Genius of Place (46 page)

CHAPTER 23

City Planning
Buffalo and Chicago

TWO MORE CITIES came calling, Chicago and Buffalo. In 1868, representatives of proposed projects in both communities approached Olmsted, Vaux & Company. The fact that two separate groups contacted the firm at virtually the same time says a lot about Buffalo and Chicago. Both were booming and both had emerged as preeminent American cities, and with their runaway growth came a need for green space. Naturally, it made sense to turn to the nation's foremost landscape architecture firm.

In the course of a few decades, Buffalo had transformed—as one contemporary observer put it—into a “commercial Constantinople,” a place that handled countless tons of grain, iron, coal, and timber as it was transported from the West back East. Chicago was quite simply the fastest-growing city in America. Its population had shot from around 100,000 in 1860 to nearly 300,000 by 1868. It now ranked as the nation's fifth-largest city and was fast gaining on St. Louis. Such urban density demanded some kind of relief.

In mid-August 1868, Olmsted set out by train from New York, planning stops in Buffalo and Chicago. In Buffalo, he took a Sunday horseback ride into the countryside just beyond the city limits, scouting for possible park locations. Olmsted was accompanied by William Dorsheimer, a prominent lawyer and leader in the drive to build a park for Buffalo. Olmsted and Dorsheimer were on slightly familiar terms, both having served on the USSC during the Civil War.

Then it was on to Chicago. Olmsted traipsed out to view a stretch of prairie nine miles west of town. The site was called Riverside. The plan was to develop the property into a parklike suburb, meant to be a haven from bustling Chicago.

On the return train trip to New York, Olmsted made another stopover in Buffalo. He was met with quite a surprise. As he wrote to his wife, “What was my horror on arriving here to find that a public meeting had been called for this evening. Mr. Fillmore to preside, special invitations to over 200 leading citizens sent out, to hear an address on the matter of a public park from the distinguished Architect of the N.Y.C.P. [New York Central Park] Fred Law Olmsted Esq. There was no help for it.”

Mr. Fillmore was Millard Fillmore, the former president now settled in his hometown of Buffalo. He was a longtime park booster. During his administration, recall, President Fillmore had hired Andrew Jackson Downing to landscape the Mall in Washington, D.C. Downing had enlisted the aid of his young assistant, Vaux. But Downing's death had brought the project to an abrupt end.

The meeting in Buffalo was held at the home of Sherman Jewett, a man who had earned a fortune manufacturing stoves. No transcript exists, nor has so much as a quotation survived from Olmsted's comments to the assembled two hundred leading citizens. But apparently, he held forth spontaneously for roughly an hour, laying out a whole-cloth vision for parkland in Buffalo.

Olmsted was a talented speaker, a fact that's often overlooked. Of course, his written park proposals are full of winning ideas and persuasive arguments. But landing—and
hanging on to
—a design commission required a great deal of communication. That's one of the reasons that Vaux, a gifted artist but stumble-tongued speaker, was so eager to team up with Olmsted.

Olmsted could be an eloquent and convincing salesman, as evidenced by this account from a participant in one of his many park pitches during this era: “Mr. Olmsted has a mastery of language commensurate with the magnitude of his plans. Nothing short of upsetting the entire status quo is worthy of being considered in his gigantic schemes; and then his fluent dissertations overwhelm the astonished listener,
and drown the natural objections to such revolutionary changes and extravagant ‘improvements.'”

Olmsted emerged from the Buffalo meeting feeling confident. He sent another letter to Mary that concluded on a note of optimism: “I think it will go.” Back in New York, he quickly drew up proposals for both Buffalo and Riverside. He worked without Vaux, who was on a lengthy inspiration-gathering trip to Europe, visiting assorted architectural treasures. Olmsted managed to wow both clients with the proposals. Both hired Olmsted, Vaux & Company.

 

Riverside got under way first. As a suburban development, at a time when very few true suburbs existed in the United States, this was a novel undertaking. Cities were densely built and teeming, but as a general rule, right beyond their limits, the land almost instantly took on a rural character. Country living provided the antidote, with clean air and open space, but there was little infrastructure and services were nonexistent.
Want running water? Run and fetch some from the well.

