History of Early American Landscape Design - User contributions [en]

Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery

2019-09-05T21:00:07Z

T-omalley: /* History */

The '''Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery''', located on the west bank of the [[Schuylkill River]] in Philadelphia, was developed by [[John Bartram]] (1699–1777) for scientific and commercial purposes and maintained by three generations of his family. The encyclopedic range of plants comprised native examples discovered on botanical expeditions made by [[John Bartram|Bartram]] and his son, [[William Bartram|William]] (1739–1823), as well as exotic specimens sent to him from other parts of the world.

==Overview==
'''Alternate Names:''' John Bartram & Sons; Bartram’s Garden; Bartram House and Garden; Kingsess Gardens<br/>
'''Site Dates:''' 1730s to present<br/>
'''Site Owner(s):''' [[John Bartram]] (1699–1777); John Bartram Jr. (1743–1812); Ann Bartram Carr (1779–1858) and Col. Robert Carr (1778–1866); City of Philadelphia<br/>
'''Location:''' Philadelphia, PA<br/>
'''Condition:''' altered<br/>
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bartram%27s+Garden/@39.931814,-75.211663,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x6bdeffbb106d9eb4 View on Google maps]

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==History==
[[File:0056.jpg|thumb|252.px|Fig. 1, John or William Bartram, “A Draught of John Bartram’s House and Garden as it appears from the River,” 1758.]]
Through a number of property transactions made between 1728 and 1740, [[John Bartram]] acquired more than 287 acres of rich, well-watered farmland on the Schuylkill River at Kingsessing, about three miles from the center of Philadelphia. [[John Bartram|Bartram]] was the son of a Quaker farmer in rural Pennsylvania, and he devoted most of his new property to agriculture. In addition to cultivating grains and raising livestock, he planted a [[kitchen garden]] in 1729 and built a stone farmhouse in 1731.<ref>Joel T. Fry, ''John Bartram’s House and Garden (Bartram’s Garden)'', Historic American Landscape Survey, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service, 2004), 4, 7, 15–18, 22, 27–30, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero], and James A. Jacobs, ''John Bartram House and Garden, Greenhouse (Seed House)'', Historic American Landscapes Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service, 2001), 1–2.</ref> Around the same time, he developed a garden on six or seven acres of ground sloping from the house down to the river.<ref>Fry 2004, 4, 7, 18, 22, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero].</ref>

A drawing of the garden dating to 1758 identifies no specific plant materials, but clearly indicates a terraced garden divided into four well-defined zones [Fig. 1]. The area directly behind the house is labeled “Common [[Flower Garden]],” with an “Upper [[Kitchen Garden]]” to its north and “A new flower Garden” (measuring twenty-six by ten yards) to the south. Board [[fence]]s enclose each of these areas. A stone retaining [[wall]] punctuated by steps marks the transition from the upper gardens down to the much larger “Lower [[Kitchen Garden]],” laid out on a slope that ended at the banks of Schuylkill River. An oval-shaped [[pond]] at the center of the lower garden connects to the “spring or milk House,” located in the shade of a large tree near the garden’s northern [[fence]]. Plantings interspersed along this [[fence]] may represent espaliered trees.<ref>Fry 2004, 43, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero]</ref> Three long [[alley]]s of trees running the full length of the garden are labeled “[[Walk]]s 150 yards long of a moderate descent.” Following his visit to the property in 1787, [[Manasseh Cutler]] described this feature as “a [[walk]] to the river, between two rows of large, lofty trees,” adding that the trees were of “all of different kinds.” <span id="Cutler_cite"></span>According to [[Manasseh Cutler|Cutler]], the walk terminated in a [[summerhouse]] on the river bank ([[#Cutler|view text]]).

From early on Bartram provided trees, shrubs, bulbs, roots, and seeds to many of his neighbors in Philadelphia, including [[William Hamilton]] of [[The Woodlands]], [[Charles Willson Peale]] of [[Belfield]], and Thomas Penn of [[Springettsbury]]. His business expanded exponentially after he entered into an informal partnership with the London merchant [[Peter Collinson]] who was his faithful correspondent and advocate for more than thirty years. With the encouragement of [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]] and a growing British and European clientele, [[John Bartram|Bartram]] traveled to most of the American colonies, collecting plants and seeds to transplant and cultivate at his garden. During Bartram’s frequent absences from home on botanical expeditions, the garden was managed by his wife, Ann Mendenhall Bartram (1703–1789).

[[John Bartram|Bartram]] initially gathered plants for his garden from the countryside near his house. Over time, he ventured farther afield, eventually exploring remote wilderness areas from New York to Florida. His extensive field experience distinguished him from most of the gardeners and botanists of his day. Informed by personal knowledge of the natural habitats of the plants in his collection, he transplanted new finds to those sections of his property that most closely approximated the environmental conditions and terrain in which he had first encountered them.<ref>For a discussion, see Therese O’Malley, “Art and Science in the Design of Botanic Gardens, 1730–1830,” in ''Garden History: Issues and Approaches'', ed. John Dixon Hunt (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), 282, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NQV3X8M7 view on Zotero].</ref> [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] insatiable botanical curiosity and far-ranging expeditions placed a premium on comprehensiveness, as did the function of his garden as a supplier of plants for sale and exchange. Initiating a trading relationship with J. Slingsby Cressy, a physician and botanist in Antigua, [[John Bartram|Bartram]] emphasized the breadth of his interests: “Whatsoever whether great or small ugly or handsom sweet or stinking . . . every thing in the universe in their own nature appears beautiful to mee.”<ref>John Bartram to J. Slingsby Cressy, c. 1740, in John Bartram, ''The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734–1777'', ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992), 131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> Twenty years later, in a letter to [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]], he crowed, “I can challenge any garden in America for variety.”<ref>John Bartram to Peter Collinson, July 19, 1761, in Bartram 1992: 529, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> Plants from Bartram’s garden survive in a number of European and American herbaria.<ref>For examples, see Joel T. Fry, “John Bartram and His Garden: Would John Bartram Recognize His Garden Today?,” in ''America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram, 1699–1777'', ed. Nancy Everill Hoffmann and John C. Van Horne (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 2004), 159n10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/95CXP28C view on Zotero].</ref>

Despite his love of variety, [[John Bartram|Bartram]] was initially reluctant to cultivate delicate plants that required inordinate care to survive Philadelphia’s climate. <span id="Tender_cite"></span>“I don’t greatly like tender plants what wont bear our severe winters,” he remarked to Philip Miller (1791–1771), curator of the Chelsea Physick Garden, in a letter of June 20, 1757 ([[#Tender|view text]]). This position changed somewhat in 1760, the year of [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] first visit to South Carolina, when he decided to build a [[greenhouse]]. As he explained to [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]], his plan was to construct the building of stone and to grow “some pretty flowering winter shrubs, and plants for winter’s diversion,” rather than the exotic orange trees and tropical plants that several of his neighbors cultivated. [[John Bartram|Bartram]] erected a modest, one-and-a-half story building of stone with an east facing window, which was completed by December 1762 when he informed Collinson that he had included an external fireplace and two flues in the back wall for heat.<ref>James A. Jacobs, John Bartram House and Garden, Greenhouse (Seed House), Historic American Landscapes Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service, 2001), 2, 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TZG4ANHU view on Zotero].</ref> From the 1760s on, the addition of warm-weather Carolina plants transformed Bartram’s garden, enlivening it with brilliantly colored flowers.<ref>See, for example, Bartram 1992, 495, 529, 668–69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>

Following [[John Bartram|John Bartram's]] death in 1777, the nursery business continued under the supervision of John Bartram Jr. (1743–1812) with assistance from his elder brother, the natural history explorer and illustrator [[William Bartram]] (1739–1823). Under their stewardship, the garden became an outdoor classroom. Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815), the first professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania, brought his students to the garden to study live plants in situ, and the Bartrams noted with pride that their family’s [[botanic garden]] “may with propriety and truth be called the Botanical Academy of Pennsylvania, since . . . the Professors of Botany, Chemistry, and Materia Medica, attended by their youthful train of pupils, annually assemble here during the Floral season.”<ref>William Bartram, ''William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings'', ed. Thomas P. Slaughter (New York: The Library of America, 1996), 587, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3XMTDFZR view on Zotero].</ref>

John Jr. and [[William Bartram|William]] continued to expand the business, adding a second [[greenhouse]] around 1790, and another in 1817.<ref>Fry 2004, 56, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero], and Benjamin Hays Smith, “Some Letters from William Hamilton of The Woodlands to his Private Secretary,” ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 29 (1905): 258–59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MW5WVDUF view on Zotero].</ref> The fame of the garden attracted many distinguished visitors. [[George Washington]] paid a visit on June 10 and September 2, 1787 while in Philadelphia for the Continental Convention.<ref>George Washington, ''The Diaries of George Washington'', ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, 5 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), 5:166, 183, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XXSQS73D view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Washington_cite"></span>Although he disparaged the garden in his diary, describing it as “not laid off with much taste, nor was it large,” he was impressed by the many “curious pl[an]ts. Shrubs & trees, many of which are exotics” ([[#Washington|view text]]). <span id="Washington_2_cite"></span>Two years later he requested a catalogue from the Bartrams ([[#Washington_2|view text]]) and in 1792 ordered at least 106 varieties of plants. Three hundred trees and shrubs from Bartram’s Garden were planted in ornamental ovals at [[Mount Vernon]] that spring.<ref>See “List of Plants from John Bartram’s Nursery, March 1792,” and George Augustine Washington to George Washington, April 15–16, 1792, in George Washington, ''The Papers of George Washington'', Presidential Series, ed. Robert F. Haggard and Mark A. Mastromarino (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2002), 10: 175–83, 272–73, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/T247JI6J view on Zotero].</ref>

In 1807 the Bartrams distributed ''A Catalog of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbaceous Plants Indigenous to the United States of America, cultivated and Disposed of by John Bartram and Son at their Botanical Garden at Kingessing, near Philadelphia. To which is added a Catalog of Foreign Plants Collected from Various Parts of the Globe''. On John Jr.’s death in 1812, his daughter, Ann Bartram Carr (1779–1858), was responsible for maintaining the garden and operating the business. She had learned the science of botany and the art of botanical illustration from her uncle [[William Bartram|William]] and together with her husband Colonel Robert Carr (1778–1866) and his son John Bartram Carr (1804–1839), she enlarged the commercial [[nursery]] and continued the international trade in seeds and plants. At its peak the enterprise operated ten [[greenhouse]]s and maintained a collection of over 1400 native and 1000 exotic plant species. In 1838 the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad laid out the first route south of Philadelphia, cutting through the west side of the Bartram-Carr property. Later in the century, the company's single track was expanded to two. Having continued to grow and thrive through three generations of the Bartram family, Bartram’s Botanic Garden and Nursery began to experience financial difficulties and was sold out of the family in 1850. The historic garden was purchased by the wealthy railroad industrialist Andrew M. Eastwick (1811–1879), who maintained it as a private park.<ref>Fry 2004, 5, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero].</ref> Today it is a 45-acre National Historic Landmark, operated by the John Bartram Association in cooperation with Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.

—''Robyn Asleson''

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==Texts==
*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], 1740/41, letter to Peter Bayard describing hedges (1992: 174–75)<ref name="Bartram_1992">Bartram, 1992, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>
:“As to the evergreens for pyramids that which is called in Europe the silver fir in new England hemlock & our people spruice is esteemed one of the most beautiful evergreens for showey pyramids & yew & holy is also much esteemed . . . for [[hedge]]s in A garden I like our red cedar or Juniper for tall natural pyramids the white or Lord weymouth pine & balm of gilead fir the larix & spruce fir & abor vita.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 11, 1743, letter to [[Peter Collinson]], describing the garden of Dr. Christopher Witt in Germantown, PA (1992: 215–16)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have lately been to visit our friend Doctor wit [Witt] where I spent 4 of 5 very agreeable sometimes in his garden wehre I viewed every kind of plant I believe that grew therin. . . . I observed particularly the Doctors famous Lychnis which thee hath dignified so highly, is I think unworthy of that Character our swamps & low grounds is full of them I had so contemptible an opinion of it as not to think it worthy sending nor afford it room in my garden.”

*Kalm, Pehr, September 25, 1748, ''Travels into North America'' (1770: 1:112–13)<ref> Pehr Kalm, ''Travels into North America . . .'', trans. John Reinhold Forster, 3 vols. (London: John Reinhold Forster, 1770), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/W7RZN46S view on Zotero]. </ref>
:“Mr. ''John Bartram'' is an ''Englishman'', who lives in the country about four miles from ''Philadelphia''. He has acquired a great knowledge of natural philosophy and history, and seems to be born with a peculiar genius for these sciences. . . . He has in several successive years made frequent excursions into different distant parts of ''North America'', with an intention of gathering all sorts of plants which are scarce and little known. Those which he found he has planted in his own [[botanic garden|botanical garden]], and likewise sent over their seeds or fresh roots to ''England''. We owe to him the knowledge of many scarce plants, which he first found, and which were never known before.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], February 12, 1753, letter to Jared Eliot describing hedges (1992: 342)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“About 16 years past I planted a [[hedge]] of red Cedars one foot long on a small bank About 2 foot asunder[.] they growed so well that in 3 or 4 years I had a A fine [[hedge]] 4 foot high 2 foot thick, & so close that A bird could not fly thro it.”

*[[Alexander Garden|Garden, Alexander]], November 4, 1754 to [[Cadwallader Colden]] (quoted in Colden 1920: 471–72)<ref>Cadwallader Colden, “The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden,” vol. 4 (1748–1754), ''Collections of the New-York Historical Society'' (1920): 471–72, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AWRMN2FD view on Zotero].</ref>
:<p>“I have met wt very Little new in the Botanic way unless Your acquaintance Bartram. . . .</p>
:<p>“His garden is a perfect portraiture of himself, here you meet wt a row of rare plants almost covered over wt weeds, here with a Beautiful Shrub, even Luxuriant Amongst Briars, and in another corner an Elegant & Lofty tree lost in common [[thicket]]—on our way from town to his house he carried me to severall rocks & Dens where he shewed me some of his rare plants, which he had brought from the Mountains &c. In a word he disdains to have a garden less than Pensylvania [''sic''] & Every den is an [[Arbor|Arbour]], Every run of water, a [[Canal]], & every small level Spot a [[Parterre]], where he nurses up some of his Idol Flowers & cultivates his darling productions.”</p>

*<div id="Tender"></div>[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 20, 1757, letter to Philip Miller (1992: 423–24)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref> [[#Tender_cite|back up to History]]
:“I dont greatly like tender plants what wont bear our severe winters but perhaps annual plants that would perfect thair seeds with you without the help of A hot bed in the spring will do with us in the open ground. . . . Two roots of a sort is enough. I don’t want much of any one species but variety pleaseth me.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], February 18, 1758, letter to Philip Miller in London (1992: 456–58)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“At present my fancy runs all upon the living curious seeds cuttings of bulbous roots[.] fibrous roots is difficult to send . . . for now every few nights I dream of seeing & gathering the finest flowers & roots to plant in my garden[.] pray my dear friend oblige me with one or two of thy best sorts[.] I want but one of A sort but I love variety [.] pray don’t let our dutch outdo me.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 24, 1760, in a letter to [[Peter Collinson]], describing his plans for the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Darlington 1849: 224)<ref name="Darlington_1849">William Darlington, ''Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall: With Notices of Their Botanical Contemporaries'' (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1849), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKNVQG76 view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Dear friend, I am going to build a [[greenhouse]]. Stone is got; and hope as soon as harvest is over to begin to build it, to put some pretty flowering winter shrubs, and plants for winter’s diversion; not to be crowded with orange trees, or those natural to the Torrid Zone, but such as will do, being protected from frost.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], July 19, 1761, letter to [[Peter Collinson]] (1992: 529)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have now A glorious appearance of Carnations from thy seed—the brightest color that ever eyes beheld now, what with thine dr. Witts & others I can challenge any garden in America for variety.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], May 1763, letter to [[Peter Collinson]] (1992: 594)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“My garden now makes A glorious appearance I have A fine anonis with A large spike of blew flowers in full bloom which I gathered in Potemack 3 years ago . . . my great carolina saracena is in bloom . . . it is a glorious odd flower A goldish color & striped.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], May 1, 1764, letter to [[Peter Collinson]] (1992: 627–28)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have many Carolina seeds come up this spring in the [[bed]] I sowed when I cam home . . . . Doctor Shippen gave me some seed last summer which he brought from the south of Europe one fine sumach grew 18 inches . . . I sheltered them with boards & thay are now very fresh the first I transplanted to one side of my [[walks]]. . . . Last summer there came up in my [[greenhouse]] from east India seed formerly sowed there an odd kind of Sumach (as I take it to be)[.] it growed in A few months near 4 foot high & continued green & growing all winter & this spring I planted it it out to take its chance it shoots vigorously & almost as red as crimson how it will stand next winter I cant say but I intend to cover the ground well above its root. . . . Last summer there came up in my greenhouse from east India seed formerly sowed there an odd kind of Sumach (as I take it to be)[.] it fgrowd in A few months near 4 foot high & continued green & growing all winter & this spring I planted it it out to take its chance it shoots vigorously & almost as red as crimson how it will stand next winter I cant say but I intend to cover the ground well above its root.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 1766, to [[Peter Collinson]] (London 1992: 668–69)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have brought home with me A fine Collection of strange florida plants.”

*[[Iwan Alexiowitz|Alexiowitz, Iwan]], 1769, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Darlington 1849: 50)<ref name="Darlington_1849"></ref>
:“The whole store of nature’s kind luxuriance seemed to have been exhausted on these beautiful [[meadow]]s; he made me count the amazing number of cattle and horses now feeding on solid bottoms, which but a few years before had been covered with water. Thence we rambled through his fields, where the rightangular [[fence]]s, the heaps of pitched stones, the flourishing clover, announced the best husbandry, as well as the most assiduous attention. . . . He next showed me his [[orchard]], formerly planted on a barren, sandy soil, but long since converted into one of the richest spots in that vicinage.”

*Al—z, Mr. Iw—n, c. 1770, describing John Bartram and the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Crèvecœur 1783: 248, 254)<ref>“A Russian Gentleman, Describing the Visit He Paid at My Request To Mr. John Bertram, The Celebrated Pennsylvanian Botanist,” in J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, ''Letters from an American Farmer: Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs Not Generally Known'' (London: Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis, 1783), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JIVSDQ3K view on Zotero]</ref>
: <p>“Let us . . . pay a visit to Mr. John Bertram [''sic''], the first botanist, in this new hemisphere. . . . It is to this simple man that America is indebted for several useful discoveries, and the knowledge of many new plants. . . . </p>
: <p>“Every disposition of the fields, [[fence]]s, and trees, seemed to bear the marks of perfect order and regularity, which in rural affairs, always indicate a prosperous industry . . . </p>
: <p>“From his study we went into the garden, which contained a great variety of curious plants and shrubs; some grew in a [[greenhouse|green-house]], over the door of which were written these lines, </p>
::“Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
::“But looks through nature, up to nature’s God!”

*<div id="Washington"></div>[[George Washington|Washington, George]], June 10, 1787, describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1979: 5:166)<ref>George Washington, ''The Diaries of George Washington'', ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, 5 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XXSQS73D view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Washington_cite|back up to History]]
:“[We] rid to see the [[botanic garden|Botanical garden]] of Mr. Bartram; which, tho’ Stored with many curious plts. Shrubs & trees, many of which are exotics was not laid off with much taste, nor was it large.”

*<div id="Cutler"></div>[[Manasseh Cutler|Cutler, Manasseh]], July 14, 1787, describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1888: 1:272–74)<ref name="Cutler_1888">Manasseh Cutler, ''Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D.'', ed. William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkin Cutler, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1888), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ASAS6SD5 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Cutler_cite|back up to History]]
:“We crossed the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], at what is called the lower ferry, over the floating [[bridge]], to [[Gray’s Garden|Gray’s tavern]], and, in about two miles, came to Mr. Bartram’s [[seat]]. We alighted from our carriages, and found our company were : Mr. [Caleb] Strong, Governor [Alexander] Martin, [[George Mason|Mr. [George] Mason]] and son, Mr. [Hugh] Williamson, [[James Madison|Mr. [James] Madison]], Mr. [John] Rutledge, and [[Alexander Hamilton|Mr. [Alexander] Hamilton]], all members of Convention, [[Samuel Vaughan|Mr. Vaughan]], and Dr. [Gerardus] Clarkson and son. Mr. Bartram lives in an ancient Fabric, built with stone, and very large, which was the seat of his father. His house is on an [[eminence]] fronting to the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], and his garden is on the declivity of the hill between his house and the river. We found him, with another man, hoeing in his garden, in a short jacket and trowsers, and without shoes or stockings. He at first stared at us, and seemed to be somewhat embarrassed at seeing so large and gay a company so early in the morning. Dr. Clarkson was the only person he knew, who introduced me to him, and informed him that I wished to converse with him on botanical subjects, and, as I lived in one of the Northern States, would probably inform him of trees and plants which he had not yet in his collection; that the other gentlemen wished for the pleasure of a walk in his garden. I instantly entered on the subject of botany with as much familiarity as possible, and inquired after some rare plants which I had heard that he had. He presently got rid of his embarrassment, and soon became very sociable, which was more than I expected, from the character I had heard of the man. I found him to be a practical botanist, though he seemed to understand little of the theory. We ranged the several [[alley]]s, and he gave me the generic and specific names, place of growth, properties, etc., so far as he knew them. This is a very ancient garden, and the collection is large indeed, but is made principally from the Middle and Southern States. It is finely situated, as it partakes of every kind of soil, has a fine stream of water, and an artificial [[pond|pond]], where he has a good collection of aquatic plants. There is no situation in which plants or trees are found but that they may be propagated here in one that is similar. But every thing is very badly arranged, for they are neither placed ornamentally nor botanically, but seem to be jumbled together in heaps. The other gentlemen were very free and sociable with him, particularly Governor Martin, who has a smattering of botany and a fine taste for natural history. There are in this garden some very large trees that are exotic, particularly an English oak, which he assured me was the only one in America. He had the Pawpaw tree, or Custard apple. It is small, though it bears fruit ; but the fruit is very small. He has also a large number of aromatics, some of them trees, and some plants. One plant I thought equal to cinnamon. The Franklin tree is very curious. It has been found only on one particular spot in Georgia. . . . From the house is a [[walk]] to the river, between two rows of large, lofty trees, all of different kinds, at the bottom of which is a [[summerhouse|summer-house]] on the bank, which here is a ledge of rocks, and so situated as to be convenient for fishing in the river, where a plenty of several kinds of fish may be caught. Mr. Bartram showed us several natural curiosities in the place where he keeps his seeds; they were principally fossils. He appeared fond of exchanging a number of his trees and plants for those which are peculiar to the Northern States. We proposed a correspondence, by which we could more minutely describe the productions peculiar to the Southern and Northern States.
:“About nine, we took our leave of Mr. Bartram, who appeared to be well pleased with his visitors, and returned to [[Gray’s Garden|Gray’s tavern]], where we breakfasted.”

*<div id="Washington_2"></div>Lear, Tobias to Clement Biddle, October 7, 1789 (1993: 4:124–25)<ref>George Washington, ''The Papers of George Washington'', Presidential Series, ed. Dorothy Twohig (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HI3EUPA2 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Washington_2_cite|back up to History]]
:“[[George Washington|The President]] will thank you to get from Mr Bartram a list of the plants & shrubs which he has for sale, with the price affixed to each, and also a note to each of the time proper for transplanting them, as he is desireous of having some sent to [[Mount Vernon]] this fall if it is proper.<p></p>
:“It is customary for those persons who publish lists of their plants &c. to insert many which they have had, but which have been all disposed of—[[George Washington|the President]] will therefore wish to have a list only of what he actually has in his Gardon.”

*[[Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn]], March 24, 1798, journal entry describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1965: 52)<ref name="Niemcewicz">Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, ''Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels through America in 1797–99, 1805, with Some Further Account of Life in New Jersey'', ed. and trans. Metchie J. E. Budka (Elizabeth, NJ: The Grassmann Publishing Company, 1965), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/URG5ABAD view on Zotero].</ref>
:“We arrived at the farmhouse. It is built of great stones wiht a few rustic columns of the same material. The gardens extends as far as the [[Schuylkill River|Skulkill]]. It was not the moment to see it. There was not yet a green leaf. Straightaway I cam upon [[William Bartram|Bartram]], the traveler and poet. . . . he showed us a few trees and bushes, brought for the most part from Georgia and the Carolinas, and the remainder from the Continent. His interest in botany, added to the profits that he has made from it, has led him to undertake, at times, journeys of 100 miles solely to go into a forest to collect there a plant or a bush. ''Franklinia'' is a tree from Georgia, with a superb flower; ''Gotheria procumbens'' from Jersey with its little leaves of deep green speckled with red; they taste like honey; during the wars it was served instead of tea. The [[hothouse]] is neither big nor luxuriant. I have seen there green tea from China and Boh[e]a. Its leaves are a deep green, an inch and a half in length when they are allowed to grow; but for drinking they are picked very young, especially those of Imperial Tea. [[William Bartram|Bartram deals]] in plants, flowers, bushes, etc.; he sells much to Europe. He is the best botanist in this country.”

*[[Alexander Wilson|Wilson, Alexander]], August 10, 1804, “A Rural Walk. The Scenery drawn from Nature,” Gray’s Ferry (1876: 359, 361–64)<ref> Alexander Wilson, ''The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson, the American Ornithologist'', ed. Alexander B. Grosart, 2 vols. (Paisley: Alex. Gardner, 1876), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VK9Q28VZ view on Zotero].</ref>
:“The Summer sun was riding high,
::“The [[wood]] in deepest verdure drest;
:“From care and clouds of dust to fly,
::“Across yon bubbling brook I past;
<p></p>
:“And up the hill, with cedars spread,
::“Where vines through spice-[[wood]] [[thicket]]s roam;
:“I took the woodland path, that led
::“To [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] hospitable dome . . . .
<p> </p>
:“The squirrel chipp’d, the tree-frog whirr’d,
::“The dove bemoan’d in shadiest [[bower|bow’r]] . . . .
<p> </p>
:“A wide extended waste of [[wood]],
::“Beyond in distant [[prospect]] lay;
:“Where Delaware’s majestic flood
::“Shone like the radiant orb of day . . . .
<p> </p>
:“There market-maids, in lovely rows,
::“With wallets white, were riding home;
:“And thund’ring gigs, with powder’d beauxs [''sic''],
::“Through [[Gray’s Garden|Gray’s]] green festive shade to roam.
<p> </p>
:“There Bacchus fills his flowing cup,
::“There Venus’ lovely train are seen;
:“There lovers sigh, and gluttons sup,
::“By [[shrubbery|shrubb’ry]] [[walks]], in [[arbor|arbours]] green.
<p> </p>
:“But dearer pleasures warm my heart,
::“And fairer scenes salute my eye;
:“As thro’ these cherry-rows I dart
::“Where [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] fairy landscapes lie.
<p> </p>
:“Sweet flows the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill’s]] winding tide,
::“By [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] emblossomed [[bower|bow’rs]];
:“Where nature sports, in all her pride
::“Of choicest plants, and fruits, and flow’rs.
<p></p>
:“These sheltering pines that shade the path,—
::“That tow'ring cypress moving slow,—
:“Survey a thousand sweets beneath,
::“And smile upon the [[groves]] below. . . .
<p> </p>
:“From pathless [[woods]], from Indian plains,
::“From shores where exil’d Britons rove;
:“Arabia’s rich luxuriant scene,
::“And Otaheite’s ambrosial [[grove]].
<p> </p>
:“Unnumber’d plants and [[shrubbery|shrubb'ry]] sweet,
::“Adorning still the circling year;
:“Whose names the Muse can ne’er repeat,
::“Display their mingling blossoms here. . . .
<p> </p>
:“For them thro’ Georgia’s sultry clime,
::“And Florida’s sequester’d shore;
:“Their streams, dark [[woods]], and cliffs sublime,
::“His dangerous way he did explore.
<p> </p>
:“And here their blooming tribes he tends,
::“And tho’ revolving Winters reign,
:“Still Spring returns him back his friends,
::“His shades and blossom’d [[bowers]] again.”

*[[William Bartram|Bartram, William]], 1807, Preface to ''A Catalogue of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbaceous Plants, Indigenous to the United States of America'' (1996: 586–87)<ref>Bartram 1996, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3XMTDFZR view on Zotero].</ref>
:“KINGSESS GARDENS were begun about 80 years since by [[John Bartram|JOHN BARTRAM]] the elder. . . . They are situated on the west banks of the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], four miles from Philadelphia, and contain about eight acres of land. The mansion and [[greenhouse|green houses]] stand on an [[eminence]] from which the garden descends by gentle [[slope]]s to the edge of the river, and on either side the ground rises into hills of moderate elevation to the summits of which its [[border]]s extend. From this scite [''sic''] are distinctly seen the winding course of the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], its broad-spread [[meadow]]s and cultivated farms, for many miles up and down. . . . The whole comprehends an extensive [[prospect]], rich in the beauty of its scenery and endless in diversity.
:“His [Bartram’s] view in the establishment [of the garden] was to make it a deposite [''sic''] of the vegetables of these United States, (then British Colonies), as well as those of Europe and other parts of the earth, that they might be the more convenient for investigation. He soon furnished his grounds with the curious and beautiful vegetables in the environs, and by degrees those more distant, which were arranged according to their natural soil and situation, either in the garden, or on his [[plantation]], which consisted of between 200 and 300 acres of land, the whole of which he termed his garden. . . .
:“Thus these extensive gardens became the Seminary of American vegetables, from whence they were distributed to Europe, and other regions of the civilized world. They may with propriety and truth be called the ''Botanical Academy of Pennsylvania'', since, being near Philadelphia, the Professors of Botany, Chemistry, and Materia Medica, attended by their youthful train of pupils, annually assemble here during the Floral season.
:“The revered founder lived to see his garden flourish beyond him most sanguine expectations, and extend its reputation both at home and abroad, as the [[Botanic Garden]] of America. In this condition it descended to his son, whose care it has been to preserve its well-earned fame, as well by continuing the collection already there, as by making annual excursions to increase the variety. Finding old age coming on, he has lately associated his son with him in the concern, and hopes by their untied exertions the gardens will continue to be worthy of the attention of the lovers of science and the admirers of nature.”

*[[Frederick Purch|Pursh, Frederick]], 1814, recalling a visit to Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery in 1799 (1814: 1:vi)<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Near Philadelphia I found the [[botanic garden]] of Messrs. John and [[William Bartram]]. This is likewise an old establishment, founded under the patronage of the late Dr. Fothergill, by the father of the now living Bartrams. This place, delightfully situated on the banks of the Delaware, is kept up by the present proprietors, and probably will increase under the care of the son of [[John Bartram]], a young gentleman of classical education, and highly attached to the study of botany. Mr. [[William Bartram]], the well known author of “Travels through North and South Carolina,” I found a very intelligent, agreeable, and communicative gentleman; and from him I received considerable information about the plants of that country, particularly respecting the habitats of a number of rare and interesting trees. It is with the liveliest emotions of pleasure I call to mind the happy hours I spent in this worthy man’s company, during the period I lived in his neighbourhood.

*Baldwin, William, August 14, 1818, letter from Philadelphia to William Darlington (Darlington 1843: 277–78)<ref>William Baldwin, ''Reliquiae Baldwinianae: Selections from the Correspondence of the Late William Baldwin with Occasional Notes, and a Short Biographical Memoir'', ed. William Darlington (Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1843), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XZCT2UNV view on Zotero].</ref>
:“ I spent several hours yesterday with our worthy old friend BARTRAM; and have made an arrangement with Col. ROBERT CARR, who has the management of the garden, to cultivate my S. American plants. He has now the ''Lantana Bratrami'' [''sic''] (for the first time) in flower in his garden . . . . Mrs. CARR (daughter of the late [[John Bartram|JOHN BARTRAM]],) draws elegantly,—and has engaged to execute as many drawings for me as I want. . . . .
:“I found yesterday . . . a new species of ''Prunella'' . . . .On showing a specimen of it to Mr. BARTRAM, he thought he had seen it,—and considered it a new species. He will search for it, and let me know.”

*[[James Thacher|Thacher, James]], 1828, describing history of Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1828: 1:67)<ref>James Thacher, ''American Medical Biography: Or, Memoirs of Eminent Physicians Who Have Flourished in America'', 2 vols. (Boston: Richardson & Lord and Cottons & Barnard, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/A6TFSIKP view on Zotero].</ref>
:“[[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] was the first native American who conceived and carried into effect the plan of a [[botanic garden|botanical garden]] for the reception and cultivation of indigenous as well as exotic plants, and of travelling for the purpose of accomplishing this plan. He purchased a situation on the banks of Schuylkill, and enriched it with every variety of the most curious and beautiful vegetables, collected in his excursions, which his sons have since continued to cultivate.”

*Committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1830, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Boyd 1929: 428)<ref>James Boyd, ''A History of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1827–1927'' (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1929), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UN9TRH8T view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Mr. Carr’s fruit [[nursery]] has been greatly improved, and will be enlarged next spring to twelve acres—its present size is eight. The trees are arranged in systematical order, and the [[walk]]s well gravelled. The whole is abundantly stocked, from the seed bed to the tree. Here are to be found 113 varieties of apples, 72 of pears, 22 of cherries, 17 of apricots, 45 of plums, 39 of peaches, 5 of nectarines, 3 of almonds, 6 of quinces, 5 of mulberries, 6 of raspberries, 6 of currants, 5 of filberts, 8 of walnuts, 6 of strawberries, and 2 of medlars. The stock, considered according to its growth, has in the first class of ornamental trees, esteemed for their foliage, flowers, or fruit, 76 sorts; of the second class 56 sorts; of the third class 120 sorts; of ornamental evergreens 52 sorts; of vines and creepers, for covering [[wall]]s and [[arbor|arbours]], 35 sorts; of honey suckle 30 sorts, and of roses 80 varieties.”

