Genius of Place (45 page)

Culyer's machine attached tightly to a tree trunk, then yanked the tree directly out of the ground, in the process pulling up an ample plug of dirt that kept the roots encased. It was like pulling a weed, but on a large, mechanized scale. Olmsted ordered hundreds of trees moved to comply with the blueprint that he and Vaux had prepared. When he encountered an especially striking specimen tree, he had it moved to a spot where it could really stand out and be viewed full-on in all its glory.

Shortly after work began, the commissioners announced an official opening day for the public. Thousands of people showed up. The routes of future pedestrian paths were marked by a series of red flags, and future waterways were marked with blue flags. But there really wasn't much to see yet. It was more akin to a construction site. Like Central Park, Prospect Park's magic would reveal itself slowly.

One of the first areas to be completed was an oval plaza that served as the main entryway into the park. The plaza featured a basin fountain and a statue of Lincoln. The nine-foot-tall bronze rendering (the work of
Vaux's friend Henry Kirke Browne) was the first statue of Lincoln to go up anywhere in the United States.

That Prospect Park was the site for this very first statue is somehow fitting. After all, the park was a grand civic work commenced immediately after the Civil War's end. Lincoln was the man who saved the Union. It's hard not to see the park in the context of a reunited America, though nothing about the park's general design overtly addresses this theme. (Olmsted and Vaux were far too subtle for that.) But remember: Vaux had rejected two mismatched pieces of land in favor of a single unbroken stretch. Olmsted had recently devoted his attention to turning the
Nation
into a publication devoted to the broad interests of a postwar America.

As Prospect Park took shape, it would be notable for its
unity
(that's the word often used) of design. Among the various elements—water, woods, and meadow—there was an undeniable harmony. Who knows? Maybe, like other artists, Olmsted and Vaux were simply caught up in the flow of events, of history, and this subconsciously informed their work.

Vaux created some of his finest structures in Prospect Park. In keeping with his motto, “Nature first, second, and third—architecture after a while,” he designed a series of rough-hewn stone archways that nestled into the sides of hills. To up the rustic feel still further, the archways' masonry was generously draped in creepers and vines. Walking through one of Vaux's masterful Prospect Park arches, one literally walks directly through a hill. The Endale Arch, constructed of alternating bands of New Jersey brownstone and yellow Berea sandstone, is particularly striking.

But the tour de force of Olmsted and Vaux's design was the Long Meadow, the feature thrice marked “The Green” on the original plan. When completed, it just rolled and rolled, luring visitors around comehither corners, whereupon a new expanse would open up ending in another enticing turn—the whole thing stretching out over nearly a mile.

As a brilliant touch, Olmsted and Vaux designed the pedestrian paths that crisscrossed this long green so as to be depressed below ground level. Perhaps this was inspired by the promenades of the failed San Francisco park plan, though these paths were sunk a matter of inches rather than twenty feet. This time, the intent was to provide someone looking out across the meadow with a view unbroken by paths. If any
people happened to be walking on the paths, they appeared to a viewer to be gliding, because their feet were not visible. It was quite an effect, especially given the formal attire of the nineteenth century. One might look out across the Long Meadow, only to see a woman in a long skirt carrying a parasol, mysteriously floating along.

Olmsted and Vaux had expected their generously proportioned skating pond to be Prospect Park's main attraction. But that distinction fell to the Long Meadow instead. Rather than skating mania, the park soon became the site of croquet mania.

Croquet had been invented in England less than a decade earlier. When the game stormed U.S. shores, no better venue presented itself than the ample green of the brand-new Prospect Park. Like skating, it was another outdoor activity that could be pursued by both men and women. Against a backdrop of strict Victorian morals, it provided another suitably chaste opportunity for the sexes to mingle. A croquet concession was set up in Prospect Park, where it was possible to rent equipment for 28¢ an hour. Some days, the Long Meadow was filled with people playing croquet. “He must be an exceptional compound of coarse clay and coarser habit who cannot in pleasant days of Summer find pleasure in this place,” waxed a reporter for the
Brooklyn Eagle
. “There are hundreds of maidens and their suitors busy at croquet on the lawn.”