Riverside was meant to combine the best of both modes of living. The setting was scenic, 1,560 acres along the banks of the Des Plaines River. Critically, the land was also near a stretch of track recently laid by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. The plan was to build a station, the first stop on the line, making commuting to Chicago easy.

Building a model suburb in Riverside was not Olmsted's idea. Rather, the idea originated with the Riverside Improvement Company. The RIC was a consortium of eastern investors that had recently purchased the property. Its president was Emery Childs, a manic and jowly business promoter. Upon first meeting with Childs and his crew, Olmsted was reminded of another consortium of eastern investors, Mayor Opdyke and his Mariposa cronies. He had sent a letter to Vaux in Europe, describing the Riverside enterprise as a “big speculation.” But it seemed like the RIC was in earnest—and in a hurry as well. In a letter to Mary, he marveled, “They want to go to work at once & employ 2000 men.”

This was a private effort in contrast to the public works in which Olmsted and Vaux had been involved, such as Central Park and Prospect Park. No legislative approval was needed; there just wasn't the same level
of bureaucracy as in a public-sector job. By autumn of 1868, work was under way.

Childs had hired Olmsted assuming he'd approach suburb design with the keen artistry on display in his firm's park making. From the outset, Olmsted was adamant that the highest priority for Riverside was something crushingly mundane: serviceable roads. He was wearing his farmer's hat. Olmsted had done his share of country living; he'd ridden over enough rutted, ill-graded, miry rural roads to know that such matter had the potential to sink this suburban experiment, no matter how comely the grounds. Roads, Olmsted stressed, must “be the first consideration” in planning a suburb, and he added, “Let them cost what they will.”

For Riverside's roads, the solution Olmsted suggested was macadamization, a process where a foundation of large stones is overlaid with layers of successively smaller stones progressing to gravel. The layers are tamped down with heavy rollers. When Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam dreamed up the idea in the early 1800s, it was the biggest innovation in road construction since Roman times. Even in 1868, it was still a pretty newfangled approach. Per McAdam's model, the surfaces of Riverside's roads were to be cambered, that is, given a convex shape that allowed rain to run off. State-of-the-art paved gutters would be installed to carry water by underground pipes into the Des Plaines River.

Yet Olmsted didn't skimp on beauty. Laying out Riverside's streets on unsullied farmland provided a rare opportunity to get away from the dreaded grid plan. Olmsted designed the streets to travel in sweeping, generous curves. This was meant to impart an unhurried vibe to the future residents of Riverside. The intention was to place their domestic life in stark relief to nearby Chicago, where the street scheme was angular and the mood frenzied. The “absence of sharp corners” in Riverside's streets, as Olmsted put it, was meant to “imply leisure, contemplativeness, and happy tranquility.”

Olmsted also named many of Riverside's streets. There are Michaux and Nuttall roads, for example, named after a couple of Olmsted's dendrology heroes. François André Michaux came to the United States
from France in the early 1800s and produced an exhaustive three-volume study of America's trees. Englishman Thomas Nuttall picked up where Michaux left off, traveling extensively in the States before writing his landmark
North American Sylva: Trees Not Described by F. A. Michaux
. Carlyle Road was named in honor of the author of
Sartor Resartus
, the novel that provoked so much philosophical pondering by Olmsted in his youth. As one might expect, the voraciously read Olmsted opted for a variety of other literary references. There are Akenside and Shenstone roads named after English poets. Of course, there's a Downing Road.

Probably the most significant concept Olmsted brought to Riverside was that of communal spaces. Roughly 40 percent of the 1,560 acres was set aside as greens and commons. This decision, too, has its roots in an earlier Olmsted experience. While traveling in the South, he'd observed the cultural vacuum that resulted from people living great distances apart. Ample shared spaces were meant to ensure that Riverside's residents connected socially, traded information, discussed the issues of the day. Riverside was meant to be a community; Olmsted wanted to promote civic discourse.

