Genius of Place (44 page)

For the College of California, meanwhile, he had been commissioned to lay out a large property that would include a university, a park, and a new residential community. In his plan, Olmsted suggested that the residences should extend right onto the campus lands. Rather than living in dorms, the students could live in clusters of houses. In Olmsted's view, this would erase artificial distinctions between campus life and the life of the larger community. It was akin to what he'd experienced as a farmer who nonetheless hung out at Yale.

On receiving his recommendations, the College of California trustees were not convinced. His plan was promptly tabled and then lost. Several years later, he would receive a check for $2,832 for his work. (By this time, the university had been rechristened “Berkeley,” as had the surrounding community.)

Olmsted's San Francisco park proposal was similarly ill met. “I like the plan myself,” Mayor Coon wrote to Olmsted, “but find at present great opposition to it.” He sent along payment for $500, and that was that.

While awaiting a verdict on Prospect Park, Olmsted also focused his attention in an entirely other direction—journalism. When Olmsted had sailed into New York Harbor aboard the
Ericson
, Vaux was waiting to meet him, but so was Godkin, editor of the
Nation
. This was no coincidence.
There were rival claims on Olmsted—Vaux in the landscape architecture corner and Godkin in the name of journalism. Godkin, less than a year into his tenure as editor of the
Nation
, already found himself deeply embattled. He hoped that Olmsted could come to his aid.

 

During the
Nation
's brief life, there had already been many twists and turns, and no shortage of intrigue. Back in 1863, recall, Olmsted and Godkin had contemplated a weekly publication devoted to serious issues. This notion, simple as it was, actually addressed an unfilled market niche given that there were serious monthlies (the
Atlantic
) and dailies (the
New York Times
), but few weeklies. Fervent as always, Olmsted came up with forty-five possible names, including
Tide
,
Reviser
,
Scrutiny
, and the
Key
. There was a war on, however, and the timing was wrong for starting a new publication. So Olmsted headed out to the Mariposa mines. Godkin was forced to take a job offered to him by the Reverend Henry Bellows, as editor of a house organ, the
Sanitary Commission Bulletin
.

Launching a new publication became a better proposition when it was clear that the Civil War was about to end. In 1865, a group of abolitionists started the
Nation
. It was meant to succeed papers such as the
Liberator
, soon to be obsolete once slavery ended. But new publications would be needed to cover “freedman's issues.” The abolitionists raised $100,000 in start-up capital, even set up an office for the
Nation
in New York, sharing space with the American Freedmen's Aid Union. They tapped Godkin to edit the new publication.

Godkin was a fitting choice. A stout English expat with a thick beard and reddish brown hair, he was avowedly committed to the rights of freed slaves. But he also had a broader agenda. On taking the job, he felt that he received assurances that he would have complete editorial control. He'd even written to Olmsted in California, calling the new publication “substantially the same as that which we had projected.”

For the
Nation
's first issues, Godkin devoted ample ink to freedmen's rights but covered a variety of other subjects as well. As a consequence, the financial backers soon split into two rival factions. Half agreed with Godkin. This group was led by James McKim, a prominent Quaker
social reformer. McKim, in fact, was the person who had come up with the name, the
Nation
. He envisioned a general-interest publication, addressing the welter of complex issues facing a reunited
nation
. But half felt that the
Nation
should be exclusively devoted to issues related to former slaves. This faction was led by George Stearns, a wealthy Bostonian who had helped finance John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

In January 1866, Olmsted entered this fray, signing on as an associate editor. Godkin was delighted. It gave him an ally in the fight for editorial independence. Godkin wrote to a friend, “Olmsted's coming in relieves my mind a good deal, particularly in ridding me of the hateful burden of over-caution.”

