProgressive Era social agenda

with the provision of bath-houses, play lots, and com-munity centers in immigrantneighborhoods; the Recre-ation Facility (1930-1965),denoting the addition ofsuch recreational services asball fields, tennis courts,swimming pools, and golfcourses to expanding munic-

ipal park sys-tems; and theOpen SpaceSystem (1965-1990), distin-guished by anetwork ofpublic areas –parks of vari-able size andlocation –which, togetherwith streetsand sidewalks,enlarge the

realm of parks programmingthrough participatory art.

When the book was pub-lished twenty-five years ago, Inoted that parks always servesocial ends, but I did notanticipate that park plannerswould be challenged withdecontaminating abandonedindustrial sites. Recently Ihave concluded that a newfifth model has been estab-lished in landscape theory,which I call the SustainablePark, one that establishes a

continuous ecologicaldynamic working over timewhile also serving the recre-ational needs of people, TheSustainable Park recycles on-site materials, serves as amodel for other sites, andhelps create ecological bal-ance in the surroundingarea. Large Parks helps definethe large-scale SustainablePark.

James Corner’s forewordlays out the issues well.“Large parks,” defined asgreater than 500 acres, havethree major functions. Theyare experiential reserves forpeople walking through“alternating sequences ofprospect and refuge,” land-scape theaters that help cul-ture embrace nature, andecological workhorses forurban environments. All ofthe essays circle around the question of how muchstructure and what kind isnecessary to support thesepurposes, thereby posing thecentral question: Should alandscape designer followone or more of the park par-adigms inherited from thepast or create new ones?

This raises an importantsocial issue. If a park isdevoted only to wildness andongoing natural ecologicaltransformations, it may notattract people who desire, asCorner assumes, “structureand identity, . . . grandeur,theatricality, novelty, or sheerexperiential power” in theirlarge parks. I would like toquestion this statement:

Which people want thosequalities, who among themwant which ones, and arethere others that are desired?

In her essay “Re-placingProcess,” Anita Berrizbeitia,Associate Professor of Land-scape Architecture at theUniversity of Pennsylvania,carefully parses the termsplace, site-specificity, andprocess. She leans in thedirection of letting designguide biological and socialprocesses. However, therestill remains the need to reg-ister public reaction withregard to the appeal of parkswhose original purposes areprimarily environmentalrather than recreational inthe traditional sense.

Elizabeth Meyer, AssociateProfessor of Architectureand Landscape Architectureat the University of Virginia,offers one of the richestessays in the collection,“Uncertain Parks: DisturbedSites, Citizens, and a RiskSociety.” She poses informed,provocative, and hard-to-answer questions. For example, she asks: Coulddesigners of large parksmake spatially legible thecontradictions betweenbroad social values such asenvironmentalism and indi-vidual habits such as con-sumption? She wonders

whether large parks inindustrially contaminatedareas can become more thanremediation sites with cir-cuit walks along metalboardwalks elevated above atoxic ground plane plantedwith heavy-metal-accumulat-ing plants. She hopes thatpark designers will find acombination of form andprogram that will instill val-ues of good citizenship,making environmentalistsout of consumers. However,in her discussion of toxicityshe misses one importantaspect of the environment:the shadow kingdom of thedisturbed landscape is onethat is interior as well asexterior. Toxicity fromindustrial agriculture is theenvironmental degradationwe experience as consumersof food. The environment isthus inside as well as outsideour bodies!

In “Sustainable LargeParks: Ecological Design orDesigner Ecology?,” Nina-Marie Lister, Associate Pro-fessor of Urban and RegionalPlanning at RyersonUniversity in Toronto, setsup a dichotomy betweensymbolic gestures that recallor represent natural systemsfor educational purposes –such as Toronto’s YorkvillePark, which she dismisses as“designer ecology” – and“operational ecology” thatfacilitates the evolution ofself-organizing systems, like

James Corner and StanAllen’s 2000 proposal forDownsview Park, Toronto. Icannot accept the dichotomybetween symbolic and actual.Dismissal of environmentaleducation belies what I thinkis one of the roles of theSustainable Park. In this eraof transition in which we tryto transform former indus-trial sites into somethingmore closely mimicking bio-logical processes, educationaluses are part of the process.Human impact on the envi-ronment is as fundamentalas the environment itself. Ingeneral, however, I applaudLister for acknowledginglimits to economic growth,the imperative of social equi-ty (since pollution does notstay in neighborhoods orcountries), and her emphasison the need for local knowl-edge of the environment.But if, as she suggests,designers should listen to adiversity of voices and values, then more educationin ethnographic-style listen-ing – listening for the cate-gories of thought that localsuse to describe and under-stand their lives and envi-ronments – will be requiredin design, architecture, plan-ning, and landscape schools.This is a teaching strategy I

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have advocated for the lastthirty-five years.

In “Matrix Landscape:Construction of Identity inthe Large Park,” Linda Pol-lak, a published researcherand New York-based archi-tect, offers a new analyticalvocabulary of terms, such asnon-equilibrium ecology, land-scape of patches, and matrix.Despite her efforts at clarifi-cation I am confused by heruse of the word matrix inmultiple senses. In one placematrix refers to a chart-liketool for analyzing how oneset of variables interacts with another; elsewhere thereference to “green matrix”denotes a Web site (www.greenmatrix.net) that teachessustainable design by meansof the above approach; final-ly, it is employed as a syn-onym for context. I have apreference for this lastmeaning of matrix as a gen-erative and womblikeground, a way of referring tothe ecological forces thatinfluence a site and itsdesigners. Matrix in thissense stands in opposition tothe design aesthetics of “de-constructivism,” which isintent on “de-composing” aform into its componentparts.

Harvard University’s JohnBeardsley’s “Conflict andErosion: The ContemporaryPublic Life of Large Parks,”

offers a refreshingly socio-logical perspective on howlarge parks are actually used.He also ties financing mech-anisms to the goals ofdemocracy, environmentaljustice, and social diversityby discussing ways in whichthe expectation that parksshould be either self-payingor privately supported canthreaten those purposes.

The entire collectionexposes the deep ambiva-lence that designers strugglewith in their desire to betheoretically advanced(meaning process-orientedand opposed to thinking of parks as landscape form),while at the same timeretaining aesthetic control of their projects. JuliaCzerniak’s concluding essayon “Legibility and Resilience”offers a social justificationfor authority over a park’simage. If landscape design-ers forsake this prerogative,their parks may turn out to be illegibile to the publicthat will use and, impor-tantly, pay for them.

