During the second half of the 19th century, the rapid industrialisation brought about a rapid urbanisation. In the process, the urban environment went through a profound change, the over-population bringing about restlessness, poverty and crime. It soon became evident that the needs of city-habitants had to be met, those needs being not only vocational and residential. The cities had become “too big, too polluted, too built up, too crowded, too diseased, too polluted, too artificial, too commercial, too corrupting and too stressful” (Cranz 1982, 3).
Horrified by these circumstances escalated in the growing cities, the protagonists of the City Beautiful movement stressed the needs to create the urban environment more pleasant by providing sufficiently open, green areas for the city dwellers. These areas were meant to regulate the morale of the city-habitants by refreshing them and providing them with beauties of nature. In 1870 Frederick Law Olmsted published an article "Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns" in the journal of Social Science, published by the American Social Science Association (L. Hall 1995, 25, 149.) As the City Beautiful movement was influenced by the architecture of the European metropoles, the representatives of the movement also noticed that the problems of the growing late 19th century cities were of similar nature, both in US and Europe.The City Beautiful movement proposed a three-step program (in order to integrate the poor immigrants to the society): firstly to provide them with a good example through settlements, secondly, through moral coercion and even segregation and thirdly, by systematic upgrading of the urban environment. This was meant to be done by providing the city-dwellers playgrounds, parks and later on, park systems. (P. Hall 2002, 37-47.)
The Franklin Park, being one part of the Boston Park network system was characterised by its designer Olmsted himself as
"the entire property has been bought by the city because of its special advantages for one purpose. That purpose is to provide opportunity for a form of recreation to be obtained only through the influence of pleasing natural scenery upon the sensibilities of those quickly contemplating it... The plan proposes, therefore, that nothing shall be built, nothing set up, nothing planted as a decorative feature... to sustain the designed character of the country park, the urban elegance generally designed in a small public or private pleasure ground is to be methodically guarded against" (Fabos et al 1968, 68).
Trips to England by Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing were instrumental in introducing the English and continental European influence in American park ideals. The establishing of parks in London - St. James's Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens - made a great influence in the American parks movement. (Tobey 1973, 154; Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 3-4.) Downing referred to the Germany as the most instructive country to Americans when it came to park planning, as in Germany many examples of public gardens were already evident. These German parks were acknowledged by Downing as something distinctly new and different from public gardens of elder generation, such as the Prater in Vienna, the Alameda in Madrid, the Chiaga at Naples and the promenade at Berne.
Deliberate modelling from Europe was nevertheless denied by Olmsted. He maintained that at the time of his plan for the New York's Central Park there were scarcely any notable public parks in Germany, Italy or Belgium and that the public park of Bois de Boulogne in Paris was a contemporary with his Central Park, being given its final form only in 1855. Olmsted maintained that the parks movement occurred simultaneously in Europe and in the US, that mid 19th century movement was an expression of the civilisation process of man, taking place simultaneously and independently. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 13-14.)
New York Central Park is largely based on the English tradition, intended to offer the urban people rural landscape, representing a modern view and a regulated form of pastoralism, providing a sudden refuge from the urban city (L. Hall 1995, 61; Wilson 1992, 95). It "exercise(s) a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon (even) the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city", according to Olmsted himself. (L. Hall 1995, 66.) From sir Richard Mayne, commander of the London Police, Olmsted inherited his idea for recruiting, training and managing a special police force for keeping order in Central Park and for instructing the park visitors in using the park for recreation without destroying it. (L. Hall 1995, 66.)
Olmsted was essentially an urbanist by thinking that the future laid in cities and the countryside was doomed to fail and believed that the growth of the cities was unavoidable. He was convinced that the living conditions at his contemporary town environments were far from favourable and even unhealthy. If Olmsted admired European city parks, the anti-urbanist undercurrent of idolising the nature was at least as strong an influence, albeit not knowingly (Cranz 1982, 3-5). In his own words,
"(it is) certain that if (townspeople) fail to secure fresh air in abundance, pleasant natural scenery, trees, flowers, birds, and, in short, all the essential advantages of a rural residence, they will possess but a meagre share if the reward which providence offers in this world to the exercise of prudence, economy and wise forecast" (Mugenauer 1995, 95).
Olmsted was largely impressed by the decision of the municipality of Birkenhead as they acquired land for a park, being opened as the People's Park in 1845. Birkenhead park was designed by Joseph Paxton (1801-1865), interlinking agricultural interests of him and humanitarian social vision of John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843). (Rogers 2001, 322-325.)
Olmsted described his visit to Birkenhead as follows:
"Five minutes of admiration and a few more spent in studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this people's garden" (Fabos et al 1968, 23).
At Birkenhead he first realised that parks could benefit civility, regardless of social class and to encourage communicativeness (L. Hall 1995, 35). Nevertheless, it is fair to say that communicativeness, civilisation and domesticity were not mere ideals of the community to Olmsted but features of those privileged and that appropriate outdoors recreation was essential especially to the curriculum of the advantaged citizens (ibid., 133-137). In the all-embracing democratic philosophy of early urban parks of the 19th century, “parks would equalize up, not down” (Cranz 1982, 183).
Olmsted thought that the human being could be changed by his surroundings; a spiritually uplifting habitat could enhance the moral standard, further democracy and aesthetical sense of its inhabitants (L. Hall 1995, 164). Parks and other urban open spaces were designed to promote social well-being: health, decency, vigor, civil morality, sensibility to the beautiful, trade and prosperity (Mugenauer 1995, 101). Parks were to bring together people from different social classes and interests, and for promoting this he planned areas at his parks meant for activities of different kinds. Olmsted's main principles guiding his designing of public parks were those of scenery, suitability, sanitation, subordination, separation and spaciousness (McClelland 1998, 36). These principles were realised in his major works in the form of city parks, state and natural parks meant for public use and whole systems of city parks for various American cities.
Parks were to be antidotes to the stress and artificiality of urban everyday life. (Cooper
Marcus et al. 1999, 242.)
"The influences (of any rural park in an urban setting) most desirable to exerted in the mind are the reverse of those from which the much confined, stimulated and overworked inhabitants of large towns are habitually suffering, and from the wearing and disorganising effects of which they need to find conditions favorable to recreation" (L. Hall 1995, 156).
The early American city parks of the late 19th century were grounds for “unstructured pleasures”, stretches of rural nature in the city, the ideal activities being such as riding, picnicking, skating, just spending time there. Since 1890, athletic activities have been promoted in a larger extent. (Cranz 1982, 5-13.)
Violating against park use considered out-of-place has caused protesting. For instance, planning of a speedway in the New York Central Park was met with vehement protesting. Parks were considered to “transcend, not to reflect the evils of urbanity” and in American parks no public meetings were generally allowed. (Cranz 1982, 21-23.) The resistance to traffic remained strong, despite the fact that often the parks were created in distant wastelands, when traffic connections promoted the access to the parks (ibid., 29-32; 96).
Comments
Post a Comment