The impact of bringing in Olmsted was instantaneous. If Godkin hoped to throw “over-caution” to the wind and to increase the
Nation
's eclecticism, he could not have teamed up with someone more catholic in his interests than Olmsted. Articles in the
Nation
during the 1860s were unsigned. Through records and correspondence, it's clear that Olmsted wrote very few pieces. Rather, he dreamed up story ideas and shaped existing copy to reflect his interests and concerns. He'd learned well during his stint at the ill-fated
Putnam's
. Now, he'd assumed the same role occupied at that magazine by the talented editors Curtis and Dana. Olmsted tapped various friends and acquaintances to write for the
Nation
, including Bellows, Charles Eliot Norton, and James Russell Lowell.

Olmsted's active tenure as associate editor of the
Nation
is confined to the first six months of 1866. Yet the variety of Olmstedian themes and ideas visited in the stories that ran during this brief period is quite simply astounding. As an editor, he managed vastly greater range than was possible for a mere harried scribe. An article in the March 1 issue, for example, takes a skeptical look at a new stamp-mill technology being touted by an eastern inventor. Fresh from the Mariposa mines, this was certainly familiar territory for Olmsted. A piece in the March 15 issue covers the brutal conditions faced by sailors, a concern dating back to Olmsted's days on the
Ronaldson
with Captain Fox. Although Olmsted wasn't the author of either of these articles, his editorial fingerprints are all over them.

The
Nation
dispatched a correspondent to travel through the former slave states, providing weekly dispatches for a column called “The South
As It Is.” This was kind of a post–Civil War retracing of Olmsted's earlier travels as “Yeoman.” But in this case, the correspondent was J. R. Dennett, a recent Harvard graduate. He received $150 a month for his dispatches. There were also a number of articles on various agricultural topics, harking back to Olmsted's years as a farmer. There was an article on the migration from farm to city, a transition Olmsted had made. There was also a piece about proper nutrition for soldiers, an echo of his time with the USSC.

Olmsted's presence is clearly felt in the selection of books the
Nation
reviewed during this brief period. There was a review of
Short Sermons to News Boys
by Charley Brace. In his role as Children's Aid Society founder, Brace had become focused on outreach to newsies, boys who lived on the street under particularly harsh conditions and hawked papers to get by. There was also a review of Samuel Bowles's
Across the Continent
, a book that includes an account of the author's visit to Yosemite where he met up with Olmsted. There was even a review of a memoir,
Life of Benjamin Silliman, M.D.
Professor Silliman taught the lone course that Olmsted enjoyed during his brief Yale stint, inspiring Olmsted to found the “Infantile Chemistry Association.”

Sometimes the consonance between Olmsted's interests and a
Nation
article borders on the absurd. A piece in the March 22 issue is based on a Connecticut state survey of clergymen's salaries. The conclusion: Endemically low pay forces the clergy into side professions such as running schools, thereby diluting their focus on spiritual matters. There's no evidence that Olmsted wrote this piece. More likely, he learned about the survey and assigned a writer to cover it. As an editor, he probably shaped the copy to reflect his own very personal experience with this matter. Another piece titled “Hints for Tourists and Invalids on Italian Climates” features the following opening passage:

Of all things, this is an article about how misconceptions about Mediterranean weather pose a danger to Americans suffering from chronic ailments. Olmsted's own brother had just such an experience. He'd arrived in Nice, desperately ill with tuberculosis, only to be told by a doctor that the climate might not be so beneficial to his health.

Of course, Olmsted had also grown over the years to be a staunch abolitionist. As part of the
Nation
's editorial mélange, there continued to be frequent articles on issues related to the freed slaves. But the subject wasn't covered sufficiently to satisfy an increasingly agitated George Stearns. By the summer of 1866, Stearns—John Brown's erstwhile benefactor—had had enough. It was clear that the
Nation
was anything but a journal devoted to freedman's rights. He withdrew his considerable stake in the venture; the others in his faction followed suit.