*Wynne, William, June 1832, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia,” describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery, vicinity of Philadelphia (''Gardener’s Magazine'' 8: 272–73)<ref>William Wynne, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia, with Remarks on the Subject of the Emigration of British Gardens to the United States,” ''Gardener’s Magazine and Register of Rural & Domestic Improvement'' 8, no. 38 (June 1832): 272–76, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CKN7ZG86 view on Zotero.] </ref>
:“I shall begin with Bartram’s Botanic Garden; the precedence being due to it, both for antiquity (it having been established 100 years), and from its containing the best collection of American plants in the United States. There are above 2000 species (natives) contained in a space of six acres, not including the fruit [[nursery]] and vineyard, which comprise eight acres. . . . Indeed, the most remarkable feature in this [[nursery]], and that which renders it superior to most of its class, is the advantage of possessing large specimens of all the rare American trees and [[shrubs]]; which are not only highly ornamental, but likewise very valuable, from the great quantities of seed they afford for exportation to London, Paris, Petersburgh, Calcutta, and several other parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This garden is the regular resort of the learned and scientific gentlemen of Philadelphia.”

*[[C. M. (Charles Mason) Hovery|Hovey, C. M. (Charles Mason)]], June 1837, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (''Magazine of Horticulture'' 3: 210)<ref>C. M. Hovey, “Notes on some of the Nurseries and Private Gardens in the neighborhood of New York and Philadelphia, visited in the early part of the month of March, 1837,” ''Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries and Improvements in Rural Affairs'' 3, no. 6 (June 1837): 201–13, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/32HMSJRW view on Zotero].</ref>
:“It is with deep regret that we learn that one of the principal rail roads in the State of Pennsylvania, now constructing, will run to the city directly through the [[nursery]] of Col. Carr, and will cut up the grounds in such a manner as to entirely destroy their beauty; but what is a source of yet deeper regret, is the destruction which it will cause of some of the old and still beautiful specimens of trees which ornament the place; several of these, which have long served as a memento of the zealous labors of the elder [[John Bartram|Bartram]] and [[William Bartram|his sons]], will fall by the woodman’s axe. It is a melancholy scene to the American horticulturist to see the few beautiful private residences and [[nursery|nurseries]] of which our country can boast, one by one, purchased by individuals or companies, to be cut up into building lots, or otherwise destroyed, by rail roads running directly through them. [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack’s]], at [[Hyde Park]], N.Y., the best specimens of gardening in this country, was the first; [[Henry Pratt|Mr. Pratt’s]], [[Lemon Hill|Laurel [Lemon] Hill]], but little inferior in its style, next; and now one of the oldest [[nursery|nurseries]], bounded by one of the best naturalists this country ever produced, is to follow, though not the same, a similar fate.”

[[File:2074.jpg|thumb|252.px|Fig. 2, Louise Françoise Jacquinot after Pancrace Bessa, “Bartram’s Oak (''Quercus heterophilla''),” 1841, plate 18 from François André Michaux, ''North American Sylva'' (1841).]]
*[[François André Michaux|Michaux, François André]], 1841, describing the Bartram Oak at the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1841: 1:37)<ref>François André Michaux, ''The North American Sylva; Or, A Description of the Forest Trees of the United States, Canada, and North America . . .'', trans. Augustus L. Hillhouse, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1841), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/BTCGCMGG view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Every botanist who has visited different regions of the globe must have remarked certain species of vegetables which are so little multiplied that they seem likely at no distant period to disappear from the earth. To this class belongs the Bartram Oak. Several English and American naturalists who, like my father and myself, have spent years in exploring the United States, and who have obligingly communicated to us the result of their observations, have like us, found no traces of this species except a single stock in a field belonging to [[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]], on the banks of the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], 4 miles from Philadelphia . . . . [Fig. 2]<p></p>
:“Several young plants, which I received from [[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] himself, have been placed in our public gardens to insure the preservation of the species.”

*Darlington, William, 1849, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1849: 18–19)<ref name="Darlington_1849"></ref>
:“He [John Bartram] was, perhaps, the first Anglo-American who conceived the idea of establishing a [[botanic garden|BOTANIC GARDEN]] for the reception and cultivation of the various vegetables, natives of the country, as well as exotics, and of travelling for the discovery and acquisition of them.<p></p>
:“*The BARTRAM BOTANIC GARDEN, (established in or about the year 1730,) is most eligibly and beautifully situated, on the right bank of the river Schuylkill, a short distance below the city of Philadelphia. Being the oldest establishment of the kind in this western world, and exceedingly interesting, from its history and associations,—one might almost hope, even in this utilitarian age, that, if no motive more commendable could avail, a feeling of state or city pride, would be sufficient to ensure its preservation, in its original character, and for the sake of its original objects. But, alas! there seems to be too much reason to apprehend that it will scarcely survive the immediate family of its noble-hearted founder,—and that even the present generation may live to see the accumulated treasures of a century laid waste—with all the once gay [[parterre]]s and lovely [[border]]s converted into lumberyards and coal-landings.”

*[[J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon|Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius)]], 1850, describing [[nursery|nurseries]] in America (1850: 339)<ref>J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening'', new ed., corr. and improved (London: Longman et al., 1850), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/W8EQFZUG view on Zotero].</ref>
:“884. ''At and near Philadelphia'' are Bartram’s botanic garden, now the nursery of Colonel Carr, and accurately described by his foreman, Mr. Wynne (''Gard. Mag''., vol. viii. p. 272.); Messrs. Landreth and Co.’s [[nursery]]; and that of Messrs. Hibbert and Buist; besides some commercial gardens in which, to a small [[nursery]] with [[greenhouse|green]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]], are added the appendages of a tavern. These tavern gardens, Mr. Wynne informs us, are the resort of many of the citizens of Philadelphia, more especially the gardens of M. Arran, and M. d’Arras; the first having a very good museum, and the latter a beautiful collection of large orange and lemon trees.”

<hr>

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:0056.jpg| John or William Bartram, “A Draught of John Bartram’s House and Garden as it appears from the River,” 1758.

Image:2074.jpg|Louise Françoise Jacquinot after Pancrace Bessa, “Bartram’s Oak (''Quercus heterophilla''),” 1841, plate 18 from François André Michaux, ''North American Sylva'' (1841).
</gallery>

<hr>

==Map==
{{#display_map:
39.930556, -75.2125
| service=google
| enablefullscreen=yes
}}

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[http://tclf.org/landscapes/bartrams-garden The Cultural Landscape Foundation]

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category: Places]]

Hannah Callender Sansom

2019-09-05T16:29:31Z

T-omalley: /* History */

'''Hannah Callender Sansom''' (November 16, 1737–March 9, 1801) was a Quaker woman from Philadelphia, who, between 1758 and 1788, kept a diary in which she describes country [[seat]]s in Pennsylvania and New York as well as her family’s estates, Richmond Seat and Parlaville.

==History==
[[File:2108_detail.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, Nicholas Scull and George Heap, ''A Map of Philadelphia and Parts Adjacent'' [detail], in Sylvanus Urban, ed. ''Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle'' 23 (1753), p. 373.]]
For more than thirty years, between January 1758 and November 1788, Hannah Callender Sansom kept a diary in which she recorded, among many topics, descriptions of the country seats she visited, primarily in the vicinity of Philadelphia and New York. Sansom, born in 1737, was the only child of William Callender Jr. (1703–1763) and Katharine Smith (1711–1789), devout Quakers and active members of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting.<ref>William Callender Jr., emigrated from Barbados to America, arriving to the Delaware Valley in 1727. He married Katharine Smith of Burlington, New Jersey, in 1731, and they moved to Philadelphia in 1733. William Callender was a prosperous merchant, who earned his wealth in the West Indian sugar trade and through Philadelphia real estate investments. He also helped found the Library Company of Philadelphia and was involved in politics, serving in the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1753–56. Both William and Katharine with active members of Philadelphia’s Quaker community and played prominent roles in the Monthly Meetings. Hannah was their only child to survive infancy. George Vaux, “Extracts from the Diary of Hannah Callender,” ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 12, no. 4 (January 1889): 432, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/STWXKSK3 view on Zotero]; Hannah Callender Sansom, ''The Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom: Sense and Sensibility in the Age of the American Revolution'', ed. Susan E. Klepp and Karin Wulf (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 16–19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> The family maintained a home on Front Street in Philadelphia as well as a [[plantation]], Richmond [[Seat]], which William established in Point-No-Point, about four miles north of Philadelphia on the banks of the Delaware River [Fig. 1].<ref>Sansom 2010, 17. By July 1760 William Callender had sold his Front Street house, and Richmond Seat became the family’s primary residence. Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entry for July 14, 1760, in Sansom 2010, 138, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> Richmond Seat was a working [[plantation]] that produced “good English hay” for sale and, by 1752, boasted thirty-five acres of meadow with “good English grass,” an eight-acre [[orchard]] for the cultivation of various fruits, a two-acre garden, and “a small well-built brick house, with a boarded kitchen.”<ref>“Advertisements,” ''Pennsylvania Gazette'' (February 16, 1744): 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKWJBRAA view on Zotero]; “To Be SOLD,” ''Pennsylvania Gazette'' (February 25, 1752): 2, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UIJSEJFE view on Zotero].</ref> With its agricultural focus and simple architecture, Richmond Seat fit well within Quaker ideals of plainness and frugality as well as the belief held by many Quakers during this period that farming in the country facilitated spiritual growth.<ref>Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean write that for Quaker men of William Callender’s generation, retreating to the countryside “was religious and involved . . . a closer contact with God through living in the country and farming.” Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean, ''The Philadelphia Country House: Architecture and Landscape in Colonial Philadelphia'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 257, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5BEHWQK6 view on Zotero].</ref>

As a member of a wealthy family, Sansom was well educated and, according to the scholars Susan E. Klepp and Karin Wulf, had access to the collections of the Library Company of Philadelphia throughout her life. Both her father and her husband, Samuel Sansom Jr. (1738/39–1824), were members of the institution, which included various architectural, gardening, and horticultural manuals in its collections.<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom attended Anthony Benezet’s Society of Friends’ girls’ school in Philadelphia and also studied under Maria Jeanne Reynier, a French school mistress. In 1762 she married Samuel Sansom Jr., a merchant, real estate investor, and fellow Quaker from Philadelphia. Beginning in 1776, Samuel Sansom served as treasurer of the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. The couple had five children: William (b. 1763), Sarah (b. 1764), Joseph (b. 1767), Catherine (b. 1769), and Samuel (b. 1773). Catherine died of smallpox as an infant, but all of the other Sansom children survived to adulthood. Sansom 2010, 12, 14, and 21, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero]. The Library Company of Philadelphia’s 1770 and 1775 catalogues, for example, include titles such as William Halfpenny, ''Useful Architecture'' (London, 1752); ''The Builder’s Dictionary'' (London, 1734); James Lee, ''An Introduction to Botany'' (London, 1760); Thomas Hitt, ''A Treatise of Fruit Trees'', 2nd ed. (London, 1757); Philip Miller, ''Gardener’s and Florist’s Dictionary'' (London, 1724); Philip Miller, ''The Gardener’s Kalendar'', 12th ed. (London, 1760); John Hill, ''Eden: or, A Compleat Body of Gardening'' (London, 1757); ''(William) Salmon’s English Herbal'' (London, 1710); and James Wheeler, ''Botanist’s and Gardener’s Dictionary'' (London, 1765), among many others. Several of the library’s early printed catalogues are available online, http://librarycompany.org/about/history.htm.</ref> As part of their education, upper-class women in 18th-century Philadelphia were encouraged to read widely and to “enhance and display” the knowledge they acquired from books “through fieldwork and critical observation of the world around them.”<ref>Sarah E. Fatherly, “‘The Sweet Recourse of Reason’: Elite Women’s Education in Colonial Philadelphia,” ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 128, no. 3 (July 2004): 230, 232, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DDXUGMRR view on Zotero].</ref> Visiting country houses provided “exclusive . . . educational opportunities” for Sansom and her companions, who were often permitted to explore the estates’ art collections, architecture, and gardens.<ref>Fatherly 2004, 251, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DDXUGMRR view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="BushHill_cite"></span>After a September 1758 visit to James Hamilton’s Bush Hill, for example, Sansom wrote about the “fine house and gardens, with Statues, and fine paintings,” and commented in particular upon works depicting St. Ignatius and the mythological story of the rape of Proserpine ([[#BushHill|view text]]). Hamilton had amassed one of the few notable fine art collections in the Philadelphia area during this period, and, because he often welcomed visitors, his estate served as “a kind of art museum for Philadelphia’s gentry.”<ref>Reinberger and McLean 2015, 240, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5BEHWQK6 view on Zotero].</ref>

From May to June 1759, twenty-one-year-old Hannah Callender Sansom traveled to New York City and Long Island. <span id="Bayards_cite"></span> In her diary, she noted the “fine [[walk]] of locas [''sic''] trees” leading to the house at “Boyard’s [''sic''] Country [[seat]]” near New York, with “a beautiful [[wood]] off one side, and a Garden for both use and ornament on the other side.” Despite such praise, Sansom championed Philadelphia’s gardens above New York’s, claiming that New York had “no gardens . . . that come up to ours of [P]hiladelphia” ([[#Bayards|view text]]). <span id="RichmondSeat_cite"></span> After returning to Philadelphia, Sansom recorded the agricultural and ornamental uses of the land at Richmond [[Seat]], observing that half of the sixty-acre property was covered in “a fine [[Woods]],” an [[orchard]], flower and [[kitchen garden]]s, and the house and barn, while the remaining thirty acres was given over to [[meadow]] ([[#RichmondSeat|view text]]).

[[Image:0301.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, William Russell Birch, “View from Belmont Pennsyl.<sup>a</sup> the Seat of Judge Peters,” in ''The Country Seats of the United States'' (1808), pl. 16.]]
Hannah Callender Sansom’s diary also contains descriptions of various country houses situated along the banks of the [[Schuylkill River]]. <span id="Francis_cite"></span> In June 1762 she visited the estate of the late Tench Francis Sr. (d. 1758), and remarked upon the “fine [[prospect]]” available behind the house, from which she could see several neighboring estates, including [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], Dr. William Smith’s Octagon, and Baynton’s House, as well as “a genteel garden, with serpentine [[walk]]s and low [[hedge]]s.” From the garden, Sansom observed, one could “descend by [slopes] to a [[Lawn]]” with a [[summer house]] and then descend again “to the edge of the hill which Terminates by a [[fence|fen[c]e]], for security” ([[#Francis|view text]]). <span id="Belmont1_cite"></span> After a visit to [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], the country [[seat]] of [[William Peters]], Sansom described in great detail various features of the estate’s landscape design ([[#Belmont1|view text]]) [Fig. 2]. [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]] long remained one of Sansom's favorite sites. <span id="Belmont2_cite"></span> Twenty-three years after she first described the estate, she once again recorded her impression of [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], which was now under the purview of [[Richard Peters]], lauding it as “the highest and finist [''sic''] situation I know, its gardens and [[walk]]s are in the King William taste, but are very pleasant” ([[#Belmont2|view text]]).

[[File:2122 detail.png|thumb|right|Fig. 3, John Hills (surveyor), William Kneass (engraver), Joseph B. Varnum (publisher), ''A Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its Environs'' [detail], 1808.]]
Hannah and her husband moved their primary residence from Philadelphia to Parlaville, a suburban retreat located about two and a half miles north of the city on the banks of the [[Schuylkill River]], in July 1782 [Fig. 3].<ref>In the diary entry for July 4, 1785, Sansom notes that “this day three years we come to live at Parlaville.” Sansom 2010, 298, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> As Klepp and Wulf have observed, Parlaville, in contrast to Richmond [[Seat]], “was small, private, and quite deliberately divorced from commercial concerns.”<ref>Sansom 2010, 167, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> This contrast between Richmond [[Seat]] as a working [[plantation]] and Parlaville as a suburban retreat mirrors a larger generational shift in Quaker attitudes toward retiring to the countryside. According to Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean, as the religious motivation for working the land waned, country houses were typically located closer to the city and primarily served as a “refuge . . . to protect and improve one’s physical and mental health, though with less emphasis on one’s spiritual health than in earlier days.”<ref>Reinberger and McLean 2015, 333, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5BEHWQK6 view on Zotero].</ref>

Joseph Francis was hired to plan the garden at Parlaville, and Hannah Callender Sansom evidently relished tending it, writing on one occasion that she “rose blythly to sow my seeds” and, in a separate entry, proclaiming gardening “the primitive occupation of man, <u>designed</u> by the almighty for a happy life!”<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entries for December 10, 1784, and April 14 and 11, 1785, in Sansom 2010, 282, 291, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> During the spring of 1785, Sansom obtained a “variety of Trees, flowers, and plants” for Parlaville, including both native and non-native species. On April 24, for example, Sansom noted that her husband and son Samuel “went nine miles up [the] [[Schuylkill River|Schuikill]] for white pine trees.” Four days later she procured “two Tuby Rose [tuberose] roots” that an acquaintance had brought from Barbados.<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entries for April 12, 24, and 28, 1785, in Sansom 2010, 291, 292, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> Hannah Callender Sansom and Samuel Sansom moved back to Philadelphia in July 1786, although they continued to maintain a secondary residence at Parlaville.<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entry for January 1, 1788, in Sansom 2010, 326, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref>

Hannah Callender Sansom’s diary remained in the possession of her family after her death in 1801. In 1889, George Vaux, a descendant of Sansom, published a selection of entries written by Sansom between 1758 and 1762. The diary, which is now housed in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, was transcribed and published in full in 2010.<ref>Vaux 1889, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/STWXKSK3 view on Zotero]; Sansom 2010, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref>

—''Lacey Baradel''

<hr>

==Texts==
*<div id="BushHill"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, September 9, 1758, diary entry describing Bush Hill, estate of James Hamilton, near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 67)<ref name="Sansom_2010">Sansom 2010, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> [[#BushHill_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . concluded upon a party to bush hill . . . in the afternoon, a fine house and gardens, with [[Statue]]s, and fine paintings, particularly a picture of Saint Ignatius at his devotions, exceedingly well drawn, and the rape of Proserpine, where the grim god of hell, seems to exult with horrid joy, over his prey, who turns from him with a dread and loathing such as fully pictures, the horrors of a loathed embrace.”

*<div id="Bayards"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 11, 1759, diary entry describing Bayard’s country [[seat]], near New York, NY (2010: 114)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Bayards_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . took a walk to ---- Boyard’s Country [[seat]], who was so complaisent as to ask us in his garden. the front of the house, faces the great road, about a quarter of a mile distance, a fine [[walk]] of locas trees now in full blossom perfumes the air, a beautiful wood off one side, and a Garden for both use and ornament on the other side from which you see the City at a great distance. good out houses at the back part. they have no gardens in or about New York that come up to ours of philadelphia”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 23, 1759, diary entry describing the vicinity of New York, NY (2010: 117)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . a good many pretty Country [[seat]]s, In particular Murreys, a fine brick house, and the whole [[plantation]] in good order, we rode under the finest row of Button Wood I ever see . . .”

*<div id="RichmondSeat"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, August 1, 1759, diary entry describing Richmond [[Seat]], summer retreat of William Callender Jr. on the Delaware River in Point-No-Point near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 123)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#RichmondSeat_cite|back up to History]]
:“Morn: 8O'Clock Daddy and I went to [[plantation|Plantation]] . . . the place looks beautiful. the plat belonging to Daddy is 60 acres square: 30 of upland, 30 of [[meadow]], which runs along the side of the river Delawar, half the uplands is a fine [[wood|Woods]], the other [[Orchard]] and Gardens, a little house in the midst of the Gardens, interspersed with fruit trees. the main Garden lies along the [[meadow]], by 3 descents of Grass steps, you are led to the bottom, in a [[walk]] length way of the Garden, on one Side a fine cut [[hedge]] incloses from the [[meadow]], the other, a high Green bank shaded with Spruce, the [[meadow|meadows]] and river lying open to the eye, looking to the house, covered with trees, honey scycle vines on the [[fence|fences]], low [[hedge|hedges]] to part the flower and kitchen Garden, a fine barn. Just at the side of the [[Wood]], the trees a small space round it cleared from brush underneath, the whole a little romantic rural scene.”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, August 30, 1761, diary entry describing the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, PA (2010: 156)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . Sister Garrison with good humour gave us girls leave, to step cross a field to a little Island belonging to the Single Bretheren, on it is a neat [[Summer house]], with seats of turf, and button wood Trees round it.”

*<div id="Francis"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 28, 1762, diary entry describing the estate of the late Tench Francis Sr. near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 180–81)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Francis_cite|back up to History]]
:“..walked agreeably down to [[Schuylkill River|Skylkill]] along its banks adorned with Native beauty, interspersed by little dwelling houses at the feet of hills covered by trees, that you seem to look for enchantment they appear so suddenly before your eyes, on the entrance you find nothing but mere mortality, a spinning wheel, an earthen cup, a broken dish, a calabash and wooden platter: ascending a high Hill into the road by Robin Hood dell went to the Widow Frances’s place, she was there and behaved kindly, the House stands fine and high, the back is adorned by a fine [[prospect]], [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Peter’s House]], Smiths Octagon, Bayntons House &c and a genteel garden, with serpentine [[walk|walks]] and low [[hedge]]s, at the foot of the garden you desend by sclopes to a [[Lawn]]. in the middle stands a [[summer House]], Honey Scykle &c, then you desend by Sclopes to the edge of the hill which Terminates by a [[fence|fense]], for security, being high & almost perpendicular except the craggs of rocks, and shrubs of trees, that diversify the Scene.”

*<div id="Belmont1"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 30, 1762, diary entry describing [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], estate of [[William Peters]], near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 182–83)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Belmont1_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . went to [[William Peters| Will: Peters]]’s house, having some small aquaintance with his wife who was at home with her Daughter Polly. they received us kindly in one wing of the House, after a while we passed thro' a covered Passage to the large hall, well furnished, the top adorned with instruments of musick, coat of arms, crest, and other ornaments in Stucco, its sides by paintings and [[Statue]]s in Bronze. from the Front of this hall you have a [[prospect]] bounded by the Jerseys, like a blueridge, and the Horison, a broad [[walk]] of english Cherre trys leads down to the river, the doors of the hous opening opposite admitt a [[prospect]] [of] the length of the garden thro' a broad gravel [[walk]], to a large hansome [[Summerhouse|summer house]] in a [[green|grean]], from these Windows down a [[vista|Wisto]] terminated by an [[Obelisk]], on the right you enter a [[labyrinth|Labarynth]] of [[hedge]] and low ceder with spruce, in the middle stands a [[Statue]] of Apollo, note: in the garden are the [[Statue]]s of Dianna, Fame & Mercury, with [[urn]]s. we left the garden for a [[wood]] cut into [[vista|Visto’s]], in the midst a [[Chinese Taste|chinese]] [[temple]], for a [[Summerhouse|summer house]], one [[avenue]] gives a fine [[prospect]] of the City, with a Spy glass you discern the houses distinct, Hospital, & another looks to the [[obelisk|Oblisk]].”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, July 27, 1768, diary entry describing Edgely, estate of Joshua Howell, near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 232–33)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . went to Edgeley. Joshua Howel has a fine Iregular Garden there, walked down to [[Schuylkill River|Shoolkill]], after dinner . . . walked to the [[Summer house|Summer House,]] in view of [[Schuylkill River|Skylkill]] when Benny [Shoemaker] Played on the flute.”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, May 14, 1785, diary entry describing Bush Hill, estate of James Hamilton, near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 293)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . to Hambleton’s Bush hill [estate,] walked over that good house, viewed the fine stucco work, and delightful [[prospect|prospects]] round. . .”

*<div id="Belmont2"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 20, 1785, diary entry describing [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], estate of [[Richard Peters]], near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 296)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Belmont2_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . crossed Brittains bridge, to John Penns elegant Villa, passed a Couple of delightfull hours, mounted our chaise and rode a long the [[Schuylkill River|Schuilkill]] to [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Peters place]] the highest and finist situation I know, its gardens and walks are in the King William taste, but are very pleasant, We had a very polite reception from [[Richard Peters|Rich: Peters]], his Wife, and mother, took to our chaise and by his direction, thro a pleasent rode to Riters ferry, crossed and continued our route along [[Schuylkill River|Schuilkill]], to the falls tavern. . . .”

<hr>

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="4">

File:2108.jpg|Nicholas Scull and George Heap, ''A Map of Philadelphia and Parts Adjacent'', in Sylvanus Urban, ed. ''Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle'' 23 (1753): p. 373.

Image:0301.jpg|William Russell Birch, “View from Belmont Pennsyl.<sup>a</sup> the Seat of Judge Peters,” in ''The Country Seats of the United States'' (1808), pl. 16.

File:2122.jpg|John Hills (surveyor), William Kneass (engraver), Joseph B. Varnum (publisher), ''A Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its Environs'', 1808.
</gallery>

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2009063573 Library of Congress Authority File]

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category:People|S]]

Hannah Callender Sansom

2019-09-05T16:28:35Z

T-omalley: /* History */

'''Hannah Callender Sansom''' (November 16, 1737–March 9, 1801) was a Quaker woman from Philadelphia, who, between 1758 and 1788, kept a diary in which she describes country [[seat]]s in Pennsylvania and New York as well as her family’s estates, Richmond Seat and Parlaville.

==History==
[[File:2108_detail.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, Nicholas Scull and George Heap, ''A Map of Philadelphia and Parts Adjacent'' [detail], in Sylvanus Urban, ed. ''Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle'' 23 (1753), p. 373.]]
For more than thirty years, between January 1758 and November 1788, Hannah Callender Sansom kept a diary in which she recorded, among many topics, descriptions of the country seats she visited, primarily in the vicinity of Philadelphia and New York. Sansom, born in 1737, was the only child of William Callender Jr. (1703–1763) and Katharine Smith (1711–1789), devout Quakers and active members of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting.<ref>William Callender Jr., emigrated from Barbados to America, arriving to the Delaware Valley in 1727. He married Katharine Smith of Burlington, New Jersey, in 1731, and they moved to Philadelphia in 1733. William Callender was a prosperous merchant, who earned his wealth in the West Indian sugar trade and through Philadelphia real estate investments. He also helped found the Library Company of Philadelphia and was involved in politics, serving in the Pennsylvania Assembly from 1753–56. Both William and Katharine with active members of Philadelphia’s Quaker community and played prominent roles in the Monthly Meetings. Hannah was their only child to survive infancy. George Vaux, “Extracts from the Diary of Hannah Callender,” ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 12, no. 4 (January 1889): 432, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/STWXKSK3 view on Zotero]; Hannah Callender Sansom, ''The Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom: Sense and Sensibility in the Age of the American Revolution'', ed. Susan E. Klepp and Karin Wulf (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 16–19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> The family maintained a home on Front Street in Philadelphia as well as a [[plantation]], Richmond [[Seat]], which William established in Point-No-Point, about four miles north of Philadelphia on the banks of the Delaware River [Fig. 1].<ref>Sansom 2010, 17. By July 1760 William Callender had sold his Front Street house, and Richmond Seat became the family’s primary residence. Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entry for July 14, 1760, in Sansom 2010, 138, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> Richmond Seat was a working [[plantation]] that produced “good English hay” for sale and, by 1752, boasted thirty-five acres of meadow with “good English grass,” an eight-acre [[orchard]] for the cultivation of various fruits, a two-acre garden, and “a small well-built brick house, with a boarded kitchen.”<ref>“Advertisements,” ''Pennsylvania Gazette'' (February 16, 1744): 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKWJBRAA view on Zotero]; “To Be SOLD,” ''Pennsylvania Gazette'' (February 25, 1752): 2, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UIJSEJFE view on Zotero].</ref> With its agricultural focus and simple architecture, Richmond [[Seat]] fit well within Quaker ideals of plainness and frugality as well as the belief held by many Quakers during this period that farming in the country facilitated spiritual growth.<ref>Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean write that for Quaker men of William Callender’s generation, retreating to the countryside “was religious and involved . . . a closer contact with God through living in the country and farming.” Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean, ''The Philadelphia Country House: Architecture and Landscape in Colonial Philadelphia'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 257, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5BEHWQK6 view on Zotero].</ref>

As a member of a wealthy family, Sansom was well educated and, according to the scholars Susan E. Klepp and Karin Wulf, had access to the collections of the Library Company of Philadelphia throughout her life. Both her father and her husband, Samuel Sansom Jr. (1738/39–1824), were members of the institution, which included various architectural, gardening, and horticultural manuals in its collections.<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom attended Anthony Benezet’s Society of Friends’ girls’ school in Philadelphia and also studied under Maria Jeanne Reynier, a French school mistress. In 1762 she married Samuel Sansom Jr., a merchant, real estate investor, and fellow Quaker from Philadelphia. Beginning in 1776, Samuel Sansom served as treasurer of the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. The couple had five children: William (b. 1763), Sarah (b. 1764), Joseph (b. 1767), Catherine (b. 1769), and Samuel (b. 1773). Catherine died of smallpox as an infant, but all of the other Sansom children survived to adulthood. Sansom 2010, 12, 14, and 21, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero]. The Library Company of Philadelphia’s 1770 and 1775 catalogues, for example, include titles such as William Halfpenny, ''Useful Architecture'' (London, 1752); ''The Builder’s Dictionary'' (London, 1734); James Lee, ''An Introduction to Botany'' (London, 1760); Thomas Hitt, ''A Treatise of Fruit Trees'', 2nd ed. (London, 1757); Philip Miller, ''Gardener’s and Florist’s Dictionary'' (London, 1724); Philip Miller, ''The Gardener’s Kalendar'', 12th ed. (London, 1760); John Hill, ''Eden: or, A Compleat Body of Gardening'' (London, 1757); ''(William) Salmon’s English Herbal'' (London, 1710); and James Wheeler, ''Botanist’s and Gardener’s Dictionary'' (London, 1765), among many others. Several of the library’s early printed catalogues are available online, http://librarycompany.org/about/history.htm.</ref> As part of their education, upper-class women in 18th-century Philadelphia were encouraged to read widely and to “enhance and display” the knowledge they acquired from books “through fieldwork and critical observation of the world around them.”<ref>Sarah E. Fatherly, “‘The Sweet Recourse of Reason’: Elite Women’s Education in Colonial Philadelphia,” ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 128, no. 3 (July 2004): 230, 232, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DDXUGMRR view on Zotero].</ref> Visiting country houses provided “exclusive . . . educational opportunities” for Sansom and her companions, who were often permitted to explore the estates’ art collections, architecture, and gardens.<ref>Fatherly 2004, 251, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DDXUGMRR view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="BushHill_cite"></span>After a September 1758 visit to James Hamilton’s Bush Hill, for example, Sansom wrote about the “fine house and gardens, with Statues, and fine paintings,” and commented in particular upon works depicting St. Ignatius and the mythological story of the rape of Proserpine ([[#BushHill|view text]]). Hamilton had amassed one of the few notable fine art collections in the Philadelphia area during this period, and, because he often welcomed visitors, his estate served as “a kind of art museum for Philadelphia’s gentry.”<ref>Reinberger and McLean 2015, 240, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5BEHWQK6 view on Zotero].</ref>

From May to June 1759, twenty-one-year-old Hannah Callender Sansom traveled to New York City and Long Island. <span id="Bayards_cite"></span> In her diary, she noted the “fine [[walk]] of locas [''sic''] trees” leading to the house at “Boyard’s [''sic''] Country [[seat]]” near New York, with “a beautiful [[wood]] off one side, and a Garden for both use and ornament on the other side.” Despite such praise, Sansom championed Philadelphia’s gardens above New York’s, claiming that New York had “no gardens . . . that come up to ours of [P]hiladelphia” ([[#Bayards|view text]]). <span id="RichmondSeat_cite"></span> After returning to Philadelphia, Sansom recorded the agricultural and ornamental uses of the land at Richmond [[Seat]], observing that half of the sixty-acre property was covered in “a fine [[Woods]],” an [[orchard]], flower and [[kitchen garden]]s, and the house and barn, while the remaining thirty acres was given over to [[meadow]] ([[#RichmondSeat|view text]]).

[[Image:0301.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, William Russell Birch, “View from Belmont Pennsyl.<sup>a</sup> the Seat of Judge Peters,” in ''The Country Seats of the United States'' (1808), pl. 16.]]
Hannah Callender Sansom’s diary also contains descriptions of various country houses situated along the banks of the [[Schuylkill River]]. <span id="Francis_cite"></span> In June 1762 she visited the estate of the late Tench Francis Sr. (d. 1758), and remarked upon the “fine [[prospect]]” available behind the house, from which she could see several neighboring estates, including [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], Dr. William Smith’s Octagon, and Baynton’s House, as well as “a genteel garden, with serpentine [[walk]]s and low [[hedge]]s.” From the garden, Sansom observed, one could “descend by [slopes] to a [[Lawn]]” with a [[summer house]] and then descend again “to the edge of the hill which Terminates by a [[fence|fen[c]e]], for security” ([[#Francis|view text]]). <span id="Belmont1_cite"></span> After a visit to [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], the country [[seat]] of [[William Peters]], Sansom described in great detail various features of the estate’s landscape design ([[#Belmont1|view text]]) [Fig. 2]. [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]] long remained one of Sansom's favorite sites. <span id="Belmont2_cite"></span> Twenty-three years after she first described the estate, she once again recorded her impression of [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], which was now under the purview of [[Richard Peters]], lauding it as “the highest and finist [''sic''] situation I know, its gardens and [[walk]]s are in the King William taste, but are very pleasant” ([[#Belmont2|view text]]).

