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Presenting Nature
MENU
Design Ethic Origins
(1916-1927)
Design Policy & Process
(1916-1927)
Western Field Office
(1927-1932)
Decade of Expansion
(1933-1942)
State Parks
(1933-1942)
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Presenting Nature:
The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942 |
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II. ORIGINS OF A DESIGN ETHIC FOR NATURAL PARKS (continued)
AN AMERICAN STYLE OF NATURAL GARDENING (continued)
THE WRITINGS OF HENRY HUBBARD
In 1917, two publications on the theory of landscape gardening appeared strongly promulgating an American style of natural gardening based on indigenous materials. They would have far-reaching influence on the landscape architecture of national and state parks. These were An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design by Henry Hubbard and Theodora Kimball, the major textbook in schools of landscape architecture until the 1950s, and the lesser-known The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening by Frank A. Waugh. It is no coincidence that both of these advocated a study of nature as the basis for informal or naturalistic landscape gardening and upheld the stewardship of landscape architects for natural areas of various types, including country parks, county and state parks, national forests, and national parks.
Hubbard, a professor in Harvard's School of Landscape Architecture, had an extensive role in perpetuating the principles and practices of naturalistic landscape design in the twentieth century. Primarily through his Introduction, which was published in 1917, revised in 1929, and printed in many editions, Hubbard influenced several generations of students of landscape architecture. His text was comprehensive in its treatment of composition and description of numerous design features. It included a comprehensive bibliography of both American and European writings on landscape design. Hubbard was an experienced and versatile practitioner of both informal and formal landscape styles.
Unlike architects, who tended to work in the prevailing style of the period, landscape architects had freedom of choice, a wide palette of materials, and a panoply of styles from which to fashion each landscape according to its purpose and the tastes of the client. It should be no surprise then, that in an era when Beaux Arts and Italianate influences and formal geometrical design dominated urban planning and estate design, a style of park design based on naturalistic principles and the inspiration of nature should also flourish. Landscape architects of renown were versatile in their art, employing both formal and informal styles in their designs of gardens, parks, and estate grounds. Even the axial symmetry of formal promenades in urban systems of parks and parkways was relieved by meandering sinuous parkways that followed natural stream valleys and landforms. Hubbard practiced the naturalistic style in the spirit of Downing and Robinson in his own work and illustrated in his text the spring—complete with ferns and rockwork—that he designed for the wild garden of an estate in Newport, Rhode Island. He also showed numerous views of the work of the Olmsted firm at Franklin Park and along the Boston's Emerald Necklace. [90]
Although influenced by Downing's theory and principles, Hubbard was far removed from the romantic idealism of the mid-nineteenth century. Hubbard was enlightened by the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and City Beautiful movement with its Beaux Arts formality that would transform naturalistic landscapes, such as the National Mall, into formal axial designs regimented by formal balustrades, regularly spaced rows of trees and shrubs, and patriotic memorials with their monuments and statuary. He, however, recognized and perpetuated an informal style of landscape architecture, which he called the Modern American Landscape style. Hubbard replaced nineteenth-century romanticism with principles of composition that often echoed the tradition of American landscape painting. He also provided pragmatic solutions for substantial, durable, and harmonious designs. Although harmonious composition was imperative, Hubbard advocated as a general rule that it was better for the work to be recognizable either as a structure or as an element of natural beauty. This principle distinguished twentieth-century park structures from the nineteenth-century romanticized examples such as Central Park's Boulder Bridge with its cataclysmic collection of rocks and ledges and ambiguity between natural and manmade forms. In this way. he distinguished the transitory romantic trends of a bygone era from universal principles and an empirical approach to naturalism, thereby setting the stage for the flowering of a naturalistic American style, the greatest practitioners of which would be the designers of national and state parks. [91]
Hubbard's book was a compilation illustrating the professional practice of landscape architecture as it had evolved in America from Downing and others, assimilating English gardening style, Italian influences, and other trends, European and Eastern. For Hubbard, the design elements of texture, color, line, balance, and form and the basic principles of composition could be applied to landscape design for artistic and functional purposes. He translated Downing's concepts into practical approaches and techniques that the twentieth-century designer could follow. He gave detailed instructions on creating landscapes in both formal and informal styles, focusing mostly on landscape composition and principles of design rather than horticultural advice. Hubbard frequently pointed out what was appropriate for informal or naturalistic situations. For this reason, his ideas easily found their way into the practices of national park designers.
Hubbard's techniques included the natural coloration of park structures, use of native stone in rustic steps and bridges, variation in the contours of parapets to avoid monotony. construction of cobblestone gutters for drainage, creation of park shelters that repeated the verticality and branching of surrounding trees of the forest, curving paths rising to scenic overlooks, and use of plantings to integrate buildings and ground. Hubbard explored the development of vistas through devices such as screening and enframement and the construction of terraces, paths, and roads.
