Olmsted Brothers

“ One of the most beautiful, striking and completely self-contained and independent new features which could be added to the Botanical Garden is that which has been for some time under favorable consideration by the Director-in-Chief in the so-called “Lake Valley”—a great naturalistic exhibition of rhododendrons (including azaleas) and of plants suitable for association therewith, in such a manner as to make a notably impressive landscape unit, a valley of rich foliage and brilliant bloom enclosed by wooded rocky hills. ”

“ The embankment of the new road is in itself an ugly interruption of the valley, but it can and should be pierced by an ample archway through which the narrow sylvan portion of the valley and a pathway traversing it would debouch at the head of the broader glade, the embankment of the roadway being heavily embowered in trees. ”

“ The result is to divide the landscape opposite the long façade of the building into three distinct parts, of three totally different characters, the combined relations of which to the building seem to us most unfortunate.
The formal treatment on the axis is too narrow to furnish in itself an adequate setting for the frontage of so wide a building, and yet is so massive that, instead of seeming a mere incident within a unified open space relating as a whole to the whole façade, it almost completely divides the open space. ”

“ In the case of a botanical garden or a park, where the real values derived from the investment are largely dependent on the cumulative effect of the growth of plants in certain ways over long periods of years, the effect of inadequate or ill-directed maintenance is peculiarly disastrous because the resulting depreciation (or failure to secure legitimate increase of value) can never be offset in short order by liberal investment in repairs and improvements, as can generally be done with buildings and engineering works. ”

“ Obviously a botanic garden is hardly a legitimate place to devote much space or money to the creation, for its own sake, of any formal design so predominantly architectural or sculptural in its interest that the vegetation plays a wholly secondary rôle—such [Pg 23] a thing as might be more properly called a court-yard or a plaza than a garden. ”

“ The Botanical Garden, as a specialized institution, if it is to do its job well, has got to meet the increased cost of the most essential part of its function without sacrifice of quality. Otherwise it is manifestly failing as a Garden, however useful it may be in other respects.
But whatever program you adopt as to increase of maintenance funds, it seems likely that the increase will come only by degrees and that a serious deficiency must be faced for some time to come. ”

“ It is also important that it should lead the people conveniently, agreeably, and without a sense either of confusion, or unpleasant compulsion, or of disappointment, through those places where they can best see and enjoy what is prepared for their benefit. It is a further fact that the topography of the Garden is in parts so intricate and peculiar as to have made the design and construction of such a system of circulation, in a thoroughly satisfactory way, extremely difficult, especially under the conditions of piecemeal construction with funds available in limited amounts from time to time. ”

“ The mere fact of the existence of interesting things half a mile away, which they can not see and do not know about, is very little inducement to their dispersal. We believe that a better theory even for the mere purpose of dispersing the public and inducing them in large numbers to penetrate into the interior of the Botanical Garden, and certainly a better means of making them promptly interested and satisfied, is to provide from the very start a series of markedly attractive prospects, leading on from one to another in several different directions, so as to “toll” them along ”

“ On the other hand, in areas that are likely to be upset by such construction, improvements in the vegetation should be undertaken only when the desirable changes in the paths and roads seem, because of lack of funds, unlikely to be made for so long a time that the value of the temporary improvement in the vegetation would, in the meantime, justify the money and effort expended on it.
6. Qualities generally to be sought in improving the vegetation through better maintenance. The esthetic qualities to be sought and developed in the care of the vegetation must of course vary widely. ”

“ Passing through the unit of first impression one would cross the main path or paths of the flower garden which lies northeast of the Conservatory at a grade and in a way which would give glimpses of that garden, inviting some to turn aside, while the main lead would continue northeasterly at easy grades through successive minor units of informal character but individual, distinctive interest, all backed up by heavy tree plantations on the northwesterly side, to a point on the hillside pleasantly overlooking the valley southeast of the Museum. ”

“ In an area the size of the New York Botanical Garden, we believe that automobile roads for circulation within the area are necessary and desirable, although for the public benefit to be derived from the Botanical Garden as such it is extremely desirable, as heretofore indicated, that every possible care should be exercised to minimize the danger and annoyance of frequent crossings at grade of these roads and the main routes of circulation for people on foot. ”

“ We think that no one who studies the conditions on the ground can deny that those who arrive by the Elevated Railway at the western corner of the Garden (the route of approach which is apparently used by the largest numbers and is likely to remain so) upon arriving at the end of the causeway near the men’s toilet house are confronted with a very uninviting prospect. They debouch abruptly on a disagreeable and dangerous grade crossing of two automobile roads. Some of them are deflected at once into the not unattractive little cul-de-sac between the railroad and these roads. ”