[[File:2122 detail.png|thumb|right|Fig. 3, John Hills (surveyor), William Kneass (engraver), Joseph B. Varnum (publisher), ''A Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its Environs'' [detail], 1808.]]
Hannah and her husband moved their primary residence from Philadelphia to Parlaville, a suburban retreat located about two and a half miles north of the city on the banks of the [[Schuylkill River]], in July 1782 [Fig. 3].<ref>In the diary entry for July 4, 1785, Sansom notes that “this day three years we come to live at Parlaville.” Sansom 2010, 298, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> As Klepp and Wulf have observed, Parlaville, in contrast to Richmond [[Seat]], “was small, private, and quite deliberately divorced from commercial concerns.”<ref>Sansom 2010, 167, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> This contrast between Richmond [[Seat]] as a working [[plantation]] and Parlaville as a suburban retreat mirrors a larger generational shift in Quaker attitudes toward retiring to the countryside. According to Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean, as the religious motivation for working the land waned, country houses were typically located closer to the city and primarily served as a “refuge . . . to protect and improve one’s physical and mental health, though with less emphasis on one’s spiritual health than in earlier days.”<ref>Reinberger and McLean 2015, 333, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5BEHWQK6 view on Zotero].</ref>

Joseph Francis was hired to plan the garden at Parlaville, and Hannah Callender Sansom evidently relished tending it, writing on one occasion that she “rose blythly to sow my seeds” and, in a separate entry, proclaiming gardening “the primitive occupation of man, <u>designed</u> by the almighty for a happy life!”<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entries for December 10, 1784, and April 14 and 11, 1785, in Sansom 2010, 282, 291, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> During the spring of 1785, Sansom obtained a “variety of Trees, flowers, and plants” for Parlaville, including both native and non-native species. On April 24, for example, Sansom noted that her husband and son Samuel “went nine miles up [the] [[Schuylkill River|Schuikill]] for white pine trees.” Four days later she procured “two Tuby Rose [tuberose] roots” that an acquaintance had brought from Barbados.<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entries for April 12, 24, and 28, 1785, in Sansom 2010, 291, 292, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> Hannah Callender Sansom and Samuel Sansom moved back to Philadelphia in July 1786, although they continued to maintain a secondary residence at Parlaville.<ref>Hannah Callender Sansom, diary entry for January 1, 1788, in Sansom 2010, 326, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref>

Hannah Callender Sansom’s diary remained in the possession of her family after her death in 1801. In 1889, George Vaux, a descendant of Sansom, published a selection of entries written by Sansom between 1758 and 1762. The diary, which is now housed in the collection of the American Philosophical Society, was transcribed and published in full in 2010.<ref>Vaux 1889, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/STWXKSK3 view on Zotero]; Sansom 2010, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref>

—''Lacey Baradel''

<hr>

==Texts==
*<div id="BushHill"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, September 9, 1758, diary entry describing Bush Hill, estate of James Hamilton, near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 67)<ref name="Sansom_2010">Sansom 2010, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/33F7ZBKJ view on Zotero].</ref> [[#BushHill_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . concluded upon a party to bush hill . . . in the afternoon, a fine house and gardens, with [[Statue]]s, and fine paintings, particularly a picture of Saint Ignatius at his devotions, exceedingly well drawn, and the rape of Proserpine, where the grim god of hell, seems to exult with horrid joy, over his prey, who turns from him with a dread and loathing such as fully pictures, the horrors of a loathed embrace.”

*<div id="Bayards"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 11, 1759, diary entry describing Bayard’s country [[seat]], near New York, NY (2010: 114)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Bayards_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . took a walk to ---- Boyard’s Country [[seat]], who was so complaisent as to ask us in his garden. the front of the house, faces the great road, about a quarter of a mile distance, a fine [[walk]] of locas trees now in full blossom perfumes the air, a beautiful wood off one side, and a Garden for both use and ornament on the other side from which you see the City at a great distance. good out houses at the back part. they have no gardens in or about New York that come up to ours of philadelphia”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 23, 1759, diary entry describing the vicinity of New York, NY (2010: 117)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . a good many pretty Country [[seat]]s, In particular Murreys, a fine brick house, and the whole [[plantation]] in good order, we rode under the finest row of Button Wood I ever see . . .”

*<div id="RichmondSeat"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, August 1, 1759, diary entry describing Richmond [[Seat]], summer retreat of William Callender Jr. on the Delaware River in Point-No-Point near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 123)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#RichmondSeat_cite|back up to History]]
:“Morn: 8O'Clock Daddy and I went to [[plantation|Plantation]] . . . the place looks beautiful. the plat belonging to Daddy is 60 acres square: 30 of upland, 30 of [[meadow]], which runs along the side of the river Delawar, half the uplands is a fine [[wood|Woods]], the other [[Orchard]] and Gardens, a little house in the midst of the Gardens, interspersed with fruit trees. the main Garden lies along the [[meadow]], by 3 descents of Grass steps, you are led to the bottom, in a [[walk]] length way of the Garden, on one Side a fine cut [[hedge]] incloses from the [[meadow]], the other, a high Green bank shaded with Spruce, the [[meadow|meadows]] and river lying open to the eye, looking to the house, covered with trees, honey scycle vines on the [[fence|fences]], low [[hedge|hedges]] to part the flower and kitchen Garden, a fine barn. Just at the side of the [[Wood]], the trees a small space round it cleared from brush underneath, the whole a little romantic rural scene.”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, August 30, 1761, diary entry describing the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, PA (2010: 156)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . Sister Garrison with good humour gave us girls leave, to step cross a field to a little Island belonging to the Single Bretheren, on it is a neat [[Summer house]], with seats of turf, and button wood Trees round it.”

*<div id="Francis"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 28, 1762, diary entry describing the estate of the late Tench Francis Sr. near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 180–81)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Francis_cite|back up to History]]
:“..walked agreeably down to [[Schuylkill River|Skylkill]] along its banks adorned with Native beauty, interspersed by little dwelling houses at the feet of hills covered by trees, that you seem to look for enchantment they appear so suddenly before your eyes, on the entrance you find nothing but mere mortality, a spinning wheel, an earthen cup, a broken dish, a calabash and wooden platter: ascending a high Hill into the road by Robin Hood dell went to the Widow Frances’s place, she was there and behaved kindly, the House stands fine and high, the back is adorned by a fine [[prospect]], [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Peter’s House]], Smiths Octagon, Bayntons House &c and a genteel garden, with serpentine [[walk|walks]] and low [[hedge]]s, at the foot of the garden you desend by sclopes to a [[Lawn]]. in the middle stands a [[summer House]], Honey Scykle &c, then you desend by Sclopes to the edge of the hill which Terminates by a [[fence|fense]], for security, being high & almost perpendicular except the craggs of rocks, and shrubs of trees, that diversify the Scene.”

*<div id="Belmont1"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 30, 1762, diary entry describing [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], estate of [[William Peters]], near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 182–83)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Belmont1_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . went to [[William Peters| Will: Peters]]’s house, having some small aquaintance with his wife who was at home with her Daughter Polly. they received us kindly in one wing of the House, after a while we passed thro' a covered Passage to the large hall, well furnished, the top adorned with instruments of musick, coat of arms, crest, and other ornaments in Stucco, its sides by paintings and [[Statue]]s in Bronze. from the Front of this hall you have a [[prospect]] bounded by the Jerseys, like a blueridge, and the Horison, a broad [[walk]] of english Cherre trys leads down to the river, the doors of the hous opening opposite admitt a [[prospect]] [of] the length of the garden thro' a broad gravel [[walk]], to a large hansome [[Summerhouse|summer house]] in a [[green|grean]], from these Windows down a [[vista|Wisto]] terminated by an [[Obelisk]], on the right you enter a [[labyrinth|Labarynth]] of [[hedge]] and low ceder with spruce, in the middle stands a [[Statue]] of Apollo, note: in the garden are the [[Statue]]s of Dianna, Fame & Mercury, with [[urn]]s. we left the garden for a [[wood]] cut into [[vista|Visto’s]], in the midst a [[Chinese Taste|chinese]] [[temple]], for a [[Summerhouse|summer house]], one [[avenue]] gives a fine [[prospect]] of the City, with a Spy glass you discern the houses distinct, Hospital, & another looks to the [[obelisk|Oblisk]].”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, July 27, 1768, diary entry describing Edgely, estate of Joshua Howell, near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 232–33)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . went to Edgeley. Joshua Howel has a fine Iregular Garden there, walked down to [[Schuylkill River|Shoolkill]], after dinner . . . walked to the [[Summer house|Summer House,]] in view of [[Schuylkill River|Skylkill]] when Benny [Shoemaker] Played on the flute.”

*Sansom, Hannah Callender, May 14, 1785, diary entry describing Bush Hill, estate of James Hamilton, near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 293)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref>
:“. . . to Hambleton’s Bush hill [estate,] walked over that good house, viewed the fine stucco work, and delightful [[prospect|prospects]] round. . .”

*<div id="Belmont2"></div>Sansom, Hannah Callender, June 20, 1785, diary entry describing [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Belmont]], estate of [[Richard Peters]], near Philadelphia, PA (2010: 296)<ref name="Sansom_2010"></ref> [[#Belmont2_cite|back up to History]]
:“. . . crossed Brittains bridge, to John Penns elegant Villa, passed a Couple of delightfull hours, mounted our chaise and rode a long the [[Schuylkill River|Schuilkill]] to [[Belmont (Philadelphia)|Peters place]] the highest and finist situation I know, its gardens and walks are in the King William taste, but are very pleasant, We had a very polite reception from [[Richard Peters|Rich: Peters]], his Wife, and mother, took to our chaise and by his direction, thro a pleasent rode to Riters ferry, crossed and continued our route along [[Schuylkill River|Schuilkill]], to the falls tavern. . . .”

<hr>

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="4">

File:2108.jpg|Nicholas Scull and George Heap, ''A Map of Philadelphia and Parts Adjacent'', in Sylvanus Urban, ed. ''Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle'' 23 (1753): p. 373.

Image:0301.jpg|William Russell Birch, “View from Belmont Pennsyl.<sup>a</sup> the Seat of Judge Peters,” in ''The Country Seats of the United States'' (1808), pl. 16.

File:2122.jpg|John Hills (surveyor), William Kneass (engraver), Joseph B. Varnum (publisher), ''A Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its Environs'', 1808.
</gallery>

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2009063573 Library of Congress Authority File]

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category:People|S]]

Hannah Callender Sansom

2019-09-05T16:21:53Z

T-omalley: /* History */

Bernard M’Mahon

2019-09-05T16:16:46Z

T-omalley: /* History */

'''Bernard M’Mahon''' (before 1765–September 18, 1816), self-described “[[Nursery]], Seedsman, and Florist,” wrote a popular calendar for American gardeners in 1806, ran a successful [[nursery]] and [[botanic garden]] in Philadelphia, corresponded with [[Thomas Jefferson]] about his gardening and agricultural endeavours, and cultivated previously undescribed botanic specimens collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
==History==
The details of Bernard M’Mahon’s birth and youth in Ireland prior to his immigration to the United States remain largely unknown. While Appleton’s ''Cyclopedia of American Biography'' gives his birth date “about 1775,” historian Robert Cox has pointed out that that the 1810 census records list him as one of two men in his household over 45 years of age, suggesting a birth no later than 1765, and probably several years earlier.<ref>Robert S. Cox, ed., “‘I Never Yet Parted’: Bernard McMahon and the Seeds of the Corps of Discovery,” in ''The Shortest and Most Convenient Route: Lewis and Clark in Context,'' Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 94, no. 5 (American Philosophical Society, 2004), 131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> By 1806, he claimed already to have had experience “of near thirty years, in practical gardening,” so he must have begun an apprenticeship as a gardener or horticulturist around the year 1776.<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....'' (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Graves for the author, 1806), v, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/the%20american%20gardener's%20calendar view on Zotero].</ref> The precise reasons for and year of his immigration are also unknown, but the botanist, physician, and congressman William Darlington (1782–1863) attributed his motivation to political unrest in Ireland, which came to a head with the failed French invasion of 1796 and the Irish rebellion of 1798.

[[Image:2191.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, Title page for the first edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'' (1806)]]
Knowledge of his life after his arrival in Philadelphia rests on firmer foundations. <span id="Darlington_cite"></span>By 1799 he was residing in the city, where he first met Darlington during an outbreak of yellow fever. As of 1802, M’Mahon “had established his nurseries of useful and ornamental plants” ([[#Darlington|view text]]).<ref>Joseph Ewan, “Bernard M’Mahon (c. 1775–1816), Pioneer Philadelphia Nurseryman, and His American Gardener’s Calendar,” ''Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History'' 3, no. 7 (October 1960): 366, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GAHIWIAR/q/ewan view on Zotero].</ref> He recognized a need for pamphlets and books about plants tailored to American climates and species, which he set out to satisfy. In 1804 he published the first American seed catalog in booklet form.<ref> Bernard M’Mahon, ''A Catalogue of American Seeds'' (Philadelphia: Printed by William Duane, 1804), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/4PHBM2KF/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> This was followed in 1806 by his most significant work, ''The American Gardener's Calendar,'' which broke up the seasonal labors of gardening into monthly lists of tasks over the course of 648 pages [Fig. 1]. By 1807, he ran a successful flower shop, [[nursery]] and seed business at 39 South 2nd Street in Philadelphia.<ref>See “M’Mahon, Bernard” in James Robinson, ''The Philadelphia Directory for 1807: Containing the Names, Trades, and Residence of the Inhabitants of the City, Southwark, and Northern Liberties: Also, a Calendar, from the 1st of February, 1807 to the 1st of February 1808, and Other Useful Information'' (Philadelphia: Printed for the publisher and sold by W. Woodhouse, 1807), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/QYKKKNXQ/q/philadelphia%20directory view on Zotero].</ref>

[[Image:2192.jpg|thumb|Fig. 2, Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, recto, 1806]]
[[Image:2193.jpg|thumb|Fig. 3, Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, verso, 1806]]
In addition to his publishing and commercial activities, M’Mahon was an active member of the Philadelphia horticultural and scientific communities. A receipt in M’Mahon’s handwriting [Fig. 2–3] reveals that he sold seeds and plants to the American Philosophical Society, which shipped them to Amsterdam.<ref>Now in the American Philosophical Society Archives, reproduced in Ewan 1960, 366–67, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GAHIWIAR/q/ewan view on Zotero].</ref> Perhaps the most intriguing but least successful of his professional organizations and business interests was a viticulture endeavor known as the Pennsylvania Vine Company, run by Peter Legaux (1748–1827), which M’Mahon helped govern from 1807 to 1811.<ref>For his membership in the Vine Company see Robinson 1807, xlvii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/QYKKKNXQ/q/philadelphia%20directory view on Zotero]; ''Census Directory for 1811: Containing the Names, Occupations, & Residence of the Inhabitants of the City, Southwark & Northern Liberties, a Separate Division Being Allotted to Persons of Colour; to Which Is Annexed an Appendix Containing Much Useful Information, and a Perpetual Calendar'' (Philadelphia: Printed by Jane Aitken, No. 71, North Third Street, 1811), 426, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UYA9SCPV/q/census%20directory view on Zotero].
The society, which floundered throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, is discussed in Thomas Pinney, ''A History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 113, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HHVCQQVU/q/a%20history%20of%20wine view on Zotero].</ref> He also participated in the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, which listed him as a member in 1812.<ref>Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, ''Laws of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, as Revised and Enacted at the Annual Meeting, Held on the 14th January, 1812. To Which Is Prefixed, a List of the Members of the Society. Incorporated February 14, 1809.'' (Lydia R. Bailey, 1812), 6, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/KVCQ42ZX/q/laws%20of%20the%20philadelphia%20society view on Zotero].</ref> As a member of the Philadelphia community of seedsmen and botanists, M’Mahon likely met many of the preeminent figures in these fields. Two undated letters attest to his correspondence and acquaintance with the botanist and physician Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815).<ref>American Philosophical Society Archives, Violetta Delafield-Benjamin Smith Barton Papers, ALS, 1p. (letter from M’Mahon to Barton inviting him to a meeting), and AMsS, 1p. (letter from Barton to M’Mahon about fish).
</ref> He must also have visited [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery|Bartram’s Garden]], another celebrated [[botanic garden]] outside of Philadelphia, although no direct evidence of such a visit survives. The botanist Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859) named a genus of evergreen shrubs ''Mahonia'' after him (known today as ''Berberis aquifolium'' after Frederick Pursh’s earlier naming). Following M’Mahon’s death in September of 1816, his wife Ann and son Thomas took over the [[nursery]]. After an unsuccessful attempt to auction the land and its contents in 1818, Ann M’Mahon ran the garden until 1830, when Thomas Hibbert, business partner of [[Robert Buist]], purchased the property.<ref>Alexander Gordon, “Notices of Some of the Principal Nurseries and Private Gardens in the United States of America, Made during a Tour through the Country, in the Summer of 1831; with Some Hints on Emigration,” ''The Gardener’s Magazine'' 8, no. 38 (June 1832): 284, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/2TVP4JIX/q/notices%20of%20some%20of%20the%20principal view on Zotero].
</ref>

Bernard M’Mahon’s practical impact on early American landscape design is revealed by his correspondence with [[Thomas Jefferson]], who sought useful new American species to plant at [[Monticello]]. In 1806, M’Mahon sent a letter offering a copy of his ''Calendar'' to [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], who gladly accepted. This gift inaugurated the exchange of what would amount to thirty-seven letters between the men by the time of M’Mahon’s death in 1816. As Peter Hatch notes, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]]’s notebook on gardening contains more than a few entries that precisely replicate M’Mahon’s specifications for layout and maintenance.<ref>Peter J. Hatch, ''“A Rich Spot of Earth”: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 76, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/9DWZKRZG/q/a%20rich%20spot%20of%20earth view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to following the guidance of the ''Calendar,'' [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] purchased a wide variety of seeds and plants from M’Mahon. In exchange, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] not only paid M’Mahon for his goods, but also created new professional opportunities for him. When the noted Parisian botanist André Thouin sent [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] a collection of international seeds in 1808, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] forwarded them on to M’Mahon to cultivate and sell as he saw fit.<ref>Thomas Jefferson, ''Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book, 1766-1824, with Relevant Extracts from His Other Writings, Annotated by Edwin Morris Betts,'' ed. Edwin Morris Betts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944), 383, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref>

In addition to his international connections, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] also helped M’Mahon secure his place within the American community of seedsmen and botanists. In the winter of 1806, just eight months after their correspondence had begun, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] arranged for M’Mahon to become one of two recipients of the botanic specimens collected by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their expedition to the Pacific Ocean.<ref>Jefferson 1944, 328, 337, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref> The other designated recipient was [[William Hamilton]], also based in the Philadelphia area at his estate [[The Woodlands]]. M’Mahon received seeds and specimens from the expedition in early 1807, and by 1808 he was growing as many as twenty species and six genera that were previously undescribed in the botanical literature.<ref>As quoted in Jefferson 1944, 345, 373, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon hired a German botanist named Frederick Pursh to describe and illustrate the specimens collected by Lewis sometime in the winter of 1807–1808, but the project stalled when Lewis’s health declined in 1808. Lewis proved unable to visit Philadelphia and answer questions about damaged specimens before he died in 1809. Pursh left Philadelphia with his notes and drawings, unpaid, and eventually published a description of the discoveries in England in December of 1813 without the permission of the remaining expedition team.<ref> Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America,'' vol. 1, 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM/q/frederick%20pursh view on Zotero]. Cox 2004, 12, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon finally began selling plants from the expedition in 1812, advertising a variety of fragrant currant (''Ribes odoratissimum'') “collected by Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, on the shores of the rivers ''Columbia'' and ''Jefferson,'' and in the ''Rocky Mountains.''”<ref>M’Mahon regularly advertised in the Philadelphia ''Aurora,'' and the currant appears in the edition of March 11, 1812, as quoted in Cox 2004, 127, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="DemocraticPress_cite"></span>By the end of 1813 he had also relocated his shop from 39 South Second Street to 13 South Second Street, several blocks closer to the center of Philadelphia ([[#DemocraticPress|view text]]).

In 1808 M’Mahon purchased some land “on the township line road, near the Germantown road,” in the area of what is today Fotterall Square, where he opened a [[nursery]] and [[botanic garden]] called Upsal [[Botanic Garden]].<ref>John William Harshberger, ''The Botanists of Philadelphia and Their Work'' (Philadelphia: Press of T. C. Davis & Son, 1899), 117, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/6C7I6V7V/q/harshberger view on Zotero].</ref> Referencing the [[botanic garden]] of Uppsala University in Sweden restored by the celebrated botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707– 1778), the name of M'Mahon's nursery and garden emphasized his knowledge of the history of botany and his scientific ambitions. Although no descriptions of Upsal survive from M’Mahon’s lifetime, early histories and guides to the city briefly mention it as an attraction, including James Mease’s 1811 ''The Picture of Philadelphia.''<ref>James Mease, ''The Picture of Philadelphia: Giving an Account of Its Origin, Increase, and Improvements in Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures, Commerce and Revenue. With a Compendious View of Its Societies ...'' (Philadelphia: Published by B. & T. Kite, 1811), 351, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/5EXQKRJT/q/picture%20of%20philadelphia view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Poulsons1818_cite"></span>The earliest extant description, written in 1818, two years after M’Mahon’s death, records about twenty acres of “variegated” land, with “an ample fish [[pond]] and island, supported by a never failing spring” on the property, and several buildings including a “two-storied stone dwelling; a brick and frame kitchen, a large stone building, [[Green House]], a frame stable, coach house, and out buildings” ([[#Poulsons1818|view text]]). With its [[pond]], mixed soils, and [[green house]], the land at Upsal must have afforded M’Mahon with diverse growing conditions for a wide variety of species. The garden continued to attract botanically-minded visitors in the decades following M’Mahon’s death, like the Scottish botanist David Douglas (1799–1834), who visited the property in 1823. <span id="Douglas_cite"></span>In his journal, Douglas briefly described Upsal’s Osage orange trees (''Maclura pomifera''), which were among the most celebrated specimens collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition ([[#Douglas|view text]]). <span id="Report1831_cite"></span>As late as 1830, visitors remarked on the “[[green house]] 60 feet long,” the “beautiful fish and water plants” with which the [[pond]] was stocked, and “a row of native oaks, planted by him [M’Mahon], containing 30 varieties; being all the kinds that he could collect in his day, either with money or zealous exertion” ([[#Report1831|view text]]).

''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' also outlived M’Mahon by several decades, reprinted in a total of eleven editions between 1806 and 1857 in Philadelphia. The ''Calendar'' provided readers with month-by-month instructions for the care and maintenance of [[kitchen garden]]s, [[orchard]]s, and [[nursery|nurseries]]. In both structure and content, it borrowed heavily from English garden manuals, and only lightly from American sources. M’Mahon himself admitted his admiration for the ''Gardener’s Dictionary'' by the English botanist Philip Miller (1691–1771).<ref>Sarah Pattee Stetson, “American Garden Books Transplanted and Native, before 1807,” ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 3, ser. 3 (1946): 366, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/QIREGNVP/q/transplanted%20and%20native view on Zotero].</ref> Other sources included John Abercrombie’s ''Every Many His Own Gardener,'' which provided a general structure for the work.<ref>For the most comprehensive analysis of his sources to date, see Brenda Bullion, “The Science and Art of Plants and Gardens in the Development of an American Landscape Aesthetic” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1990), 293–95, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/9XGG8N2W/q/brenda%20bullion view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon was not, however, completely beholden to these English models. He cited Philadelphian John Beale Bordley’s 1799 ''Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs'' in his discussions of animal husbandry. The distinctly American perspective of the text appears most clearly in his discussion of indigenous flowering plants. <span id="Indigenous_cite"></span>Even before M’Mahon received specimens from the Lewis and Clark expedition, he pleaded with American gardeners to incorporate indigenous species in their ornamental plantings: “In Europe plants are not rejected because they are indigenous, on the contrary they are cultivated with due care; and yet here, we cultivate many foreign trifles, and neglect the profusion of beauties so bountifully bestowed upon us by the hand of nature” ([[#Indigenous|view text]]).

Within M’Mahon’s lifetime, he became especially known for his championing of [[hedge]]s as live fences, and his calendar may have helped popularize them wherever it was read. <span id="Aurora1816_cite"></span> In 1816, his obituary singled out his innovative approach to planting “Quickset [[hedge]]s” from European white thorn (''Crataegus laevigata''), based on observation of the weathering and germination of Hawthorn seeds in the wild ([[#Aurora1816|view text]]). As Brenda Bullion points out, M’Mahon himself understood these live fences as a response to the deforestation of the American countryside, recommending them “particularly in those parts of the Union in which timber has got scarce, and must inevitably become more so in a very rapid progression.”<ref>Bullion 1990, 304–5, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/9XGG8N2W/q/brenda%20bullion view on Zotero].</ref> Here, as elsewhere, his ''Calendar'' had both practical and aesthetic implications for the development of American landscape design.

Landscape design principles formed a small but significant part of the book’s content, and in 1841, the landscape gardener [[A. J. Downing]] described the ''American Gardener’s Calendar'' as the “only American work previously published which treats directly of landscape gardening.”<ref> A. J. Downing, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America; with a View to the Improvement of Country Residences... with Remarks on Rural Architecture'' (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1841), 20, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/PGUEKHNG? view on Zotero].</ref> Squeezed into the month of January, M’Mahon’s introductory overview of “The [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|Pleasure]], or [[Flower Garden]]” quotes extensively from ''The Universal Gardener and Botanist'' by John Abercrombie.<ref>See the entry on Pleasure-Garden in the 1778 and, even more similar, 1797 editions of Thomas Mawe and John Abercrombie, ''The Universal Gardener and Botanist, or A General Dictionary of Gardening and Botany'' (London: Printed for G. Robinson et al, 1778), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/ID3XI7NM/q/abercrombie view on Zotero].</ref> This overview effectively popularized a design vocabulary drawn from earlier English works for American audiences, employing terms for plantings like [[lawn]], [[hedge]], and [[parterre]]; architectural elements such as [[temple]], pyramid, and [[obelisk]]; and earthworks including [[slope]], [[terrace]], and [[eminence]].<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 55–69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon’s taste and those of his sources subtly shaped this vocabulary. <span id="Modern_cite"></span>He expressed a preference for the “[[Modern style/Natural style|modern]] garden” in imitation of nature rather than the “too formal works” that characterized the [[Ancient style]] ([[#Modern|view text]]).<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 66 (perspective), 55–56 (modern garden), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].
</ref> <span id="Variety_cite"></span>Lifting passages from Abercrombie’s ''Universal Gardener and Botanist'' verbatim, he advocated variety in garden design, rather than single-minded adherence to any individual design principle ([[#Variety|view text]]).

The ''Calendar'' quickly gained a wide readership among the agricultural, botanical, and even medical communities (an early copy is listed in the New York Hospital library inventory of 1811).<ref>See the catalog of books in ''An Account of the New-York Hospital'' (New York: Collins & Co., 1811), 63, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/64Q6DV2I/q/an%20account%20of%20the%20new-york view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon’s horticultural and agricultural guidelines were excerpted in a variety of gardening manuals and almanacs like Fessenden’s 1828 ''The New American Gardener,'' which contains roughly twenty short passages attributed to M’Mahon.<ref>Thomas Fessenden, ed., ''The New American Gardener,'' 1st ed. (Boston: J. B. Russell, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/M8WDX2P7/q/the%20new%20american%20gardener view on Zotero]. Fessenden also quoted liberally from M’Mahon in several of his later works.</ref> In 1819, one unscrupulous publisher named Fielding Lucas Jr. went so far as to reproduce the work nearly in its entirety, retitled ''The Practical American Gardener.''<ref>Ewan 1960, 378, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GAHIWIAR/q/ewan view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Loudon_cite"></span>The book was also known in Europe, where [[J._C._(John_Claudius)_Loudon|John Claudius Loudon]] praised its pioneering subject and completeness in the 1822 edition of his ''Encyclopaedia of Gardening,'' but expressed skepticism concerning just how widespread the horticultural and agricultural techniques described within really were: “We cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars” ([[#Loudon|view text]]). ''The American Gardener's Calendar'' was so successful that in 1846, some thirty years after M’Mahon’s death, his acquaintance Darlington cited it in his ''Address Before the Chester County Horticultural Society,'' claiming that “although his book was published forty years ago, it is, in my opinion, about as well adapted to our wants—and as replete with practical common sense—as any thing of the kind which has yet appeared in our country.”<ref>William Darlington, ''Address Before the Chester County Horticultural Society, at Their First Annual Exhibition, in the Borough of West Chester, Sept. 11, 1846'' (West Chester, PA, 1846), 13, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/P7C9TXRV/q/darlington view on Zotero].</ref>

—''Alexander Brey''

<hr>

==Texts==
*<div id="Modern"></div>M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, describing designs for a [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|pleasure ground]] (1806: 55)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 55, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Modern_cite|back up to History]]
:“In designs for a [[Pleasure-ground]], according to [[Modern style/Natural style|modern gardening]]; consulting rural disposition, in imitation of nature; all too formal works being almost abolished, such as long straight [[walk]]s, regular intersections, square [[Plot/Plat|grass-plats]], corresponding [[parterre]]s, quadrangular and angular spaces, and other uniformities, as in [[Ancient style|ancient designs]]; instead of which, are now adopted, rural open spaces of grass-ground, of varied forms and dimensions, and winding [[walk]]s, all bounded with [[plantation]]s of trees, shrubs, and flowers, in various [[clump]]s; other compartments are exhibited in a variety of imitative rural forms; such as curves, projections, openings, and closings, in imitation of a natural assemblage; having all the various [[plantation]]s and [[border]]s, open to the [[walk]]s and [[lawn]]s.”

*<div id="Variety"></div>M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, describing the monotonous quality of [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|pleasure grounds]] imitating rural design “to an extreme” (1806: 56)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 56, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Variety_cite|back up to History]]
:“In these rural works, however, we should not abolish entirely, the appearance of art and uniformity; for these when properly applied, give an additional beauty and peculiar grace, to all our natural productions, and sets [sic] nature in the fairest and most beautiful point of view.
:“But some modern [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|Pleasure-grounds]], in which rural design is copied to an extreme, are often very barren of variety and entertainment, as they frequently consist only of a grass-[[lawn]], like a great field; having a running [[plantation]] of trees and shrubs all round it, just broad enough, to admit a gravel-walk winding through it, in the serpentine way, in many short twists and turns, and bordering at every turn alternately, upon the outward [[fence]] and the [[lawn]]; which are continually obtruded upon the sight, exhibiting the same prospect over and over, without the least variation; so as that after having traversed the [[walk]]s all round this sort of [[pleasure-ground]], we find no more variety or entertainment than at our first entrance, the whole having presented itself at the first view.”

*M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, describing the usefulness of formal gardens to “diversify” landscapes (1806: 69)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref>
:“The perpetual show of stiff formality, displayed by this kind of fancy, has induced many to discontinue it; but some of these run into the contrary extreme, by excluding all formal regularity and uniform appearances; and substituting various dissimilar arrangements, in the formation of the different compartments, in fancied imitation of natural rurality as much as possible.
:“However, for the sake of diversity, some of the more elegant regular works, ought still to be admitted, which would form a beautiful contrast with the general rural improvements, and diversify the whole scene, so as to have a most enchanting effect.”

*<div id="Indigenous"></div>M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, endorsing the ornamental use of “indigenous” flowers (1806: 72)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 72, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Indigenous_cite|back up to History]]
:“Here I cannot avoid remarking, that many [[flower-garden]]s, &c. Are almost destitute of bloom, during a great part of the season; which could be easily avoided, and a blaze of flowers kept up, both in this department, and in the borders of the [[pleasure ground]], from March to November, by introducing from our woods and fields, the various beautiful ornaments with which nature has so profusely decorated them. Is it because they are indigenous, that we should reject them? ought we not rather to cultivate and improve them? what can be more beautiful than our Lobelias, Orchis’, Asclepias’ and Asters; Dracocephalums, Gerardias, Monardas and Ipomoeas; Liliums, Podalyrias, Rhexias, Solidagos and Hibiscus’; Phlox’s, Gentianas, Spigelias, Chironias and Sisyrinchiums, Cassias, Ophrys’, Coreopsis’ and Cypripediums; Fumarias, Violas, Rudbeckias and Liatris’; with our charming Limadorum, fragrant Arethusa and a thousand other lovely plants, which if introduced would grace our plantations, and delight our senses?
:“In Europe plants are not rejected because they are indigenous, on the contrary they are cultivated with due care; and yet here, we cultivate many foreign trifles, and neglect the profusion of beauties so bountifully bestowed upon us by the hand of nature.”

*Anonymous, 1807, Review of ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' (''The Medical Repository'' vol. 4: 177-180)<ref>“Review of ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'',” ''The Medical Repository'' 4 (1807): 174–80, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UR9I39RN view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Mr. M’Mahon has parcelled his work into twelve great divisions. These correspond to the months of the year. In each he prescribes the work to be done, and the way of doing it. In this manner he has constructed a Calendar, beginning with January, and proceeding regularly to June, and thence forward to December. By attending to this arrangement, the person who consults the volume can readily find the months, by casting his eye to the top of the pages, and below them the labour and preparation during each.
:“Besides this distribution of his precepts and directions, according to the sun’s place in the zodiacal signs, the author has made a methodical disposition of the business of every month. The operations in the [[kitchen-garden]], fruit-garden, [[orchard]], vineyard, [[nursery]], [[flower-garden]], [[Greenhouse|green-house]], and [[hot-house]], are placed under distinct heads; and its is easy to find under one or another of these titles, whatever the Calendar contains for all the months of the year. By adverting thus to a division of his publication, into twelve parts or months, and these again into a subdivision of each into eight sections, Mr. M. has rendered it very easy to find any thing it contains. And, by attending to this, it is scarcely more difficult to examine the directions for the [[pleasure garden]] in September, the [[orchard]] in March, or the [[hot-house]] in December, &c. &c. Than to search for a word and its correlatives in the Encyclopaedia, or to examine passages in the Bible by the aid of a Concordance.
:“The reader is not to expect that the work should be wholly original. The author does not pretend to this. A candid acknowledgement is made, that in writing the treatise, he consulted the best publications in the American States, and in the transatlantic countries, especially those extant in the English, French, and Latin tongues. To bring into one compendious tract the information scattered in many books, composed in different languages, hard and costly to procure, laborious to examine when procured, and requiring more literature than falls to the lot of the great body of cultivators, is a very laudable and useful undertaking. Our fellow citizens, we confidently believe, will concur with us in opinion, that he has done them worthy and acceptable service. He is perfectly aware that in some cases he may be mistaken, and in others may have made omissions; and these he is ready to amend as soon as they shall be discovered. But he has employed a good share of judgment in the directions he has given for the rearing of thorn-quicks and other plants for live [[fence]]s; for cultivating liquorice, manna-ash, and rhubarb for medicines; planting madder and weld for dyeing; cork tree, fuller’s teazel, tanner’s-sumac, and paper mulberry for the economical arts; sea-kale for the dining table; grapes for the preparation of wine; and mulberry trees and insects for the manufacture of silk. And, in addition to all his knowledge derived from preceding authors, Mr. M. lays claim to the attention of his readers, by the experimental skill derived from a large and extensive course of practical gardening, pursued for almost thirty years. . . .
:“We were pleased to find that the American plants which beautify the woods, fields, and swamps, had not been overlooked or neglected by our author. Many of them are duly noticed, and the cultivator’s attention called to them among the instructions for the [[flower-garden]] in the month of August. And we were gratified also with a piece of convenient economy, by substituting oak leaves newly fallen in autumn, instead of tanner’s bark, as described in the section which relates to the [[hot-house]] department for October.
:“But we forbear any further comments or criticisms. A book of such great extent, and various contents, cannot be easily analized [''sic''] in a general way further than we have gone. And to proceed more deeply into particulars would be inconsistent with our plan and limits: we therefore observe, that as the taste for gardening is increasing, and the appearance of the book is opportune, we expect it will be sought with avidity, and thereby become the incentive and the guide to capital improvements in that interesting art. And we shall be disappointed, if nursery-men, florists, and gentlemen of taste, leisure, and fortune, do not add to their libraries, however select and small, M’Mahon’s American Calendar.”