The Modern American Landscape style was a unique American version of the English landscape gardening tradition. What made American parks and large private estates different from their English antecedents was the greater appreciation and interest of American designers in preserving and interpreting natural character. Focused on assimilating natural features and using native vegetation, American designers forged an informal style suitable for natural settings, whether a private home, residential subdivision, or country park. Hubbard defined the style:
The choice of indigenous plant materials, the study of the arrangement of this material in accordance wit h its own character and of that in the landscape in which it appeared, is therefore an important consideration in this American style. The . . . "natural" landscape scenes, which this style usually seized upon to enhance and reproduce, are seldom the unhampered work of nature; more usually they are the scenes of pasture and woodlot, shrub-grown wall, and elm-dotted river bottom, which are partly the results of man's activity in the less intensively used farm lands. [92]
Hubbard linked the landscape architects' inspiration from nature with their civic obligation of stewardship. He sought to give credibility to informal and naturalistic landscape design as a high artistic form, which, although simple in appearance, was a complex and exacting endeavor. He explained the process:
The greater and more striking examples of Nature's handiwork will serve the designer as inspiration and as training in appreciation, and he may by his knowledge of their peculiar value to the race have the duty and the opportunity of defending them from destruction. But the humbler and less striking characters will be those to which he will usually go for models and for materials in his designs, since these will be the forms most commonly lying near the homes of the city-bred people for whom he works. His work will be on a small scale relatively to the great free landscape; the character which he will endeavor to produce will be of less striking sort, and it will therefore be doubly necessary for him to make the expression of this character as complete, as unified, and as distinct as possible. He must be sensitive to feel what character is latent in the more or less inchoate scene on which he is called to work; he must know what of the elements now present are masking this character, and should be removed; he must know what can be added to perfect it without confusing it. [93]
In Hubbard's opinion, the designer's challenge was to arrange natural materials in such a way that they not only expressed the natural character of the landscape, but also produced harmony of form, color, texture, repetition, sequence, and balance. Designs were to be both interpretations of natural character and effective pictorial compositions.
The original source of this style, according to Hubbard, was the work of the Olmsted firm at Franklin Park. His text included five illustrations of the park, depicting the circuit drive, one of the bridges over Scarborough Pond, the tennis courts at Ellicotdale, steps in a "naturalistic setting," and the Playstead Shelter and overlook. With its spaces, vistas, circuit drive, shelters, and facilities, Franklin Park became fixed in the minds of students and practitioners of landscape architecture in the 1920s and 1930s. Through Hubbard's book, the park became the prototype for the development of natural areas, and the Scarborough Bridges, the Playstead Shelter, boulder-lined roads and paths, and meandering paths with rustic steps leading to scenic overlooks became models for rustic park structures and landscape features. The lessons of Franklin Park were applied to state and national parks and forests, as well as country parks and metropolitan reservations through the 1930s. [94]
Hubbard's text abounded with advice useful to the twentieth-century park designer. Some of his most important lessons related to the development of vistas and the use of vegetation for screening and enframement. Hubbard explained how these devices enabled designers to control their designs and even enhance natural beauty:
In naturalistic design it normally happens that in any given important view the designer does what he can to enhance the character of the pond or valley or other small naturalistic unit which forms the principal part of a particular scene. Sometimes by judicious screening on t of incongruous elements and careful concentration of attention on those elements which are of the character intended to be brought out, a special character may be given to a scene as beheld from a certain point of view. [95]
Hubbard described in pictorial terms the development of vistas, which he considered to be one of the most unified of all types of landscape compositions. Vistas were to have a single central focal point and to be enframed by trees or other masses that screened all other objects. This essentially created a window that could be manipulated by the designer who could arrange one scene after another in a sequence. Enframement prevented the visual intrusion of undesirable objects, setting definite limits to the composition being considered and fixing its center. Trees planted at the edges of viewpoints enframed the composition along the sides while overhanging foliage framed the view from above as well. The shadows of the trees, a long shadow from an object at the side, or perhaps a low mass of shrubbery in the foreground would similarly enframe a view at the bottom. [96]