In addition to grapplingwith theoretical themes,these essays offer practicalinformation about particularparks, comparative analyses,and diagrams and maps ofecological change. For exam-ple, Julia Czerniak’s intro-ductory essay contains ahelpful scale comparison ofthirty large parks. I only wishthat the book designer hadbeen willing to devote a littlemore of the page to a read-

able font size. In addition,the book would have beenmore useful if it had anindex. In Lister’s essay stu-dents will find an informa-tive contrast and comparisonof the work of Ian McHarg,author of Design With Nature,and that of James Corner’sfirm, Field Operations. I alsoappreciated learning aboutBrickworks in Toronto, less apark than a social enterprisethat will model sustainabilitythrough the fusion of art andeducation. Another exampleof this kind of fusion occursin “Not a Cornfield,” anabandoned railway yardalong the Los Angeles Riverin California. In his essay“Large Parks: A Designer’sPerspective,” GeorgeHargreaves evaluates thelong-term aesthetic values,social uses, and ecologicalsustainability of sevenimportant parks around theworld: London’s Hyde Park,Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, SanFrancisco’s Golden GatePark, Sydney’s CentennialParklands, Amsterdam’s Bos,Parc du Sausset outsideParis, and LandschaftsparkDuisburg Nord in Germany.Like Corner, Hargreaveswants to retain the originalcompositional intentions of the designer rather thanassume that the process

of orchestrating his key vari-ables – site, program, evolutionary process, andinformed management – will yield compelling form.

None of the essaysacknowledges the globaldimensions of the problemsand opportunities of dein-dustrialization. Corner notesthat most current urbandevelopment tries to includeopen space in its planning,but he only tacitly admitsthat this so-called demandfor parks is more a questionof supply, stemming fromthe vast inventory of aban-doned industrial sites.Globally, the United Stateshas not abandoned industri-alization but rather allowedit to move to other countries.

Similarly, Meyer, whospeaks of disturbed sites asconsciousness-raising inregard to consumption, doesnot go far enough. Formerindustrial sites express ourshifted economy, requiringother places and peoples tobear the ecological andhealth costs of industrializa-tion. Landfills as symbols ofobsolete technologies are soonly in a particular location.Resource extraction andmanufacturing are still goingon, and at faster rates thanever, in other parts of theworld. Global environmentalimprovement depends ondeveloped nations sharingthe fiscal responsibility forthe modulation of pollutionstemming from industrial

production in China, India,and elsewhere.

Still, these essays move usin the right direction as theyassist political leaders, cityplanners, community advo-cates, and landscape archi-tects who face the practicalproblems of how large, dam-aged sites can be madesocially useful, aestheticallyevocative, ecologically sound,and economical to maintainas Sustainable Parks. – GalenCranz

A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of theCountry Place EraBy Robin Karson Library of AmericanLandscape History with theUniversity of MassachusettsPress, 2007

In the yearsbetween theWorld’sColumbianExposition inChicago in1893 and theend of theGreat Depres-sion in 1939,the amassingof vast for-tunes led tothe creation ofelaborate estates in affluentenclaves around the country.A Genius for Place: American

Landscapes of the CountryPlace Era is a study of theextravagant domestic land-scape architecture of thoseyears, beginning with thework of Frederick LawOlmsted and ending withFletcher Steele and the earlystirrings of modernism. The author, Robin Karson,focuses on seven well-docu-mented estates and eightinfluential landscape archi-tects. Through their work awide-angle image of theperiod clearly emerges.

The title of the book ref-erences two pivotal historicsignposts of landscape archi-tecture: Norman Newton’sterm Country Place Era andAlexander Pope’s genius loci,the particular inherent char-acter of the site, or whatOlmsted termed “local cir-

cumstances.”It is the the-sis of thisstudy of theCountry PlaceEra that thesuccess of thebest estatedesignsderived fromthe ability ofthe landscapearchitect toidentify the

genius loci and exploit it togreat advantage.

A fortuitous convergenceof factors in the CountryPlace Era created the perfectclimate for landscape archi-tecture writ large. Unprece-dented personal fortunes

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were made in a dizzyingboom of industrialization,but at the same time the first symptoms of environ-mental and social costs wereacknowledged. A growingnostalgia for the pastoral life,as well as admiration for vil-las and châteaux seen onEuropean travels, inspired afabulously wealthy class tocreate personal paradises ofunprecedented scale andlimitless budget. This hap-pened at the moment whenthe profession of landscapearchitecture fully emerged,credentialed and legitimized,and produced many of itsgreatest talents.

Expanding on the scopeof her earlier books, includ-ing one devoted to the landscape architect FletcherSteele and another to thegarden design of the estateof Gwinn, Karson addressesthe wider phenomenon of the Country Place Era.Beautifully produced andgenerously illustrated, thecurrent book is a dense yet accessible study of one ofthe most colorful momentsin American landscape archi-tectural history. Augmentingthe more than 350 vintagephotographs, drawings, andplans are beautiful contem-porary photographs of each

landscape by Carol Betsch.This thoughtful additionanchors the disparate sitesand stories to the present. Italso provides a remarkabletestament to the uncommonsurvival of the great land-scape legacies of the CountryPlace Era and, by implica-tion, points to the urgency ofpreserving others. This, as part of the preservation of the entire heritage ofAmerican landscape design,is a primary mission of the Library of AmericanLandscape History, foundedby the author, which co-pub-lished this book with theUniversity of MassachusettsPress.

In an unconventional for-mat, the book is organized inthree chronological sections,within which are a total ofeight biographies of land-scape architects and detailedhistories of seven of theirexemplary estate designs.The latter contain substan-tial profiles of the clientsand their milieu, an essentialthread in the fabric of thestory. The Vanderbilts, theDu Ponts, the Sieberlings,and the Fords were all col-laborators as well as clients.Involved, opinionated, andwell informed, they were notonly enormously wealthy butalso enlightened participantsin the design of their estates.Indeed, throughout theseven estate histories, a sur-prisingly consistent phe-

nomenon occurs that is oneof the most interesting reve-lations of the book: The bestof these landscapes benefitedfrom, perhaps dependedupon, the felicitous alchemyof the collaboration betweenthe client and landscapearchitect.