*M’Mahon, Bernard, 3 January 1809, letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] describing a [[nursery]] and [[botanic garden]] in Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Jefferson 1944: 401)<ref>Jefferson 1944, 401, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Last month I purchased in the vicinity of this City [Philadelphia] 20 Acres of ground, well adapted for a [[Nursery]] & [[Botanic Garden]], and hope that, in a few years, I shall enrich that spot, and through it, in some measure, the country in general, with as extensive and useful a collection of vegetable productions, as can reasonably be expected from the small means of which I am possessed.”

*Anonymous, 1811, Description of Upsal [[Botanic Garden]] published in the ''Census Directory for 1811,'' reprinted in various newspapers (1811: 426-27)<ref>''Census Directory for 1811,'' 426–427, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UYA9SCPV/q/census%20directory view on Zotero]. Reprinted verbatim in “From the True American. Botany,” ''Concord Gazette,'' April 23, 1811, 3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/84CNB3KN/q/from%20the%20true%20american view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Upsal [[Botanic Garden]]
:“A [[Botanic Garden]] and [[Nursery]] was commenced in the spring of 1809 in the immediate vicinity of this city [Philadelphia], near the junction of the Germantown and township line roads; the extent of the ground is 20 acres, well and advantageously watered, the varieties of soils and exposures which it produces and exhibits, is of considerable importance in an institution of this kind.
:“In the summer of the last year, the proprietor erected an elegant building for the preservation of exotics, which is now furnished with an immense variety; and the garden generally, at this time, is said to contain several thousand species and varieties of plants, foreign and indigenous, many of which are of considerable importance in medicine, agriculture, horticulture and the arts.—The proprietor of this garden, Mr. Bernard M’Mahon, a few years ago, published in this city a work on horticulture in general, entitled “The American Gardeners’ Calendar,” which appears to have thrown a new light on our former system of gardening; the good effects of which are here generally acknowledged, and are visible in the superabundance of fine fruits and vegetables, annually accumulating in the markets of this city.”

*<div id="DemocraticPress"></div>Anonymous, December 28, 1813, advertisement in the ''Democratic Press'' for M’Mahon’s new store at No. 13, South Second Street, Philadelphia<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, “Grass and Garden Seeds, &c.,” Democratic Press, December 28, 1813, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HYB8WB7Z/q/grass%20and%20garden%20seeds view on Zotero].</ref> [[#DemocraticPress_cite|back up to History]]
:“Grass and Garden Seeds, &c.
:“BERNARD M’MAHON
:“[[Nursery]] & Seedsman.
:“HAS recently moved his stock in trade from No. 39, to No. 13, South Second street where he intends permanently to reside. He is amply supplied, as usual with an extensive variety of Grass Garden and Flower Seeds; Bulbous Flower Roots, of numerous species and varieties, Garden Tools, Agricultural, Gardening and Botanical Books, &c. He has also for sale at his [[Botanic Garden]] [Upsal] near this city, a numerous variety of the most beautiful hardy perennial, tuberous and fibrous FLOWER ROOTS, ornamental Trees and Shrubs as well as [[Green House]] Plants, collected from various parts of the Globe, with some very valuable Fruit Trees, such as superior English Gooseberries, large red and white Antwerp Raspberries, red white and black Currants, Apples, Pears, Peaches, Nectarines and German Medlars, &c. with superior Strawberry and Asparagus Plants.
:“Dec. 22—if w10t”

*<div id="Aurora1816"></div>Anonymous, September 19, 1816, obituary in the ''Aurora'' for Bernard M’Mahon<ref>“Died—on Wednesday Morning...,” ''Aurora,'' September 19, 1816, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LY9RB34Z/q/1816 view on Zotero]. Reprinted verbatim in “Died—on Wednesday Morning...,” ''Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser,'' September 20, 1816, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/B9PBEY5G/q/1816 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Aurora1816_cite|back up to History]]
:“Died—On Wednesday Morning, at his [[Botanical Garden]], called Upsal, two and a half miles from this city, Mr. BERNARD M’MAHON, well known throughout the Continent and among the Botanists of the Old World. Mr. M’Mahon came to this city, from Ireland, about twenty years since, and from his previous experience and industry, and great enthusiasm in the profession to which he was bred, he has rendered very eminent services to the United States, (more, indeed, than all who had preceded him,) by applying the principles of Agricultural Science to the varieties of the climates of this continent; pointing out the errors which had retarded improvement, he contributed to the comforts, and the most delightful of human recreations, planting the shrub, and nursing the buds into bloom, and tendril into vigor. His Book of Gardening is a precious treasure, and ought to occupy a place in every house in this country; its principles are eternal, and its instruction fruitful of advantage. His theory of Planting, has removed the difficulties heretofore deemed insurmountable in the production of Quickset [[hedge]]s, from the white thorn—he urged, that he learned it from Nature, who scattering stone fruit on the surface of the earth opens the stone by the frost, and the earth to receive the kernel by the thaw—following this observation, he laid his white thorn seed, or the dried haw on the smooth surface of the ground upon which he proposed to plant, preparing the soil only to suit the operations of Nature. It was his desire, while living, to be useful; and it is in conformity with his usual mode of thinking, that we think fit to notice, at the same time that we notice his demise, his practice in an invaluable branch of knowledge, which many may see on this occasion, who have not before heard of it.
:“His funeral will take place at Upsal, this morning at ten o’clock, where his friends are requested to attend.”

*<div id="Poulsons1818"></div>Anonymous, April 4, 1818, auction notice and description of Upsal [[Botanic Garden]] in ''Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser''<ref> “Botanic Garden. Real Estate, &c.,” ''Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser,'' April 4, 1818, 3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/7487U853/q/botanic%20garden.%20real%20estate view on Zotero]. See also Cox 2004, 132, note 22, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Poulsons1818_cite|back up to History]]
:“[[Botanic garden|BOTANIC GARDEN]].
:“REAL ESTATE, &c.
:“PURSUANT to an Order of the Orphans’ Court, held at Philadelphia, for the city and county of Philadelphia, on the 20th day of March, A.D. 1818, before the Honourable Jacob Rush, William Moulder, and Thomas Armstrong, Esquires, Justices of the said Court,
:“Will be Exposed to Public Sale,
:“On Tuesday, the 12th day of May, at seven o’clock in the evening, at the Merchants’ Coffee House, the following described Real Estate, late of James M’Mahon, deceased, to wit:
:“All that tract or piece of Land situate in Penn township, in the county of Philadelphia, on the township line road, near the Germantown road, and about two and a half miles from the city—adjoining lands of Charles Wharton, Esq. and others; containing 19 acres and 128 perches, on which is erected a two storied stone dwelling; a brick and frame kitchen, a large stone building, [[Green House]], a frame stable, coach house and out buildings. The ground is variegated, and in high cultivation. Terms at sale.
:“By order of the Court,
:“Thomas F. Gordon, Clerk.
:“Ann M’Mahon, Widow and Administratrix of James M’Mahon, deceased.
:“AT THE SAME TIME AND PLACE,
:“Will also be exposed to Public Sale, either collectively or separately, as may best suit the purchaser or purchasers. The whole of the [[Green House]] plants, (about three thousand) and other articles, very many of which are peculiar, valuable, and far sought for. The ground is sufficiently variegated, to admit of every species of Botany, and is probably the best [[Botanic garden|BOTANIC GARDEN]] in the country. It contains an ample fish [[pond]] and island, supported by a never failing spring, having therein Gold and Silver fish, in great variety and quantity. There is a great variety of Scots Fir, Silver Spruce, Larch, with other trees and shrubs—A pump of the finest water, &c. &c.
:“Catalogues will be made out, and the property may be viewed at any time previous to sale.
:“John Dorsey, Auc’r.”

*<div id="Loudon"></div>Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius), 1822, describing Bernard M’Mahon and the ''American Gardener’s Calendar'' (1822, I: 106)<ref>J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening,'' 1st ed. (London: Longman et al, 1822), 106, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/Y638SNRW/q/loudon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Loudon_cite|back up to History]]
:“M’Mahon, already mentioned, is a seedsman at Philadelphia, and ‘has connected with the seed-trade a botanical, agricultural, and horticultural book-store.’ His work is the first of the kind which has appeared in America, and includes every department to be found in our calendars. Ample instructions are given for growing the pine, vine, melon, and other delicate fruits, and also for the forcing departments both of the [[Flower garden|flower]] and [[kitchen garden]]s; but we cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars.”

*<div id="Douglas"></div>Douglas, David, August 22, 1823, describing his visit to Upsal [[Botanic Garden]] (1914: 8)<ref>David Douglas, ''Journal Kept by David Douglas During His Travels in North America 1823–1827 Together with a Particular Description of Thirty-Three Species of American Oaks and Eighteen Species of Pinus, with Appendices Containing a List of the Plants Introduced by Douglas and an Account of His Death in 1834'' (London: W. Wesley & Son, for the Royal Historical Society, 1914), 8, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GVY4XWI3/q/david%20douglas view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Douglas_cite|back up to History]]
:“Friday, August 22nd.
:“. . . . I made a journey to Mr. McMahon, which is three miles north of the city. I did not find him at home; I looked round the garden, and after a patient search found Maclura, two plants, height about seventeen feet, bushy and rugged; they had a few fruits on the trees; it is well described in Pursh’s Preface of his ‘Flora Amer.’ Then I called at [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery|Bartram’s old place]], but found no person at home.”

*<div id="Report1831"></div>Anonymous, c. 1831, Report on the condition of Upsal for the Horticultural Society of Pennsylvania, maintained after M’Mahon’s death by his wife (1831: 10–11)<ref>''Report of the Committee Appointed by the Horticultural Society of Pennsylvania for Visiting the Nurseries and Gardens in the Vicinity of Philadelphia'' (Philadelphia: W. Geddes, 1831), 10–11, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/SSQIGDZR/q/report%20of%20the%20committee view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Report1831_cite|back up to History]]
:“Mrs. M’Mahon’s Garden is about 3 miles north of Philadelphia. It contains a [[green house]] 60 feet long and calculated to hold a great many plants. The collection is good. The establishment is 19 years old, and was founded by that enterprising and distinguished horticulturist, Mr. B. M’Mahon, husband of the present proprietor.
:“Here is the largest Portlandia that we have seen, and a good selection of the succulent family, with many oranges, lemons, shaddock, etc. A very large tree of Maclura aurantiaca or osage orange; a highly ornamental tree, with bright green foliage, and standing longer in the fall than any other of the deciduous tribe. It bears a large green fruit, not unlike an orange. We think that Mr. M’Mahon was the first to introduce this tree, brought back by Lewis and Clark. Here we saw an uncommon large shrub of the Lonicera tartarica, or tartarian honeysuckle; it is twenty feet in diameter, and high in proportion.
:“The ground contains about 20 acres, distributed in [[nursery]] stock, and growing vegetable seeds.
:“Those two beautiful shrubs, the Symphoricarpos racemosus and Ribes aureum, were propagated in this [[nursery]] before any other in our vicinity; and this was the case, too, with many other shrubs and trees. Of European trees there are several valuable specimens, such as Fraxinus, Tilia, Ulmus, Fagus, Betula, Carpinus, Platanus and Pinus. On these grounds are [[pond]]s well stocked with beautiful fish and water plants, among these last is the Nymphaea odorata, with its showy white flowers, yellow anthers and sweet fragrance.
:“Mr. M’Mahon was an indefatigable arborist, and his garden now exhibits a row of native oaks, planted by him, containing 30 varieties; being all the kinds that he could collect in his day, either with money or zealous exertion. The willow-leaved oak is the most conspicuous, and forms a very handsome conical tree.
:“Perhaps we owe as much to the late Mr. M’Mahon, as a horticulturist, as to any individual in America. Besides his efforts in collecting and propagating we are indebted to him for his excellent book on “American Gardening,” which has passed through many editions.
:“There is a small [[nursery]] connected with this, in Camac street.
:“Attached to this establishment is a Seed Store, in Second below Market street, where there is sold an extensive variety of seeds, foreign and native, to the amount of 2,000 kinds; with a variety of horticultural implements, and a collection of botanical and horticultural books.”

*Wynne, William, 1832, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia,” describing Hibbert [[Nursery]], vicinity of Philadelphia, Pa. (''Gardener’s Magazine'' 8: 273)<ref>William Wynne, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia, with Remarks on the Subject of the Emigration of British Gardens to the United States,” ''The Gardener’s Magazine and Register of Rural & Domestic Improvement'' 8, no. 38 (June 1832): 273, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CKN7ZG86/q/william%20wynne view on Zotero].</ref>
:“A Mr. Hibbert keeps a small [[nursery]], in which he grows roses and other plants in pots, which he sells chiefly in the city market. I understand Mr. Hibbert has taken a piece of ground formerly occupied as a [[nursery]] by Mr. M’Mahon, and has taken into partnership [[Robert Buist|Mr. Buist]], a gardener in the neighbourhood.”

*Darlington, William, 1846, on the significance of M’Mahon’s ''American Gardener’s Calendar'' (1846: 13)<ref>Darlington 1846, 13, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/P7C9TXRV/q/darlington view on Zotero].
</ref>
:“To instruct us in the management of the [[Flower garden|Flower]] and [[Kitchen Garden]], we have “The American Gardener’s Calendar,” by the late Bernard M’Mahon—one of the pioneers among us, in the good work of teaching horticulture. Although his book was published forty years ago, it is, in my opinion, about as well adapted to our wants—and as replete with practical common sense—as any thing of the kind which has yet appeared in our country.”

*<div id="Darlington"></div>Darlington, William, 1857, on his recollections of Bernard M’Mahon (in M’Mahon 1857: xii-xiii)<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....,'' 11th ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Company, 1857), xii–xiii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/4CL25KHJ/q/the%20american%20gardener's%20calendar view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Darlington_cite|back up to History]]
:“I am much gratified to learn that a new edition of M’Mahon’s “American Gardener’s Calendar” is in press. That work was among the earliest of its kind in our country, and I have always regarded it as among the best. It is at once comprehensive and complete; and, moreover, remarkable for its judicious, practical, common sense views of the subject.
:“I had the pleasure of knowing Bernard M’Mahon, in my youthful days. He was, I believe, one of those Exiles of Erin who sought and found a refuge in our country, near the close of the last century. In the autumn, I think of 1799, he passed some weeks at my native village of Dilworthtown, in Chester County, in order to avoid the ravages of yellow fever, in Philadelphia, where he resided; and in that rural retreat I first knew him. I renewed the acquaintance in 1802, 3, and 4, while attending the medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, by which time he had established his nurseries of useful and ornamental plants: and I ever found him an obliging, intelligent, and instructive friend. He was a regularly educated gardener, of much experience, and great enterprise. He gave the first decisive impulse to scientific horticulture in our State; and to him we are mainly indebted among other favors, for the successful culture and dissemination of the interesting novelties collected by Lewis and Clarke, in their journey to the Pacific. When, in 1818, Mr. Nuttall published his Genera of North American Plants, he named a beautiful shrub “in memory of the late Mr. Bernard M’Mahon, whose ardent attachment to Botany, and successful introduction of useful and ornamental Horticulture into the United States, lay claim to public esteem:” and although the genus has been reduced by later botanists to a section of Berberis, it is generally known by—and I trust will long retain—the popular name of Mahonia.
:“It was a well-deserved tribute of respect, from one who intimately knew, and could justly appreciate the merits it commemorated: and I am happy in the opportunity, even at this late day, to add my own humble and inadequate testimonial to that of so accomplished a judge of botanical worth, as Thomas Nuttall.”

<hr>

==Images==
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
Image:2191.jpg|Title page for the first edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'' (1806)
Image:2192.jpg|Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, recto, 1806
Image:2193.jpg|Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, verso, 1806
</gallery>
<hr>

==Other Resources==

[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr97032038 Library of Congress Authority File]

[https://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/bernard-mcmahon-pioneer-american-gardener “Monticello's Twinleaf Journal Online: Bernard McMahon, Pioneer American Gardener”]

[https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b117016 Hathitrust Digital Library: 1806 Edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'']

[https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/20141404#page/7/mode/1up Biodiversity Heritage Library: 1857 Edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'']

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category: People|M'Mahon, Bernard]]

Bernard M’Mahon

2019-09-05T15:00:11Z

T-omalley: /* History */

'''Bernard M’Mahon''' (before 1765–September 18, 1816), self-described “[[Nursery]], Seedsman, and Florist,” wrote a popular calendar for American gardeners in 1806, ran a successful [[nursery]] and [[botanic garden]] in Philadelphia, corresponded with [[Thomas Jefferson]] about his gardening and agricultural endeavours, and cultivated previously undescribed botanic specimens collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
==History==
The details of Bernard M’Mahon’s birth and youth in Ireland prior to his immigration to the United States remain largely unknown. While Appleton’s ''Cyclopedia of American Biography'' gives his birth date “about 1775,” historian Robert Cox has pointed out that that the 1810 census records list him as one of two men in his household over 45 years of age, suggesting a birth no later than 1765, and probably several years earlier.<ref>Robert S. Cox, ed., “‘I Never Yet Parted’: Bernard McMahon and the Seeds of the Corps of Discovery,” in ''The Shortest and Most Convenient Route: Lewis and Clark in Context,'' Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 94, no. 5 (American Philosophical Society, 2004), 131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> By 1806, he claimed already to have had experience “of near thirty years, in practical gardening,” so he must have begun an apprenticeship as a gardener or horticulturist around the year 1776.<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....'' (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Graves for the author, 1806), v, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/the%20american%20gardener's%20calendar view on Zotero].</ref> The precise reasons for and year of his immigration are also unknown, but the botanist, physician, and congressman William Darlington (1782–1863) attributed his motivation to political unrest in Ireland, which came to a head with the failed French invasion of 1796 and the Irish rebellion of 1798.

[[Image:2191.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, Title page for the first edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'' (1806)]]
Knowledge of his life after his arrival in Philadelphia rests on firmer foundations. <span id="Darlington_cite"></span>By 1799 he was residing in the city, where he first met Darlington during an outbreak of yellow fever. As of 1802, M’Mahon “had established his nurseries of useful and ornamental plants” ([[#Darlington|view text]]).<ref>Joseph Ewan, “Bernard M’Mahon (c. 1775–1816), Pioneer Philadelphia Nurseryman, and His American Gardener’s Calendar,” ''Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History'' 3, no. 7 (October 1960): 366, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GAHIWIAR/q/ewan view on Zotero].</ref> He recognized a need for pamphlets and books about plants tailored to American climates and species, which he set out to satisfy. In 1804 he published the first American seed catalog in booklet form.<ref> Bernard M’Mahon, ''A Catalogue of American Seeds'' (Philadelphia: Printed by William Duane, 1804), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/4PHBM2KF/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> This was followed in 1806 by his most significant work, ''The American Gardener's Calendar,'' which broke up the seasonal labors of gardening into monthly lists of tasks over the course of 648 pages [Fig. 1]. By 1807, he ran a successful flower shop, [[nursery]] and seed business at 39 South 2nd Street in Philadelphia.<ref>See “M’Mahon, Bernard” in James Robinson, ''The Philadelphia Directory for 1807: Containing the Names, Trades, and Residence of the Inhabitants of the City, Southwark, and Northern Liberties: Also, a Calendar, from the 1st of February, 1807 to the 1st of February 1808, and Other Useful Information'' (Philadelphia: Printed for the publisher and sold by W. Woodhouse, 1807), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/QYKKKNXQ/q/philadelphia%20directory view on Zotero].</ref>

[[Image:2192.jpg|thumb|Fig. 2, Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, recto, 1806]]
[[Image:2193.jpg|thumb|Fig. 3, Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, verso, 1806]]
In addition to his publishing and commercial activities, M’Mahon was an active member of the Philadelphia horticultural and scientific communities. A receipt in M’Mahon’s handwriting [Fig. 2–3] reveals that he sold seeds and plants to the American Philosophical Society, which shipped them to Amsterdam.<ref>Now in the American Philosophical Society Archives, reproduced in Ewan 1960, 366–67, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GAHIWIAR/q/ewan view on Zotero].</ref> Perhaps the most intriguing but least successful of his professional organizations and business interests was a viticulture endeavor known as the Pennsylvania Vine Company, run by Peter Legaux (1748–1827), which M’Mahon helped govern from 1807 to 1811.<ref>For his membership in the Vine Company see Robinson 1807, xlvii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/QYKKKNXQ/q/philadelphia%20directory view on Zotero]; ''Census Directory for 1811: Containing the Names, Occupations, & Residence of the Inhabitants of the City, Southwark & Northern Liberties, a Separate Division Being Allotted to Persons of Colour; to Which Is Annexed an Appendix Containing Much Useful Information, and a Perpetual Calendar'' (Philadelphia: Printed by Jane Aitken, No. 71, North Third Street, 1811), 426, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UYA9SCPV/q/census%20directory view on Zotero].
The society, which floundered throughout the first decade of the nineteenth century, is discussed in Thomas Pinney, ''A History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 113, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HHVCQQVU/q/a%20history%20of%20wine view on Zotero].</ref> He also participated in the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, which listed him as a member in 1812.<ref>Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, ''Laws of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, as Revised and Enacted at the Annual Meeting, Held on the 14th January, 1812. To Which Is Prefixed, a List of the Members of the Society. Incorporated February 14, 1809.'' (Lydia R. Bailey, 1812), 6, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/KVCQ42ZX/q/laws%20of%20the%20philadelphia%20society view on Zotero].</ref> As a member of the Philadelphia community of seedsmen and botanists, M’Mahon likely met many of the preeminent figures in these fields. Two undated letters attest to his correspondence and acquaintance with the botanist and physician Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815).<ref>American Philosophical Society Archives, Violetta Delafield-Benjamin Smith Barton Papers, ALS, 1p. (letter from M’Mahon to Barton inviting him to a meeting), and AMsS, 1p. (letter from Barton to M’Mahon about fish).
</ref> He must also have visited [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery|Bartram’s Garden]], another celebrated [[botanic garden]] outside of Philadelphia, although no direct evidence of such a visit survives. The botanist Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859) named a genus of evergreen shrubs ''Mahonia'' after him (known today as ''Berberis aquifolium'' after Frederick Pursh’s earlier naming). Following M’Mahon’s death in September of 1816, his wife Ann and son Thomas took over the [[nursery]]. After an unsuccessful attempt to auction the land and its contents in 1818, Ann M’Mahon ran the garden until 1830, when Thomas Hibbert, business partner of [[Robert Buist]], purchased the property.<ref>Alexander Gordon, “Notices of Some of the Principal Nurseries and Private Gardens in the United States of America, Made during a Tour through the Country, in the Summer of 1831; with Some Hints on Emigration,” ''The Gardener’s Magazine'' 8, no. 38 (June 1832): 284, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/2TVP4JIX/q/notices%20of%20some%20of%20the%20principal view on Zotero].
</ref>

Bernard M’Mahon’s practical impact on early American landscape design is revealed by his correspondence with [[Thomas Jefferson]], who sought useful new American species to plant at [[Monticello]]. In 1806, M’Mahon sent a letter offering a copy of his ''Calendar'' to [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], who gladly accepted. This gift inaugurated the exchange of what would amount to thirty-seven letters between the men by the time of M’Mahon’s death in 1816. As Peter Hatch notes, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]]’s notebook on gardening contains more than a few entries that precisely replicate M’Mahon’s specifications for layout and maintenance.<ref>Peter J. Hatch, ''“A Rich Spot of Earth”: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 76, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/9DWZKRZG/q/a%20rich%20spot%20of%20earth view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to following the guidance of the ''Calendar,'' [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] purchased a wide variety of seeds and plants from M’Mahon. In exchange, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] not only paid M’Mahon for his goods, but also created new professional opportunities for him. When the noted Parisian botanist André Thouin sent [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] a collection of international seeds in 1808, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] forwarded them on to M’Mahon to cultivate and sell as he saw fit.<ref>Thomas Jefferson, ''Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book, 1766-1824, with Relevant Extracts from His Other Writings, Annotated by Edwin Morris Betts,'' ed. Edwin Morris Betts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944), 383, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref>

In addition to his international connections, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] also helped M’Mahon secure his place within the American community of seedsmen and botanists. In the winter of 1806, just eight months after their correspondence had begun, [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]] arranged for M’Mahon to become one of two recipients of the botanic specimens collected by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their expedition to the Pacific Ocean.<ref>Jefferson 1944, 328, 337, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref> The other designated recipient was [[William Hamilton]], also based in the Philadelphia area at his estate [[The Woodlands]]. M’Mahon received seeds and specimens from the expedition in early 1807, and by 1808 he was growing as many as twenty species and six genera that were previously undescribed in the botanical literature.<ref>As quoted in Jefferson 1944, 345, 373, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon hired a German botanist named Frederick Pursh to describe and illustrate the specimens collected by Lewis sometime in the winter of 1807–1808, but the project stalled when Lewis’s health declined in 1808. Lewis proved unable to visit Philadelphia and answer questions about damaged specimens before he died in 1809. Pursh left Philadelphia with his notes and drawings, unpaid, and eventually published a description of the discoveries in England in December of 1813 without the permission of the remaining expedition team.<ref> Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America,'' vol. 1, 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM/q/frederick%20pursh view on Zotero]. Cox 2004, 12, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon finally began selling plants from the expedition in 1812, advertising a variety of fragrant currant (''Ribes odoratissimum'') “collected by Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, on the shores of the rivers ''Columbia'' and ''Jefferson,'' and in the ''Rocky Mountains.''”<ref>M’Mahon regularly advertised in the Philadelphia ''Aurora,'' and the currant appears in the edition of March 11, 1812, as quoted in Cox 2004, 127, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="DemocraticPress_cite"></span>By the end of 1813 he had also relocated his shop from 39 South Second Street to 13 South Second Street, several blocks closer to the center of Philadelphia ([[#DemocraticPress|view text]]).

In 1808 M’Mahon purchased some land “on the township line road, near the Germantown road,” in the area of what is today Fotterall Square, where he opened a [[nursery]] and [[botanic garden]] called Upsal [[Botanic Garden]].<ref>John William Harshberger, ''The Botanists of Philadelphia and Their Work'' (Philadelphia: Press of T. C. Davis & Son, 1899), 117, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/6C7I6V7V/q/harshberger view on Zotero].</ref> Referencing the [[botanic garden]] of Uppsala University in Sweden restored by the celebrated botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707– 1778), the name of M'Mahon's nursery and garden emphasized his knowledge of the history of botany and his scientific ambitions. Although no descriptions of Upsal survive from M’Mahon’s lifetime, early histories and guides to the city briefly mention it as an attraction, including James Mease’s 1811 ''The Picture of Philadelphia.''<ref>James Mease, ''The Picture of Philadelphia: Giving an Account of Its Origin, Increase, and Improvements in Arts, Sciences, and Manufactures, Commerce and Revenue. With a Compendious View of Its Societies ...'' (Philadelphia: Published by B. & T. Kite, 1811), 351, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/5EXQKRJT/q/picture%20of%20philadelphia view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Poulsons1818_cite"></span>The earliest extant description, written in 1818, two years after M’Mahon’s death, records about twenty acres of “variegated” land, with “an ample fish [[pond]] and island, supported by a never failing spring” on the property, and several buildings including a “two-storied stone dwelling; a brick and frame kitchen, a large stone building, [[Green House]], a frame stable, coach house, and out buildings” ([[#Poulsons1818|view text]]). With its [[pond]], mixed soils, and [[green house]], the land at Upsal must have afforded M’Mahon with diverse growing conditions for a wide variety of species. The garden continued to attract botanically-minded visitors in the decades following M’Mahon’s death, like the Scottish botanist David Douglas (1799–1834), who visited the property in 1823. <span id="Douglas_cite"></span>In his journal, Douglas briefly described Upsal’s Osage orange trees (''Maclura pomifera''), which were among the most celebrated specimens collected by the Lewis and Clark expedition ([[#Douglas|view text]]). <span id="Report1831_cite"></span>As late as 1830, visitors remarked on the “[[green house]] 60 feet long,” the “beautiful fish and water plants” with which the [[pond]] was stocked, and “a row of native oaks, planted by him [M’Mahon], containing 30 varieties; being all the kinds that he could collect in his day, either with money or zealous exertion” ([[#Report1831|view text]]).

''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' also outlived M’Mahon by several decades, reprinted in a total of eleven editions between 1806 and 1857 in Philadelphia. The ''Calendar'' provided readers with month-by-month instructions for the care and maintenance of [[kitchen garden]]s, [[orchard]]s, and [[nursery|nurseries]]. In both structure and content, it borrowed heavily from English garden manuals, and only lightly from American sources. M’Mahon himself admitted his admiration for the ''Gardener’s Dictionary'' by the English botanist Philip Miller (1691–1771).<ref>Sarah Pattee Stetson, “American Garden Books Transplanted and Native, before 1807,” ''William and Mary Quarterly'' 3, ser. 3 (1946): 366, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/QIREGNVP/q/transplanted%20and%20native view on Zotero].</ref> Other sources included John Abercrombie’s ''Every Many His Own Gardener,'' which provided a general structure for the work.<ref>For the most comprehensive analysis of his sources to date, see Brenda Bullion, “The Science and Art of Plants and Gardens in the Development of an American Landscape Aesthetic” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1990), 293–95, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/9XGG8N2W/q/brenda%20bullion view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon was not, however, completely beholden to these English models. He cited Philadelphian John Beale Bordley’s 1799 ''Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs'' in his discussions of animal husbandry. The distinctly American perspective of the text appears most clearly in his discussion of indigenous flowering plants. <span id="Indigenous_cite"></span>Even before M’Mahon received specimens from the Lewis and Clark expedition, he pleaded with American gardeners to incorporate indigenous species in their ornamental plantings: “In Europe plants are not rejected because they are indigenous, on the contrary they are cultivated with due care; and yet here, we cultivate many foreign trifles, and neglect the profusion of beauties so bountifully bestowed upon us by the hand of nature” ([[#Indigenous|view text]]).

Within M’Mahon’s lifetime, he became especially known for his championing of [[hedge]]s as live fences, and his calendar may have helped popularize them wherever it was read. <span id="Aurora1816_cite"></span> In 1816, his obituary singled out his innovative approach to planting “Quickset [[hedge]]s” from European white thorn (''Crataegus laevigata''), based on observation of the weathering and germination of Hawthorn seeds in the wild ([[#Aurora1816|view text]]). As Brenda Bullion points out, M’Mahon himself understood these live fences as a response to the deforestation of the American countryside, recommending them “particularly in those parts of the Union in which timber has got scarce, and must inevitably become more so in a very rapid progression.”<ref>Bullion 1990, 304–5, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/9XGG8N2W/q/brenda%20bullion view on Zotero].</ref> Here, as elsewhere, his ''Calendar'' had both practical and aesthetic implications for the development of American landscape design.

Landscape design principles formed a small but significant part of the book’s content, and in 1841, the landscape gardener [[Andrew Jackson Downing]] described the ''American Gardener’s Calendar'' as the “only American work previously published which treats directly of landscape gardening.”<ref> A. J. Downing, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America; with a View to the Improvement of Country Residences... with Remarks on Rural Architecture'' (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1841), 20, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/PGUEKHNG? view on Zotero].</ref> Squeezed into the month of January, M’Mahon’s introductory overview of “The [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|Pleasure]], or [[Flower Garden]]” quotes extensively from ''The Universal Gardener and Botanist'' by John Abercrombie.<ref>See the entry on Pleasure-Garden in the 1778 and, even more similar, 1797 editions of Thomas Mawe and John Abercrombie, ''The Universal Gardener and Botanist, or A General Dictionary of Gardening and Botany'' (London: Printed for G. Robinson et al, 1778), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/ID3XI7NM/q/abercrombie view on Zotero].</ref> This overview effectively popularized a design vocabulary drawn from earlier English works for American audiences, employing terms for plantings like [[lawn]], [[hedge]], and [[parterre]]; architectural elements such as [[temple]], pyramid, and [[obelisk]]; and earthworks including [[slope]], [[terrace]], and [[eminence]].<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 55–69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon’s taste and those of his sources subtly shaped this vocabulary. <span id="Modern_cite"></span>He expressed a preference for the “[[Modern style/Natural style|modern]] garden” in imitation of nature rather than the “too formal works” that characterized the [[Ancient style]] ([[#Modern|view text]]).<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 66 (perspective), 55–56 (modern garden), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].
</ref> <span id="Variety_cite"></span>Lifting passages from Abercrombie’s ''Universal Gardener and Botanist'' verbatim, he advocated variety in garden design, rather than single-minded adherence to any individual design principle ([[#Variety|view text]]).