“ Our impression is that a continuous, dense, high, but narrow screen of trees and undergrowth should be provided between the road and the railroad; that the slope toward the Garden should be more openly and intermittently planted; and that the permanent fence between the road and the Garden might in many places take the form of a mere parapet supported by a high retaining-wall so as to permit unobstructed views of the Garden without facilitating trespass and at the same time minimize the encroachment of the slope-grading on the present plantations of the Garden. ”

“ The kind, amount and cost of maintenance of grounds necessary to keep on the safe side of the border which separates cumulative advance in values from progressive deterioration depend mainly on three sets of factors. One obviously is the efficiency and cost of labor and the skill with which it is directed. A second includes the inherent advantages and disadvantages of the site and of external or otherwise largely uncontrollable conditions—such factors as soil, climate, atmospheric impurities, and the habits of the people who resort to the grounds. ”

“ Considered simply as a piece of architecture, apart from relation to surroundings and without allowance for any limiting conditions which may have necessitated the present design, the exterior of the Museum building could not, we believe, be regarded by any competent critic as an artistic success. The story above the main cornice is peculiarly unfortunate in its effect on the silhouette and general proportions of the building. And for a building situated, as this is, in a large open landscape, the high-shouldered effect thus produced is particularly unhappy. ”

“ If and when the Park Department greenhouses and work yards can be removed from the old Lorillard Mansion gardens, as they certainly ought to be for the proper development of the Botanical Garden (preferably, as in the case of the Park stables, to the undeveloped park lands just across Pelham Parkway) a peculiarly valuable area in the very heart of the Garden’s most precious landscape will be freed and will offer a very notable opportunity for a new feature. ”

“ The successive steps in the formation of routes of automobile travel within and through and near Bronx Park, largely controlled as they have been by considerations entirely independent of the Botanical Garden, and the interjection of the Botanical Garden into the area traversed by or affected by these routes, have resulted in a situation quite unprecedented, so far as we know, in any of the important botanical gardens of the world. ”

“ Such a road or parkway for through-traffic, because of the necessity for connecting with the bridges over the railroad, should be built largely in heavy fill, on a broad embankment that would provide a platform for a tall and dense border plantation serving ultimately to screen from the landscape of the Botanical Garden not merely the railroad but the very conspicuous miscellaneous buildings on the higher ground to the west, far better than they can ever be screened otherwise. ”

“ Only one other additional road for interior circulation has occurred to us as at all desirable, and we are not yet entirely confident that it is worth while. The road now under construction from the Rose Garden to the Allerton Avenue Entrance is in part ugly and positively dangerous in alignment and grade. The most objectionable points are where it crosses the Lake Valley and near the undeveloped Arboretum Entrance. ”

“ Appendix A gives some comparative figures of maintenance labor and maintenance costs, which we have used in arriving at our tentative conclusions of this subject.
We see no signs whatever of such a flocking of capable men into the ranks of gardeners and gardening laborers in America as would tend to lower the costs of such work as compared with the costs of all the other things that money buys. If anything, the tendency seems likely to be the other way, as it has been for some time in the past. ”

“ We believe, therefore, that there should be a very careful and thorough study of the whole system of circulation, existing and prospective, with a view to determining, first, all those areas in the Garden within which the existing means of circulation can reasonably be regarded as permanently satisfactory, so that improvements and refinements to the plantations can there be undertaken without danger that things will have to be seriously upset by subsequent changes in or additions to the path and road system. ”

“ But the successive and almost independent steps in the development of the main lines of through-travel for automobiles in this part of the Borough of the Bronx, have placed the Garden in the path of some of the most important of these lines and thrown upon its roads a burden of through-traffic which is already a very serious problem and bids fair to become immensely worse. ”

“ Unquestionably it is a very desirable thing to provide, in the most perfect possible way, somewhere in the Botanical Garden area, for the grouping of such functions in a beautiful building, domestic in scale but considerable in size, intimately related to a beautiful garden of a suitable kind. ”

“ We assume, then, such a west-side through-traffic road, as a fundamental part of a comprehensive plan for the Botanical Garden.
With this new through-traffic line and the complete improvement of Bronx Park East, the interior roads can be wholly or almost wholly relieved of the burden of through-traffic, and some of them could advantageously be eliminated. One road in particular seems to us unnecessary and undesirable under such conditions. ”