There is an enormousamount of information – analmost indigestible numberof names, sites, and historieswithin histories within histories. At times, the bookbogs down in distractingtangential detail. Ultimately,however, what emerges is acarefully articulated portraitof American estate land-scapes, those who builtthem, and how they weredesigned. Departing fromthe manageable scope and resultant narrative toneof her earlier books on thesame period, this ambitiousstudy reads as a referencework with many layers of material, much of it reve-latory and surprising.

In an introduction, theauthor reveals that a deter-mining factor in the choiceof the seven sites she dis-cusses was the requirementthat a significant amount of the original landscape beintact in order for it to beobserved at first-hand andphotographed. This is a

departure from the conven-tional historiography oflandscape architecture,which relies heavily, if notexclusively, on historicaldocumentation, so rarely domore than traces of the orig-inal designs endure.

Not insignificantly, theseare all well-documentedsites, for which deep storesof archival materials havesurvived. Much of the colorof the book – the biogra-phies of the clients and thelandscape architects, the his-tories of their collaborations,the evolution of theirdesigns, even their successesand disappointments – couldonly have been constructedfrom a trove of correspon-dence, office records, manu-scripts, clients’ archives, andephemera. This rich varietyand depth of documentation,going far beyond that offeredby limited conventionalrecords, has resulted in acomplex, nuanced study.

The client profiles in thelandscape essays add a valu-able dimension often lackingin other accounts of thedesign process in landscapearchitecture. As this was a particularly collaborativegeneration of ambitiousclients and designers, theprofiles are a compellingpart of the story. Makingespecially skillful use of thecorrespondence betweenclients and designers, Karsonilluminates the processbehind the evolution of each

project. Drawing from herin-depth knowledge of land-scape architect Warren H.Manning, about whom shehas previously written in TheMuses of Gwinn, she gives aparticularly fine descriptionof the design of Gwinn, witha detailed but fluid portraitof the collaboration betweenManning, the architectCharles Platt, and WilliamGwinn Mather, the client.The correspondence betweenEdsel Ford and Jens Jensen,for another example, revealsFord as an active, even intru-sive, client. Ford’s insistentpreference for open spaceand lawns made Jensen’sdesign for the Fords’ GrossePointe site quite unlike his other work. ExploringDumbarton Oaks withKarson, we learn that therewere many conflicts of tastebetween Mildred Bliss andlandscape designer BeatrixFarrand throughout theirlong collaboration, but in theend Farrand thanked herclient for “many hours ofcommon work and commondelight.” At Naumkeag,Mabel Choate and FletcherSteele were friends and col-laborators for thirty years. Acharming 1938 photographshows them together, paint-ing the famous Blue Steps

that Choate had asked Steeleto design for access to hercutting gardens.

Another surprise is thesocial and professionalgenealogy of the seeminglysmall world of landscapearchitects, artists, writers,publishers, critics, andpatrons. Mariana GriswoldVan Rensselaer, the criticand writer on architectureand landscape, was a friendof Beatrix Farrand’s family and perhaps one of her earlymentors. Rose StandishNichols, garden designer and critic, was sculptorAugustus Saint-Gaudens’niece. Landscape architectsFletcher Steele and HelenBullard both worked forManning, as did Dan Kiley,one of the masters of earlymodern landscape design.Manning himself hadworked in the office ofFrederick Law Olmsted, thefather of landscape architec-ture in America. Dozensmore such connections arerevealed through the book.

The segue from the pro-fession’s almost exclusiveemployment on lavish pri-vate estates to landscapesserving the general publicwas not as abrupt as mightbe presumed. Indeed, theCountry Place Era and theProgressive Era were over-lapping. Many of the clientsshared with their landscapearchitects an emerging con-sciousness of the reform

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agenda of the Progressives,including the need for civicplanning and the provisionof housing and parks for the working classes. Forexample, Frank Sieberling,Manning’s client and thefounder of Goodyear Rubberand Tire Company, wasinspired during the buildingof his country house, StanHywet, to address the dearthof housing opportunities forhis Akron factory workers.He asked Manning to helpdesign Goodyear Heights.

With the changing eco-nomic realities in Americafollowing the GreatDepression and the SecondWorld War, the civic sphere,not the lavish personalestate, was to be the nextfrontier for the profession oflandscape architecture. As ifin anticipation of the transi-tion of their beautiful homesand gardens to public stew-ardship, many proprietors ofCountry Place Era estateswere active proponents ofthe creation of municipaland state parks and partici-pants in the City Beautifuland regional planning move-ments. Karson’s magisterialbook shows the magnitudeof the Country Era landscapeheritage and confirms its importance as a majorchapter in the history ofAmerican landscape design.– Leslie Rose Close

City Trees: A HistoricalGeography from theRenaissance through theNineteenth Century By Henry W. Lawrence University of Virginia Pressin association with theCenter for American Places,2006

The block ofState Street inLancaster,Pennsylvania,where I live islined withsycamore treesthree-quartersof a centuryold. Plantedshortly after afarm was devel-oped into rowsof duplexesand single-family homes on the north-west edge of the city in themid-1920s, these majestictrees create a cathedral-likeeffect when fully leaved. Atthe same time, their rootsplay havoc with sewer drains,they shed their bark everyother year, and as I writethey are dropping moun-tains of leaves that willrequire hours of raking.These practical considera-tions, however, are a smallprice to pay for the canopythat graces the streetscape.

The human desire todomesticate the forest andreverence trees goes back atleast as far as the Book ofRevelation (22:2), which men-tions “the tree of life” whoseleaves “were for the healingof the nations.” HenryLawrence argues that thetrees that were planted in

private gar-dens andsacred spacesin antiquity inthe Mediter-ranean basinhad importantreligious,social, andsymbolic func-tions, but theiruse in urbanpublic placesand streets isan early mod-

ern phenomenon. Lawrenceattempts to explain how the tree-lined streets, boskysquares, and large urbanparks we accept today as agiven – what he calls thegreen city – became a symbolof urban civilization by theend of the nineteenth centu-ry. Ranging broadly acrossspace and time to delineatechanging attitudes towardtrees, public and semi-publicspaces, and their roles inurban form and culture, hepays attention to trees as asymbol of respectability andsocial power and to theirabsence as a reflection ofpowerlessness.