The ''Calendar'' quickly gained a wide readership among the agricultural, botanical, and even medical communities (an early copy is listed in the New York Hospital library inventory of 1811).<ref>See the catalog of books in ''An Account of the New-York Hospital'' (New York: Collins & Co., 1811), 63, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/64Q6DV2I/q/an%20account%20of%20the%20new-york view on Zotero].</ref> M’Mahon’s horticultural and agricultural guidelines were excerpted in a variety of gardening manuals and almanacs like Fessenden’s 1828 ''The New American Gardener,'' which contains roughly twenty short passages attributed to M’Mahon.<ref>Thomas Fessenden, ed., ''The New American Gardener,'' 1st ed. (Boston: J. B. Russell, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/M8WDX2P7/q/the%20new%20american%20gardener view on Zotero]. Fessenden also quoted liberally from M’Mahon in several of his later works.</ref> In 1819, one unscrupulous publisher named Fielding Lucas Jr. went so far as to reproduce the work nearly in its entirety, retitled ''The Practical American Gardener.''<ref>Ewan 1960, 378, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GAHIWIAR/q/ewan view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Loudon_cite"></span>The book was also known in Europe, where [[J._C._(John_Claudius)_Loudon|John Claudius Loudon]] praised its pioneering subject and completeness in the 1822 edition of his ''Encyclopaedia of Gardening,'' but expressed skepticism concerning just how widespread the horticultural and agricultural techniques described within really were: “We cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars” ([[#Loudon|view text]]). ''The American Gardener's Calendar'' was so successful that in 1846, some thirty years after M’Mahon’s death, his acquaintance Darlington cited it in his ''Address Before the Chester County Horticultural Society,'' claiming that “although his book was published forty years ago, it is, in my opinion, about as well adapted to our wants—and as replete with practical common sense—as any thing of the kind which has yet appeared in our country.”<ref>William Darlington, ''Address Before the Chester County Horticultural Society, at Their First Annual Exhibition, in the Borough of West Chester, Sept. 11, 1846'' (West Chester, PA, 1846), 13, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/P7C9TXRV/q/darlington view on Zotero].</ref>

—''Alexander Brey''

<hr>

==Texts==
*<div id="Modern"></div>M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, describing designs for a [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|pleasure ground]] (1806: 55)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 55, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Modern_cite|back up to History]]
:“In designs for a [[Pleasure-ground]], according to [[Modern style/Natural style|modern gardening]]; consulting rural disposition, in imitation of nature; all too formal works being almost abolished, such as long straight [[walk]]s, regular intersections, square [[Plot/Plat|grass-plats]], corresponding [[parterre]]s, quadrangular and angular spaces, and other uniformities, as in [[Ancient style|ancient designs]]; instead of which, are now adopted, rural open spaces of grass-ground, of varied forms and dimensions, and winding [[walk]]s, all bounded with [[plantation]]s of trees, shrubs, and flowers, in various [[clump]]s; other compartments are exhibited in a variety of imitative rural forms; such as curves, projections, openings, and closings, in imitation of a natural assemblage; having all the various [[plantation]]s and [[border]]s, open to the [[walk]]s and [[lawn]]s.”

*<div id="Variety"></div>M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, describing the monotonous quality of [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|pleasure grounds]] imitating rural design “to an extreme” (1806: 56)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 56, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Variety_cite|back up to History]]
:“In these rural works, however, we should not abolish entirely, the appearance of art and uniformity; for these when properly applied, give an additional beauty and peculiar grace, to all our natural productions, and sets [sic] nature in the fairest and most beautiful point of view.
:“But some modern [[Pleasure ground/Pleasure garden|Pleasure-grounds]], in which rural design is copied to an extreme, are often very barren of variety and entertainment, as they frequently consist only of a grass-[[lawn]], like a great field; having a running [[plantation]] of trees and shrubs all round it, just broad enough, to admit a gravel-walk winding through it, in the serpentine way, in many short twists and turns, and bordering at every turn alternately, upon the outward [[fence]] and the [[lawn]]; which are continually obtruded upon the sight, exhibiting the same prospect over and over, without the least variation; so as that after having traversed the [[walk]]s all round this sort of [[pleasure-ground]], we find no more variety or entertainment than at our first entrance, the whole having presented itself at the first view.”

*M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, describing the usefulness of formal gardens to “diversify” landscapes (1806: 69)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref>
:“The perpetual show of stiff formality, displayed by this kind of fancy, has induced many to discontinue it; but some of these run into the contrary extreme, by excluding all formal regularity and uniform appearances; and substituting various dissimilar arrangements, in the formation of the different compartments, in fancied imitation of natural rurality as much as possible.
:“However, for the sake of diversity, some of the more elegant regular works, ought still to be admitted, which would form a beautiful contrast with the general rural improvements, and diversify the whole scene, so as to have a most enchanting effect.”

*<div id="Indigenous"></div>M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, endorsing the ornamental use of “indigenous” flowers (1806: 72)<ref>M’Mahon 1806, 72, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C/q/m'mahon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Indigenous_cite|back up to History]]
:“Here I cannot avoid remarking, that many [[flower-garden]]s, &c. Are almost destitute of bloom, during a great part of the season; which could be easily avoided, and a blaze of flowers kept up, both in this department, and in the borders of the [[pleasure ground]], from March to November, by introducing from our woods and fields, the various beautiful ornaments with which nature has so profusely decorated them. Is it because they are indigenous, that we should reject them? ought we not rather to cultivate and improve them? what can be more beautiful than our Lobelias, Orchis’, Asclepias’ and Asters; Dracocephalums, Gerardias, Monardas and Ipomoeas; Liliums, Podalyrias, Rhexias, Solidagos and Hibiscus’; Phlox’s, Gentianas, Spigelias, Chironias and Sisyrinchiums, Cassias, Ophrys’, Coreopsis’ and Cypripediums; Fumarias, Violas, Rudbeckias and Liatris’; with our charming Limadorum, fragrant Arethusa and a thousand other lovely plants, which if introduced would grace our plantations, and delight our senses?
:“In Europe plants are not rejected because they are indigenous, on the contrary they are cultivated with due care; and yet here, we cultivate many foreign trifles, and neglect the profusion of beauties so bountifully bestowed upon us by the hand of nature.”

*Anonymous, 1807, Review of ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' (''The Medical Repository'' vol. 4: 177-180)<ref>“Review of ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'',” ''The Medical Repository'' 4 (1807): 174–80, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UR9I39RN view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Mr. M’Mahon has parcelled his work into twelve great divisions. These correspond to the months of the year. In each he prescribes the work to be done, and the way of doing it. In this manner he has constructed a Calendar, beginning with January, and proceeding regularly to June, and thence forward to December. By attending to this arrangement, the person who consults the volume can readily find the months, by casting his eye to the top of the pages, and below them the labour and preparation during each.
:“Besides this distribution of his precepts and directions, according to the sun’s place in the zodiacal signs, the author has made a methodical disposition of the business of every month. The operations in the [[kitchen-garden]], fruit-garden, [[orchard]], vineyard, [[nursery]], [[flower-garden]], [[Greenhouse|green-house]], and [[hot-house]], are placed under distinct heads; and its is easy to find under one or another of these titles, whatever the Calendar contains for all the months of the year. By adverting thus to a division of his publication, into twelve parts or months, and these again into a subdivision of each into eight sections, Mr. M. has rendered it very easy to find any thing it contains. And, by attending to this, it is scarcely more difficult to examine the directions for the [[pleasure garden]] in September, the [[orchard]] in March, or the [[hot-house]] in December, &c. &c. Than to search for a word and its correlatives in the Encyclopaedia, or to examine passages in the Bible by the aid of a Concordance.
:“The reader is not to expect that the work should be wholly original. The author does not pretend to this. A candid acknowledgement is made, that in writing the treatise, he consulted the best publications in the American States, and in the transatlantic countries, especially those extant in the English, French, and Latin tongues. To bring into one compendious tract the information scattered in many books, composed in different languages, hard and costly to procure, laborious to examine when procured, and requiring more literature than falls to the lot of the great body of cultivators, is a very laudable and useful undertaking. Our fellow citizens, we confidently believe, will concur with us in opinion, that he has done them worthy and acceptable service. He is perfectly aware that in some cases he may be mistaken, and in others may have made omissions; and these he is ready to amend as soon as they shall be discovered. But he has employed a good share of judgment in the directions he has given for the rearing of thorn-quicks and other plants for live [[fence]]s; for cultivating liquorice, manna-ash, and rhubarb for medicines; planting madder and weld for dyeing; cork tree, fuller’s teazel, tanner’s-sumac, and paper mulberry for the economical arts; sea-kale for the dining table; grapes for the preparation of wine; and mulberry trees and insects for the manufacture of silk. And, in addition to all his knowledge derived from preceding authors, Mr. M. lays claim to the attention of his readers, by the experimental skill derived from a large and extensive course of practical gardening, pursued for almost thirty years. . . .
:“We were pleased to find that the American plants which beautify the woods, fields, and swamps, had not been overlooked or neglected by our author. Many of them are duly noticed, and the cultivator’s attention called to them among the instructions for the [[flower-garden]] in the month of August. And we were gratified also with a piece of convenient economy, by substituting oak leaves newly fallen in autumn, instead of tanner’s bark, as described in the section which relates to the [[hot-house]] department for October.
:“But we forbear any further comments or criticisms. A book of such great extent, and various contents, cannot be easily analized [''sic''] in a general way further than we have gone. And to proceed more deeply into particulars would be inconsistent with our plan and limits: we therefore observe, that as the taste for gardening is increasing, and the appearance of the book is opportune, we expect it will be sought with avidity, and thereby become the incentive and the guide to capital improvements in that interesting art. And we shall be disappointed, if nursery-men, florists, and gentlemen of taste, leisure, and fortune, do not add to their libraries, however select and small, M’Mahon’s American Calendar.”

*M’Mahon, Bernard, 3 January 1809, letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]] describing a [[nursery]] and [[botanic garden]] in Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Jefferson 1944: 401)<ref>Jefferson 1944, 401, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5/q/thomas%20jefferson's%20garden%20book view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Last month I purchased in the vicinity of this City [Philadelphia] 20 Acres of ground, well adapted for a [[Nursery]] & [[Botanic Garden]], and hope that, in a few years, I shall enrich that spot, and through it, in some measure, the country in general, with as extensive and useful a collection of vegetable productions, as can reasonably be expected from the small means of which I am possessed.”

*Anonymous, 1811, Description of Upsal [[Botanic Garden]] published in the ''Census Directory for 1811,'' reprinted in various newspapers (1811: 426-27)<ref>''Census Directory for 1811,'' 426–427, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UYA9SCPV/q/census%20directory view on Zotero]. Reprinted verbatim in “From the True American. Botany,” ''Concord Gazette,'' April 23, 1811, 3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/84CNB3KN/q/from%20the%20true%20american view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Upsal [[Botanic Garden]]
:“A [[Botanic Garden]] and [[Nursery]] was commenced in the spring of 1809 in the immediate vicinity of this city [Philadelphia], near the junction of the Germantown and township line roads; the extent of the ground is 20 acres, well and advantageously watered, the varieties of soils and exposures which it produces and exhibits, is of considerable importance in an institution of this kind.
:“In the summer of the last year, the proprietor erected an elegant building for the preservation of exotics, which is now furnished with an immense variety; and the garden generally, at this time, is said to contain several thousand species and varieties of plants, foreign and indigenous, many of which are of considerable importance in medicine, agriculture, horticulture and the arts.—The proprietor of this garden, Mr. Bernard M’Mahon, a few years ago, published in this city a work on horticulture in general, entitled “The American Gardeners’ Calendar,” which appears to have thrown a new light on our former system of gardening; the good effects of which are here generally acknowledged, and are visible in the superabundance of fine fruits and vegetables, annually accumulating in the markets of this city.”

*<div id="DemocraticPress"></div>Anonymous, December 28, 1813, advertisement in the ''Democratic Press'' for M’Mahon’s new store at No. 13, South Second Street, Philadelphia<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, “Grass and Garden Seeds, &c.,” Democratic Press, December 28, 1813, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HYB8WB7Z/q/grass%20and%20garden%20seeds view on Zotero].</ref> [[#DemocraticPress_cite|back up to History]]
:“Grass and Garden Seeds, &c.
:“BERNARD M’MAHON
:“[[Nursery]] & Seedsman.
:“HAS recently moved his stock in trade from No. 39, to No. 13, South Second street where he intends permanently to reside. He is amply supplied, as usual with an extensive variety of Grass Garden and Flower Seeds; Bulbous Flower Roots, of numerous species and varieties, Garden Tools, Agricultural, Gardening and Botanical Books, &c. He has also for sale at his [[Botanic Garden]] [Upsal] near this city, a numerous variety of the most beautiful hardy perennial, tuberous and fibrous FLOWER ROOTS, ornamental Trees and Shrubs as well as [[Green House]] Plants, collected from various parts of the Globe, with some very valuable Fruit Trees, such as superior English Gooseberries, large red and white Antwerp Raspberries, red white and black Currants, Apples, Pears, Peaches, Nectarines and German Medlars, &c. with superior Strawberry and Asparagus Plants.
:“Dec. 22—if w10t”

*<div id="Aurora1816"></div>Anonymous, September 19, 1816, obituary in the ''Aurora'' for Bernard M’Mahon<ref>“Died—on Wednesday Morning...,” ''Aurora,'' September 19, 1816, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LY9RB34Z/q/1816 view on Zotero]. Reprinted verbatim in “Died—on Wednesday Morning...,” ''Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser,'' September 20, 1816, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/B9PBEY5G/q/1816 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Aurora1816_cite|back up to History]]
:“Died—On Wednesday Morning, at his [[Botanical Garden]], called Upsal, two and a half miles from this city, Mr. BERNARD M’MAHON, well known throughout the Continent and among the Botanists of the Old World. Mr. M’Mahon came to this city, from Ireland, about twenty years since, and from his previous experience and industry, and great enthusiasm in the profession to which he was bred, he has rendered very eminent services to the United States, (more, indeed, than all who had preceded him,) by applying the principles of Agricultural Science to the varieties of the climates of this continent; pointing out the errors which had retarded improvement, he contributed to the comforts, and the most delightful of human recreations, planting the shrub, and nursing the buds into bloom, and tendril into vigor. His Book of Gardening is a precious treasure, and ought to occupy a place in every house in this country; its principles are eternal, and its instruction fruitful of advantage. His theory of Planting, has removed the difficulties heretofore deemed insurmountable in the production of Quickset [[hedge]]s, from the white thorn—he urged, that he learned it from Nature, who scattering stone fruit on the surface of the earth opens the stone by the frost, and the earth to receive the kernel by the thaw—following this observation, he laid his white thorn seed, or the dried haw on the smooth surface of the ground upon which he proposed to plant, preparing the soil only to suit the operations of Nature. It was his desire, while living, to be useful; and it is in conformity with his usual mode of thinking, that we think fit to notice, at the same time that we notice his demise, his practice in an invaluable branch of knowledge, which many may see on this occasion, who have not before heard of it.
:“His funeral will take place at Upsal, this morning at ten o’clock, where his friends are requested to attend.”

*<div id="Poulsons1818"></div>Anonymous, April 4, 1818, auction notice and description of Upsal [[Botanic Garden]] in ''Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser''<ref> “Botanic Garden. Real Estate, &c.,” ''Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser,'' April 4, 1818, 3, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/7487U853/q/botanic%20garden.%20real%20estate view on Zotero]. See also Cox 2004, 132, note 22, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CHM5IVVN/q/i%20never%20yet%20parted view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Poulsons1818_cite|back up to History]]
:“[[Botanic garden|BOTANIC GARDEN]].
:“REAL ESTATE, &c.
:“PURSUANT to an Order of the Orphans’ Court, held at Philadelphia, for the city and county of Philadelphia, on the 20th day of March, A.D. 1818, before the Honourable Jacob Rush, William Moulder, and Thomas Armstrong, Esquires, Justices of the said Court,
:“Will be Exposed to Public Sale,
:“On Tuesday, the 12th day of May, at seven o’clock in the evening, at the Merchants’ Coffee House, the following described Real Estate, late of James M’Mahon, deceased, to wit:
:“All that tract or piece of Land situate in Penn township, in the county of Philadelphia, on the township line road, near the Germantown road, and about two and a half miles from the city—adjoining lands of Charles Wharton, Esq. and others; containing 19 acres and 128 perches, on which is erected a two storied stone dwelling; a brick and frame kitchen, a large stone building, [[Green House]], a frame stable, coach house and out buildings. The ground is variegated, and in high cultivation. Terms at sale.
:“By order of the Court,
:“Thomas F. Gordon, Clerk.
:“Ann M’Mahon, Widow and Administratrix of James M’Mahon, deceased.
:“AT THE SAME TIME AND PLACE,
:“Will also be exposed to Public Sale, either collectively or separately, as may best suit the purchaser or purchasers. The whole of the [[Green House]] plants, (about three thousand) and other articles, very many of which are peculiar, valuable, and far sought for. The ground is sufficiently variegated, to admit of every species of Botany, and is probably the best [[Botanic garden|BOTANIC GARDEN]] in the country. It contains an ample fish [[pond]] and island, supported by a never failing spring, having therein Gold and Silver fish, in great variety and quantity. There is a great variety of Scots Fir, Silver Spruce, Larch, with other trees and shrubs—A pump of the finest water, &c. &c.
:“Catalogues will be made out, and the property may be viewed at any time previous to sale.
:“John Dorsey, Auc’r.”

*<div id="Loudon"></div>Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius), 1822, describing Bernard M’Mahon and the ''American Gardener’s Calendar'' (1822, I: 106)<ref>J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening,'' 1st ed. (London: Longman et al, 1822), 106, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/Y638SNRW/q/loudon view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Loudon_cite|back up to History]]
:“M’Mahon, already mentioned, is a seedsman at Philadelphia, and ‘has connected with the seed-trade a botanical, agricultural, and horticultural book-store.’ His work is the first of the kind which has appeared in America, and includes every department to be found in our calendars. Ample instructions are given for growing the pine, vine, melon, and other delicate fruits, and also for the forcing departments both of the [[Flower garden|flower]] and [[kitchen garden]]s; but we cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars.”

*<div id="Douglas"></div>Douglas, David, August 22, 1823, describing his visit to Upsal [[Botanic Garden]] (1914: 8)<ref>David Douglas, ''Journal Kept by David Douglas During His Travels in North America 1823–1827 Together with a Particular Description of Thirty-Three Species of American Oaks and Eighteen Species of Pinus, with Appendices Containing a List of the Plants Introduced by Douglas and an Account of His Death in 1834'' (London: W. Wesley & Son, for the Royal Historical Society, 1914), 8, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/GVY4XWI3/q/david%20douglas view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Douglas_cite|back up to History]]
:“Friday, August 22nd.
:“. . . . I made a journey to Mr. McMahon, which is three miles north of the city. I did not find him at home; I looked round the garden, and after a patient search found Maclura, two plants, height about seventeen feet, bushy and rugged; they had a few fruits on the trees; it is well described in Pursh’s Preface of his ‘Flora Amer.’ Then I called at [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery|Bartram’s old place]], but found no person at home.”

*<div id="Report1831"></div>Anonymous, c. 1831, Report on the condition of Upsal for the Horticultural Society of Pennsylvania, maintained after M’Mahon’s death by his wife (1831: 10–11)<ref>''Report of the Committee Appointed by the Horticultural Society of Pennsylvania for Visiting the Nurseries and Gardens in the Vicinity of Philadelphia'' (Philadelphia: W. Geddes, 1831), 10–11, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/SSQIGDZR/q/report%20of%20the%20committee view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Report1831_cite|back up to History]]
:“Mrs. M’Mahon’s Garden is about 3 miles north of Philadelphia. It contains a [[green house]] 60 feet long and calculated to hold a great many plants. The collection is good. The establishment is 19 years old, and was founded by that enterprising and distinguished horticulturist, Mr. B. M’Mahon, husband of the present proprietor.
:“Here is the largest Portlandia that we have seen, and a good selection of the succulent family, with many oranges, lemons, shaddock, etc. A very large tree of Maclura aurantiaca or osage orange; a highly ornamental tree, with bright green foliage, and standing longer in the fall than any other of the deciduous tribe. It bears a large green fruit, not unlike an orange. We think that Mr. M’Mahon was the first to introduce this tree, brought back by Lewis and Clark. Here we saw an uncommon large shrub of the Lonicera tartarica, or tartarian honeysuckle; it is twenty feet in diameter, and high in proportion.
:“The ground contains about 20 acres, distributed in [[nursery]] stock, and growing vegetable seeds.
:“Those two beautiful shrubs, the Symphoricarpos racemosus and Ribes aureum, were propagated in this [[nursery]] before any other in our vicinity; and this was the case, too, with many other shrubs and trees. Of European trees there are several valuable specimens, such as Fraxinus, Tilia, Ulmus, Fagus, Betula, Carpinus, Platanus and Pinus. On these grounds are [[pond]]s well stocked with beautiful fish and water plants, among these last is the Nymphaea odorata, with its showy white flowers, yellow anthers and sweet fragrance.
:“Mr. M’Mahon was an indefatigable arborist, and his garden now exhibits a row of native oaks, planted by him, containing 30 varieties; being all the kinds that he could collect in his day, either with money or zealous exertion. The willow-leaved oak is the most conspicuous, and forms a very handsome conical tree.
:“Perhaps we owe as much to the late Mr. M’Mahon, as a horticulturist, as to any individual in America. Besides his efforts in collecting and propagating we are indebted to him for his excellent book on “American Gardening,” which has passed through many editions.
:“There is a small [[nursery]] connected with this, in Camac street.
:“Attached to this establishment is a Seed Store, in Second below Market street, where there is sold an extensive variety of seeds, foreign and native, to the amount of 2,000 kinds; with a variety of horticultural implements, and a collection of botanical and horticultural books.”

*Wynne, William, 1832, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia,” describing Hibbert [[Nursery]], vicinity of Philadelphia, Pa. (''Gardener’s Magazine'' 8: 273)<ref>William Wynne, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia, with Remarks on the Subject of the Emigration of British Gardens to the United States,” ''The Gardener’s Magazine and Register of Rural & Domestic Improvement'' 8, no. 38 (June 1832): 273, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/CKN7ZG86/q/william%20wynne view on Zotero].</ref>
:“A Mr. Hibbert keeps a small [[nursery]], in which he grows roses and other plants in pots, which he sells chiefly in the city market. I understand Mr. Hibbert has taken a piece of ground formerly occupied as a [[nursery]] by Mr. M’Mahon, and has taken into partnership [[Robert Buist|Mr. Buist]], a gardener in the neighbourhood.”

*Darlington, William, 1846, on the significance of M’Mahon’s ''American Gardener’s Calendar'' (1846: 13)<ref>Darlington 1846, 13, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/P7C9TXRV/q/darlington view on Zotero].
</ref>
:“To instruct us in the management of the [[Flower garden|Flower]] and [[Kitchen Garden]], we have “The American Gardener’s Calendar,” by the late Bernard M’Mahon—one of the pioneers among us, in the good work of teaching horticulture. Although his book was published forty years ago, it is, in my opinion, about as well adapted to our wants—and as replete with practical common sense—as any thing of the kind which has yet appeared in our country.”

*<div id="Darlington"></div>Darlington, William, 1857, on his recollections of Bernard M’Mahon (in M’Mahon 1857: xii-xiii)<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....,'' 11th ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Company, 1857), xii–xiii, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/4CL25KHJ/q/the%20american%20gardener's%20calendar view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Darlington_cite|back up to History]]
:“I am much gratified to learn that a new edition of M’Mahon’s “American Gardener’s Calendar” is in press. That work was among the earliest of its kind in our country, and I have always regarded it as among the best. It is at once comprehensive and complete; and, moreover, remarkable for its judicious, practical, common sense views of the subject.
:“I had the pleasure of knowing Bernard M’Mahon, in my youthful days. He was, I believe, one of those Exiles of Erin who sought and found a refuge in our country, near the close of the last century. In the autumn, I think of 1799, he passed some weeks at my native village of Dilworthtown, in Chester County, in order to avoid the ravages of yellow fever, in Philadelphia, where he resided; and in that rural retreat I first knew him. I renewed the acquaintance in 1802, 3, and 4, while attending the medical lectures in the University of Pennsylvania, by which time he had established his nurseries of useful and ornamental plants: and I ever found him an obliging, intelligent, and instructive friend. He was a regularly educated gardener, of much experience, and great enterprise. He gave the first decisive impulse to scientific horticulture in our State; and to him we are mainly indebted among other favors, for the successful culture and dissemination of the interesting novelties collected by Lewis and Clarke, in their journey to the Pacific. When, in 1818, Mr. Nuttall published his Genera of North American Plants, he named a beautiful shrub “in memory of the late Mr. Bernard M’Mahon, whose ardent attachment to Botany, and successful introduction of useful and ornamental Horticulture into the United States, lay claim to public esteem:” and although the genus has been reduced by later botanists to a section of Berberis, it is generally known by—and I trust will long retain—the popular name of Mahonia.
:“It was a well-deserved tribute of respect, from one who intimately knew, and could justly appreciate the merits it commemorated: and I am happy in the opportunity, even at this late day, to add my own humble and inadequate testimonial to that of so accomplished a judge of botanical worth, as Thomas Nuttall.”

<hr>

==Images==
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
Image:2191.jpg|Title page for the first edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'' (1806)
Image:2192.jpg|Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, recto, 1806
Image:2193.jpg|Receipt for payment received by Bernard M’Mahon from the American Philosophical Society, verso, 1806
</gallery>
<hr>

==Other Resources==

[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/nr97032038 Library of Congress Authority File]

[https://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/bernard-mcmahon-pioneer-american-gardener “Monticello's Twinleaf Journal Online: Bernard McMahon, Pioneer American Gardener”]

[https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b117016 Hathitrust Digital Library: 1806 Edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'']

[https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/20141404#page/7/mode/1up Biodiversity Heritage Library: 1857 Edition of ''The American Gardener's Calendar'']

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category: People|M'Mahon, Bernard]]

Alexander Jackson Davis

2019-09-04T19:12:38Z

T-omalley: /* History */

[[File:2205.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, George Freeman, Portrait of Alexander Jackson Davis, 1833.]]
'''Alexander Jackson Davis''' (1803–1892) was one of the most influential American residential architects of the nineteenth century. His designs for country houses illustrated publications on [[landscape gardening]] and rural life that established an architectural vocabulary for American [[picturesque]] landscape design between 1835 and 1850. Davis’s copious drawings and watercolors provide idealized documents of mid-nineteenth-century designed landscapes as they were built and imagined.

==History==

[[File:2206.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Mary Freeman Goldbeck, Portrait of Alexander Jackson Davis, ca. 1845.]]
[[File:0675.jpg|thumb|Fig. 3, Anthony Imbert after Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View of the Battery and Castle Garden'', 1826–28.]]
[[File:0811.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4, William Smith after Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View of St. John's Chapel, From the Park'', 1829.]]
Born on July 24, 1803, in New York City, Alexander Jackson Davis [Figs. 1 & 2] was raised and educated in Utica and Auburn, New York. After apprenticing with a publisher in Alexandria, Virginia, between 1818 and 1823 (at the time still within the District of Columbia), Davis moved to New York City to study design at the American Academy of the Fine Arts, the New York Association of Artists, and the Antique School of the National Academy of Design.<ref>For an overview of Davis’s education, see Carrie Rebora, “Alexander Jackson Davis and the Arts of Design,” in ''Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803-1892'', ed. Amelia Peck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992), 25–31, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/BCH6DYYR view on Zotero]; John Cornelius Donoghue, “Alexander Jackson Davis, Romantic Architect, 1803-1892.” (Ph.D., New York University, 1977), 67–84, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HTJSZXUM/q/donoghue view on Zotero].</ref> During this period, Davis published a series of lithographs depicting urban landscapes as ''Views of the Public Buildings in the City of New-York'', [Fig. 3], and provided material to early American illustrated journals like the ''New-York Mirror'' [Fig. 4]. Davis’s career as an architect began in 1829 when he entered into a partnership with the established architect Ithiel Town (1784–1844). For six years Davis collaborated with Town on civic projects and public buildings, mostly neoclassical in plan and elevation. As historian of architecture Patrick Snadon has noted, Davis studied the buildings of [[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]] during this period of his career, creating detailed drawings of the United States Capitol between 1832 and 1834 [Fig. 5].<ref>Patrick A. Snadon, review of ''Review of Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect 1803-1892, by Amelia Peck, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'' 52, no. 4 (1993): 495, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UJUT3CUL view on Zotero]. For an overview of Davis’s work on public buildings, see Francis R. Kowsky, “Simplicity and Dignity: The Public and Institutional Buildings of Alexander Jackson Davis,” in ''Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803-1892'', ed. Amelia Peck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992), 41–57, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/P5FSVN2Q view on Zotero].</ref> Davis also worked with Town on the design of a residential villa known as Glen Ellen (1833), a building type to which Davis would devote much of his active career as an architect. In 1835, Davis parted ways with Town. By that time, Davis had already begun independently designing Hudson river estates for patrons like the banker Robert Donaldson (1834, never built).

[[File:2207.jpg|thumb|Fig. 5, Alexander Jackson Davis, [United States Capitol, Washington D.C. East front elevation, rendering], [1834].]]
<span id="RuralResidences_cite"></span>With Donaldson’s support and encouragement, Davis began work on a book composed of architectural drawings and plans accompanied by short explanatory texts ([[#RuralResidences|view text]]). In 1837, Davis published this work, ''Rural Residences, Etc. Consisting of Designs, Original and Selected, for Cottages, Farm-Houses, Villas, and Village Churches: With Brief Explanations, Estimates, and a Specification of Materials, Construction, Etc.'', in periodical installments each containing four designs. The concept and format seem to have been modeled on the British architect and artist John Buonarotti Papworth's 1818 publication with the strikingly similar title ''Rural Residences, Consisting of a Series of Designs for Cottages, Decorated Cottages, Small Villas, and Other Ornamental Buildings.'' As in Papworth's work, the floorplans within Davis's ''Rural Residences'' do not extend to the surrounding landscape, but the perspectival drawings suggest complementary planting designs. Davis’s brief introduction emphasizes the landscape as a design factor in terms of the “connexion [of a building] with its site.”<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Rural Residences, Etc. Consisting of Designs, Original and Selected, for Cottages, Farm-Houses, Villas, and Village Churches: With Brief Explanations, Estimates, and a Specification of Materials, Construction, Etc.'' (New York, 1837), n.p., [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LDE2TS2Z view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:2208.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6, E. Jones, F. [Fanny] Palmer, and E. Palmer (lithographers), Alexander Jackson Davis (architect), ''Suburban Gothic Villa, Murray Hill, N.Y. City. Residence of W. C. Waddell, Esq. 5th Avenue, Between 37 & 38th Street. Below, Plans of First and Second Floors'', n.d.]]
<span id="Introduction_cite"></span>Donaldson introduced Davis to the nurseryman and landscape gardener [[Andrew Jackson Downing]] in 1838 ([[#Introduction|view text]]), and Davis would go on to design [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing’s]] own Hudson River estate Highland Park (1838–1839).<ref>Patrick Alexander Snadon, “A. J. Davis and the Gothic Revival Castle in America, 1832-1865” (Ph.D., Cornell University, 1988), 173, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Between 1839 and 1850, [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing]] used woodcuts of designs and sketches by Davis to illustrate many of his publications, including ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (first published in 1841), ''The Architecture of Country Houses'' (1850), and ''The Horticulturist''. The publicity generated by these works made Davis one of the most desirable architects for wealthy owners of rural estates and [[plantation]]s. Donaldson was also instrumental in helping Davis obtain commissions for campus designs, including the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, writing in 1843 that <span id="Recommendation_cite"></span>“Mr Davis is the readiest & most skillful draughtsman that I know, and can furnish you with designs for Exterior Elevations or Interior Decorations—plans for [[Gate]]s, [[Fence]]s, & improving grounds about Buildings—in fact the danger is, when he mounts the Pegasus of Design, he may require the restraining taste of another” ([[#Recommendation|view text]]).

[[File:0956.jpg|thumb|Fig. 7, Alexander Jackson Davis, Canopied pavilion at Blithewood, 1836.]]
In his publications and his flourishing practice throughout the 1840s, Davis developed two main types of residential structures: large, asymmetrical villas for wealthy clients characterized by two main wings in an L-shaped configuration, and smaller rectangular cottages intended for clients of more modest means.<ref>For a discussion of the villa designs, which employed massing and decorative elements to emphasize “river-front” and “road front” facades, see Snadon 1988, 81–82, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="#Villa_cite"></span>Both types featured a [[veranda]] or [[porch]] wrapped around the building, which connected the house to its immediate surroundings, while his villas often incorporated “[[prospect tower]]s” or “prospect rooms” that provided sweeping views of the landscape, as seen in his design for Murray Hill ([[#Villa|view text]]) [Fig. 6].<ref>Snadon 1988, 73 (belvederes), 75 (verandas), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Davis also designed many small, free-standing structures for contemplating the landscape, including tented seats [Fig. 7], and [[summerhouse]]s [Fig. 8], inspired by the publications of [[John Claudius Loudon|J. C. Loudon]] and Batty Langley.<ref>Snadon 1988, 80, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing’s]] publications further emphasized the visual relationship between Davis’s designs and the surrounding landscape, recommending paint colors that harmonized with green foliage.

[[File:0854.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, Shore Seat for Montgomery Place, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (elevation and plan), 1870–79.]]
In addition to his clients in the New York area, Davis found patronage among several owners of [[plantation]]s in the American south. These commissions reveal how Davis, like other architects of the era, adapted the [[picturesque]] to aestheticize or obscure built landscapes of slavery.<ref>See also the work of William Birch for Rosalie Stier Calvert at Riversdale, mentioned in Therese O’Malley, “‘Models in This Art’: Tracing the Brownian Landscape Tradition in America,” ''Garden History'' 44, no. Suppl. 1 (Autumn 2016): 78–79, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/RUA439AW view on Zotero].</ref> With a workforce of more than 500 people, Philip St. George Cocke’s Belmead Plantation (1845–1848), near Powhatan, Virginia, was comparable in scale to large southern [[plantation]]s, such as Daniel and Martha Turnbull’s [[Rosedown Plantation]] (1835–1845) in Louisiana.<ref>Daniel Bluestone, “A. J. Davis’s Belmead: Picturesque Aesthetics in the Land of Slavery,” ''Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'' 71, no. 2 (2012): 147, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/FM7YPU9N view on Zotero].</ref> At Belmead, Davis and Cocke modified [[picturesque]] designs for cottages and gatehouses to function as slave [[quarter]]s. Architectural decorations featured heraldic depictions of cotton, tobacco, wheat, and corn that brought the landscape into the main house, but elided the bodies of the enslaved people who cultivated them.<ref>Snadon 1988, 201, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Architectural historian Daniel Bluestone has shown that much of the construction labor at Belmead was carried out by enslaved people, and argued that Davis’s designs for the estate hid slavery behind a [[picturesque]] veneer connoting refinement and taste. At Loudoun Plantation near Lexington, Kentucky (1849–1852), Davis accommodated his client Francis Key Hunt’s requests to eliminate prominent windows from the northeast face of his residence, overlooking the “private [[yard]]” in which his enslaved African American servants lived and worked.<ref>Patrick Snadon, “Loudoun: Two New York Architects and a Gothic Revival Villa in Antebellum Kentucky,” The Kentucky Review 9, no. 3 (October 1, 1989): 68–72, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/BIK2NNHX view on Zotero].</ref> Whether by altering the designs of slave [[quarter]]s at Belmead or the main [[plantation]] house at Loudoun, Davis used [[picturesque]] designs to indulge the ideological blindspots of these clients.

