Soon after publication, the 1893 Boston Metropolitan Parks Report came to be regarded as a model plan for American cities. Little known to the public today, it is frequently cited by landscape and planning historians as a testament to the vision of “pioneer” landscape architect Charles Eliot and metropolitan planning advocate Sylvester Baxter. However, planning historians have overlooked key aspects of the plan and omitted significant details about the authors’ redevelopment and planning goals. I argue that Eliot and Baxter viewed open space planning as a means of combating slums and establishing a regionwide land use template for future growth.
Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson, eds., Pioneers of American Landscape Design ( New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).
2.
Many historians have analyzed the report and its place in landscape and planning history. See, e.g., Norman T. Newton, Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971); Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); Jon Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); David Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Jon Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Cynthia Zaitzevsky, Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1982). Geoffrey T. Blodgett, The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); M. Christine Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983); Matthew Dalbey, Regional Visionaries and Metropolitan Boosters: Decentralization, Regional Planning, and Parkways during the Interwar Years (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2002); Mona Domosh, Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century New York and Boston (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Karl Haglund, Inventing the Charles River (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003); Keith Morgan, "Eliot, Charles (1859-1897) landscape architect," in Pioneers of American Landscape Design, ed. Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000); and 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).
3.
Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston 1870- 1900 ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and MIT Press , 1962), 1.
4.
Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs. See also Jacob Wegmann, What Happened to the Three-Decker? (MIT Master of City Planning thesis, 2006).
5.
Henry Binford, "Boston’s Early Residential Suburbs," in Two Centuries of American Planning, ed. Daniel Schaffer (London: Mansell, 1988).
6.
"Time Is Ripe," Boston Daily Globe, October 5, 1891, 8.
7.
"Time Is Ripe," 8 (emphasis added).
8.
Alex Krieger , "Past Futures: Boston-Visionary Plans and Practical Visions," (1989) Places5, no. 3: 56-71.
9.
In 1872, Copeland published The Most Beautiful City in America: Essay and Plan for the Improvement of Boston. He recommended that parks be developed in the newly annexed areas of the city (Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape, 140). See also Anne Whiston Spirn, "Reclaiming Common Ground: Water, Neighborhoods, and Public Places," in The American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy, ed. Robert Fishman (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000).
10.
Frederick Law Olmsted, "Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns," address to the American Social Science Association in 1870, republished in Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout, The City Reader, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2003), 304.
11.
Garden and Forest, February 10, 1892, 62.
12.
Frederick Law Olmsted, letter to his partners, Biltmore, NC, October 28, 1893, Frederick Law Olmsted Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC. The letter is cited by Keith N. Morgan, "Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect: An Introduction to His Life and Work," Arnoldia, Summer (1999): 13.
13.
Morgan describes Baxter’s role as "seminal," in "Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect," 6.
14.
Morgan, " Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect" 13-15.
15.
Charles W. Eliot , Charles Eliot Landscape Architect, with an Introduction by Keith N. Morgan (1902; repr., Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999).
16.
Haglund, Inventing the Charles River, 118.
17.
Malaria mystified experts of the period, who thought its transmission was somehow related to lowland "miasmas." As such, ideas about landscape and health were intertwined. Park planning was closely tied to issues of sanitation, civil engineering, securing a safe drinking water supply, and management of swampland.
18.
Regarding conservation and metropolitan parks, see Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape, 146. He writes, "The ideology of the public park had evolved from tenuous beginnings to embrace the Progressive conservation movement: though physically distant from them, metropolitan park systems had become conceptually related to the Adirondacks and the national parks."
19.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 83.
20.
Nancy S.Seasholes, GainingGround: A History of Landmaking in Boston (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2003).
21.
Eliot, Charles Eliot Landscape Architect.
22.
The author wishes to thank Prof. William B. Meyer of Colgate University for his suggestions related to the marginality and availability of lowlands and highlands during the nineteenth century. Special thanks also to James C. O’Connell for his suggestions. For greater detail, see Meyer, "A City (Partly) On a Hill: Terrain and Land Use in Pre-Twentieth Century Boston," conference paper, and "Shaping Greater Boston: Metropolitan Parks and Parkways, 1893-2003," conference paper, "Remaking Boston: The City and Environmental Change Over the Centuries," Massachusetts Historical Society, May 4-6, 2006.
23.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 5.
24.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 9.
25.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 11.
26.
Property values were discussed at the second legislative hearing on the bill. The Boston Herald reported this exchange: "Mr. Francis K. Dweeter of Stoneham appeared not exactly as remonstrant, for he believed that something should be done, but he opposed the taking of too much land out of the limits of his town. He represented a large amount of taxable property in Stoneham, and hoped too much power in this direction would not be given to such a commission, as might be established. Mr. Baxter asked Mr. Sweeter, as representing the Langwood Hotel property, if it would not be a great benefit to that property to have a permanent public reservation established in the Middlesex Fells in its neighborhood, and also if permanently pleasant approaches from various directions in the way of drives would not enhance its value. Mr. Sweeter acknowledged that it would, and also, in response to questions by Mr. Baxter said that it would be a benefit to the property in the neighborhood if Spot Pond could be restored to its former aspect and once more filled with water. Mr. Baxter said such measures as were proposed would be likely to bring about such desired results." ("Metropolitan Parks: Second Hearing on the Question at State House," Boston Herald, February 15, 1893, 10.)
27.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 91.
28.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 71-72.
29.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 72.
30.
Peter Hall et al., eds., To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform by Ebenezer Howard (repr., London: Routledge, 2003), 1.
31.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 72.
32.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 9.
33.
National Park Service, National Historic Landmark Nomination, Revere Beach Reservation. Prepared by Keith D. Morgan, December 18, 2000; see also Sanborn maps, 1891.
34.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 108.
35.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 90-91.
36.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 102.
37.
Haglund, Inventing the Charles River.
38.
Sanborn fire insurance maps, 1890-1892.
39.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 93.
40.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 71.
41.
Massachusetts, Boston Metropolitan Parks Report, 91 and 71-72.
42.
The plan identified thousands of acres for potential purchase, but included little in the way of quantification. O’Connell provides one accounting of the total land area, based on what was acquired by the Metropolitan Park Commission: "Remarkably, the metropolitan vision that Eliot and Baxter championed in 1893 was realized within less than a decade. By 1900, the Metropolitan Park Commission had acquired 9,177 acres of reservations, 13 miles of oceanfront, 56 miles of riverbanks, and built seven parkways. The $6.5 million price tag was a bargain" (p. 7).
43.
Haglund, Inventing the Charles River.
44.
Morgan includes this quote in his article "Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect," 16. The original source is Ian McHarg, A Quest for Life: An Autobiography (New York: John Wiley, 1996), 82.