Focusing on WesternEurope and its overseascolonies, Lawrence investi-gates how social and politicalvalues influenced the cre-ation of places in the urbanlandscape for trees and howpeople used such spaces overtime. Drawing on images,written accounts, local histo-ries, and scholarly studies, he traces the introduction oftrees in cities from the middle of the sixteenth tothe turn of the twentiethcentury. The approach is thatof a cultural geographer, and Lawrence brings to thetask a skillful understandingof place as well as years ofexperience visiting the citieshe describes. In addition, hehas collected much of thevisual material that enrichesthe book.

Over the course of eightchapters Lawrence pays par-ticular attention to threethemes: aesthetics, by whichhe means not simply tradi-tions in landscape designbut also the social uses ofpublic spaces; power, oraccess to and control of pub-lic spaces; and national tradition. He points out thatuntil the second quarter ofthe nineteenth century therewere obvious national differ-ences in the use of trees, but

thereafter cosmopolitanismand travel resulted in a con-vergence of ideas.

Lawrence attributes theorigins of European think-ing about the appropriatedesign of the urban land-scape to Italian Renaissancegardens and their axial orga-nization of space. Althoughgardens at this time werearistocratic preservesenclosed by walls, in citiesprinces, dukes, and munici-palities created piazze andthe first straight streets sinceRoman times, many of whichwould later be planted withtrees. As travel increased andthe geometrical character ofthe Italian garden spreadthroughout Europe, so didnew recreational activitiessuch as lawn bowling and anearly form of croquet, whichled to the need for special-ized green spaces.

During the sixteenth cen-tury tree-shaded walks werecreated atop fortifications, asin Lucca, where there is stilla pleasant promenade, andin the Netherlands, whichmaintains venerable tradi-tion of planting trees alongcanals. By the seventeenthcentury, wide avenues linedwith double rows of treesemanating from a patte d’oie,as at Versailles, became animportant design precedentfor the introduction of treesin cities, first in Paris andthen in other European capi-tals. Furthermore, as newmilitary technology made

ancient city walls obsolete,on the continent bulwarksgave way to boulevardsenhancing the popularity ofcarriage promenading andcafé dining outdoors. Theadjacent properties becamecenters of fashionable neighborhoods. London, incontrast, pioneered the construction of residentialsquares, an urban paradigmthat continued to shape patterns of development formore than two hundredyears. The creation of tree-lined walks and the openingof some of London’s royalparks to the public wereother important innovations.

Lawrence’s third chaptercompares French and Britishtraditions in urban planningand landscape design in theeighteenth century. Frenchformalism remained thedominant mode of design onthe continent, and Frenchtastes in recreation, especial-ly promenading, continuedto influence urban designimprovements elsewhere inEurope. Hallmarks of thisstyle of embellissementincluded both a new urbaninfrastructure and a new aes-thetic ideal based upon the use of architecture andlandscape design to dignifythe public realm. Outdoordining in cafés adjacent to

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boulevards framed by alléesof trees became a distinctivefeature in Paris. England, bycontrast, developed a verydifferent urban aesthetic thatembraced the idea of “rus inurbe,” the country within thecity. In London the royalparks were increasingly fre-quented by the public, resi-dential squares proliferated,and private gardens werecreated between individualdwellings and the street.

Lawrence next takes read-ers from Europe to its over-seas colonies. Colonial townsand cities, while influencedby Western planning ideas,did not servilely copyEuropean urban forms. TheSpanish Law of the Indiesmandated a gridded townplan with a central plaza.Although the plaza remainedmostly treeless, several largercommunities had shadedalamedas, and beginning inthe eighteenth century, tree-lined boulevards. TheEuropean section of Calcuttahad more parks and treesthan contemporaneous citiesin Britain, and street treeswere planted throughoutDutch South Africa. NorthAmerica, settled by peoplesfrom different Westernnations, had a predictablediversity of approaches totree planting. The BostonCommon, originally a pas-ture, quickly evolved into aparklike space with a prome-nade. In New York citizens

took up the practice ofplanting trees in front ofhouses, while the municipal-ity planted trees alongBroadway and other majorstreets as well as in publicplaces such as the BowlingGreen. The cemetery atTrinity Church was alsoshaded and proved to be anattractive place to prome-nade. Philadelphia apparent-ly had no tradition of streettrees during these years.Indeed, the PhiladelphiaContributionship, a mutualinsurance company, refusedto insure houses with nearbytrees. However, following the American Revolution, thenewly formed MutualAssurance Company under-wrote properties with proximate trees and took as its emblem a small tree cast in lead.

Chapter Five examinesthe last two decades of theeighteenth century and thefirst two decades of the nine-teenth, a period when, asLawrence points out, street-tree policy in Americachanged from proscriptive toprescriptive. Philadelphiaand New York undertookimprovements to city squaresat this time. An early-nine-teenth-century redrawing ofThomas Holme’s 1683 platindicates trees in each of thefive squares in WilliamPenn’s green country town.

In addition, both cities experienced a significantincrease in the planting ofstreet trees, although thisremained the work of indi-viduals rather than themunicipality. In 1806 NewYork City recommended thatresidents plant trees in frontof their dwellings, and fouryears later officials enactedan ordinance establishingfines for damage to trees. InNew Haven, Connecticut,James Hillhouse underwrotean extensive tree-plantingprogram, and PresidentThomas Jefferson hadLombardy poplars plantedalong Pennsylvania Avenuein Washington, D.C.

In the years between 1820and the middle of the nine-teenth century, internationaltravel and the wide diffusionof publications eroded thenational differences that hadpreviously characterized how trees were planted incities. In France Comte de Rambuteau commencedan ambitious tree-plantingprogram in the public spacesof Paris. Elsewhere inEurope parks continued tobe built on land vacated by dismantled perimeter for-tifications; the Ringstrausse,Vienna’s mid-nineteenth-century ring boulevard, wasthe most prominent exam-ple. In England the traditionof building residentialsquares continued, but wassupplemented by the con-struction of leafy suburbsand large urban parks,

although long-standing classtensions and issues of accessremained. New Yorkersadopted the British traditionof private residentialsquares, notably in the devel-opment of St. John’s Squareand Gramercy Park. At thesame time, the city corpora-tion undertook improve-ments to Union Square,Tompkins Park, and otherpublic places. In bothEngland and America therising middle class embracedthe leafy domestic landscapeas a hallmark of status.

