Review Essay: Three Men in Search of a Modern Arcadia: Landscape Architecture,Planning,and Conservation between Tradition and Modernism

Samuel P. Hays , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency [1959], new edition ( Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), ix.

Jon A. Peterson , The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).

See, for example, M. Christine Boyer , Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983); Anthony Sutcliffe , Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States, and France, 1780-1914 (New York: St. Martin's, 1981); Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver , eds., Planning the Twentieth-Century American City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Donald A. Krueckeberg , ed., The American Planner: Biographies and Recollections (New York: Methuen , 1983); Donald A. Krueckeberg , ed., Introduction to Planning History in the United States (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1982); John W. Reps , Monumental Washington: The Planning and Development of the Capital Center (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967); Robert Fishman , ed., The American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Distributed by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Kenneth T. Jackson , Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 ); David Schuyler and Charles E. Beveridge , eds., Creating Central Park, 1857-1861 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); David Schuyler , The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press , 1986); David Schuyler , “Cityscape and Parkscape,” in The Best Planned City: The Olmsted Legacy in Buffalo, ed. Francis R. Kowsky (Buffalo, NY: Buffalo State College Foundation , 1991); Kermit C. Parsons and David Schuyler , eds., From Garden City to Green City: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Melanie Louise Simo , Forest & Garden: Traces of Wildness in a Modernizing Land, 1897-1949 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003); Peter Walker and Melanie L. Simo , Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); Melanie L. Simo , The Coalescing of Different Forces and Ideas: A History of Landscape Architecture at Harvard, 1900-1999 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, distributed by GSD Fiscal Services, 2000); Melanie L. Simo , 100 Years of Landscape Architecture: Some Patters of a Century (Washington, DC : ASLA Press/Spacemaker Press, 1999); Cynthia Zaitzevsky , Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System (Cambridge, MA: Belknap , 1982); Roderick Frazier Nash , Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1967 ); Donald Worster , ed., American Environmentalism: The Formative Period, 1860-1915 ( New York: John Wiley, 1973); Donald Worster , Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); William Cronon , ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995); Paul S. Sutter , Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); and Richard West , Reserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).

See, for example, William H. Tishler , ed., Midwestern Landscape Architecture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press; Amherst, MA: In cooperation with Library of American Landscape History, 2000); Keith Morgan , Charles A. Platt : The Artist as Architect (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985); Keith Morgan , Shaping an American landscape: The Art and Architecture of Charles A. Platt ( Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College and University Press of New England, 1995); R. Terry Schnadelbach , Ferruccio Vitale: Landscape Architect of the Country Place Era ( New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001); Robert E. Grese , Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Judith B. Tankard , The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman (Sagaponack, NY: Sagapress in association with the Library of American Landscape History; New York: Distributed by H.N. Abrams , 1996); Dennis Domer , ed., Alfred Caldwell : The Life and Work of a Prairie School Landscape Architect (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Jane Brown , Lanning Roper and His Gardens ( New York: Rizzoli, 1987); Michael Simpson , Thomas Adams and the modern planning movement: Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1900-1940 (London and New York: Mansell, 1985).

See, for example, Elizabeth Stevenson , Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted (New York: Macmillan, 1977); Charles Capen McLaughlin and Charles E. Beveridge , eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); Melvin Kalfus , Frederick Law Olmsted: The Passion of a Public Artist ( New York: New York University Press, 1990); Lee Hall , Olmsted's America: An “Unpractical” Man and His Vision of Civilization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995); Charles E. Beveridge and Paul Rocheleau , Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape ( New York: Rizzoli, 1995); Diana Balmori , Diane Kostial McGuire , and Eleanor M. McPeck , Beatrix Farrand's American Landscapes: Her Gardens and Campuses (Sagaponack, NY: Sagapress ; Millwood, NY: Distributed by R. and P. Kraus , 1985); Jane Brown , Beatrix: The Gardening Life of Beatrix Jones Farrand, 1872-1959 (New York: Viking, 1995); and Donald L. Miller , Lewis Mumford: A Life (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989).