It would require seven years and $5 million, on top of the $4 million spent acquiring the land, before Prospect Park could be officially declared finished. But even early on, one thing became abundantly clear: Olmsted and Vaux had done it again. In this, their sophomore effort, they had created another masterpiece.

 

But for Olmsted, the experience was marred. While a refreshing sense of ease surrounded the creation of Prospect Park—Stranahan wasn't meddlesome, Vaux wasn't combative, the design just seemed to coalesce—turmoil found its way into other parts of his life just the same. As was so often the case for Olmsted, professional triumph was intertwined with personal tragedy.

On November 24, 1866, Mary gave birth to a baby boy who lived for only six hours. Olmsted and his wife never even gave the baby a
name. Mary was crushed. For months afterward, she lived like an invalid, remaining in bed for long stretches, visiting friends in the country in search of peace, just some peace. She was thirty-six now, and getting pregnant again was going to be terribly difficult. Mary was tough, but she was reaching her limit.

More than ever, Olmsted's relationship with his wife seemed forged in sorrow. The couple had gotten married after John's death had left Mary a widow. Three of the four children the couple was raising were Olmsted's brother's natural offspring. The eldest, John Charles, was fourteen now and the namesake of John Hull Olmsted. Meanwhile, Owen, age nine, bore a striking physical resemblance to his natural father. Even his temperament and mannerisms were eerily similar. With each passing year, Owen seemed more like the carefree young man who used to shoot a smirk at Kingsbury while Fred and Charley Brace argued. For Olmsted, his two adopted sons were a constant reminder of love tied closely—so achingly close—with loss.

To deal with the death of the newborn, Olmsted fell back on his now familiar way of managing grief. He lost himself in work. Of that, there was plenty. While Olmsted and Vaux referred to Prospect Park simply as “The Park” in their correspondence, their primary focus at this time, the partners had many other jobs as well. Most notably, Olmsted and Vaux had revived their association with Central Park in an official capacity as consulting landscape architects.

For all intents and purposes, the park was complete. But maintenance was perpetual and demanding. Bridges needed to be fixed, paths refurbished, dead trees taken down and new ones planted in their place. There was also the issue of clarifying certain sections of Central Park and developing these sections for the benefit of visitors. During this time, Olmsted and Vaux focused in particular on developing the children's district at the southern end of Central Park. It was a poignant choice, given that Olmsted had lost two babies, the first during the park's initial construction. Olmsted suggested that the children's section would benefit from a shelter where mothers and tots could congregate. So Vaux designed one of his most inspired rustic wooden structures, a large octagonal pavilion (one hundred feet in diameter) featuring a roof that was wildly atwist with interlaced branches.

This same children's district would later become home to the Dairy. This Gothic-style stone building (designed by Vaux in 1869) is one of the most beautiful edifices ever conceived for the benefit of cattle. It was meant as a place where a child could get a glass of milk “warm from the cow.” This was no mere novelty. Pasteurizing milk wasn't a practice yet; New York City was full of unscrupulous purveyors who sold tainted milk or even cut it with various additives to stretch out their supply. Due to these practices, children frequently became sick or died. The Dairy was intended as a kind of certified milk station, a place where a child could get a free drink in the safe confines of Central Park.

 

If Olmsted wished to lose himself in work, there were plenty of other tasks demanding his attention. In early 1867, he was named recording secretary of the Southern Famine Relief Commission (SFRC). The outfit was based in New York, and its board included J. P. Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt, a wealthy reformer and father of the future president. During the nearly two years since the Civil War ended, the South had been stricken by a terrible famine. The disaster resulted from the collision of a number of unfortunate variables: Many Southern farmers turned soldiers were now dead or dispersed, farmland had been damaged during the war, there had long been an overreliance on cotton over food crops, the system of slave labor had ended, and sealing the deal—just a grim coincidence, courtesy of Mother Nature—much of the region was starved for rain.