Chapter Seven examinesthe second half of the nine-teenth century and the firstyears of the twentieth. Thisera was marked by the tran-sition from the preindustrialto the industrial city and ashift from aesthetic to prac-tical concerns, includingpublic health issues, newtransportation technologies,infrastructure development,and the maintenance ofsocial order. During theseyears tree planting, oncelargely restricted to the met-ropolitan fringe, spreadthroughout other parts ofcities. Napoleon III’s masterplanner, Baron EugèneHaussmann working withAlphonse Alphand in Paris,and Frederick Law Olmstedwith Calvert Vaux in NewYork and other American

cities, established modelsthat would be adopted else-where. The European urban-ist tradition exemplified byParis, Vienna, and London,which consisted of publicparks, elegant tree-linedboulevards framed by neo-classical apartment buildingsand expensive shops, andlandscaped settings forimportant public institu-tions, became common incities as distant as South Asiaand South America. At thistime municipal governmentsassumed greater control overthe urban landscape, build-ing infrastructure, installingsidewalks and curbs, andtaking responsibility for theplanting and maintenance of trees. This was also a timeof significant suburbandevelopment, as well as thecreation of large metropoli-tan parks on relatively cheapundeveloped land on theperiphery of the built areasof rapidly growing cities. Bythe dawn of the twentiethcentury a cosmopolitanurban culture had reshapedthe appearance of citiesthroughout the world.

But if tree-lined boule-vards and avenues adornednew residential spaces incities and their expandingsuburbs, the triumph of the green city was not ascomplete or as enduring asLawrence suggests. Treeswere rarely planted in com-mercial and industrial areasor in crowded immigrant

neighborhoods. Moreoverthe contestation over theuses of public space did notend at the dawn of the twen-tieth century. In The CreativeDestruction of Manhattan(1999), historian Max Pagedemonstrates that in suc-ceeding decades, as develop-mental pressures increased,even existing street treeswere at risk and Manhattanfaced the possibility ofbecoming a city whose onlytrees were in public parksand squares. In recent yearscities have become moreconscious of the importanceof trees on both environ-mental and recreationalgrounds. In New York City,for example, as part of itssustainability programMayor Michael Bloomberg’sadministration has pledgedto plant a million trees.

In 1947 the New Yorkerwriter E. B. White capturedour affinity for street trees inone of his most famousessays, “The Second Treefrom the Corner.” White’sfictional protagonist, Trexler,makes a series of visits to atherapist, who repeatedlyasked his patient, “What doyou want?” After one particu-larly frustrating session,Trexler emerges from thedoctor’s office and walkswest toward Madison Avenueas the sun is setting over the

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Hudson River and the Pali-sades. At that moment he isentranced by a small tree“saturated with the evening,each gilt-edged leaf perfectlydrunk with excellence anddelicacy.” That small treeprovides the answer to thetherapist’s question: “I wantthe second tree from thecorner,” Trexler thinks tohimself, “just as it stands.” – David Schuyler

Jacob Weidenmann: PioneerLandscape Architect By Rudy J. FavrettiWesleyan University Press,2007

Rudy Favretti’sfine new biog-raphy of theSwiss-bornlandscape gar-dener JacobWeidenmann(1829–1893)penetrates the“fuzzy scrim”that hasobscured thispractitionersince hisdeath in 1893. With plans,drawings, and correspon-dence relating toWeidenmann’s work lacking,the practitioner has beenovershadowed by two better-known contemporaries,Frederick Law Olmsted andWilliam Le Baron Jenney,both of whom employedWeidenmann to carry out(and, in some cases, design)

projects on their behalf.Under these difficult circum-stances, Favretti does anadmirable job, relying on hisown substantial expertise asa landscape architect to ana-lyze several projects in whichWeidenmann almost certain-ly played a strong role. In allthese commissions,Weidenmann adhered to thenotion that nature shouldguide design and that land-scape planning should bebased on careful analysis ofthe site.

Jacob Weidenmann(sometimes anglicized to“Weidenman”) was born in 1829 in Winterthur,

Switzerland,the son of agovernmentcustomsofficer and akeen busi-nesswoman.Intelligent,inquisitive,and mischie-vous, Jacobwas a goodstudent withan early

interest in art and architec-ture. Even before enrollingin college, he worked for an architect friend of hisparents in Geneva. Jacobthen attended the Akademieder Bildenden Künste inMunich, where he studiedunder a renowned muralist.

He pursued architecturalstudies at the University ofKarlsruhe but also expandedhis interest in painting and sketching, frequentingateliers in Zurich where hisconsiderable artistic talentswere encouraged. In 1850Weidenmann enrolled in a course at the ZurichBotanical Garden, an eventthat signaled the dawn of a new interest: landscapegardening.

That year, the restlessyoung man left his home-land, traveling first to Paris,then London, then theUnited States, becoming illand almost dying on the voy-age across the Atlantic. Heregained his strength explor-ing the countryside of north-ern Manhattan but was soonlured west by the Californiagold rush. Weidenmannfound little success in theAmerican West and took offagain almost immediately,this time to Panama to workas an assistant engineer onnew railroad constructionacross the Isthmus. Hequickly discovered that thework was fraught with con-siderable risk of contractingmalaria, and with the help oflocal tribesmen, he managedto escape to Peru. ThereWeidenmann found work onan extensive country estate,La Molina, recording thelandscape and buildings inexquisite pencil sketches.

Weidenmann’s SouthAmerican adventure was cutshort by his brother’s death

and his family’s pleas toreturn to Winterthur. Heremained in Europe untillate 1856 and then movedback to New York, this timeacquiring a fiancée on thecrossing. On landing, heopened a landscape garden-ing practice on Suffolk Streetin Manhattan. Favretti iden-tifies J. C. Loudon and A. J.Downing as the primeinfluences on Weidenmann’searly work, observing thatbooks by them formed thenucleus of his library. Healso points to Downing’smagazine, The Horticulturist,as a source of design ideasand a link to an importantnetwork of practitioners,particularly the Alsatian hor-ticulturist Eugene AchillesBaumann, who employedWeidenmann for unspecifiedwork on the new suburbandevelopment of LlewellynPark in West Orange, NewJersey. Baumann turned toWeidenmann again to drawthe plans for Locust Wood,an estate for Robert Minturnin Hastings, New York.