[[File:1928.jpg|thumb|Fig. 9, Alexander Jackson Davis, Map of Blithewood, c. 1840s.]]
<span id="#Advertisement_cite"></span> In addition to marketing himself as an architect, Davis also advertised his ability to create designs and plans for “[[landscape gardening]]” ([[#Advertisement|view text]]). Several of Davis’s site plans for villas and universities survive. His most comprehensive residential site plan, made for [[Blithewood]] [Fig. 9], is labelled with a variety of features including a boathouse on the river, a [[Rustic style|rustic]] tent, a [[Cascade/Cataract/Waterfall|cataract]], a barn, a grass field, and two springs. Davis provided a variety of [[landscape gardening]] services to his clients, producing a site plan for Glen Ellen (now lost), recommending books on the subject to George Merritt for his estate Lyndhurst, and meeting with Cocke to discuss planting at Belmead.<ref>Susanne Brendel-Pandich, “From Cottages to Castles: The Country House Designs of Alexander Jackson Davis,” in ''Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803-1892'', ed. Amelia Peck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992), 60 (book recommendations for Merritt), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/WLVSXGXF view on Zotero]; Snadon 1988, 98 (lost Glen Ellen site plan), 208-209 (visit to Belmead to discuss planting), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Even his more modest residential floorplans sometimes indicated landscape elements such as [[Terrace/Slope|terraces]], [[walk]]s, [[drive]]s, [[shrubbery]], grass, and plants, as in the 1849 drawings for his mother Julia Jackson Davis’s Kirri Cottage [Fig. 10]. Davis’s university campus proposals reveal a consistent approach to institutional landscapes, recognizing not only the aesthetic but also the educational and practical functions of gardens, [[lawn]]s, and [[walk]]s. His 1838 plan for the University of Michigan features two square [[botanic garden]]s filled with geometric [[bed]]s arranged around oval [[fountain]]s, divided by a tree-lined [[avenue]] [Fig. 11]. His later design for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, (1850–1858) likewise emphasizes a tree-lined [[avenue]], but asymmetrically locates both sections of the [[botanic garden]]s on the east edge of the campus.

[[File:1253.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 10, Alexander Jackson Davis, Kirri Cottage for Julia Jackson Davis, 1849.]]
Davis developed his ideas about [[picturesque]] buildings and landscapes from popular English theoretical and practical texts. His library contained works on aesthetic theories of the picturesque such as Edmund Burke’s ''A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful'' (1757), Uvedale Price’s ''Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared with the Sublime and The Beautiful'' (1794), and Richard Payne Knight’s ''An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste'' (1805), as well as treatises by [[picturesque]] landscape painters like William Gilpin (1724–1804).<ref>Snadon 1988, 566, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Davis was also familiar with more practical books on [[landscape gardening]], especially the work of Humphry Repton and Thomas Whately, of whose 1770 ''Observations on Modern Gardening'' Davis asserted “this is ''the classic'' on modern gardening.”<ref>Typescript, Lyndhurst Archives, as cited in Brendel-Pandich 1992, 60, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/WLVSXGXF/q/brendel view on Zotero].</ref> He saw [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing]] as the latest in this illustrious series, writing in a letter to the noted artist and inventor Samuel Morse (1791–1872), “Of course your landscape gardening is going on according to Whatley, Repton, [[John Claudius Loudon|Loudon]] & [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing]], and is immediately to exhibit the most finished illustrations of Natural Beauty—the art modestly retiring within the background.”<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, “Letter from Alexander Jackson Davis to Samuel Morse,” [https://www.loc.gov/resource/mmorse.031001/?sp=167 September 5, 1852], Samuel Finley Breese Morse papers, 1793–1944, General Correspondence and Related Documents, Bound volume— 17 April 1852–7 January 1853, Library of Congress. Cited in O’Malley 2016, 83, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/RUA439AW view on Zotero]. For a discussion of Davis collaboration with Morse, see Peter A. Watson, “Picturesque Transformations: A. J. Davis in the Hudson Valley and Beyond” (M.A., Columbia University, 2012), 139, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/C7YBAY2K view on Zotero].</ref> The works of these theorists emphasized a reciprocal aesthetic relationship between architecture and landscape that Davis echoed in the introduction to ''Rural Residences'', but sometimes overlooked in his practice.<ref>Snadon 1988, 16, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:0425.jpg|thumb|Fig. 11, Alexander Jackson Davis, Design for University of Michigan (elevation and plan of building and grounds), c. 1838.]]
Although Davis continued to design and redesign projects until his death in 1892, his commissions waned in the 1860s and 1870s following the American Civil War, as the Second Empire and High Victorian Gothic styles came to dominate popular taste.<ref>His most notable late commission consisted of designs drawn and built between 1853 and 1860 for a residential development in New Jersey known as Llewellyn Park. Richard Guy Wilson, “Idealism and the Origin of the First American Suburb: Llewellyn Park, New Jersey,” ''American Art Journal'' 11, no. 4 (1979): 79–90, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LYZNEUNK view on Zotero].</ref> Through his architectural designs and site plans, Davis established a spatial and stylistic vocabulary for [[picturesque]] rural villas that adapted European historical models for American clients and landscapes. His many lithographs, sketches, and watercolors document public and private landscapes as they were conceived and constructed in the early nineteenth century.

—''Alexander Brey''

<hr>

==Texts==
*<div id="RuralResidences"></div>[Davis, Alexander Jackson, 1837, introduction to ''Rural Residences'' (Davis 1837: n.p.)<ref>Davis 1837, n.p., [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LDE2TS2Z view on Zotero].</ref> [[#RuralResidences_cite|Back up to History]]
:“RURAL DESIGNS.
:“ADVERTISEMENT.
:“THE following series of designs has been prepared in compliance with the wishes of a few gentlemen who are desirous of seeing a better taste prevail in the Rural Architecture of this country.
:“The bald and uninteresting aspect of our houses must be obvious to every traveller; and to those who are familiar with the [[picturesque]] Cottages and Villas of England, it is positively painful to witness here the wasteful and tasteless expenditure of money in building.
:“Defects are felt, however, not only in the style of the house but in the want of connexion with its site,—in the absence of appropriate offices,—well disposed trees, [[shrubbery]], and vines,—which accessories give an inviting and habitable air to the place.
:“The Greek Temple form, perfect in itself, and well adapted as it is to public edifices, and even to town mansions, is inappropriate for country residences, and yet it is the only style ever attempted in our more costly habitations. The English collegiate style, is for many reasons to be preferred. It admits of greater variety both of plan and outline;—is susceptible of additions from time to time, while its bay windows, oriels, turrets, and chimney shafts , give pictorial effect to the elevation.
:“The principal object aimed at in these designs has been to give as much character to the exteriors as possible;—should they answer in any degree the purposes for which they were projected, the architect may submit, at a future period, designs for more expensive structures. . . .
:“VILLA IN THE ENGLISH COLLEGIATE STYLE.
:“This plan was designed for Robert Donaldson, Esq. of [[Blithewood]], on the Hudson River, to whose taste and aid, in selecting designs, the public are mainly indebted for the present publication.
:“The design is irregular, and suited to scenery of a [[picturesque]] character, and to an [[eminence]] commanding an extensive [[prospect]]. . . . ”

*<div id="Introduction"></div>[[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing, Andrew Jackson]], December 12, 1838, letter to arrange a first meeting with Alexander Jackson Davis (quoted in Pierson 1978: 351)<ref>Pierson 1978, 351, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/J8FITVZG view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Introduction_cite|Back up to History]]
:“Dear Sir—
:“I am at present busily engaged in preparing a work for the press on Landscape Gardening and Rural Residences with the view of improving if possible the taste in these matters in the United States.
:“My friend, R. Donaldson, Esq., has informed me that he has mentioned my name to you and that you were so kind as to offer to show me any work, views or plans in your possession which might be of any service to me.
:“I shall probably be in town on Saturday morning next when I shall have the pleasure of calling up on you and be glad to avail myself of your very kind offer.
:“Yours truly,
:“[[Andrew Jackson Downing|A. J. Downing]]”

*<div id="Recommendation"></div>Donaldson, Robert, December 16, 1843, letter to David L. Swain (1801–1868), president of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, concerning Davis’s work on designs for the campus<ref>Robert Donaldson, “Letter from Robert Donaldson to David L. Swain,” [https://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/unc03-10/unc03-10.html December 16, 1843], University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/A4CMVKKW view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Recommendation_cite|Back up to History]]
:“[[Blithewood]] Decr. 16th 1843
:“Dear Sir
:“Your favor of the 28th came to hand in due time and I have since communicated with Mr Davis. He is ready to make you a visit ‘about the middle of next month,’ for which purpose, remit, if you please, a Draft for $100 in my [power] upon some New York Bank and I will forthwith give him directions to proceed. The $100 will barely pay his traveling expenses, though he is willing for that sum to go on & stay three days, during which time he will make any pencil Drawings of Buildings, [[gate]]s, &c &c that you may desire. But if more elaborate working drawings & specifications are required he will charge accordingly & as you may agree on before using them. Mr Davis is the readiest & most skillful draughtsman that I know, and can furnish you with designs for Exterior Elevations or Interior Decorations—plans for [[Gate]]s, [[Fence]]s, & improving grounds about Buildings—in fact the danger is, when he mounts the Pegasus of Design, he may surprise the restraining taste of another.
:“There is no room for attempting [[Landscape Gardening]], about the College Buildings. All that can be done, in my opinion, is to trim the defective limbs of trees, remove the failing trees, grade the roads & cover them (if it can be got) with gravel, remove the surface stone from the grounds & enrich them so as to get grass to grow (at least in the more open spaces). The rears of the adjoining Lots to be excluded from sight by planting a thick belt of trees along the boundary of the campus. This belt may vary in width & be composed of any trees, most likely to you—viza. Willows, Elms, Thorns, &c.
:“Buy all the stable manure which you can get & mix it in alternate layers with swamp muck or vegetable mould, of which I think there is a deposit South East of the Colleges, and this compost will answer admirably for top dressing the campus and for planting trees & shrubs.
:“Substantial [[wall]]s of enclosure & handsome [[Gate]]s, and good roads of approach to the Village is all that I would recommend to be attempted until you are ready to proceed with my favorite plan of a [[Botanic Garden]] &c about which I intend to write more fully.
:“Unless I am prevented by something unforeseen, I intend to visit North Carolina in March and as I shall have occasion to go into Chatham County, I may deviate from my route, so far as to go through C Hill, if you should think that I can be of any service in promoting the plans of improvement in what you are engaged.
:“Yours very truly,
:“Robert Donaldson
:“Gov. Swain
:“Chapel Hill
:“P S The Cedar tree or any evergreen will answer well for the belt of trees, but they are difficult to transplant”

*Davis, Alexander Jackson, April 17, 1844, letter to David L. Swain (1801–1868), president of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, “Letter from A. J. Davis to David L. Swain,” [https://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/unc02-33/unc02-33.html April 17, 1844], University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/L9YB4X3C view on Zotero].</ref>
:“. . . .The Committee adopted my plans, and seemed disposed to carry through the proposed alterations in the South Building, such as <u>adding a Dome</u>, and <u>fitting up the attic</u>: <u>Working Drawings</u> for the Dormitories, and also drawings for the South building I engaged to make for one hundred dollars, in addition to what I have already received for traveling expenses, on receiving instructions from you to that effect with intelligence of the work being in progress. At my leisure I intend to add a plan for your botanic garden. Have you seen, and what do you think of Dr. Dewey’s Discourse on Slavery? If you have not seen it in the papers, I will send it to you in pamphlet.
:“After leaving you, I passed a very pleasant time at the Governor’s in Raleigh, the weather being fine and admitting of some rambles with the young ladies on sketching expeditions. . . .”

*<div id="Villa"></div>Davis, Alexander Jackson, n.d. [after 1845 when Davis designed a house for William Coventry Waddell], draft of an entry for ''Rural Residences'' or another uncompleted publication<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, [http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A152010#page/1/mode/1up “Suburban Gothic Villa”] (Manuscript, n.d.), Alexander Jackson Davis collection, 1837-1888, Series 2. Notes, drafts, and drawings, New-York Historical Society, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/DSJ49Y7V view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Villa_cite|Back up to HIstory]]
:“SUBURBAN GOTHIC VILLA
:“IT is an object of this work to exhibit at least one illustration in each of the several prominent styles of building, with hints on construction, so that proprietors (their own landscape gardeners) consulting it, may determine upon that most fitting their particular site, as well as bias of mind in association of thought, and account of accommodation. We therefore give two subjects upon suburban dwellings: the one more simple and economical than the other, but each exhibiting features characterising the pointed (gothic or [[picturesque]]) manner of building. The [[View]] and plan of Mr. Waddell’s house is sufficiently explanatory without minute description in words. It stands upon high ground south of the Croton reservoir, on the west side of the fifth [[avenue]], between 37th and 38th streets overlooking the greater part of N.Y. island,—the [[view]] from the [[Belvedere/Prospect tower/Observatory|prospect tower]] being very extensive, commanding the bay, Staten Island, Long island, West Chester, and the Jersey shore. The grade of the [[avenue]] at this site being the natural surface of the ground, has enable the owner to preserve several of the ancient trees, which so much adorn it, rendering it thereby a spot unequalled in a city of so much change as N.Y. The [[park]] in which it is situated, with its carriage road, lined with stately elms and black walnuts, was formerly the residence of the late Wm. Ogden, Esq., who from his lofty seclusion, looked upon the distant city, as a place only to be reached by great exertion, and some travel, little dreaming that the city would come to him. The Vth [[avenue]] commences at the Washington parade ground and terminates at Harlem river. No [[avenue]] in the city affords finer sites for building, salubrity of air, or extensive [[prospect]].
:“Description.
:“Construction.—The Great tower, is 10 ft in diameter, containing a spiral stair way, leading to a [[prospect]] room at the summit. The closet turret is 4ft. The S. gable presents corbelled turrets, with a finial on top. Below is a semi octagon bay window, glazed on 3 sides, with stained glass. The oval window of 2nd story, like all windows of this name, is corbelled in the under part, and it projects a semi-hexagon from the wall. An oriel window may be circular or polygonal. The projection on the left, flanked by square turrets, is part of a picture gallery. Beyond this is a [[Greenhouse|green house]], and gardener’s cottage. On the right is seen the verge board gable of the coach house, and beyond is part of the great distributing reservoir of the croton. The material for such a building may be brick, laid open, or hollow in the walls, and stuccoed in imitation of marble or other stone. The cornice may be of wood, painted to match. Most of the trimmings, such as battlements copings, window hoods, water table and steps, are of sand stone. The roof is covered with slate.”

*<div id="Advertisement"></div>Davis, Alexander Jackson, n.d., draft text for an advertisement<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, [http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A151968#page/1/mode/1up “Draft of Advertisement for A.J. Davis’s Architecture Firm, with Notice of Sale of 6.25 Acres of Land on the S. Orange Mountain on Verso”] (Manuscript, n.d.), Alexander Jackson Davis collection, 1837-1888, Series 2. Notes, drafts, and drawings, New-York Historical Society, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/TRA28KYP view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Advertisement|Back up to History]]
:“Practical Architecture.
:“Designs and specifications, with working details for building.
:“City and Country.
:“Store fronts, Banks, ~Churches,~ Dwellings, Schools.
:“Also, [[Landscape gardening]] and furniture.
:“Alex. J. Davis., Architect, N.Y. No. 203 West 11th St.
:“From long study and extensive practice in construction and the accumulation of plans, books, models and prints, he is enabled to exhibit illustrations in varied style, and point to executed works; which may be visited by those wishing to build, comment upon and improve, for convenience, fitness and economy; see the ‘House of Mansions’ Murray Hill; E.C. Litchfield’s Prospect Park; Kent’s, Bayside; S. Wilde’s, Montclair; Geo. Merrit, Tarrytown. Terms for full professional services, five per ct. on given estimate. Without superintendence, three per cent on probable cost. Set of drawings with specifications to obtain an estimate 1 per cent.
:“Drawings when taken separately, Medium class of buildings,
:“Principal floor plan— 15.00 Section showing interior 10.00
:“Elevation principal front— 15.00 Upper story plans— 5.00
:“Basement Plan— 5.00 Specification in detail— 15.00
:“BUILDING COMMITTY [''sic'']”
:“Plans examined & errors exposed in writing.”

<hr>

==Images==
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

File:0053.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Castle Garden, N. York, c. 1825–1828.
File:0675.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “View of the Battery and Castle Garden,” 1826–28.
File:0811.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “View of St. John’s Chapel, from the park,” 1829.
File:2027.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Residence of Dr. David Hosack, Hyde Park, New York'', c. 1830.
File:0332.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Mount Vernon, c. 1831.
File:1244.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Unexecuted Design for Cross-Block Terrace Development (perspective)'', c. 1831.
File:0424.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Ithiel Town, and James Dakin, ''New York University, Washington Square'', 1833.
File:2207.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''[United States Capitol, Washington D.C. East front elevation, rendering]'', [1834].
File:1247.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Villa for David Codwise, near New Rochelle, NY (project; elevation and four plans)'', 1835.
File:1927.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Rustic Cottage at Blithewood'', 1836.
File:0956.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Canopied pavilion at Blithewood'', 1836.
File:0425.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Design for University of Michigan (elevation and plan of building and grounds), c. 1838.
File:0852.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “The Conservatory,” Montgomery Place, c. 1839.
File:1928.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Map of Blithewood'', c. 1840s.
File:0849.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View in Grounds at Blithewood, Seat of Robt. Donaldson, Dutchess Co. Hud[son]. riv[er]. N.Y.'', 1840.
File:0850.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View in Grounds at Blithewood, Seat of Robt. Donaldson'', 1840.
File:0955.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View N. W. at Blithewood'', c. 1841.
File:0844.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Montgomery Place—Shore Seat, c. 1847.
File:0357.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “Montgomery Place,” in [[A. J. Downing]], ed., ''Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. 153.
File:0842.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View from Montgomery Place'', October 1847.
File:1253.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Kirri Cottage for Julia Jackson Davis, 1849.
File:0350.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “View in the Grounds at Blithewood,” in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'', 4th ed. (1849), frontispiece.
File:0848.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “Bank-Side [[Walk]],” Blithewood, 1849.
File:0847.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Three figures going up a hill to a gazebo at Blithewood, n.d. (c. 1849).
File:0853.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Octagonal Garden Structure for Montgomery Place'', c. 1850
File:0855.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Garden Arch at Montgomery Place'', c. 1850.
File:0851.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Blithewood looking towards Montgomery Place, n.d. ''The Alexander Jackson Davis Sketchbook'', c. 1830–50.
File:0843.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Montgomery Place'', n.d.
File:0845.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, View of water with islands (Hyde Park), n.d.
File:0846.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''From Montgomery Pl. looking up river'', n.d.
File:2197.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Mount Gulian, Residence of G. C. Verplank, Esq.'', n.d.
File:0854.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Shore Seat for Montgomery Place'', 1870–79.
File:2208.jpg|E. Jones, F. [Fanny] Palmer, and E. Palmer (lithographers), Alexander Jackson Davis (architect), ''Suburban Gothic Villa, Murray Hill, N.Y. City. Residence of W. C. Waddell, Esq. 5th Avenue, Between 37 & 38th Street. Below, Plans of First and Second Floors'', n.d.

</gallery>

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[https://archive.org/details/AlexanderJacksonDavis A Digitization of Davis’s ''Rural Residences'']

[https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/davs/hd_davs.htm Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892)]

[https://tclf.org/pioneer/alexander-jackson-davis The Cultural Landscape Foundation]

[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_3460564/ Finding Aid for A. J. Davis papers at Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University]

[https://web.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/davisaj.pdf Finding Aid for the Alexander Jackson Davis Papers in the New York Public Library]

[http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/davis/ Finding Aid] and [http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A151586 Digitized documents from the Alexander Jackson Davis papers] at the New York Historical Society

[http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/col114.html Finding Aid for Alexander Jackson Davis papers at Winterthur]

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category: People|Davis, Alexander Jackson]]

Alexander Jackson Davis

2019-09-04T19:12:09Z

T-omalley: /* History */

[[File:2205.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, George Freeman, Portrait of Alexander Jackson Davis, 1833.]]
'''Alexander Jackson Davis''' (1803–1892) was one of the most influential American residential architects of the nineteenth century. His designs for country houses illustrated publications on [[landscape gardening]] and rural life that established an architectural vocabulary for American [[picturesque]] landscape design between 1835 and 1850. Davis’s copious drawings and watercolors provide idealized documents of mid-nineteenth-century designed landscapes as they were built and imagined.

==History==

[[File:2206.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Mary Freeman Goldbeck, Portrait of Alexander Jackson Davis, ca. 1845.]]
[[File:0675.jpg|thumb|Fig. 3, Anthony Imbert after Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View of the Battery and Castle Garden'', 1826–28.]]
[[File:0811.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4, William Smith after Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View of St. John's Chapel, From the Park'', 1829.]]
Born on July 24, 1803, in New York City, Alexander Jackson Davis [Figs. 1 & 2] was raised and educated in Utica and Auburn, New York. After apprenticing with a publisher in Alexandria, Virginia between 1818 and 1823 (at the time still within the District of Columbia), Davis moved to New York City to study design at the American Academy of the Fine Arts, the New York Association of Artists, and the Antique School of the National Academy of Design.<ref>For an overview of Davis’s education, see Carrie Rebora, “Alexander Jackson Davis and the Arts of Design,” in ''Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803-1892'', ed. Amelia Peck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992), 25–31, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/BCH6DYYR view on Zotero]; John Cornelius Donoghue, “Alexander Jackson Davis, Romantic Architect, 1803-1892.” (Ph.D., New York University, 1977), 67–84, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/HTJSZXUM/q/donoghue view on Zotero].</ref> During this period, Davis published a series of lithographs depicting urban landscapes as ''Views of the Public Buildings in the City of New-York'', [Fig. 3], and provided material to early American illustrated journals like the ''New-York Mirror'' [Fig. 4]. Davis’s career as an architect began in 1829 when he entered into a partnership with the established architect Ithiel Town (1784–1844). For six years Davis collaborated with Town on civic projects and public buildings, mostly neoclassical in plan and elevation. As historian of architecture Patrick Snadon has noted, Davis studied the buildings of [[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]] during this period of his career, creating detailed drawings of the United States Capitol between 1832 and 1834 [Fig. 5].<ref>Patrick A. Snadon, review of ''Review of Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect 1803-1892, by Amelia Peck, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'' 52, no. 4 (1993): 495, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/UJUT3CUL view on Zotero]. For an overview of Davis’s work on public buildings, see Francis R. Kowsky, “Simplicity and Dignity: The Public and Institutional Buildings of Alexander Jackson Davis,” in ''Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803-1892'', ed. Amelia Peck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992), 41–57, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/P5FSVN2Q view on Zotero].</ref> Davis also worked with Town on the design of a residential villa known as Glen Ellen (1833), a building type to which Davis would devote much of his active career as an architect. In 1835, Davis parted ways with Town. By that time, Davis had already begun independently designing Hudson river estates for patrons like the banker Robert Donaldson (1834, never built).

[[File:2207.jpg|thumb|Fig. 5, Alexander Jackson Davis, [United States Capitol, Washington D.C. East front elevation, rendering], [1834].]]
<span id="RuralResidences_cite"></span>With Donaldson’s support and encouragement, Davis began work on a book composed of architectural drawings and plans accompanied by short explanatory texts ([[#RuralResidences|view text]]). In 1837, Davis published this work, ''Rural Residences, Etc. Consisting of Designs, Original and Selected, for Cottages, Farm-Houses, Villas, and Village Churches: With Brief Explanations, Estimates, and a Specification of Materials, Construction, Etc.'', in periodical installments each containing four designs. The concept and format seem to have been modeled on the British architect and artist John Buonarotti Papworth's 1818 publication with the strikingly similar title ''Rural Residences, Consisting of a Series of Designs for Cottages, Decorated Cottages, Small Villas, and Other Ornamental Buildings.'' As in Papworth's work, the floorplans within Davis's ''Rural Residences'' do not extend to the surrounding landscape, but the perspectival drawings suggest complementary planting designs. Davis’s brief introduction emphasizes the landscape as a design factor in terms of the “connexion [of a building] with its site.”<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Rural Residences, Etc. Consisting of Designs, Original and Selected, for Cottages, Farm-Houses, Villas, and Village Churches: With Brief Explanations, Estimates, and a Specification of Materials, Construction, Etc.'' (New York, 1837), n.p., [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LDE2TS2Z view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:2208.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6, E. Jones, F. [Fanny] Palmer, and E. Palmer (lithographers), Alexander Jackson Davis (architect), ''Suburban Gothic Villa, Murray Hill, N.Y. City. Residence of W. C. Waddell, Esq. 5th Avenue, Between 37 & 38th Street. Below, Plans of First and Second Floors'', n.d.]]
<span id="Introduction_cite"></span>Donaldson introduced Davis to the nurseryman and landscape gardener [[Andrew Jackson Downing]] in 1838 ([[#Introduction|view text]]), and Davis would go on to design [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing’s]] own Hudson River estate Highland Park (1838–1839).<ref>Patrick Alexander Snadon, “A. J. Davis and the Gothic Revival Castle in America, 1832-1865” (Ph.D., Cornell University, 1988), 173, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Between 1839 and 1850, [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing]] used woodcuts of designs and sketches by Davis to illustrate many of his publications, including ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (first published in 1841), ''The Architecture of Country Houses'' (1850), and ''The Horticulturist''. The publicity generated by these works made Davis one of the most desirable architects for wealthy owners of rural estates and [[plantation]]s. Donaldson was also instrumental in helping Davis obtain commissions for campus designs, including the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, writing in 1843 that <span id="Recommendation_cite"></span>“Mr Davis is the readiest & most skillful draughtsman that I know, and can furnish you with designs for Exterior Elevations or Interior Decorations—plans for [[Gate]]s, [[Fence]]s, & improving grounds about Buildings—in fact the danger is, when he mounts the Pegasus of Design, he may require the restraining taste of another” ([[#Recommendation|view text]]).

[[File:0956.jpg|thumb|Fig. 7, Alexander Jackson Davis, Canopied pavilion at Blithewood, 1836.]]
In his publications and his flourishing practice throughout the 1840s, Davis developed two main types of residential structures: large, asymmetrical villas for wealthy clients characterized by two main wings in an L-shaped configuration, and smaller rectangular cottages intended for clients of more modest means.<ref>For a discussion of the villa designs, which employed massing and decorative elements to emphasize “river-front” and “road front” facades, see Snadon 1988, 81–82, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="#Villa_cite"></span>Both types featured a [[veranda]] or [[porch]] wrapped around the building, which connected the house to its immediate surroundings, while his villas often incorporated “[[prospect tower]]s” or “prospect rooms” that provided sweeping views of the landscape, as seen in his design for Murray Hill ([[#Villa|view text]]) [Fig. 6].<ref>Snadon 1988, 73 (belvederes), 75 (verandas), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Davis also designed many small, free-standing structures for contemplating the landscape, including tented seats [Fig. 7], and [[summerhouse]]s [Fig. 8], inspired by the publications of [[John Claudius Loudon|J. C. Loudon]] and Batty Langley.<ref>Snadon 1988, 80, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing’s]] publications further emphasized the visual relationship between Davis’s designs and the surrounding landscape, recommending paint colors that harmonized with green foliage.

[[File:0854.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, Shore Seat for Montgomery Place, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (elevation and plan), 1870–79.]]
In addition to his clients in the New York area, Davis found patronage among several owners of [[plantation]]s in the American south. These commissions reveal how Davis, like other architects of the era, adapted the [[picturesque]] to aestheticize or obscure built landscapes of slavery.<ref>See also the work of William Birch for Rosalie Stier Calvert at Riversdale, mentioned in Therese O’Malley, “‘Models in This Art’: Tracing the Brownian Landscape Tradition in America,” ''Garden History'' 44, no. Suppl. 1 (Autumn 2016): 78–79, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/RUA439AW view on Zotero].</ref> With a workforce of more than 500 people, Philip St. George Cocke’s Belmead Plantation (1845–1848), near Powhatan, Virginia, was comparable in scale to large southern [[plantation]]s, such as Daniel and Martha Turnbull’s [[Rosedown Plantation]] (1835–1845) in Louisiana.<ref>Daniel Bluestone, “A. J. Davis’s Belmead: Picturesque Aesthetics in the Land of Slavery,” ''Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians'' 71, no. 2 (2012): 147, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/FM7YPU9N view on Zotero].</ref> At Belmead, Davis and Cocke modified [[picturesque]] designs for cottages and gatehouses to function as slave [[quarter]]s. Architectural decorations featured heraldic depictions of cotton, tobacco, wheat, and corn that brought the landscape into the main house, but elided the bodies of the enslaved people who cultivated them.<ref>Snadon 1988, 201, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Architectural historian Daniel Bluestone has shown that much of the construction labor at Belmead was carried out by enslaved people, and argued that Davis’s designs for the estate hid slavery behind a [[picturesque]] veneer connoting refinement and taste. At Loudoun Plantation near Lexington, Kentucky (1849–1852), Davis accommodated his client Francis Key Hunt’s requests to eliminate prominent windows from the northeast face of his residence, overlooking the “private [[yard]]” in which his enslaved African American servants lived and worked.<ref>Patrick Snadon, “Loudoun: Two New York Architects and a Gothic Revival Villa in Antebellum Kentucky,” The Kentucky Review 9, no. 3 (October 1, 1989): 68–72, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/BIK2NNHX view on Zotero].</ref> Whether by altering the designs of slave [[quarter]]s at Belmead or the main [[plantation]] house at Loudoun, Davis used [[picturesque]] designs to indulge the ideological blindspots of these clients.

[[File:1928.jpg|thumb|Fig. 9, Alexander Jackson Davis, Map of Blithewood, c. 1840s.]]
<span id="#Advertisement_cite"></span> In addition to marketing himself as an architect, Davis also advertised his ability to create designs and plans for “[[landscape gardening]]” ([[#Advertisement|view text]]). Several of Davis’s site plans for villas and universities survive. His most comprehensive residential site plan, made for [[Blithewood]] [Fig. 9], is labelled with a variety of features including a boathouse on the river, a [[Rustic style|rustic]] tent, a [[Cascade/Cataract/Waterfall|cataract]], a barn, a grass field, and two springs. Davis provided a variety of [[landscape gardening]] services to his clients, producing a site plan for Glen Ellen (now lost), recommending books on the subject to George Merritt for his estate Lyndhurst, and meeting with Cocke to discuss planting at Belmead.<ref>Susanne Brendel-Pandich, “From Cottages to Castles: The Country House Designs of Alexander Jackson Davis,” in ''Alexander Jackson Davis, American Architect, 1803-1892'', ed. Amelia Peck (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992), 60 (book recommendations for Merritt), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/WLVSXGXF view on Zotero]; Snadon 1988, 98 (lost Glen Ellen site plan), 208-209 (visit to Belmead to discuss planting), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Even his more modest residential floorplans sometimes indicated landscape elements such as [[Terrace/Slope|terraces]], [[walk]]s, [[drive]]s, [[shrubbery]], grass, and plants, as in the 1849 drawings for his mother Julia Jackson Davis’s Kirri Cottage [Fig. 10]. Davis’s university campus proposals reveal a consistent approach to institutional landscapes, recognizing not only the aesthetic but also the educational and practical functions of gardens, [[lawn]]s, and [[walk]]s. His 1838 plan for the University of Michigan features two square [[botanic garden]]s filled with geometric [[bed]]s arranged around oval [[fountain]]s, divided by a tree-lined [[avenue]] [Fig. 11]. His later design for the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, (1850–1858) likewise emphasizes a tree-lined [[avenue]], but asymmetrically locates both sections of the [[botanic garden]]s on the east edge of the campus.

[[File:1253.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 10, Alexander Jackson Davis, Kirri Cottage for Julia Jackson Davis, 1849.]]
Davis developed his ideas about [[picturesque]] buildings and landscapes from popular English theoretical and practical texts. His library contained works on aesthetic theories of the picturesque such as Edmund Burke’s ''A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful'' (1757), Uvedale Price’s ''Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared with the Sublime and The Beautiful'' (1794), and Richard Payne Knight’s ''An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste'' (1805), as well as treatises by [[picturesque]] landscape painters like William Gilpin (1724–1804).<ref>Snadon 1988, 566, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref> Davis was also familiar with more practical books on [[landscape gardening]], especially the work of Humphry Repton and Thomas Whately, of whose 1770 ''Observations on Modern Gardening'' Davis asserted “this is ''the classic'' on modern gardening.”<ref>Typescript, Lyndhurst Archives, as cited in Brendel-Pandich 1992, 60, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/WLVSXGXF/q/brendel view on Zotero].</ref> He saw [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing]] as the latest in this illustrious series, writing in a letter to the noted artist and inventor Samuel Morse (1791–1872), “Of course your landscape gardening is going on according to Whatley, Repton, [[John Claudius Loudon|Loudon]] & [[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing]], and is immediately to exhibit the most finished illustrations of Natural Beauty—the art modestly retiring within the background.”<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, “Letter from Alexander Jackson Davis to Samuel Morse,” [https://www.loc.gov/resource/mmorse.031001/?sp=167 September 5, 1852], Samuel Finley Breese Morse papers, 1793–1944, General Correspondence and Related Documents, Bound volume— 17 April 1852–7 January 1853, Library of Congress. Cited in O’Malley 2016, 83, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/RUA439AW view on Zotero]. For a discussion of Davis collaboration with Morse, see Peter A. Watson, “Picturesque Transformations: A. J. Davis in the Hudson Valley and Beyond” (M.A., Columbia University, 2012), 139, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/C7YBAY2K view on Zotero].</ref> The works of these theorists emphasized a reciprocal aesthetic relationship between architecture and landscape that Davis echoed in the introduction to ''Rural Residences'', but sometimes overlooked in his practice.<ref>Snadon 1988, 16, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/8YX2TPPX view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:0425.jpg|thumb|Fig. 11, Alexander Jackson Davis, Design for University of Michigan (elevation and plan of building and grounds), c. 1838.]]
Although Davis continued to design and redesign projects until his death in 1892, his commissions waned in the 1860s and 1870s following the American Civil War, as the Second Empire and High Victorian Gothic styles came to dominate popular taste.<ref>His most notable late commission consisted of designs drawn and built between 1853 and 1860 for a residential development in New Jersey known as Llewellyn Park. Richard Guy Wilson, “Idealism and the Origin of the First American Suburb: Llewellyn Park, New Jersey,” ''American Art Journal'' 11, no. 4 (1979): 79–90, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LYZNEUNK view on Zotero].</ref> Through his architectural designs and site plans, Davis established a spatial and stylistic vocabulary for [[picturesque]] rural villas that adapted European historical models for American clients and landscapes. His many lithographs, sketches, and watercolors document public and private landscapes as they were conceived and constructed in the early nineteenth century.