Expanding on Downing's advice, Hubbard enjoined landscape designers to use native rock, vegetation, and functional structures as elements of harmonious design. He drew the reader's attention to the size, coloration, texture, and natural arrangement of rocks and the growth of lichens and mosses upon them. He wrote,
The landscape architect is not infrequently called upon to design a unit in a naturalistic landscape, or to treat a part of a natural landscape, in which rocks form the principal objects to be arranged. . . . If rockwork is to be esthetically good, it must be apparently organized. If . . . it is to simulate the work of nature, then it must be organized as groups of rocks in nature are, the rocks must be related one to another as though they formed part of a sea beach, of a talus slope, of a water-eroded slope, of an outcropping ledge, or of whatever natural rockmade form the designer chooses, or the circumstances require. [97]
Designers were to carefully study the character of existing natural rock and heed a few elementary geologic facts. Hubbard wrote,
Rock appears also in the landscape as outcropping of natural stone. Sometimes it has evidently been exposed by some of the forces which we have discussed; sometimes, lying at steep slopes or at high altitudes, in cliffs or mountain summits, it has apparently never been clothed by any softer covering, at least not in recent geologic times. Such rock ledges, subjected to the action of the weather and in a great part of the world to frost, will in time break up on their surface into separate rocks. If the slope is not too great, these rocks will still remain more or less in their original position, and by their related forms and the direction of their fissures and perhaps their stratification, show the character of their parent ledge. Groups of rocks so formed are likely to produce, in nature, particularly unified and interesting compositions. [98]
The color and texture of rocks were valuable qualities that normally gave strength and solidity to manmade rockwork without making it conspicuous. Hubbard urged designers to use weathered or moss- and lichen-covered rocks and ledges to give an appearance of age. He discouraged the use of light-colored rocks dug from the ground because they had not been exposed to the weather and appeared barren. Designers were told to place rocks in conditions of sunlight or shade and dampness similar to those of the location where they were collected, so that mosses and lichens could continue to grow. Noting their deep fissures often filled with moist loam suitable for rock loving plants, Hubbard, like Downing, saw natural outcroppings and rock formations as ideal places to encourage rock gardens. Artificial rockwork was to be planted in similar ways to create the textures and character of natural outcrops or groups of boulders. Pragmatic in his advice, Hubbard recognized the difficulty in achieving a "final consistent natural effect." He cautioned designers that although they could draw rockwork easily enough on a plan, "skillful, patient, practical superintendence" of the work itself was necessary to "give results worthy of consideration." [99]
Hubbard encouraged designers to use local stone in the construction of steps, parapets, terraces, shelters, and walks. Local material yielded harmonies of color, as well as texture, between the stonework and any natural ledges nearby. Recognizing that manmade structures were bound to be conspicuous, Hubbard challenged designers to incorporate them into harmonious compositions that blended with nature. He suggested, "Such structures should have some pleasing irregularity of form and color in their surface and some possibility of accumulating moss and lichen, and growing old gracefully with the rest of the design. [100]
Hubbard illustrated the curvilinear flight of stone steps that led to the overlook on Schoolmaster's Hill in Franklin Park. Although function determined the basic design, the stone steps fit tightly into the steep grade of the hill and were enframed by large coping boulders and low-growing plants and shrubs. Hubbard also suggested that stairways be set under overarching trees or built along the side of a projecting ledge for naturalistic effect. The careful selection of stones for color and texture and good masonry technique were imperative to achieve harmony of form and setting. The Franklin Park steps were particularly fine: they were sturdy; the treads and risers were evenly sized; and the coping of large boulders was embedded firmly in the ground as if part of the natural hillside. [101]
Stone walls gained texture and interest and could even be concealed when covered with vines hanging from above or climbing from below. Hubbard, like others, suggested creating pockets among the stones that could be filled with loam, planted, and watered. The results could relieve the harshness of form, change the texture of the construction, and provide a panel of green—the effect being to conceal the architectural character beneath.