Weidenmann’s most sub-stantial early work was HillPark Estate on Staten Island,a seventeen-lot developmenton about one hundred acres,the first parcel of which had already been laid out inthe “English style” by “Ed.

Baumann . . . Pupil ofLoudon.” Weidenmann’s del-icately rendered presentationdrawing shows Hill ParkHouse overlooking a lawndotted with specimen treesand an oval pond. The siteplan features amoeboidforms throughout, verymuch in the manner ofLoudon’s gardenesqueapproach. More distinctlyAmerican was the landscapeprogram, which afforded res-idents access to extensiveparkland, woodland, andviews to the sea.

Favretti traces Weiden-mann’s important Hartford,Connecticut, work – his next professional foray – to a connection through theGerman-born landscape gar-dener Adolph Strauch,hypothesizing that the menhad met in Europe. The linkmay have been JonathanSands Niles, a resident ofCincinnati, who likely knewStrauch, who was friendlywith members of the newlyformed Hartford park com-mission. However, Favrettialso notes an 1858 news itemrecommending that Olmstedbe hired to design the citypark. Years later, JohnCharles Olmsted claimedthat his stepfather recom-mended Weidenmann forthe job, perhaps havingrefused it himself.

Weidenman becamesuperintendent of Hartford’sCity (later Bushnell) Park in1860 and set about correct-

ing flawed work that hadbeen introduced to the forty-acre site. He drained theswampy land and laid out anextensive road system,employing his wide-rangingskills as draftsman, site planner, engineer, and horti-culturist. Favretti cites the influence of the EnglishPicturesque style in theplanting scheme. Old pho-tographs also suggest thestrong influence of Olmstedand Vaux’s new Central Park.

The work on the Hartfordpark was followed by a com-mission for a rural cemetery,Cedar Hill, on 268 acresthree miles outside the city –land described as “charming-ly diversified with vale, lawn,forest, picturesque rocks,stately shade trees, runningand pond water . . . altogeth-er remarkably adapted to beautification.” Weiden-mann’s major challengewould be to establish anentrance through a swampysection, which he accom-plished by creating a seriesof five lakes. Weidenmann’sdesign employed Strauch’sstill-revolutionary concept ofthe “lawn plan,” whichemphasized the importanceof a comprehensive pictorialcomposition.

While maintaining hisposition as superintendentof Cedar Hill, Weidenmann

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laid out Hartford’s SouthGreen and the HartfordRetreat for the Insane, ini-tially designed by Olmstedand Vaux. He also undertookestate designs for a numberof wealthy individuals, workthat extended into otherConnecticut towns. In thesedesigns, Weidenmann’s plant palette featured a widerange of species, includ-ing many conifers and Lom-bardy poplars, a lingeringinfluence of Loudon’s garde-nesque style.

Although he continued assuperintendent of Cedar HillCemetery, Weidenmann’scareer as a landscape garden-er appeared to stall after theHartford park was complet-ed. Probably as a way to findnew clients, he began writinga book. In the examples hepresented in BeautifyingCountry Homes he relied pri-marily on his own projects, a decision that happily preserved traces of some forposterity. The handsomebook was a critical success,but unfortunately it wasnever reprinted owing to theexpense of the brilliantlycolored lithographs thatillustrate it.

Following the publicationof his book, Weidenmannleft abruptly for Switzerland,remaining there about a year. He returned to Hart-ford in 1871 to find a newboard of cemetery and parktrustees. Their unanticipatedanimosity toward him forced

him to resign. He turned to his colleague Olmsted for help, which came in the form of an invitation toassist on development ofProspect Park in Brooklyn.Weidenmann was soon givenresponsibilities for otherprojects by Olmsted andVaux, whose firm, Favrettinotes, had a steady flow ofwork during these years.

After Olmsted and Vauxdissolved their arrangementin 1872, Weidenmann contin-ued to work for Olmsted in aflexible alliance that gaveOlmsted considerable leewayin requesting a range of ser-vices from Weidenmann –from drawing plans to fulldesign responsibilities andimplementation – for whichWeidenmann would be com-pensated proportionally. Theassociation relieved Olmstedfrom some of the demandsof private estate work, free-ing up his time for the travel necessary to completea number of far-flung public projects, which heconsidered his most impor-tant duties.

With the informal part-nership in place, Olmsted’sbusiness boomed – surelythe fine quality of Weiden-mann’s plans and drawingswas a strong asset – andWeidenmann’s abilities blos-

somed. His drawings recordsuperb architectural detailsand increasingly imaginativesite plans, and his plantingcompositions were nowmore complex. He began toemploy the plant massesassociated with Olmsted’sversion of the Picturesquerather than Loudon’s horti-culturally oriented garde-nesque method with itswidely spaced single speci-mens.

During these years,Weidenmann assistedOlmsted on several publicprojects, including thegrounds for the UnitedStates Capitol Building inWashington, D.C. and theQuartermaster Depot inJeffersonville, Indiana. Healso worked on the SchuylkillArsenal in Philadelphia, theHot Springs Reservation inArkansas, and Congress Parkin Saratoga Springs, NewYork. Weidenmann helpeddraft plans for Montreal’sMount Royal Park, NiagaraSquare in Buffalo, and thecampus of Johns HopkinsUniversity in Baltimore.During these years, he alsosecured his own commis-sions, including severalalong the Hudson River, inBrooklyn, and in New Jersey.

Building on his success in the East, Weidenmanndecided to expand the reachof his practice into theMidwest. In 1884 he won thecompetition for the design

of the grounds of the CapitolBuilding in Des Moines,Iowa. That successful projectled to others in the region,requiring frequent travelbetween Iowa and New YorkCity. When Weidenmannheard about Mount Hope, anew cemetery planned forChicago, he applied for thejob of planning and superin-tending it – against theadvice of his old friendOlmsted.

The Mount Hope venturewas a fiasco. After a corruptand power-hungry cemeteryboard fired Weidenmann, heagain sought help fromOlmsted who wrote on hisbehalf to William Le BaronJenney, whom Olmsted knewwell through their mutualwork at Riverside, the com-muter subdivision north ofChicago. Jenney, in turn,hired Weidenmann for workat Mackinac Island and fornew developments atChicago’s Union Park. Wei-denmann was also commis-sioned to design a masterplan for NorthwesternUniversity in Evanston,where, as Favretti points out,he took care to preservegroves of large oaks.