The
Nation
was reorganized as a new company. Godkin held one-half of the stock, McKim held a third, and Olmsted took the remaining onesixth. As for the name of the new venture: E. L. Godkin and Company. “I wanted Olmsted's name,” Godkin wrote to a friend, “but he was afraid it would injure his other business.” In any case, Olmsted would be a relatively absentee shareholder and within a few years' time would transfer his interest (worth only a pittance) to the other partners. But he'd already made his mark on the publication. During a critical few months in the spring of 1866, Olmsted had boldly chosen a direction—broad inquiry over narrow focus—and had helped set the
Nation
on its course.

 

As for that “other business” mentioned by Godkin, it scored a major victory to offset the pair of California setbacks. Olmsted and Vaux's design won the overwhelming approval of the Prospect Park commission. On May 29, 1866, the partners were officially appointed as landscape architects, and their fee was fixed at $8,000 per year. Earlier in the spring, Olmsted had moved to a new home on Amos Street in the Clifton section
of Staten Island. He was now able to commute each day by ferry to his new job. John Olmsted, aged seventy-four, paid a visit. Olmsted proudly conducted his father over the grounds of his latest project.

From the outset, Stranahan and the other commissioners were extremely supportive. With his strong features and aquiline nose, Stranahan had a face like a Roman statesman. But the illusion was quickly broken by his manner and garb: Stranahan perpetually carried a black silk top hat in his hand, as opposed to wearing it on his head. He usually had an overcoat draped over his arm. He was a man in a hurry. After making a fortune as a railroad contractor, he'd devoted himself entirely to becoming Brooklyn's number-one booster. To secure maritime commerce for his city, he'd taken the lead in developing the Atlantic Docks in Red Hook. A few years hence, he'd be a prime mover behind the Brooklyn Bridge, and many years later he'd urge the combination of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the other boroughs into a single city.

Olmsted found Stranahan to be the opposite of Andrew Green. Stranahan didn't interfere, and he didn't pinch pennies. To work with so little oversight was an unexpected and gratifying experience. Early in the project, Olmsted wrote to his friend Norton, “It grows upon me and my enthusiasm and liking for the work is increasing to an inconvenient degree, so that it elbows all other interests out of my mind.”

As with Central Park, the creation of Prospect Park demanded a knack for illusion. The landscape had to be totally engineered yet made to look utterly natural. This presented ample technological challenges from a nineteenth-century standpoint. It also required a substantial workforce. By the summer of 1866, 300 men were at work on the park, and in the years ahead that number would swell to nearly 2,000. Whereas some of the tasks required brute force—digging holes and hauling stone—some demanded expertise and precision. To execute their design, Olmsted and Vaux oversaw a team of talented engineers and gardeners and architects.

A major technical challenge was filling the artificial lake. Initially, the plan was to rely exclusively on a network of drainage pipes. These pipes would conduct rain runoff from the parkland into the lake. But Olmsted wasn't certain that rain alone would be sufficient to feed this
vast 57-acre sheet of water. So a sixty-foot well was dug, and a state-of-the-art Worthington duplex pump powered by a 50-horsepower engine was installed to draw water. Capacity: 1 million gallons a day. The pumped water, in turn, could be directed through a series of natural-looking streams that merged, entered a ravine, and flowed over a waterfall before emptying into the lake—an ingenious solution. A set of sluices was built to drain water in the event that the lake got too full.

Olmsted's tree-planting scheme also demanded a creative solution. The land slated for Prospect Park had a fine assortment of old-growth trees; problem was, they weren't in the right places. Fortunately, John Culyer, a park engineer, invented a tree-moving machine.

Such a device would have come in handy at Central Park, especially during the construction of the Mall. At the time, Olmsted tried to bring in mature elms uprooted from the grounds of Sing Sing prison. But the transplanted trees all died very quickly. The only solution was to plant saplings. As a consequence, during Central Park's earliest years, the Mall was flanked by scrawny juvenile elms rather than overhung with an intricate canopy. Once again, it had required time for the Greensward vision to be realized.