—''Alexander Brey''

<hr>

==Texts==
*<div id="RuralResidences"></div>[Davis, Alexander Jackson, 1837, introduction to ''Rural Residences'' (Davis 1837: n.p.)<ref>Davis 1837, n.p., [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/LDE2TS2Z view on Zotero].</ref> [[#RuralResidences_cite|Back up to History]]
:“RURAL DESIGNS.
:“ADVERTISEMENT.
:“THE following series of designs has been prepared in compliance with the wishes of a few gentlemen who are desirous of seeing a better taste prevail in the Rural Architecture of this country.
:“The bald and uninteresting aspect of our houses must be obvious to every traveller; and to those who are familiar with the [[picturesque]] Cottages and Villas of England, it is positively painful to witness here the wasteful and tasteless expenditure of money in building.
:“Defects are felt, however, not only in the style of the house but in the want of connexion with its site,—in the absence of appropriate offices,—well disposed trees, [[shrubbery]], and vines,—which accessories give an inviting and habitable air to the place.
:“The Greek Temple form, perfect in itself, and well adapted as it is to public edifices, and even to town mansions, is inappropriate for country residences, and yet it is the only style ever attempted in our more costly habitations. The English collegiate style, is for many reasons to be preferred. It admits of greater variety both of plan and outline;—is susceptible of additions from time to time, while its bay windows, oriels, turrets, and chimney shafts , give pictorial effect to the elevation.
:“The principal object aimed at in these designs has been to give as much character to the exteriors as possible;—should they answer in any degree the purposes for which they were projected, the architect may submit, at a future period, designs for more expensive structures. . . .
:“VILLA IN THE ENGLISH COLLEGIATE STYLE.
:“This plan was designed for Robert Donaldson, Esq. of [[Blithewood]], on the Hudson River, to whose taste and aid, in selecting designs, the public are mainly indebted for the present publication.
:“The design is irregular, and suited to scenery of a [[picturesque]] character, and to an [[eminence]] commanding an extensive [[prospect]]. . . . ”

*<div id="Introduction"></div>[[Andrew Jackson Downing|Downing, Andrew Jackson]], December 12, 1838, letter to arrange a first meeting with Alexander Jackson Davis (quoted in Pierson 1978: 351)<ref>Pierson 1978, 351, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/J8FITVZG view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Introduction_cite|Back up to History]]
:“Dear Sir—
:“I am at present busily engaged in preparing a work for the press on Landscape Gardening and Rural Residences with the view of improving if possible the taste in these matters in the United States.
:“My friend, R. Donaldson, Esq., has informed me that he has mentioned my name to you and that you were so kind as to offer to show me any work, views or plans in your possession which might be of any service to me.
:“I shall probably be in town on Saturday morning next when I shall have the pleasure of calling up on you and be glad to avail myself of your very kind offer.
:“Yours truly,
:“[[Andrew Jackson Downing|A. J. Downing]]”

*<div id="Recommendation"></div>Donaldson, Robert, December 16, 1843, letter to David L. Swain (1801–1868), president of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, concerning Davis’s work on designs for the campus<ref>Robert Donaldson, “Letter from Robert Donaldson to David L. Swain,” [https://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/unc03-10/unc03-10.html December 16, 1843], University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/A4CMVKKW view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Recommendation_cite|Back up to History]]
:“[[Blithewood]] Decr. 16th 1843
:“Dear Sir
:“Your favor of the 28th came to hand in due time and I have since communicated with Mr Davis. He is ready to make you a visit ‘about the middle of next month,’ for which purpose, remit, if you please, a Draft for $100 in my [power] upon some New York Bank and I will forthwith give him directions to proceed. The $100 will barely pay his traveling expenses, though he is willing for that sum to go on & stay three days, during which time he will make any pencil Drawings of Buildings, [[gate]]s, &c &c that you may desire. But if more elaborate working drawings & specifications are required he will charge accordingly & as you may agree on before using them. Mr Davis is the readiest & most skillful draughtsman that I know, and can furnish you with designs for Exterior Elevations or Interior Decorations—plans for [[Gate]]s, [[Fence]]s, & improving grounds about Buildings—in fact the danger is, when he mounts the Pegasus of Design, he may surprise the restraining taste of another.
:“There is no room for attempting [[Landscape Gardening]], about the College Buildings. All that can be done, in my opinion, is to trim the defective limbs of trees, remove the failing trees, grade the roads & cover them (if it can be got) with gravel, remove the surface stone from the grounds & enrich them so as to get grass to grow (at least in the more open spaces). The rears of the adjoining Lots to be excluded from sight by planting a thick belt of trees along the boundary of the campus. This belt may vary in width & be composed of any trees, most likely to you—viza. Willows, Elms, Thorns, &c.
:“Buy all the stable manure which you can get & mix it in alternate layers with swamp muck or vegetable mould, of which I think there is a deposit South East of the Colleges, and this compost will answer admirably for top dressing the campus and for planting trees & shrubs.
:“Substantial [[wall]]s of enclosure & handsome [[Gate]]s, and good roads of approach to the Village is all that I would recommend to be attempted until you are ready to proceed with my favorite plan of a [[Botanic Garden]] &c about which I intend to write more fully.
:“Unless I am prevented by something unforeseen, I intend to visit North Carolina in March and as I shall have occasion to go into Chatham County, I may deviate from my route, so far as to go through C Hill, if you should think that I can be of any service in promoting the plans of improvement in what you are engaged.
:“Yours very truly,
:“Robert Donaldson
:“Gov. Swain
:“Chapel Hill
:“P S The Cedar tree or any evergreen will answer well for the belt of trees, but they are difficult to transplant”

*Davis, Alexander Jackson, April 17, 1844, letter to David L. Swain (1801–1868), president of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, “Letter from A. J. Davis to David L. Swain,” [https://docsouth.unc.edu/unc/unc02-33/unc02-33.html April 17, 1844], University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/L9YB4X3C view on Zotero].</ref>
:“. . . .The Committee adopted my plans, and seemed disposed to carry through the proposed alterations in the South Building, such as <u>adding a Dome</u>, and <u>fitting up the attic</u>: <u>Working Drawings</u> for the Dormitories, and also drawings for the South building I engaged to make for one hundred dollars, in addition to what I have already received for traveling expenses, on receiving instructions from you to that effect with intelligence of the work being in progress. At my leisure I intend to add a plan for your botanic garden. Have you seen, and what do you think of Dr. Dewey’s Discourse on Slavery? If you have not seen it in the papers, I will send it to you in pamphlet.
:“After leaving you, I passed a very pleasant time at the Governor’s in Raleigh, the weather being fine and admitting of some rambles with the young ladies on sketching expeditions. . . .”

*<div id="Villa"></div>Davis, Alexander Jackson, n.d. [after 1845 when Davis designed a house for William Coventry Waddell], draft of an entry for ''Rural Residences'' or another uncompleted publication<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, [http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A152010#page/1/mode/1up “Suburban Gothic Villa”] (Manuscript, n.d.), Alexander Jackson Davis collection, 1837-1888, Series 2. Notes, drafts, and drawings, New-York Historical Society, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/DSJ49Y7V view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Villa_cite|Back up to HIstory]]
:“SUBURBAN GOTHIC VILLA
:“IT is an object of this work to exhibit at least one illustration in each of the several prominent styles of building, with hints on construction, so that proprietors (their own landscape gardeners) consulting it, may determine upon that most fitting their particular site, as well as bias of mind in association of thought, and account of accommodation. We therefore give two subjects upon suburban dwellings: the one more simple and economical than the other, but each exhibiting features characterising the pointed (gothic or [[picturesque]]) manner of building. The [[View]] and plan of Mr. Waddell’s house is sufficiently explanatory without minute description in words. It stands upon high ground south of the Croton reservoir, on the west side of the fifth [[avenue]], between 37th and 38th streets overlooking the greater part of N.Y. island,—the [[view]] from the [[Belvedere/Prospect tower/Observatory|prospect tower]] being very extensive, commanding the bay, Staten Island, Long island, West Chester, and the Jersey shore. The grade of the [[avenue]] at this site being the natural surface of the ground, has enable the owner to preserve several of the ancient trees, which so much adorn it, rendering it thereby a spot unequalled in a city of so much change as N.Y. The [[park]] in which it is situated, with its carriage road, lined with stately elms and black walnuts, was formerly the residence of the late Wm. Ogden, Esq., who from his lofty seclusion, looked upon the distant city, as a place only to be reached by great exertion, and some travel, little dreaming that the city would come to him. The Vth [[avenue]] commences at the Washington parade ground and terminates at Harlem river. No [[avenue]] in the city affords finer sites for building, salubrity of air, or extensive [[prospect]].
:“Description.
:“Construction.—The Great tower, is 10 ft in diameter, containing a spiral stair way, leading to a [[prospect]] room at the summit. The closet turret is 4ft. The S. gable presents corbelled turrets, with a finial on top. Below is a semi octagon bay window, glazed on 3 sides, with stained glass. The oval window of 2nd story, like all windows of this name, is corbelled in the under part, and it projects a semi-hexagon from the wall. An oriel window may be circular or polygonal. The projection on the left, flanked by square turrets, is part of a picture gallery. Beyond this is a [[Greenhouse|green house]], and gardener’s cottage. On the right is seen the verge board gable of the coach house, and beyond is part of the great distributing reservoir of the croton. The material for such a building may be brick, laid open, or hollow in the walls, and stuccoed in imitation of marble or other stone. The cornice may be of wood, painted to match. Most of the trimmings, such as battlements copings, window hoods, water table and steps, are of sand stone. The roof is covered with slate.”

*<div id="Advertisement"></div>Davis, Alexander Jackson, n.d., draft text for an advertisement<ref>Alexander Jackson Davis, [http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A151968#page/1/mode/1up “Draft of Advertisement for A.J. Davis’s Architecture Firm, with Notice of Sale of 6.25 Acres of Land on the S. Orange Mountain on Verso”] (Manuscript, n.d.), Alexander Jackson Davis collection, 1837-1888, Series 2. Notes, drafts, and drawings, New-York Historical Society, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/keywords_in_early_american_landscape_design/items/itemKey/TRA28KYP view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Advertisement|Back up to History]]
:“Practical Architecture.
:“Designs and specifications, with working details for building.
:“City and Country.
:“Store fronts, Banks, ~Churches,~ Dwellings, Schools.
:“Also, [[Landscape gardening]] and furniture.
:“Alex. J. Davis., Architect, N.Y. No. 203 West 11th St.
:“From long study and extensive practice in construction and the accumulation of plans, books, models and prints, he is enabled to exhibit illustrations in varied style, and point to executed works; which may be visited by those wishing to build, comment upon and improve, for convenience, fitness and economy; see the ‘House of Mansions’ Murray Hill; E.C. Litchfield’s Prospect Park; Kent’s, Bayside; S. Wilde’s, Montclair; Geo. Merrit, Tarrytown. Terms for full professional services, five per ct. on given estimate. Without superintendence, three per cent on probable cost. Set of drawings with specifications to obtain an estimate 1 per cent.
:“Drawings when taken separately, Medium class of buildings,
:“Principal floor plan— 15.00 Section showing interior 10.00
:“Elevation principal front— 15.00 Upper story plans— 5.00
:“Basement Plan— 5.00 Specification in detail— 15.00
:“BUILDING COMMITTY [''sic'']”
:“Plans examined & errors exposed in writing.”

<hr>

==Images==
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

File:0053.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Castle Garden, N. York, c. 1825–1828.
File:0675.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “View of the Battery and Castle Garden,” 1826–28.
File:0811.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “View of St. John’s Chapel, from the park,” 1829.
File:2027.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Residence of Dr. David Hosack, Hyde Park, New York'', c. 1830.
File:0332.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Mount Vernon, c. 1831.
File:1244.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Unexecuted Design for Cross-Block Terrace Development (perspective)'', c. 1831.
File:0424.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Ithiel Town, and James Dakin, ''New York University, Washington Square'', 1833.
File:2207.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''[United States Capitol, Washington D.C. East front elevation, rendering]'', [1834].
File:1247.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Villa for David Codwise, near New Rochelle, NY (project; elevation and four plans)'', 1835.
File:1927.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Rustic Cottage at Blithewood'', 1836.
File:0956.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Canopied pavilion at Blithewood'', 1836.
File:0425.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Design for University of Michigan (elevation and plan of building and grounds), c. 1838.
File:0852.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “The Conservatory,” Montgomery Place, c. 1839.
File:1928.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Map of Blithewood'', c. 1840s.
File:0849.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View in Grounds at Blithewood, Seat of Robt. Donaldson, Dutchess Co. Hud[son]. riv[er]. N.Y.'', 1840.
File:0850.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View in Grounds at Blithewood, Seat of Robt. Donaldson'', 1840.
File:0955.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View N. W. at Blithewood'', c. 1841.
File:0844.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Montgomery Place—Shore Seat, c. 1847.
File:0357.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “Montgomery Place,” in [[A. J. Downing]], ed., ''Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. 153.
File:0842.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''View from Montgomery Place'', October 1847.
File:1253.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Kirri Cottage for Julia Jackson Davis, 1849.
File:0350.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “View in the Grounds at Blithewood,” in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'', 4th ed. (1849), frontispiece.
File:0848.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, “Bank-Side [[Walk]],” Blithewood, 1849.
File:0847.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Three figures going up a hill to a gazebo at Blithewood, n.d. (c. 1849).
File:0853.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Octagonal Garden Structure for Montgomery Place'', c. 1850
File:0855.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Garden Arch at Montgomery Place'', c. 1850.
File:0851.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, Blithewood looking towards Montgomery Place, n.d. ''The Alexander Jackson Davis Sketchbook'', c. 1830–50.
File:0843.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Montgomery Place'', n.d.
File:0845.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, View of water with islands (Hyde Park), n.d.
File:0846.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''From Montgomery Pl. looking up river'', n.d.
File:2197.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Mount Gulian, Residence of G. C. Verplank, Esq.'', n.d.
File:0854.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, ''Shore Seat for Montgomery Place'', 1870–79.
File:2208.jpg|E. Jones, F. [Fanny] Palmer, and E. Palmer (lithographers), Alexander Jackson Davis (architect), ''Suburban Gothic Villa, Murray Hill, N.Y. City. Residence of W. C. Waddell, Esq. 5th Avenue, Between 37 & 38th Street. Below, Plans of First and Second Floors'', n.d.

</gallery>

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[https://archive.org/details/AlexanderJacksonDavis A Digitization of Davis’s ''Rural Residences'']

[https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/davs/hd_davs.htm Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892)]

[https://tclf.org/pioneer/alexander-jackson-davis The Cultural Landscape Foundation]

[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_3460564/ Finding Aid for A. J. Davis papers at Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University]

[https://web.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/davisaj.pdf Finding Aid for the Alexander Jackson Davis Papers in the New York Public Library]

[http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/davis/ Finding Aid] and [http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A151586 Digitized documents from the Alexander Jackson Davis papers] at the New York Historical Society

[http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/col114.html Finding Aid for Alexander Jackson Davis papers at Winterthur]

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category: People|Davis, Alexander Jackson]]

Samuel Bard

2019-09-04T15:24:45Z

T-omalley: /* History */

{{#set:has birth year=1742}}
'''Samuel Bard''' (April 1, 1742–May 24, 1821), was a professional physician and professor of botany who designed several gardens in New York, including those at his country estate, [[Hyde Park]].

==History==
The descendant of Huguenot refugees who settled in Philadelphia, Samuel Bard spent his early years in New York City, where his father, Dr. John Bard (1716–1799), relocated his medical practice on the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin in 1746.<ref>J. A. Leo Lemay, ''The Life of Benjamin Franklin'', 3 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 2:316, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UNBJAK4N view on Zotero].</ref> Ten years later, while convalescing from a prolonged illness, fourteen-year-old Samuel spent the summer at Coldengham, the remote Hudson Highlands farm of his father’s friend, botanist and government official [[Cadwallader Colden]].<ref>John Brett Langstaff, ''Doctor Bard of Hyde Park: The Famous Physician of Revolutionary Times, the Man Who Saved Washington’s Life'' (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1942), 32–35, 47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref> During his stay, Bard received instruction in botany from [[Cadwallader Colden|Colden]] and his daughter [[Jane Colden|Jane]], both of whom had mastered Carl Linnaeus’s system of plant classification while cataloging indigenous New York flora. An accomplished draftsman, Bard reportedly “repaid the lady for her instruction, by making figures and drawings of plants for her.”<ref>Samuel Latham Mitchill, ''A Discourse on the Life and Character of Samuel Bard, M.D. & LL.D.: Late President of the New-York College of Physicians and Surgeons; Pronounced in the Public Hall, at the Request of the Trustees, on the 5th Day of Nov. 1821'' (New York: Daniel Fanshaw, 1821), 12, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V9TDJ8HA view on Zotero]; John McVickar, ''A Domestic Narrative of the Life of Samuel Bard, M.D., LL.D.'' (New York: A. Paul, 1822), 9–10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref>

<div id="Fig_1"></div>[[File:2021_detail.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, William de la Cour and Samuel Bard, “Rheum Palmaatum Linn” [detail], in ''Philosophical Transactions'' (1765), vol. 55, pl. XIII. [[#Fig_1_cite|(view text)]]]]
After a period of study at King’s College, New York, Bard sailed for Britain in 1761 to complete his education. Waylaid by French privateers, he spent five months in captivity before Benjamin Franklin, a family friend, secured his release. When Bard finally reached London in April 1762, he followed a course of medical instruction suggested by the Quaker physician, philanthropist, and plant collector John Fothergill (1712–1780), and devoted the summer months to botanical investigations in the countryside.<ref>McVickar 1822, 15–20, 23, 24–29, 37, 44, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero]; Langstaff 1942, 56–57, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref> In 1764, having transferred to the University of Edinburgh, Bard received the annual award in botany from John Hope (1725–1786), Professor of Botany and Materia Medica and King’s Botanist, <span id="Mitchill_cite"></span> for producing “the best herbarium or collection of dried plants, growing spontaneously within ten miles of Edinburgh” ([[#Mitchill|view text]]). Bard’s herbarium survived for several decades and was presented in 1817 to the New-York Historical Society, where it joined [[Cadwallader Colden|Cadwallader Colden's]] ''hortus siccus'' of plants indigenous to the Highlands of New York and a collection of duplicate specimens from Linnaeus’s herbarium.<ref>Christine Chapman Robbins, “David Hosack’s Herbarium and Its Linnaean Specimens,” ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' 104 (June 1960): 301, 302, 307, 310, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NJE7ZUGQ view on Zotero]; “Transactions of Learned Societies,” ''American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review'' 1 (August 1817): 287; see also 47, [https://books.google.com/books?id=lS4CAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false view on Zotero]; Mitchill 1821, 6–7, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V9TDJ8HA view on Zotero].</ref>

In addition to his medical studies, Bard worked with a drawing master three hours a week. He reportedly had “a strong taste for delineation and perspective” and sketched with “exactness.”<ref>McVikar 1822, 59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref><span id="Hope_cite"></span> When John Hope published the description of a rhubarb plant successfully cultivated at the Edinburgh [[botanic garden]], he employed Bard to add four minutely observed botanical details to a professional artist’s illustration ([[#Hope|view text]]) [Fig. 1].<ref>McVikar 1822, 67, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref> Hope was then forming a syndicate for importing American seeds and plants, and solicited Bard’s assistance in finding a supplier. Bard wrote his father, “I know of no one who would answer so well as [[John Bartram|Mr. [John] Bartram]].<ref>Samuel Bard to John Bard, April 1, 1764, quoted in McVickar 1822, 58, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref> In addition to combing the countryside for plants, Bard toured local estates, developing a taste for naturalism in landscape and garden design. Tasked with finding an English gardener to help lay out the grounds of his father’s Hudson river estate, [[Hyde Park]], Bard composed a long letter of advice in April 1764, counseling careful attention to the natural conditions of climate and terrain, avoidance of straight lines (“except where they serve to lead the eye to some distant and beautiful object”), and artful concealment of ornamental features, <span id="Bard_1764_cite"></span>so that the viewer “suddenly, and unexpectedly, comes upon them; so that by the surprise, the pleasure may be increased” ([[#Bard_1764|view text]]). Finding his opinions confirmed in a chapter on gardening and architecture in ''The Elements of Criticism'' (1762) by Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), Bard wrote his father again three months later to recommend the book and warn against “the cutting of gardens into formal [[parterre]]s, or forcing nature in any respect.”

[[File:2022.jpg|left|thumb|Fig. 2, C. Milbourne, First New York Hospital building, 1818.]]
After completing his medical degree in 1765, Bard returned to New York and entered into partnership with his father. Over the next two years, he established a medical school at King’s College, serving as dean and professor of the theory and practice of physic.<ref>“The Early History of Medicine in New York. Part II,” ''Americana'' 9 (1914): 1011, 1014–15, 1020, 1021, 1024, 1025, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MJGA76HG view on Zotero].</ref> In 1769 he began campaigning for the city’s first public hospital, leading his fellow physicians Peter Middleton and John Jones in petitioning [[Cadwallader Colden]], then Lieutenant Governor of New York, for a charter of incorporation. Bard’s mentor, John Fothergill, spearheaded fundraising for the hospital in Britain, and King George III granted the charter in 1771.<ref>''An Account of the New-York Hospital'' (New York: Collins & Co., 1811), 3–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/64Q6DV2I view on Zotero]; Marynita Anderson Nolosco, ''Physician Heal Thyself: Medical Practitioners of Eighteenth-Century New York'' (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 14, 87–88, 119–20, 125, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/BHB3MD5Z view on Zotero].</ref> Construction was delayed by a fire and the Revolutionary War.<ref>Mitchill 1821, 19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V9TDJ8HA view on Zotero].</ref> When the hospital was finally completed in 1791, Bard reportedly laid out a [[botanic garden]] occupying two city blocks, in which he cultivated medicinal herbs [Fig. 2].<ref> Langstaff 1942, 179, 181, 189, 277, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref> He may also have contributed to the design of the grounds, <span id="Brief_cite"></span>which in 1801 were “inclosed with a brick [[wall]] and converted into gardens for the accommodation and benefit of convalescent patients” and “planted with fruit and forest trees” ([[#Brief|view text]]) [Fig. 3]. In spite of his loyalist sympathies, Bard served as [[George Washington|George Washington's]] private physician, having saved the recently inaugurated president’s life in 1789 by removing a malignancy from his thigh.<ref>George Washington, ''The Papers of George Washington'', ed. Dorothy Twohig, Mark A. Mastromarino, and Jack D. Warren, Presidential Series, 16 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 393–400, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/QQ462GQ6 view on Zotero]; McVickar 1822, 114, 136–37, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref> He also continued to play an active role in King's College (renamed Columbia College after the war),<ref>In addition to serving as a trustee (1787–1804) and dean (1791–1804), he taught chemistry (1784–87) and natural philosophy and astronomy (1785–86); see ''Catalogue of Columbia College, in the City of New-York; Embracing the Names of Its Trustees, Officers, and Graduates'' (New York: Columbia College, 1844), 8, 13, 17, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MJAWNGN9 view on Zotero].</ref> and in 1811, four years after the College of Physicians and Surgeons was founded in New York, Bard was appointed its president, serving in that capacity until his death in 1821. He was a founding member of the New-York Historical Society and re-established the collections of the New York Society Library, which had been scattered during the war.<ref>Bard served as trustee (1769–76, 1788–93, 1796) and secretary (1769–76, 1788–89) of the Society; see Austin Baxter Keep, ''History of the New York Society Library'' (New York: De Vinne Press, 1908), 130, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/EHECFHJV view on Zotero]; Mitchill 1821, 20, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V9TDJ8HA view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:2023.jpg|thumb|Fig. 3, John R. Murray, ''View of the New-York Hospital'', 1808.]]
At his Broad Street house, Bard maintained a garden and [[conservatory]] filled with exotic plants, which he later told his son-in-law, John McVickar (1787–1868) had served “as a specific [i.e., remedy] against the petty cares and anxieties of life,” <span id="McVickar_155_cite"></span>for “nothing calmed and soothed his mind like a walk among his plants and flowers” ([[#McVickar_155|view text]]). The opportunity to lay out gardens on a more extensive scale figured among the attractions that led Bard to establish a residence outside of the city near his father’s estate of [[Hyde Park]].<ref>McVickar 1822, 158–59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref> In the 1770s Bard had begun cultivating a grove of locust trees (''Robinia pseudoacacia'') at [[Hyde Park]] with the expectation that they would provide valuable timber. He observed in a letter: “We have been planting a fortune for our children,—a great quantity of locust seed; our farm is to be one great forest of locust trees.”<ref>McVickar 1822, 184, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero]. Bard’s method of germinating locusts seeds in a northern climate was published in several agricultural journals, beginning with Dr. S. Ackerly, “Remarks on the Cultivation of the Locust Tree,” ''The American Farmer, Containing Original Essays and Selections on Agriculture, Horticulture, Rural and Domestic Economy, and Internal Improvements'' 5 (1824): 396.</ref> He often foraged in the woods with his son William (1776–1853), <span id="William_pockets_cite"></span>filling his pockets with plants that then became the focus of idiosyncratic botany lessons incorporating drawing, nature poetry, scripture, and Linnaean taxonomy ([[#William_pockets|view text]]). With the expectation of entering semi-retirement, Bard formed a partnership in 1796 with [[David Hosack]]—a young, Edinburgh-educated physician recently appointed to a professorship at Columbia—who took over much of his case load. Bard settled at [[Hyde Park]] in the spring of 1798 and apart from occasional trips to the city, devoted his time to landscape improvements and botanical experiments.<ref>McVickar 1822, 164, 167, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero]; Langstaff 1942, 206, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref> He reportedly drew the plans for his mansion and [[greenhouse]]s, and also mapped out the garden paths and roads that wound through his property.<ref>Langstaff 1942, 205, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref>

Bard corresponded with the Philadelphia agriculturalist [[Richard Peters]] on the use of clover grass as a crop and gypsum as a manure.<ref>Langstaff 1942, 206–7; McVickar 1822, 182–83, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero]; see also William Bard’s letter to the Secretary of the Society, “Transactions of the Society of Dutchess County for the Promotion of Agriculture,” 2 vols. (Poughkeepsie: Paraclete Potter, 1809): 39–48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D8CVUX3M view on Zotero].</ref> In 1806 Bard founded and served as the first president of the Society of Dutchess County for the Promotion of Agriculture, and the following year delivered an address on the rotation of crops—“a short account of the reasoning and practice of the best English farmers . . . [adapted] to our soil and climate, and to such other circumstances, as necessarily control our practice.”<ref>''Transactions of the Society of Dutchess County for the Promotion of Agriculture'' (Poughkeepsie: Bowman, Parsons and Potter, 1807), 1:5, 8–18, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H3H39DN8 view on Zotero] and Samuel Bard, “On the Rotation of Crops,” ''Transactions of the Society of Dutchess County for the Promotion of Agriculture'' (1809), 40–48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D8CVUX3M view on Zotero].</ref>

—''Robyn Asleson''

<hr>

==Texts==
*Hope, John, November 4, 1763, letter from Edinburgh to [[John Bartram]] (1849: 432–33)<ref name="Darlington">William Darlington, ''Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall: With Notices of Their Botanical Contemporaries'' (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1849), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKNVQG76 view on Zotero].</ref>

:“The great reputation which you have just acquired, by many faithful and accurate observations, and that most extraordinary thirst of knowledge which has distinguished you, makes me extremely desirous of your correspondence.

:“If you will be so kind as send me a few seeds of your new discovered plants, I shall on my part make a return of whatever is in my power, that I shall judge agreeable to you.

:“It will be agreeable to you to hear that Mr. Samuel Bard, son of your friend Mr. Bard, of New York, is making most wonderful progress in Botany, and has made a beautiful collection of near four hundred Scots plants; by which he undoubtedly will gain the annual premium.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], October 4, 1764, letter to Dr. John Hope (1849: 433–34)<ref name="Darlington"></ref>

:“I have received your proposals by the hands of our dear friend Benjamin [Franklin]; and since, by a letter from the worthy, humane Dr. [John] Bard, or New York, in which he inserts a paragraph of a letter from his son [Samuel Bard] (whose person and activity I am not a stranger to), wherein he writes to the same effect as thee wrote to Benjamin Franklin, signifying that you had laid a new [[botanic garden]] to be stored with exotics; that you were forming a laudable and very necessary plan of storing your bare country with variety of forest trees; that many gentlemen of rank and fortune had countenanced this scheme with an annual subscription, to enable a botanist to make your desired collections; and that my answer was desired, whether I would undertake to supply your demands, which I consent to do.”

*<div id="Bard_1764"></div>Bard, Samuel, April 1, 1764, letter from Edinburgh to John Bard (McVickar 1822: 57–58)<ref name="McVickar">McVickar 1822, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Bard_1764_cite|back up to History]]

:“I heartily wish I could be with you at laying out your grounds, as I imagine I could be of some assistance, although I may find it impossible to convey my notions upon that subject in writing. From what I have as yet seen, I find those the most beautiful where nature is suffered to be our guide. The principal things to be observed in planning a [[pleasure ground]], seem to me, to be the situation of the ground, and the storms and winds the country is most liable to. By the first, I mean, to distribute my plants according to the soil they most delight in; to place such as flourish most in a warm exposure and dry soil, upon the sunny side of a hill; while such as delight in the shade and moist ground, should be placed in the vallies. By this single precaution, one of the greatest beauties of a garden is obtained, which consists in the health and vigour of the plants which compose it. By considering well the predominant winds and storms of the country, we are directed where to plant our large trees, so that they shall be at once an ornament, and afford a useful shelter to the smaller and more delicate plants. Next I think straight lines should be particularly avoided except where they serve to lead the eye to some distant and beautiful object—serpentine [[walk]]s are much more agreeable. Another object deserving of attention seems to be, to place the most beautiful and striking objects, such as water, if possible, a handsome [[greenhouse|green-house]], a [[grove]] of flowering shrubs, or a remarkably fine tree, in such situations, that from the house they may almost all be seen; but to a person walking, they should be artfully concealed until he suddenly, and unexpectedly, comes upon them; so that by the surprise, the pleasure may be increased: and if possible, I would contrive them so that they should contrast each other, which again greatly increases their beauty. The last thing I should mention, which, indeed, is not the least worthy of notice, is, to throw the [[flower garden]], [[kitchen garden|kitchen]], and fruit garden, and if possible, the whole farm, into one, so that they may appear as links of the same chain, and may mutually contribute to the beauties of the whole. If you could send me an accurate plan of the situation of your ground, describing particularly the hollows, risings, and the opportunities you have of bringing water into it, the spot where you intend your house, and the situation of your [[orchard]], I would consult some of my friends here about a proper plan, and I believe I know some who would assist us, and as I cannot obtain your gardener before November, if you sent the plan immediately, I shall be able to return it by him.

:“In my last letter I sent you one from Dr. Hope, informing you of my having the prize; he has done me the honour to write also to Dr. Franklin upon the subject. He has also desired me to acquaint you, that a number of gentlemen here have formed themselves into an association for the importation of American seeds and plants, and would be much obliged to you to recommend a proper person as a correspondent.

:“I know of no one who would answer so well as [[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]].”

*Bard, Samuel, June 8, 1764, letter from London to John Bard (McVickar 1822: 61)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“I have lately received great pleasure and improvement in reading Lord Kames’s late work, and recommend it to your perusal, especially that part of it relating to gardening and architecture, before you go on in improving your place on the north river. He most justly condemns the cutting of gardens into formal [[parterre]]s, or forcing nature in any respect; at the same time, points out, in a beautiful and philosophical manner, where we are implicitly to follow this amiable mistress, and when and how we may improve, by modest dress, her native beauties.”

*Bard, John, February 16, 1765, letter from New York to Samuel Bard in London (McVickar 1822: 67)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“With respect to your dedication to the governor [[Cadwallader Colden|[Cadwallader Colden]]], I wish you to remember, he is an old gentleman who likes respect, but is impatient of adulation. I think I would make it very short: mention your first instruction in botany, which is a branch of medicine, to have been received from him; and with an honest and plan expression of gratitude acknowledge his instances of kindness to you, and offer the dedication of your Thesis as a public testimony of that gratitude.”

*<div id="Hope"></div> Hope, John, September 24, 1765, letter to John Pringle describing rhubarb plant (''Philosophical Transactions'': 290)<ref>“Extract of a Letter from Dr. John Hope, Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Edinburgh, to Dr. Pringle; dated Edinburgh, 24 September 1765. Read Nov. 7, 1765,” ''Philosophical Transactions, Giving Some Account of the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious, in Many Considerable Parts of the World . . . for the Year 1765'' (London: L. Davis and C. Reymers, Printers to the Royal Society, 1766), 290, 293, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7DD9XJR3 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Hope_cite|back up to History]]

:“In autumn 1763, I received from Doctor Mounsey the seeds of the ''Rheum palmatum'', which he assured me were the seeds of the true Rhubarb. I sowed them immediately in the open ground in the [[Botanic garden]]. In the beginning of May last, one of the plants from these seeds pushed up a flowering stem, and about the middle of the month, the flowers began to open, and continued in great beauty till the 8th of 9th of June. . . .

:“I employed Mr. [William] De la Cour to made the drawings, who, though a good painter, is no botanist; this defect was fully supplied by Mr. Samuel Bard of New York, student in this university, who made the drawings of the fructification in plate XIII. Fig. 4. ''a'', ''a'', ''a'', ''b'', ''c'', ''d''. . . .

:“''aaa'' florem; ''b'' pistillum (sed non satis explicatum); ''c'' semen maturum; ''d'' sectionem transversam ejusdem exhibtent, magnitudine naturali.” [<span id="Fig_1_cite"></span>[[#Fig_1|See Fig. 1]]]

*Bard, Samuel, March 16, 1766, letter from London to Mary Bard (McVickar 1822: 86–87)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“Were I a man of fortune . . . I would have . . . in my gardens, [[alcove]]s and [[temple]]s dedicated to the memory of my best friends, and adorned with their portraits. By these means, I could never experience the fatigue of being tired of myself; for thus I could always enjoy the choicest company, without the interruption of idle intruders.”