Weidenmann moved hisfamily back east in 1888, tak-ing an apartment in Brook-lyn near Prospect Park. He found new commissions in the New York area, but

few details of them survive.Weidenmann’s largest jobfrom these last years was inIowa, the completion of theGrand Stair Plaza of the StateCapitol, a project to whichhe applied his architectural,rendering, and planningskills with elegance andpanache. His drawings of theplaza reflect a familiaritywith recent developments inBeaux-Arts design, a strikingcontrast with the Downing-inspired approach that guid-ed his early work. During his last years, Weidenmannembarked on two substantialprojects in Hartford (a newsubdivision and park for Colonel Albert Pope), butthese were left unfinishedafter he developed kidneydisease. He died in February1893 at the age of sixty-three,leaving behind a legacy ofthree books and a substantialbody of built work.

Favretti ably tells his storyin jargon-free prose. Hiscomplex and consideredanalyses of projects are wellillustrated with color planstaken primarily fromWeidenmann’s BeautifyingCountry Homes and with historical and contemporaryphotographs. He providesuseful background informa-tion and also discusses planning, planting, and con-struction in considerabledetail. The book’s organiza-tion is clear and thoughtful.

There are a few bones topick, however. Some conclu-

sions – for example, thestatement that Weidenmanncould be considered “thefather of our present systemof educating landscapearchitects” – are not support-ed by strong evidence.Further, the decision toforego numbered endnotesand to abbreviate sourcematerial in a multi-sectionedbibliography has resulted ina system that is almostimpossible to use. One lasteditorial complaint: a comprehensive client list would have been a welcomeaddition for a book of thisimportance; perhaps thiscould be corrected in futureeditions.

This beautifully designedbook represents a consider-able investment on the partof the Cedar Hill CemeteryFoundation, which pub-lished it in cooperation withWesleyan University Press.We are indebted to the foun-dation and to Rudy Favrettifor tackling the subject ofWeidenmann’s career and forpersevering in the initiativeover many years. Sustainedwork on a project of thisscope is extraordinarily chal-lenging, but it is throughsuch depth of commitmentthat the field of Americanlandscape history is expand-ing and maturing today. – Robin Karson

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Awards

2008 David R. CoffinPublication GrantThe Foundation forLandscape Studies is proudto announce the winners ofthe 2008 David R. CoffinPublication Grant, which isgiven for the purpose ofresearch and publication of a book that advances schol-arship in the field of gardenhistory and landscape studies.

Dorothée ImbertBetween Garden and City:Landscape Modernism andJean Canneel-ClaesPublisher: University ofPittsburgh Press

This book-in-progresschronicles the work and lifeof Belgian landscape architect Jean Canneel-Claes(1909-1989), a somewhatoverlooked but significantfigure for the early period ofEuropean modernism.

Thaisa WayUnbounded Practices:Women, LandscapeArchitecture, and EarlyTwentieth Century DesignPublisher: University ofVirginia Press

This book-in-progressdescribes landscape designin the United States startingin 1893, the year of theChicago World’s Fair and thepublication of Marianna VanRenssalaer’s book, Art out of Doors.

2008 John BrinkerhoffJackson Book PrizeThe Foundation forLandscape Studies is proudto announce the winners ofthe 2008 John BrinkerhoffJackson Book Prize forrecently published booksthat have made significantcontributions to the studyand understanding of gardenhistory and landscape studies.

Ethan CarrMission 66: Modernism andthe National Park DilemmaLibrary of AmericanLandscape History with theUniversity of MassachusettsPress, 2007

To a significant degree, thenational park system and theNational Park Service as weknow them today are prod-ucts of the Mission 66 era.Ethan Carr’s book examinesthe significance of theMission 66 program andexplores the influence of mid-century modernismon landscape design andpark planning.

Julie Czerniak and George HargreavesLarge ParksPrinceton ArchitecturalPress, 2007

In the eight essays that makeup Large Parks, leadingscholars and practitionersengage in depth the topic oflarge urban parks as complexcultural spaces, where issuesof landscape discourse, eco-logical challenges, social his-tory, urban relations, andplace-making are writ large.From historic parks such asNew York’s Central Park andParis’s Bois de Boulogne tocontemporary projects suchas Toronto’s DownsviewPark, Staten Island’s FreshKills, and California’s OrangeCounty Great Park, LargeParks highlights the com-plexities and special consid-erations that go intodesigning these massive andculturally significant works.

Ada SegreThe Gardens at San Lorenzoin Piacenza, 1656-1665Dumbarton Oaks ResearchLibrary and Collection, 2006

This two-volume setincludes a photographicreproduction of an anony-mous seventeenth-century

Italian gardener’s notebookand a scholarly study, tran-scription, and translation ofthis valuable historicalrecord. Ada Segre’s accompa-nying study of the notebookis a groundbreaking exampleof garden archaeology.

Jack WilliamsEast 40 Degrees: AnInterpretive AtlasUniversity of Virginia Press,2006

The title of this work refersto the longitudinal orienta-tion of the AppalacianMountain chain as it travers-es fifteen states fromAlabama to Maine. Withinthis less populous part ofAmerica are many historicsmall towns. Beginning hisrecord with the continentalcollisions that shaped eachtown’s history more than 300million years ago, Williamsallows us to “see the tenuousweb of connections betweenourselves and the naturalprocesses that shape thisearth.”

Calendar

Society of ArchitecturalHistorians 2008 Annual MeetingApril 23-27, 2008Cincinnati, OhioContact: www.sah.orgNote: There will be a sessionon Friday, April 25, at 2:00 on “Science and ChangingIdeas in Landscape Architec-ture.”