David Lowenthal , George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation (Seattle : University of Washington Press, 2000); Steven J. Holmes , The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, c1999); Stephen Fox , John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston : Little, Brown, 1981); Michael P. Cohen , The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness (Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison , eds., John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); Gretel Ehrlich , John Muir: Nature's Visionary (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2000); Char Miller , Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2001); John F. Reiger , Gifford Pinchot with Rod and Reel; Trading Places, from Historian to Environmental Activist: Two Essays in Conservation History (Milford, PA: Grey Towers Press, 1994); David Backes , A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); James M. Glover , A Wilderness Original: The Life of Bob Marshall (Seattle, WA: Mountaineers, 1986); Donald Worster , A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Mark Harvey , Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005); Douglas H. Strong , Dreamers & Defenders: American Conservationists (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1988); Peter Wild , Pioneer Conservationists of Eastern America (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press, 1985, 1986); Kim Heacox , Visions of a Wild America: Pioneers of Preservation (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1996); Jim Dale Vickery , Wilderness Visionaries (Merrillville, IN: ICS Books, 1986); Madelyn Holmes , American Women Conservationists: Twelve Profiles (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004).

See, for example, Susan L. Klaus , “Efficiency, Economy, Beauty: The City Planning Reports of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., 1905-1915,” Journal of the American Planning Association 57, no. 4 (1991): 456-70; Susan L. Klaus , “Olmsted, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.” in Pioneers of American Landscape Design, ed. Charles A. Birnbaum and Robin Karson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), 273-76.

Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 12.

Fletcher Steele cit. in Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 ( Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 142.

Garrett Eckbo cit. in Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 ( Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), XI. Also see Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 218.

Keith N. Morgan , “ The Rise and Fall of the Italian Garden in America,” in Masters of American Garden Design IV: Influences on American Garden Design 1895 to 1940, Proceedings of the Garden Conservancy Symposium held March 11, 1994 at the Paine Webber Building in New York, New York, ed. Robin Karson (1994), 7-16 (9).

Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 96.

Ibid., 89-90.

Ibid., 46-51.

Ibid., 21.

Ibid., 37, 135.

For a history of the profession, see Melanie L. Simo , 100 Years of Landscape Architecture: Some Patters of a Century ( Washington, DC: ASLA Press/Spacemaker Press, 1999).

Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 104.

Ibid., 104-5.

Ibid., 148.

Ibid., 149.

For Kiley, see, for example, Dan Kiley and Jane Amidon , Dan Kiley: The Complete Works of America's Master Landscape Architect ( Boston and New York: Bulfinch Press, 1999); and William S. Saunders , ed., Daniel Urban Kiley: The Early Gardens (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999).

Ibid., 204.

See, for example, Marc Treib , ed., Thomas Church, Landscape Architect: Designing a Modern California Landscape (San Francisco: William Stout, 2003).

Fletcher Steele cit. in Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 236.

Ibid., 29.

Fletcher Steele , Design in the little garden ( Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924), 116.

See Fletcher Steele , Gardens and People ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964).

See, for example, Jens Jensen , “Die Lichtung,” Die Gartenkunst, 50 (1937): 177-81; Jens Jensen , Siftings (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymore Publisher , 1939); Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn , “ The Native Plant Enthusiasm: Ecological Panacea or Xenophobia?” Landscape Research 28, 1 (2003): 75-88.

See Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 54-55, 149; Robin Karson , “Spheres, Cones, and Other Least Common Denominators: Modern French Gardens through the Eyes of Fletcher Steele,” in Masters of American Garden Design III: The Modern Garden in Europe and the United States, Proceedings of the Garden Conservancy Symposium held March 12, 1993, ed. Robin Karson, 7-11.

See, for example, Robin Karson , Fletcher Steele , Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life, 1885-1971 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 33 (added subtitle “ Aesthetic Maturity”), 121 (added paragraph), chap. 3.

Marc Treib , “ Review Essay: Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect: An Account of the Gardenmaker's Life 1885-1971,” Journal of Garden History 11, no. 3 (1991): 177-81 (181).

See, for example , Dorothee Imbert , The Modernist Garden in France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).

See, for example, Robin Karson , The Muses of Gwinn: Art and Nature in a Garden Designed by Warren H. Manning, Charles A. Platt & Ellen Biddle Shipman (Sagaponack, NY: Sagapress , 1996) and note 4 of this essay.