The SFRC was remarkably similar to Olmsted's USSC. During the Civil War, the USSC had coordinated the activity of local women's groups, making sure everything from shoes to preserved peaches was routed to the Union soldiers who most needed the items. Now, the SFRC coordinated efforts among various famine-relief organizations such as church groups and various benevolent societies. Thousands of Northerners wished to help, both out of simple human decency and also as a way of extending an olive branch to Southerners.

Olmsted helped gather information about which regions of the South were most afflicted. He also prepared handbills and circulars requesting aid. Due to his wealth of journalism connections, he was very successful
at getting these pleas printed in newspapers. There's a particularly striking exchange between Olmsted and Edward Bright, a fellow SFRC executive, in regard to a circular titled
Famine at Home
. Bright contributed a passage in which he suggested that aid would help restore the South to “the wealth in which she once luxuriated.” Olmsted disagreed with this conceit. He'd traveled to the antebellum South and found it anything but opulent: “Judging from my own experience, therefore, I think the appeal would be forcible perhaps if the idea of abounding wealth among the people were not emphasized.” Olmsted prevailed; the phrase in question did not appear in the printed version of the circular.

By November 1867, the crisis had ended, and the SFRC disbanded. Olmsted wrote the organization's final report, which recorded that 169,316 bushels of corn had been sent to the South, enough to feed a half-million people for six months. The SFRC had also distributed clothing, potatoes, beans, flour, and money for medicine. He concluded the report with this: “It remains to be seen whether the war, which has cost us so much, has, after all, brought us nearer in our public or our private life to the divine requirement: ‘Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.'”

Olmsted's service with the SFRC is notable because the outfit saved untold numbers of lives during its brief ten-month existence. It is also notable because it marks the last time that Olmsted would participate in a substantial way in an endeavor outside the field of landscape architecture.

 

“Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation,” said Aristotle. Olmsted's
talents
were many and various. He'd been a sailor, farmer, journalist, and abolitionist—and that's just a partial list. As for what the world
needed,
it was parks, more parks. Olmsted and Vaux now found themselves inundated with requests from various cities around the United States. It was quite a turnabout, given that only a few years earlier Olmsted had wondered whether there was sufficient demand for landscape architecture to make a living.

Much had changed. By now, Olmsted and Vaux had created showpiece parks—Central Park and Prospect Park—in two of the nation's three largest cities. The post–Civil War economy was on an upswing, and
other cities were eager to build parks of their own. Olmsted, Vaux & Company was contracted to provide designs for Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey; and Fall River, Massachusetts. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, the firm designed Seaside Park using land donated by one of the town's leading citizens, P. T. Barnum. And the demand wasn't confined to park making. Olmsted, Vaux & Company was also called upon to do other landscape architecture work such as creating a campus plan for the new Maine College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. The firm also designed the grounds of a summer cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey, later owned by Ulysses Grant.

Olmsted grew so busy that he couldn't have pursued one of his assorted sidelines had he wanted to. He was forced to give up the idea—subject of the lively exchange with Vaux—that he was more an administrator than an artist, that his greatest talents lay in supervising gold mines and battlefield relief outfits. Even journalism—long a shadow career of sorts—fell by the wayside. He would rarely write articles, and when he did, they would usually be about landscape architecture. A big book on the drift of civilization, which he'd been tinkering with for years—that would be abandoned. Olmsted was done working as an editor, too. At the age of forty-five, Olmsted had finally found his vocation, or, rather, it had found him.

Going forward, as a landscape architect exclusively, he would draw on the varied interests and experiences of his earlier life to craft a series of inspired designs that would literally change the face of America. As always, his professional heights would exist in a queer close blend with devastating personal events.