The Landscape of GloucestershireSociety for LandscapeStudies (in association with the University ofGloucestershire)Spring Field Meeting 2008May 10-11, 2008Gloucestershire, EnglandContact: www.landscapestudies.com

Designing the Parks: A Two-Part Conference National Park Service, The Cultural LandscapeFoundation, University ofVirginia, Golden GateNational Parks Conservancy,and the George WrightSociety

Part 1: The History of ParkPlanning and DesignMay 20-22, 2008 Charlottesville, Virginia

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Part 2: The Present andFuture of Park Planning andDesignDecember 9-11, 2008San Francisco, CaliforniaContact: www.designingtheparks.com

Transforming with WaterInternational Federation ofLandscape Architects (IFLA)45th World CongressJune 30-July 3, 2008Apeldoorn, The NetherlandsContact: www.ifla2008.com

Vauxhall Revisited: Pleasure Gardens and TheirPublics, 1660-1880Paul Mellon Centre forStudies in British ArtJuly 15-16, 2008London, EnglandAn interdisciplinaryconference accompanied bya concert.Contact: www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/contact.html

Contributors

Ethan Carr, Ph.D., is a land-scape historian and preserva-tionist specializing in the public landscapes of the United States. He is the author of Wilderness byDesign (University ofNebraska Press, 1998) andMission 66: Modernism andthe National Park Dilemma(Library of AmericanLandscape History with theUniversity of MassachusettsPress, 2007). Carr formerlyserved as the New York Citypark historian and as aNational Park Service land-scape architect. He is cur-rently an associate professorat the University of VirginiaSchool of Architecture and is editing the eighth volumeof The Papers of Frederick LawOlmsted.

Leslie Rose Close is a land-scape historian. A founder ofthe Catalog of LandscapeRecords in the United States,now housed at the New YorkBotanical Garden, she wasdirector of the Program inAmerican Landscape Historyat Wave Hill between 1980and 1988. She is currentlyworking on a guide to NewYork City historic land-scapes.

Galen Cranz, Ph.D., Professorof Architecture at the Univer-sity of California at Berkeley,is an environmental sociolo-gist, park historian, land-scape theorist, and designer.Among her recent publica-tions are articles in Placesand Landscape Journal aboutsustainability in park design.

Julie Ann Grimm covers citygovernment as a reporterwith The Santa Fe NewMexican, a daily newspaper.She has a journalism degreefrom the University ofMissouri-Columbia andworked for the AssociatedPress in Albuquerque, NewMexico, before joining theNew Mexican in 2003. In 2007 she was awarded thetop prize in the NationalFederation of Press Women’sannual communicationscontest.

Kenneth I. Helphand, Ph.D., isa professor of LandscapeArchitecture at the Universityof Oregon. His recent worksinclude Dreaming Gardens:Landscape Architecture & theMaking of Modern Israel(Center for American Placesin association with theUniversity of Virginia Press,2002) and Defiant Gardens:Making Gardens in Wartime(Trinity University Press,2006). He is a Fellow of theAmerican Society of Land-scape Architects, a SeniorFellow at Dumbarton Oaks,an Honorary Member of the Israel Association of

Landscape Architects, and a recipient of the BradfordWilliams Medal and aGraham Foundation Grant.From 1994 to 2002 he servedas editor of LandscapeJournal.

Robin Karson is the founderand executive director of the Library of AmericanLandscape History, a not-for-profit organization that pro-duces books and exhibitionsabout American landscapehistory. Her most recentbook is A Genius for Place:American Landscapes of theCountry Place Era (Library ofAmerican Landscape Historywith the University ofMassachusetts Press, 2007).She is also the author ofFletcher Steele, LandscapeArchitect (Library of AmericanLandscape History, 2003),The Muses of Gwinn (Saga-press/Abrams, 1996), and co-editor of Pioneers ofAmerican Landscape Design(McGraw-Hill, 2000).

Elizabeth Meyer, FASLA, is alandscape architect and amember of the faculty of theDepartment of Architecture+ Landscape Architecture at the University of VirginiaSchool of Architecture.Formerly chair of the depart-ment and Graduate ProgramDirector, she teaches designstudios and courses on thetheory and practice of twen-

tieth-century and contempo-rary landscape architecture.A critic and theorist, Meyer’smost recent writings include“Uncertain Parks: DisturbedSites, Citizens, and a RiskSociety” in Large Parks(Princeton ArchitecturalPress, 2007) and “SiteCitations” in Site Matters(Routledge, 2005).

David Schuyler, Ph.D., isArthur and KatherineShadek Professor of theHumanities and a professorof American Studies atFranklin & Marshall College,where he has taught since 1979. He is the authorof A City Transformed:Redevelopment, Race, andSuburbanization in Lancaster,Pennsylvania, 1940–1980(Penn State University Press,2002), Apostle of Taste: AndrewJackson Downing 1815-1852(The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1996) andThe New Urban Landscape:The Redefinition of City Formin Nineteenth-Century America(The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1986). Healso co-edited From GardenCity to Green City: The Legacyof Ebenezer Howard (TheJohns Hopkins UniversityPress, 2002), and was the co-editor of three volumes ofThe Papers of Frederick LawOlmsted, the most recent ofwhich is The Years of Olmsted,Vaux & Company, 1865-1874(The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1992).

Errata

The caption for the photo-graph on Page 3 of the previous issue of Site/Lines(Volume III / Number I)reads “Lower East Side play-ground attendant watchingchildren digging, January,1941.” It should read “Play-ground attendant watchingchildren digging in Hines(formerly St. Augustine) Park,Bronx, New York, c. 1940.”

The caption for the pho-tograph on page 5 of the previous issue of Site/Lines(Volume III / Number I)reads “Robert Moses at thededication of the GreatLawn, July 6, 1934.” It shouldread “Robert Moses withGovernor Thomas E. Deweyin the front row, Great Lawn event for the New YorkCommunity Trust, July 6,1943.

Corrections courtesy ofJonathan Kuhn, Director, Artand Antiquities, City of NewYork/Parks and Recreation.

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Volume iii, Number iiSpring 2008

Publisher:Foundation for Landscape Studies

Board of Directors:Dominique BrowningJay E. CantorKenneth I. HelphandRobin KarsonNancy NewcombTherese O’MalleyJohn A. PintoReuben M. RaineyFrederic Rich, ChairmanElizabeth Barlow RogersMargaret Sullivan

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan

Copy-editor:Margaret Oppenheimer

Design: Skeggs Design

Contributors:Ethan CarrLeslie Rose CloseGalen CranzJulie Ann GrimmKenneth I. HelphandRobin KarsonElizabeth K. MeyerDavid Schuyler

For more information about the Foundation for Landscape Studies, visitwww.foundationforlandscapestudies.org, or contactrogerseb@aol.com.

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