Ibid., 233.

Jon A. Peterson , The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 ( Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 248.

See, for example, Frederick Law Olmsted, City Planning, American Civic Association Series II, no. 4 (Washington DC, 1910).

See Jon A. Paterson , “Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.: The Visionary and the Professional,” in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 37-54.

Ibid., 47.

See, for example, John Reps , The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 525; Spiro Kostof , The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings through History (New York and Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1991), 78, 80; and Peter Hall , Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002), 130-32.

Susan L. Klaus , A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens (Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, Library of American Landscape History, 2002), 37.

Ibid., 47.

Frederick Law Olmsted cit. in Susan L. Klaus , A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens ( Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, Library of American Landscape History, 2002), 61.

Ibid., 33-36.

Ibid., 135.

Ibid., 116.

Ibid., 145.

See also Peter Hall , Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century ( Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 2002 ), 128-32.

See Susan L. Klaus , A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, Library of American Landscape History, 2002), 160-61.

Harvey A. Kantor , “Charles Dyer Norton and the Origins of the Regional Plan of New York,” in The American Planner: Biographies and Recollections, ed. Donald A. Krueckeberg (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1994), 162-81 (178).

John L. Thomas , “Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye, and the Regional Vision,” in Donald A. Krueckeberg , ed., The American Planner: Biographies and Recollections (New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1994), 265-309 (267). See also, for example, Francesco Dal Co , “From Parks to the Region: Progressive Ideology and the Reform of the American City,” in The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal, ed. Giorgio Ciucci , Francesco Dal Co, Mario Manieri-Elia, and Manfredo Tafuri (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979), 143-292 (249-56).

See Melanie Louise Simo , Forest & Garden: Traces of Wildness in a Modernizing Land, 1897-1949 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 155.

See Larry Anderson , Benton MacKaye : Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 49.

Ibid., 43.

See, for example, John R. Ross , “Benton MacKaye: The Appalachian Trail ,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 41, no. 2 (1975): 110-14; Peter Wild , Pioneer Conservationists of Eastern America (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press, 1985, 1986), 107-22; Mark Luccarelli , “Benton MacKaye's Appalachian Trail: Imagining and Engineering a Landscape,” in Technologies of Landscape: From Reaping to Recycling, ed. David E. Nye (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 207-17; Daniel Schaffer , “Benton MacKaye: The TVA years,” Planning perspectives 5, no. 1 (1990): 5-21; Paul S. Sutter , Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 142-93; and Erik Ness , “The Path Taken: Benton MacKaye Gave Us the Appalachian Trail—New Ways to Look at the American Landscape,” Preservation: The Magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation 55, no. 4 (2003): 40-43, 75.

Larry Anderson , Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 45.

Benton MacKaye, Charles Harris Whitaker, and Herbert Brougham in a draft letter cit. in Larry Anderson, Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 125-26.

Ibid., 110.

See Susan L. Klaus , A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, Library of American Landscape History, 2002), 155-56. See also Francesco Dal Co , “From Parks to the Region: Progressive Ideology and the Reform of the American City,” in The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal, ed. Giorgio Ciucci , Francesco Dal Co , Mario Manieri-Elia, and Manfredo Tafuri (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1979), 143-292 (225).

See Larry Anderson , Benton MacKaye : Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail ( Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 146.

Ibid., 145-46.

Ibid., 97-99.

Benton MacKaye cit. in Larry Anderson, Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 99.

Ibid., 156.

Ibid., 168.

Ibid., 277.

Ibid., 261.

Ibid., 298-301.

Ibid., 328-29.

Ibid., 1, 328.

Ibid., 253.

Garrett Eckbo , Daniel U. Kiley , and James C. Rose , “Landscape Design in the Primeval Environment,” Architectural Record 87 (February 1940): [73]-79 (79).

See Larry Anderson , Benton MacKaye : Conservationist, Planner, and Creator of the Appalachian Trail (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 1, 261.

Ibid., 1, 224.

See Susan L. Klaus , A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, Library of American Landscape History, 2002), 102.

Thomas Campanella , Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003).

Fletcher Steele , Gardens and People (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1964), 3-4.