Val Verde, Santa Barbara,
Calif., designed by Bertram Goodhue and Lockwood deForest.
Photo by Carol Betsch.
PaineWebber Explores Landscape Architecture
NEW YORK CITY - A new photography exhibition at the PaineWebber
Art Gallery explores a previously unexamined period of American
landscape architecture and traces important movements in the
history of design between 1900 and 1940. Organized by the Library
of American Landscape History, ": American Landscapes of the
Country Place Era" examines seven rare estate landscapes - from
Stockbridge, Mass., to Santa Barbara, Calif. - that are currently
accessible to the public and retain significant portions of their
original designs.
The country place era was a time when wealthy American
industrialists, such as Edsel Ford and Henry F. du Pont, pursued
rural life in settings of great beauty. While most Nineteenth
Century residential landscape design was guided by a naturalistic
approach, championed by such landscape architects as Frederick
Law Olmsted, the designer of New York City's Central Park,
America's capitalists were eager to enlist a new, formal design
vocabulary for the new century.
Prestigious landscape designers, including Charles Platt and
Beatrix Jones Farrand, collaborated with their wealthy patrons to
create estate gardens that embrace the Olmstedian concept of
genius loci (the spirit or genius of the natural surroundings)
while incorporating a new and inspired use of historical form and
Beaux Arts spatial principles.
"" examines seven important landscape achievements from the era
and explores design concerns of the time, including the tension
between formality and naturalism; the role of travel; the
contributions of women to the emerging profession; and the impact
of painting, sculpture, music and cinema on landscape design.
The exhibition presents these landscapes through seventy 20 by 24
inch toned, black and white photographs and seven oversize color
Iris prints on watercolor paper. All were produced by
distinguished landscape photographer Carol Betsch, whose
evocative images were featured in the award-winning exhibition
"The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman," sponsored by PaineWebber
in 1997.
Curated by historian Robin Karson, director of the Library of
American Landscape History, the exhibition's accompanying text
explores the collaborations between the landscape designers and
their patrons, as well as the successful incorporation of new
ideas and principles into landscape design.
The seven gardens in the exhibition include: Gwinn (estate of
William Gwinn Mather), Cleveland, Ohio, designed by Charles
Platt, Warren Manning and Ellen Shipman; Dumbarton Oaks (estate
of Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss), Washington Dc., designed by
Beatrix Farrand; Naumkeag (estate of Mabel Choate), Stockbridge,
Mass., designed by Fletcher Steele; Ford House (estate of Eleanor
and Edsel Ford), Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich., designed by Jens
Jensen; Val Verde (estate of Wright S. Ludington), Santa Barbara,
Calif., designed by Lockwood de Forest; Stan Hywet Hall (estate
of Gertrude and Frank Seiberling), Akron, Ohio, designed by
Warren Manning and Ellen Shipman; and Winterthur (estate of Henry
F. du Pont), Winterthur, Del., designed by Henry F. du Pont and
Marian Cruger Coffiin.
Gwinn, Cleveland, Ohio (1906-1912)
In 1905, Cleveland iron-ore magnate William Gwinn Mather hired
two landscape architects to help him plan his new country estate.
Warren H. Manning (1860-1938), a former employee of Frederick Law
Olmsted and proponent of the emerging "American style" of
irregular groupings of mostly indigenous plants, and Charles A.
Platt (1861-1933), a young artist-turned-architect and a champion
of formality.
They counseled Mather to purchase a five-acre parcel east of the
city directly on Lake Erie to benefit from the ever changing lake
panorama. The pair, with their divergent stylistic allegiances,
together created an influential early work that clearly
articulates naturalism and formality with remarkable vibrancy.
Gwinn's original design includes a 505 foot curing sea wall to
embrace the lake, an axial arrangement of walled and hedged
outdoor rooms, luxuriant masses of trees, shrubs, and
groundcovers that soften the architecture throughout, and a 20
acre wild garden across the boulevard.
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (1922-1941)
Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872-1959) was one of the most prominent
landscape architects of her time, and, as the niece of Edith
Wharton, author of Italian Villas and Their Gardens, was
familiar with Italian design principles. Farrand was asked by
Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss to design a garden for their 54
acre Georgetown property, and thus began a close collaboration
between designer and patron.
For almost 20 years, Farrand and her clients shared sketches and
ideas, developing a singularly sequential garden, conceived and
designed much like a piece of music. From the tautly elegant rose
terrace to the richly planted woodland that lies north of the
home grounds (now a National Park Service property), each garden
at Dumbarton Oaks strikes a different narrative chord. Soaring
views throughout unify these differences, lifting attention
beyond the charm of bower and bloom toward the larger
transcendent force of the genius loci.
Naumkeag, Stockbridge, Massachusetts (1920s-1940s)
In 1925, Mabel Choate decided to modernize her family's Berkshire
summer estate, designed by Stanford White. The estate's Victorian
flower garden provided no comfortable or private place for Choate
to sit, so she enlisted the help of Fletcher Steele (1885-1971)
to create one.
Steele, a former student of Warren Manning, had become one of the
most experimental landscape architects of the period, regarding
plants unsentimentally as abstract color and form. Steele
invented new gardens for Naumkeag over three decades, responding
to Choate's wishes and needs while at the same time using the
landscape as a laboratory for his iconoclastic investigations
into form, line, and color.
Among Steele's last designs for Naumkeag were the Blue Steps,
(circa 1937), now one of the best known images in American garden
history. Steele used industrial materials - cast concrete and
metal pipe - and the Italian Renaissance form of the water
staircase, planted with lithe white birches that uncannily mimic
the stair railings. The Blue Steps form an almost Mannerist
conclusion to the stylistic explorations of the American country
place era.
The Library of American Landscape History was founded in the
belief that clear, informative books about North American
landscape design would broaden support for enlightened landscape
preservation. To achieve this goal, library texts meet high
academic standards while using language accessible to the
interested public. It is located at 205 East Pleasant Street in
Amherst, Mass. Telephone, 413/549-4860.
The PaineWebber Art Gallery, in PaineWebber's Corporate
Headquarters, 1285 Avenue of the Americas (between 51st and 52nd
Streets), is open Monday through Friday from 8 am until 6 pm.
Admission is free.