Shelters required special treatment to blend into a natural setting. Hubbard wrote,
Where sonic actual or apparent use of the pleasure structure is the first consideration—shelter or shade, for instance—and where considerable architectural effect is desired, as often in a naturalistic design, the shelter may be made very much a part of its wilder surroundings. The roof may be thatched, the supporting posts rough, or even with the bark on; the whole structure may be covered and concealed with vines. A greater departure from architectural form is permissible in such shelters, because they have an unimportant and temporary look, and a lightness of imaginative touch is not out of place in their design. [102]
Hubbard illustrated a circular pavilion with a thatched roof not unlike Downing's in form and function. Hubbard, however, replaced Downing's lattice of intertwined and bark-covered trunks with evenly spaced sturdy timber posts that had a somewhat knotted and irregular appearance. The posts branched to create braces for the roof in a naturalistic way that imitated the natural branching of a woodland tree. So effective was Hubbard's shelter, in its imitation of the natural branching of tree limbs, its thatched roofing, and its fulfillment of the functional needs of the design, that the design would become an identifiable prototype for the construction of park shelters and lookouts. Its influence is most obvious in the circular and octagonal picnic shelters in Iowa state parks illustrated in Park and Recreation Structures. The basic materials, method of construction, and branchlike braces have been adapted in parks across the country. [103]
Hubbard paid little attention to smaller park structures, other than to suggest that "seats and drinking fountains could be made inconspicuous but remain useful if they were built to resemble natural boulders." Such rustic features had been fashioned by the Olmsted firm for Franklin Park. This practice was readily adopted by the designers of national and state parks by the end of the 1930s and resulted in many imaginative variations, from water fountains made from large single boulders to picnic tables made of mammoth flagstones supported on masonry piers of native stone. [104]
As an ideal for larger park structures, Hubbard presented the large, multipurpose Playstead Shelter, which he called the Overlook Shelter, at Franklin Park. Although the shelter was built upon a massive 600-foot boulder terrace overlooking the playing fields, the terrace was not visible from the circuit drive. From this point of view, the building appeared to spring out of the natural rock outcrop, its weathered materials of stone and shingle blending with the natural rock and trees. The pitch of the hipped roof was flattened and given an undulating surface; it had broad overhanging eaves and was interrupted by a wide intersecting front gable. The design of the hipped roof enabled designers to "tuck in" the ends of the roof and eliminate the right angles that marked artificial construction. The roof overhung the shingled walls and was pierced by a large chimney of local stone. The ribbon of windows characteristic of the Shingle style extended across the gable illuminating the upper-story interior. [105]
The Overlook Shelter illustrated Hubbard's advice:
We should bear in mind . . . in our endeavors to subordinate a building to a natural or naturalistic landscape, the fact that it is not essential for harmony that the shape of the buildings should resemble any natural form. . . . The building should be beautiful, convenient, efficient after its own kind. In fact, fitness to local conditions, and simple form obviously expressing a practical need in construction or in use, tend of themselves to make the building less expressive of man's will, more expressive of man's necessity, and so less incongruous with natural expression. [106]
Although Hubbard discouraged the construction of buildings in a park, he admitted they were often necessary. Small buildings, such as comfort stations, were best located where they could be easily concealed and where signs could direct visitors to them. Large buildings, however, such as the Overlook Shelter, were to be set and enframed so that they were inconspicuous and were to be built of materials that harmonized with the landscape. Hubbard suggested that such buildings take on an irregular shape or be fitted closely to the irregularities of the land. Buildings could be subordinated to the landscape through harmonization of texture and color. Stone from local quarries could be used to match the nearby outcrops. Thatch roofing or lichen-covered walls could echo the character of nearby trees or grasses. Hubbard too suggested using "mantling" vines and overhanging foliage to screen manmade walls. Hubbard felt it unnecessary to go to the extreme of actually imitating natural forms in the shape of rooflines or other features. [107]
Hubbard also suggested that designers create a transition between a building and its natural setting by constructing terraces, ramps, steps, and stairs. These features effectively connected the two areas and could be combined with intermediary trees, shrubs, and vines to further blend the building and its setting together. By the late nineteenth century transitional features such as terraces were increasingly becoming a standard part of the vocabulary of both architects and landscape architects, particularly in the styles influenced by the Shingle style of the 1870s—Prairie, Adirondack, the West Coast work of Greene and Greene and Bernard Maybeck, and those generally categorized as Craftsman and Bungaloid. With its use of native wood and stone and its tendency to weather over time in a way that enhanced the building's ability to blend into natural surroundings, the Shingle style provided the ideal medium for park construction, particularly when enhanced by naturalistic landscape features constructed of the same native materials. In 1917, the Overlook Shelter was already thirty years old. Yet Hubbard's interest gave it a timeless quality, demonstrating that architectural fashion mattered little when nature was the dominant feature in a naturalistic landscape. [108]
Published one year after Congress had established the National Park Service, Hubbard's textbook was probably the single most influential source that inspired national and state park designers in the 1920s and 1930s. Hubbard, one of the profession's strongest advocates for the creation of the National Park Service, had visited Yosemite and used his photographs, experiences, and observations of the park extensively in his text. He appreciated national park scenery as an object for the study of landscape character as well as conservation. [109]
Many of Hubbard's ideas were translated directly into the National Park Service's principles for park design. Numerous techniques, from using cobblestones in drains and ditches alongside park roads to varying the line of a parapet by introducing crenellations to relieve monotony. were incorporated into the work of National Park Service designers in the 1920s and continued to be applied in new and creative ways in state and national parks in the 1930s. As a professor at Harvard, Hubbard had an even greater influence on park landscape architects such as Daniel Hull, Merel Sager, George Nason, and Frank Culley. who had all been his students in the 1910s and 1920s.
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Last Modified: Mon, Oct 31, 2002 10:00:00 pm PDT
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