He even went so far as to propose that a dedicated road be built to Chicago. That would serve horse and carriage traffic. The railroad was quick, to be sure, but he wanted people to have another, more leisurely, way to travel home to Riverside.

As payment for the design, Olmsted accepted lots of land. This was against his better judgment, but the terms were just so enticing. According to Childs, the land that the RIC transferred to Olmsted, Vaux & Company for the design alone would be worth $15,000 once those lots were sold to residents. Supervising construction would net the firm additional lots, potentially worth more than $100,000. If just a fraction of this amount were realized, it would be quite a payday.

Still more earning potential would derive from the fact that Vaux was a trained architect with considerable experience designing houses. Riverside was 1,560 blank acres demanding homes, not to mention all the houses and other structures needed along the boulevard to Chicago. “There will probably be a large demand upon us for cheap little cottages
growing out of it, wood chalets,” Olmsted wrote his partner, referring to that long road, “—also for spring houses, arbors, seats, drinking fountains & c.” Riverside had the potential to be a genuine bonanza.

 

In tandem with Riverside, Olmsted set to work in Buffalo. This was an Olmsted, Vaux & Company job, but once again, Olmsted very much took the lead. His plan—first enumerated during those impromptu remarks before the two hundred citizens—was nothing if not revolutionary.

He designed a set of three separate parks, each with a distinct purpose. One park was called the Parade and was intended, as the name implies, to be the scene of large gatherings and vigorous activities such as sports. It occupied 56 acres. A second larger greensward was meant for passive pursuits such as strolling and sitting in quiet contemplation. Because this was the only fitting use for a true park, to Olmsted's mind, he designated this 350-acre parcel as, simply, the Park. (Later, it was rechristened as Delaware Park.) The Park featured a natural-looking lake—totally man-made—with a meandering shoreline and plantings of weeping willows and other trees that looked more soft than stately, touches meant to lend a subtle, dreamlike quality to this creation. The third park was called the Front. For this one, Olmsted chose a 32-acre piece of land with a commanding view, a bluff overlooking the spot where Lake Erie starts to narrow as it feeds into the Niagara River. The Front also had a distinct purpose. Olmsted considered the Front to be a place with “a character of magnificence admirably adapted to be associated with stately ceremonies, the entertainment of public guests, and other occasions of civic display.”

The land Olmsted selected for the three separate parks showed a genuine grasp of Buffalo's landscape. Besides his Sunday horseback tour with Dorsheimer, Olmsted had also visited the city on USSC business during the Civil War. He was well aware that Buffalo didn't adhere to a simple street grid like New York and so many other American cities. Rather, Buffalo's street plan had a distinctly French accent. This was due to a blueprint for the city's future growth, drawn up by Joseph Ellicott back in 1804. At the time, Buffalo had a mere two dozen residents. But its founders had a sense of manifest destiny. They hired Ellicott, who
had worked with French-born Pierre-Charles L'Enfant during the early stages of planning Washington, D.C. In an echo of Paris, L'Enfant had suggested a radial plan for Washington, with the U.S. Capitol in the center and streets radiating out like the spokes on a wheel. Buffalo, at its inception, was designed by Ellicott with streets radiating out from a hub, Niagara Square.

Because the city was founded on the shores of Lake Erie, however, expansion in all directions wasn't possible. So Ellicott designed Buffalo as a partial radial—a wedge shape. Think of Niagara Square as home plate on a baseball field. And picture Buffalo growing outward, continually outward, but within the confines of the foul lines. In placing his three parks, Olmsted was careful to stay true to Ellicott's original blueprint. Per the baseball-field analogy, think of the parks as being placed in left field (the Front), center field (the Park), and right field (the Parade).

Olmsted also sited the parks at a considerable distance from the city center. They were arrayed along the town's edge, not yet built up as of 1868. That made it possible for the city to obtain the selected parcels of land at low prices. Olmsted knew full well that as Buffalo grew, it would eventually surround these parks; land on the city's outskirts would over time become priceless green space well within the city limits. In the years since 1858, when work on Central Park commenced, he'd watched this same process happen as development crept northward around the park's periphery.