*Bard, Samuel, July 22, 1776, letter from New York to Mary Bard at [[Hyde Park]] (McVickar 1822: 106)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“My little garden is in full luxuriance; it looks really beautiful, but alone, I cannot enjoy it. Oh! How I long for the time when we shall chase our little folks around the [[walk]]s, and together cultivate and adorn it.”

*Bard, Samuel, February 27, 1799, letter from [[Hyde Park]] to Sally Bard in New York (Langstaff 1942: 200)<ref>Langstaff, 1942, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref>

:“Today for the first time I walk as far as my barnyard—looked at my pigs, my cattle and my workmen & proposed to Caesar to begin our hot [[bed]]s. . . .

:“I beg you or [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]] will write to Mr. Prince at Flushing for twelve good roots of the sweet scented monthly Honeysuckle to be sent immediately to you at [[David Hosack|Doctor Hosack’s]] so that you may send them by the first boat of which you shall have notice hence. Your letter is to be sent to the house formerly Gains book store Hanover Square [New York] where get for me one of [[William Prince, Jr.|Princes]] last catalogues & send to me with the plants— by no means neglect this immediately, we do not know how soon the river will open.”

*<div id="Brief"></div>''A Brief Account of the New-York Hospital'', 1804 (1804: 3)<ref>''A Brief Account of the New-York Hospital'' (New York: Isaac Collins & Son, 1804), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AGIRFXCC view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Brief_cite|back up to History]]

:“The grounds belonging to the [New York] Hospital were, in 1801, inclosed with a brick [[wall]] and converted into gardens for the accommodation and benefit of convalescent patients. . . .

:“The site of the hospital is elevated, and is one of the most agreeable on New-York Island. . . . The gardens are planted with fruit and forest trees, and afford agreeable refreshing [[walk]]s to valetudinary and convalescent patients; the situation being high, open and airy, possesses extraordinary advantages for the enjoyment of fresh and salubrious breezes.”

*''An Account of the New-York Hospital'', 1811 (1811: 11)<ref>''An Account of the New-York Hospital'' (New York: Collins & Co., 1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/64Q6DV2I view on Zotero].</ref>
:“The edifice is crowned with a handsome cupola, which affords a most extensive and [[picturesque]] [[view]] of the city, harbour and adjacent country. There is an excellent [[Kitchen garden|kitchen-garden]], and the grounds are laid out in [[walk]]s, planted with fruit and ornamental trees, for the benefit of convalescent patients. There is also a large and well constructed [[Icehouse|ice-house]], a [[Bathhouse|bathing house]], and convenient stables.”

*Bard, Samuel, December 25, 1820, letter from [[Hyde Park]] to his son (McVickar 1822: 236–37)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“I walk, ride, and amuse myself, out of doors with my [[greenhouse|green-house]], and in doors, with my little transparent orrery; to which I am contemplating some additions and familiar illustrations.

:“My [[greenhouse|green-house]] and flower-stands afford me considerable amusement. The plants flourish exceedingly: I spent two hours among them yesterday, and shall do so occasionally this winter. . . . Every plant, from the royal orange and myrtle to the humble crocus, in fragrance, grace, and beauty, perform their part to admiration: and although they excite no passion of fear or mirth, of love or alarm, yet they do better,—they calm all my passions, sooth disappointment, and even mitigate the feelings of sorrow.”

*Bard, Samuel, n.d. [c. 1820], letter to an unknown correspondent (McVickar 1822: 237)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“I . . . now begin to enjoy the spring by riding on horseback, and amusing myself in my garden; but I do both with caution. When it is fair over head, but damp under foot, I ride my poney into the garden to give directions, and to see my plants bursting in to life, in which I take great delight.

:“I have several beautiful and rare plants coming forward; and I watch their progress with an interest which, by many people, would be thought trifling in a man of four score: but I appease my conscience by the innocency of the pursuit, and my inability for such as are more active.”

*<div id="Mitchill"></div>Mitchill, Samuel Latham, November 5, 1821, “A Discourse on the Life and Character of Samuel Bard” (Mitchill 1821: 12–13)<ref>Mitchill 1821, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/V9TDJ8HA view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Mitchill_cite|back up to History]]

:“With the intention of encouraging the study of Scottish plants, and particularly of stimulating young gentlemen at the university to search for them and to know them, Dr. Hope offered a gold medal as a premium for the best herbarium or collection of dried plants, growing spontaneously within ten miles of Edinburgh. Bard obtained this testimonial of superior skill, in collecting, arranging, and preserving the vegetable species of that vicinity. It is reported that he had received the rudiments of the science from [[Jane Colden|Miss Colden]], daughter of [[Cadwallader Colden|Dr. Colden]] . . . ; and that he had repaid the young lady for her instruction, by making figures and drawings of plants for her. It hence appears that before he left home, he was a tolerable proficient in that useful and charming art. . . .

:“A book of the plants then exhibited, is yet extant. It was presented to me some years ago, by Charles Buxton, M.D. It is a large folio, in strong binding, and lettered ''E plantis circa Edinam natis. C.'' By the letter C, it would seem that it was only one of several; or, that at least there were two more; of this, however, I am uninformed. The present volume contains about one hundred plants, glued to sheets of white paper, and these laid between larger sheets of purple paper. Their scientific names, their places of growth, and the season of gathering, are distinctly written on the opposite page. They are mostly in good preservation, after a lapse of fifty-seven years. In particular, the Conium maculatum, Parnassia palustris, Alisma plantago, AEsculus hippocastanum, Fragaria vesca, Geum rivale, Agrimonia eupatoria, Spiraea filipendula, Rubus idaeus, Papaver rhaeas, Stachys sylvatica, and Urtica diocia, look exceedingly natural.”

*<div id="McVickar_155"></div>McVickar, John, 1822, describing the value Samuel Bard placed in his garden and conservatory (1822: 155)<ref name="McVickar"></ref> [[#McVickar_155_cite|back up to History]]

:“As a relaxation from business, Dr. Bard peculiarly prized the enjoyment of his garden and [[conservatory]], which were stored with the choicest native and exotic plants. The pleasure he took in them was almost a peculiar sense: nor was it to him, as he asserted, without its moral uses. He has often told the writer, that nothing calmed and soothed his mind like a walk among his plants and flowers; and that he used it as a specific against the petty cares and anxieties of life.”

*McVickar, John, 1822, describing Samuel Bard’s gardening at [[Hyde Park]] (1822: 207–10)<ref name="McVickar"></ref>

:“Increasing years rendering the care of his large establishment too great a burthen, he transferred the management of it to his son . . . disburthening him of many cares, and leaving him free to his favourite employments in the [[greenhouse|green house]] and garden.

:“To the favourite occupations just mentioned Dr. Bard now devoted himself with an ardour which made them seem rather a change of labour, than a respite from it. In the flowers and fruits of the garden he became a learned and skilful horticulturist,—conversed, read, and wrote, upon the subject,—laid exactions on all his friends who could aid him in obtaining what was rare, beautiful, or excellent, in its kind, —drew from England its smaller fruits,—the larger ones from France, melons from Italy, and vines from Madeira,—managing them all with a varied yet experimental skill, which baffled the comprehension of minds of slower perception. These plans, though novel, were, in general, judicious; being the result of much reading, and long experience, and above all, of an imagination trained to what Bacon terms ‘tentative experiments.’

:“In the construction of a [[conservatory]] he displayed much of this talent, it being the first, in that northern climate, which substituted, with success, the heat of fermentation for the more expensive and dangerous one of combustion. In this, during the severity of the winter, he would often pass the greater part of the day, engaged in his usual occupations of reading and writing, or his favourite amusement of chess; and welcoming his friends who called upon him, to use his own sportive language, to the ‘little tropical region of his own creation.‘”

*<div id="William_pockets"></div>Bard, William [or Eliza?], ca. 1822, on botanical instruction by Samuel Bard (McVickar 1822: 181–82)<ref>McVickar 1822, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8NP6WKE8 view on Zotero]. For attribution of letter to Eliza Bard, see Langstaff 1942, 209–10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X4BCENGC view on Zotero].</ref> [[#William_pockets_cite|back up to History]]

:“The principal part of my instruction he took upon himself. . . . Our studies [of drawing and botany] generally ended with a walk in the woods, or a scramble among the rocks, in which I delighted to follow him. His pockets, on such excursions, were generally filled with such new plants as we could collect; affording a botanical lesson for the day, and specimens for future illustration. I had a little of his own fondness for drawing and plants, and look back with delight on the pleasure and employment I thus afforded him. An illustration of the system of Linnaeus, and subsequently, of Miss [Frances Arabella] Rowden’s botany [''A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany'' (1801)], was the manner in which he made me unite these studies; ornamenting every page or two with a group or basket of flowers, with some appropriate sentence, either from Scripture, or our best poets.”

<hr>

==Images==
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:2021.jpg|William de la Cour and Samuel Bard (artists), Andrew Bell (engraver), “Rheum Palmaatum Linn,” in ''Philosophical Transactions'' (1765), vol. 55, pl. XIII.

Image:2023.jpg|John R. Murray, ''View of the New-York Hospital'', 1808.

Image:2022.jpg|C. Milbourne, First New York Hospital building, 1818.

Image:2046.jpg|Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, ''Hyde Park, Hudson River'', c. 1838–56.

Image:0845.jpg|Alexander Jackson Davis, View of water with islands (Hyde Park), n.d.
</gallery>

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n83188693.html Library of Congress Authority File]

[http://www.anb.org/articles/12/12-00047.html American National Biography]

[https://www.nysoclib.org/collection/ledger/people/bard_samuel New York Society Library circulation records for Samuel Bard]

[http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/22/5/682.full Exotic Plant Inventory, Landscape Survey, and Invasiveness Assessment: Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, Hyde Park, NY]

[http://www.stjameshydepark.org/sjhistory.htm St. James' Episcopal Church, Hyde Park]

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category:People|Bard, Samuel]]

Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery

2019-09-04T14:05:27Z

T-omalley: /* History */

The '''Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery''', located on the west bank of the [[Schuylkill River]] in Philadelphia, was developed by [[John Bartram]] (1699–1777) for scientific and commercial purposes and maintained by three generations of his family. The encyclopedic range of plants comprised native examples discovered on botanical expeditions made by [[John Bartram|Bartram]] and his son, [[William Bartram|William]] (1739–1823), as well as exotic specimens sent to him from other parts of the world.

==Overview==
'''Alternate Names:''' John Bartram & Sons; Bartram’s Garden; Bartram House and Garden; Kingsess Gardens<br/>
'''Site Dates:''' 1730s to present<br/>
'''Site Owner(s):''' [[John Bartram]] (1699–1777); John Bartram Jr. (1743–1812); Ann Bartram Carr (1779–1858) and Col. Robert Carr (1778–1866); City of Philadelphia<br/>
'''Location:''' Philadelphia, PA<br/>
'''Condition:''' altered<br/>
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bartram%27s+Garden/@39.931814,-75.211663,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x6bdeffbb106d9eb4 View on Google maps]

<hr>

==History==
[[File:0056.jpg|thumb|252.px|Fig. 1, John or William Bartram, “A Draught of John Bartram’s House and Garden as it appears from the River,” 1758.]]
Through a number of property transactions made between 1728 and 1740, [[John Bartram]] acquired more than 287 acres of rich, well-watered farmland on the Schuylkill River at Kingsessing, about three miles from the center of Philadelphia. [[John Bartram|Bartram]] was the son of a Quaker farmer in rural Pennsylvania, and he devoted most of his new property to agriculture. In addition to cultivating grains and raising livestock, he planted a [[kitchen garden]] in 1729 and built a stone farmhouse in 1731.<ref>Joel T. Fry, ''John Bartram’s House and Garden (Bartram’s Garden)'', Historic American Landscape Survey, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service, 2004), 4, 7, 15–18, 22, 27–30, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero], and James A. Jacobs, ''John Bartram House and Garden, Greenhouse (Seed House)'', Historic American Landscapes Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service, 2001), 1–2.</ref> Around the same time, he developed a garden on six or seven acres of ground sloping from the house down to the river.<ref>Fry 2004, 4, 7, 18, 22, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero].</ref>

A drawing of the garden dating to 1758 identifies no specific plant materials, but clearly indicates a terraced garden divided into four well-defined zones [Fig. 1]. The area directly behind the house is labeled “Common [[Flower Garden]],” with an “Upper [[Kitchen Garden]]” to its north and “A new flower Garden” (measuring twenty-six by ten yards) to the south. Board [[fence]]s enclose each of these areas. A stone retaining [[wall]] punctuated by steps marks the transition from the upper gardens down to the much larger “Lower [[Kitchen Garden]],” laid out on a slope that ended at the banks of Schuylkill River. An oval-shaped [[pond]] at the center of the lower garden connects to the “spring or milk House,” located in the shade of a large tree near the garden’s northern [[fence]]. Plantings interspersed along this [[fence]] may represent espaliered trees.<ref>Fry 2004, 43, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero]</ref> Three long [[alley]]s of trees running the full length of the garden are labeled “[[Walk]]s 150 yards long of a moderate descent.” Following his visit to the property in 1787, [[Manasseh Cutler]] described this feature as “a [[walk]] to the river, between two rows of large, lofty trees,” adding that the trees were of “all of different kinds.” <span id="Cutler_cite"></span>According to [[Manasseh Cutler|Cutler]], the walk terminated in a [[summerhouse]] on the river bank ([[#Cutler|view text]]).

From early on Bartram provided trees, shrubs, bulbs, roots, and seeds to many of his neighbors in Philadelphia, including [[William Hamilton]] of [[The Woodlands]], [[Charles Willson Peale]] of [[Belfield]], and Thomas Penn of [[Springettsbury]]. His business expanded exponentially after he entered into an informal partnership with the London merchant [[Peter Collinson]] who was his faithful correspondent and advocate for more than thirty years. With the encouragement of [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]] and a growing British and European clientele, [[John Bartram|Bartram]] traveled to most of the American colonies, collecting plants and seeds to transplant and cultivate at his garden. During Bartram’s frequent absences from home on botanical expeditions, the garden was managed by his wife, Ann Mendenhall Bartram (1703–1789).

[[John Bartram|Bartram]] initially gathered plants for his garden from the countryside near his house. Over time, he ventured farther afield, eventually exploring remote wilderness areas from New York to Florida. His extensive field experience distinguished him from most of the gardeners and botanists of his day. Informed by personal knowledge of the natural habitats of the plants in his collection, he transplanted new finds to those sections of his property that most closely approximated the environmental conditions and terrain in which he had first encountered them.<ref>For a discussion, see Therese O’Malley, “Art and Science in the Design of Botanic Gardens, 1730–1830,” in ''Garden History: Issues and Approaches'', ed. John Dixon Hunt (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), 282, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NQV3X8M7 view on Zotero].</ref> [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] insatiable botanical curiosity and far-ranging expeditions placed a premium on comprehensiveness, as did the function of his garden as a supplier of plants for sale and exchange. Initiating a trading relationship with J. Slingsby Cressy, a physician and botanist in Antigua, [[John Bartram|Bartram]] emphasized the breadth of his interests: “Whatsoever whether great or small ugly or handsom sweet or stinking . . . every thing in the universe in their own nature appears beautiful to mee.”<ref>John Bartram to J. Slingsby Cressy, c. 1740, in John Bartram, ''The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734–1777'', ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992), 131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> Twenty years later, in a letter to [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]], he crowed, “I can challenge any garden in America for variety.”<ref>John Bartram to Peter Collinson, July 19, 1761, in Bartram 1992: 529, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref> Plants from Bartram’s garden survive in a number of European and American herbaria.<ref>For examples, see Joel T. Fry, “John Bartram and His Garden: Would John Bartram Recognize His Garden Today?,” in ''America’s Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram, 1699–1777'', ed. Nancy Everill Hoffmann and John C. Van Horne (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 2004), 159n10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/95CXP28C view on Zotero].</ref>

Despite his love of variety, [[John Bartram|Bartram]] was initially reluctant to cultivate delicate plants that required inordinate care to survive Philadelphia’s climate. <span id="Tender_cite"></span>“I don’t greatly like tender plants what wont bear our severe winters,” he remarked to Philip Miller (1791–1771), curator of the Chelsea Physick Garden, in a letter of June 20, 1757 ([[#Tender|view text]]). This position changed somewhat in 1760, the year of [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] first visit to South Carolina, when he decided to build a [[greenhouse]]. As he explained to [[Peter Collinson|Collinson]], his plan was to construct the building of stone and to grow “some pretty flowering winter shrubs, and plants for winter’s diversion,” rather than the exotic orange trees and tropical plants that several of his neighbors cultivated. [[John Bartram|Bartram]] erected a modest, one-and-a-half story building of stone with an east facing window, which was completed by December 1762 when he informed Collinson that he had included an external fireplace and two flues in the back wall for heat.<ref>James A. Jacobs, John Bartram House and Garden, Greenhouse (Seed House), Historic American Landscapes Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service, 2001), 2, 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TZG4ANHU view on Zotero].</ref> From the 1760s on, the addition of warm-weather Carolina plants transformed Bartram’s garden, enlivening it with brilliantly colored flowers.<ref>See, for example, Bartram 1992, 495, 529, 668–69, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>

Following [[John Bartram|John Bartram's]] death in 1777, the nursery business continued under the supervision of John Bartram Jr. (1743–1812) with assistance from his elder brother, the natural history explorer and illustrator [[William Bartram]] (1739–1823). Under their stewardship, the garden became an outdoor classroom. Benjamin Smith Barton (1766–1815), the first professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania, brought his students to the garden to study live plants in situ, and the Bartrams noted with pride that their family’s [[botanic garden]] “may with propriety and truth be called the Botanical Academy of Pennsylvania, since . . . the Professors of Botany, Chemistry, and Materia Medica, attended by their youthful train of pupils, annually assemble here during the Floral season.”<ref>William Bartram, ''William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings'', ed. Thomas P. Slaughter (New York: The Library of America, 1996), 587, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3XMTDFZR view on Zotero].</ref>

John Jr. and [[William Bartram|William]] continued to expand the business, adding a second [[greenhouse]] around 1790, and another in 1817.<ref>Fry 2004, 56, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero], and Benjamin Hays Smith, “Some Letters from William Hamilton of The Woodlands to his Private Secretary,” ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 29 (1905): 258–59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MW5WVDUF view on Zotero].</ref> The fame of the garden attracted many distinguished visitors. [[George Washington]] paid a visit on June 10 and September 2, 1787 while in Philadelphia for the Continental Convention.<ref>George Washington, ''The Diaries of George Washington'', ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, 5 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), 5:166, 183, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XXSQS73D view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Washington_cite"></span>Although he disparaged the garden in his diary, describing it as “not laid off with much taste, nor was it large,” he was impressed by the many “curious pl[an]ts. Shrubs & trees, many of which are exotics” ([[#Washington|view text]]). <span id="Washington_2_cite"></span>Two years later he requested a catalogue from the Bartrams ([[#Washington_2|view text]]) and in 1792 ordered at least 106 varieties of plants. Three hundred trees and shrubs from Bartram’s Garden were planted in ornamental ovals at [[Mount Vernon]] that spring.<ref>See “List of Plants from John Bartram’s Nursery, March 1792,” and George Augustine Washington to George Washington, April 15–16, 1792, in George Washington, ''The Papers of George Washington'', Presidential Series, ed. Robert F. Haggard and Mark A. Mastromarino (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2002), 10: 175–83, 272–73, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/T247JI6J view on Zotero].</ref>

In 1807 the Bartrams distributed ''A Catalog of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbaceous Plants Indigenous to the United States of America, cultivated and Disposed of by John Bartram and Son at their Botanical Garden at Kingessing, near Philadelphia. To which is added a Catalog of Foreign Plants Collected from Various Parts of the Globe''. On John Jr.’s death in 1812, his daughter, Ann Bartram Carr (1779–1858), was responsible for maintaining the garden and operating the business. She had learned the science of botany and the art of botanical illustration from her uncle [[William Bartram|William]] and together with her husband Colonel Robert Carr (1778–1866) and his son John Bartram Carr (1804–1839), she enlarged the commercial [[nursery]] and continued the international trade in seeds and plants. At its peak the enterprise operated ten [[greenhouse]]s and maintained a collection of over 1400 native and 1000 exotic plant species.In 1838 the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad laid out the first route south of Philadelphia, cutting through the west side of the Bartram-Carr property. Later in the century, the company's single track was expanded to two. Having continued to grow and thrive through three generations of the Bartram family, Bartram’s Botanic Garden and Nursery began to experience financial difficulties and was sold out of the family in 1850. The historic garden was purchased by the wealthy railroad industrialist Andrew M. Eastwick (1811–1879), who maintained it as a private park.<ref>Fry 2004, 5, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R9R5T6QS view on Zotero].</ref> Today it is a 45-acre National Historic Landmark, operated by the John Bartram Association in cooperation with Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.

—''Robyn Asleson''

<hr>

==Texts==
*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], 1740/41, letter to Peter Bayard describing hedges (1992: 174–75)<ref name="Bartram_1992">Bartram, 1992, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NZGMIACI view on Zotero].</ref>
:“As to the evergreens for pyramids that which is called in Europe the silver fir in new England hemlock & our people spruice is esteemed one of the most beautiful evergreens for showey pyramids & yew & holy is also much esteemed . . . for [[hedge]]s in A garden I like our red cedar or Juniper for tall natural pyramids the white or Lord weymouth pine & balm of gilead fir the larix & spruce fir & abor vita.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 11, 1743, letter to [[Peter Collinson]], describing the garden of Dr. Christopher Witt in Germantown, PA (1992: 215–16)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have lately been to visit our friend Doctor wit [Witt] where I spent 4 of 5 very agreeable sometimes in his garden wehre I viewed every kind of plant I believe that grew therin. . . . I observed particularly the Doctors famous Lychnis which thee hath dignified so highly, is I think unworthy of that Character our swamps & low grounds is full of them I had so contemptible an opinion of it as not to think it worthy sending nor afford it room in my garden.”

*Kalm, Pehr, September 25, 1748, ''Travels into North America'' (1770: 1:112–13)<ref> Pehr Kalm, ''Travels into North America . . .'', trans. John Reinhold Forster, 3 vols. (London: John Reinhold Forster, 1770), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/W7RZN46S view on Zotero]. </ref>
:“Mr. ''John Bartram'' is an ''Englishman'', who lives in the country about four miles from ''Philadelphia''. He has acquired a great knowledge of natural philosophy and history, and seems to be born with a peculiar genius for these sciences. . . . He has in several successive years made frequent excursions into different distant parts of ''North America'', with an intention of gathering all sorts of plants which are scarce and little known. Those which he found he has planted in his own [[botanic garden|botanical garden]], and likewise sent over their seeds or fresh roots to ''England''. We owe to him the knowledge of many scarce plants, which he first found, and which were never known before.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], February 12, 1753, letter to Jared Eliot describing hedges (1992: 342)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“About 16 years past I planted a [[hedge]] of red Cedars one foot long on a small bank About 2 foot asunder[.] they growed so well that in 3 or 4 years I had a A fine [[hedge]] 4 foot high 2 foot thick, & so close that A bird could not fly thro it.”

*[[Alexander Garden|Garden, Alexander]], November 4, 1754 to [[Cadwallader Colden]] (quoted in Colden 1920: 471–72)<ref>Cadwallader Colden, “The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden,” vol. 4 (1748–1754), ''Collections of the New-York Historical Society'' (1920): 471–72, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AWRMN2FD view on Zotero].</ref>
:<p>“I have met wt very Little new in the Botanic way unless Your acquaintance Bartram. . . .</p>
:<p>“His garden is a perfect portraiture of himself, here you meet wt a row of rare plants almost covered over wt weeds, here with a Beautiful Shrub, even Luxuriant Amongst Briars, and in another corner an Elegant & Lofty tree lost in common [[thicket]]—on our way from town to his house he carried me to severall rocks & Dens where he shewed me some of his rare plants, which he had brought from the Mountains &c. In a word he disdains to have a garden less than Pensylvania [''sic''] & Every den is an [[Arbor|Arbour]], Every run of water, a [[Canal]], & every small level Spot a [[Parterre]], where he nurses up some of his Idol Flowers & cultivates his darling productions.”</p>

*<div id="Tender"></div>[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 20, 1757, letter to Philip Miller (1992: 423–24)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref> [[#Tender_cite|back up to History]]
:“I dont greatly like tender plants what wont bear our severe winters but perhaps annual plants that would perfect thair seeds with you without the help of A hot bed in the spring will do with us in the open ground. . . . Two roots of a sort is enough. I don’t want much of any one species but variety pleaseth me.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], February 18, 1758, letter to Philip Miller in London (1992: 456–58)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“At present my fancy runs all upon the living curious seeds cuttings of bulbous roots[.] fibrous roots is difficult to send . . . for now every few nights I dream of seeing & gathering the finest flowers & roots to plant in my garden[.] pray my dear friend oblige me with one or two of thy best sorts[.] I want but one of A sort but I love variety [.] pray don’t let our dutch outdo me.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 24, 1760, in a letter to [[Peter Collinson]], describing his plans for the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Darlington 1849: 224)<ref name="Darlington_1849">William Darlington, ''Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall: With Notices of Their Botanical Contemporaries'' (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1849), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKNVQG76 view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Dear friend, I am going to build a [[greenhouse]]. Stone is got; and hope as soon as harvest is over to begin to build it, to put some pretty flowering winter shrubs, and plants for winter’s diversion; not to be crowded with orange trees, or those natural to the Torrid Zone, but such as will do, being protected from frost.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], July 19, 1761, letter to [[Peter Collinson]] (1992: 529)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have now A glorious appearance of Carnations from thy seed—the brightest color that ever eyes beheld now, what with thine dr. Witts & others I can challenge any garden in America for variety.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], May 1763, letter to [[Peter Collinson]] (1992: 594)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“My garden now makes A glorious appearance I have A fine anonis with A large spike of blew flowers in full bloom which I gathered in Potemack 3 years ago . . . my great carolina saracena is in bloom . . . it is a glorious odd flower A goldish color & striped.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], May 1, 1764, letter to [[Peter Collinson]] (1992: 627–28)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have many Carolina seeds come up this spring in the [[bed]] I sowed when I cam home . . . . Doctor Shippen gave me some seed last summer which he brought from the south of Europe one fine sumach grew 18 inches . . . I sheltered them with boards & thay are now very fresh the first I transplanted to one side of my [[walks]]. . . . Last summer there came up in my [[greenhouse]] from east India seed formerly sowed there an odd kind of Sumach (as I take it to be)[.] it growed in A few months near 4 foot high & continued green & growing all winter & this spring I planted it it out to take its chance it shoots vigorously & almost as red as crimson how it will stand next winter I cant say but I intend to cover the ground well above its root. . . . Last summer there came up in my greenhouse from east India seed formerly sowed there an odd kind of Sumach (as I take it to be)[.] it fgrowd in A few months near 4 foot high & continued green & growing all winter & this spring I planted it it out to take its chance it shoots vigorously & almost as red as crimson how it will stand next winter I cant say but I intend to cover the ground well above its root.”

*[[John Bartram|Bartram, John]], June 1766, to [[Peter Collinson]] (London 1992: 668–69)<ref name="Bartram_1992"></ref>
:“I have brought home with me A fine Collection of strange florida plants.”

*[[Iwan Alexiowitz|Alexiowitz, Iwan]], 1769, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Darlington 1849: 50)<ref name="Darlington_1849"></ref>
:“The whole store of nature’s kind luxuriance seemed to have been exhausted on these beautiful [[meadow]]s; he made me count the amazing number of cattle and horses now feeding on solid bottoms, which but a few years before had been covered with water. Thence we rambled through his fields, where the rightangular [[fence]]s, the heaps of pitched stones, the flourishing clover, announced the best husbandry, as well as the most assiduous attention. . . . He next showed me his [[orchard]], formerly planted on a barren, sandy soil, but long since converted into one of the richest spots in that vicinage.”

*Al—z, Mr. Iw—n, c. 1770, describing John Bartram and the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Crèvecœur 1783: 248, 254)<ref>“A Russian Gentleman, Describing the Visit He Paid at My Request To Mr. John Bertram, The Celebrated Pennsylvanian Botanist,” in J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, ''Letters from an American Farmer: Describing Certain Provincial Situations, Manners, and Customs Not Generally Known'' (London: Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis, 1783), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JIVSDQ3K view on Zotero]</ref>
: <p>“Let us . . . pay a visit to Mr. John Bertram [''sic''], the first botanist, in this new hemisphere. . . . It is to this simple man that America is indebted for several useful discoveries, and the knowledge of many new plants. . . . </p>
: <p>“Every disposition of the fields, [[fence]]s, and trees, seemed to bear the marks of perfect order and regularity, which in rural affairs, always indicate a prosperous industry . . . </p>
: <p>“From his study we went into the garden, which contained a great variety of curious plants and shrubs; some grew in a [[greenhouse|green-house]], over the door of which were written these lines, </p>
::“Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
::“But looks through nature, up to nature’s God!”

*<div id="Washington"></div>[[George Washington|Washington, George]], June 10, 1787, describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1979: 5:166)<ref>George Washington, ''The Diaries of George Washington'', ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, 5 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XXSQS73D view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Washington_cite|back up to History]]
:“[We] rid to see the [[botanic garden|Botanical garden]] of Mr. Bartram; which, tho’ Stored with many curious plts. Shrubs & trees, many of which are exotics was not laid off with much taste, nor was it large.”

*<div id="Cutler"></div>[[Manasseh Cutler|Cutler, Manasseh]], July 14, 1787, describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1888: 1:272–74)<ref name="Cutler_1888">Manasseh Cutler, ''Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D.'', ed. William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkin Cutler, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1888), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ASAS6SD5 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Cutler_cite|back up to History]]
:“We crossed the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], at what is called the lower ferry, over the floating [[bridge]], to [[Gray’s Garden|Gray’s tavern]], and, in about two miles, came to Mr. Bartram’s [[seat]]. We alighted from our carriages, and found our company were : Mr. [Caleb] Strong, Governor [Alexander] Martin, [[George Mason|Mr. [George] Mason]] and son, Mr. [Hugh] Williamson, [[James Madison|Mr. [James] Madison]], Mr. [John] Rutledge, and [[Alexander Hamilton|Mr. [Alexander] Hamilton]], all members of Convention, [[Samuel Vaughan|Mr. Vaughan]], and Dr. [Gerardus] Clarkson and son. Mr. Bartram lives in an ancient Fabric, built with stone, and very large, which was the seat of his father. His house is on an [[eminence]] fronting to the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], and his garden is on the declivity of the hill between his house and the river. We found him, with another man, hoeing in his garden, in a short jacket and trowsers, and without shoes or stockings. He at first stared at us, and seemed to be somewhat embarrassed at seeing so large and gay a company so early in the morning. Dr. Clarkson was the only person he knew, who introduced me to him, and informed him that I wished to converse with him on botanical subjects, and, as I lived in one of the Northern States, would probably inform him of trees and plants which he had not yet in his collection; that the other gentlemen wished for the pleasure of a walk in his garden. I instantly entered on the subject of botany with as much familiarity as possible, and inquired after some rare plants which I had heard that he had. He presently got rid of his embarrassment, and soon became very sociable, which was more than I expected, from the character I had heard of the man. I found him to be a practical botanist, though he seemed to understand little of the theory. We ranged the several [[alley]]s, and he gave me the generic and specific names, place of growth, properties, etc., so far as he knew them. This is a very ancient garden, and the collection is large indeed, but is made principally from the Middle and Southern States. It is finely situated, as it partakes of every kind of soil, has a fine stream of water, and an artificial [[pond|pond]], where he has a good collection of aquatic plants. There is no situation in which plants or trees are found but that they may be propagated here in one that is similar. But every thing is very badly arranged, for they are neither placed ornamentally nor botanically, but seem to be jumbled together in heaps. The other gentlemen were very free and sociable with him, particularly Governor Martin, who has a smattering of botany and a fine taste for natural history. There are in this garden some very large trees that are exotic, particularly an English oak, which he assured me was the only one in America. He had the Pawpaw tree, or Custard apple. It is small, though it bears fruit ; but the fruit is very small. He has also a large number of aromatics, some of them trees, and some plants. One plant I thought equal to cinnamon. The Franklin tree is very curious. It has been found only on one particular spot in Georgia. . . . From the house is a [[walk]] to the river, between two rows of large, lofty trees, all of different kinds, at the bottom of which is a [[summerhouse|summer-house]] on the bank, which here is a ledge of rocks, and so situated as to be convenient for fishing in the river, where a plenty of several kinds of fish may be caught. Mr. Bartram showed us several natural curiosities in the place where he keeps his seeds; they were principally fossils. He appeared fond of exchanging a number of his trees and plants for those which are peculiar to the Northern States. We proposed a correspondence, by which we could more minutely describe the productions peculiar to the Southern and Northern States.
:“About nine, we took our leave of Mr. Bartram, who appeared to be well pleased with his visitors, and returned to [[Gray’s Garden|Gray’s tavern]], where we breakfasted.”

*<div id="Washington_2"></div>Lear, Tobias to Clement Biddle, October 7, 1789 (1993: 4:124–25)<ref>George Washington, ''The Papers of George Washington'', Presidential Series, ed. Dorothy Twohig (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HI3EUPA2 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Washington_2_cite|back up to History]]
:“[[George Washington|The President]] will thank you to get from Mr Bartram a list of the plants & shrubs which he has for sale, with the price affixed to each, and also a note to each of the time proper for transplanting them, as he is desireous of having some sent to [[Mount Vernon]] this fall if it is proper.<p></p>
:“It is customary for those persons who publish lists of their plants &c. to insert many which they have had, but which have been all disposed of—[[George Washington|the President]] will therefore wish to have a list only of what he actually has in his Gardon.”

*[[Niemcewicz, Julian Ursyn]], March 24, 1798, journal entry describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1965: 52)<ref name="Niemcewicz">Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, ''Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels through America in 1797–99, 1805, with Some Further Account of Life in New Jersey'', ed. and trans. Metchie J. E. Budka (Elizabeth, NJ: The Grassmann Publishing Company, 1965), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/URG5ABAD view on Zotero].</ref>
:“We arrived at the farmhouse. It is built of great stones wiht a few rustic columns of the same material. The gardens extends as far as the [[Schuylkill River|Skulkill]]. It was not the moment to see it. There was not yet a green leaf. Straightaway I cam upon [[William Bartram|Bartram]], the traveler and poet. . . . he showed us a few trees and bushes, brought for the most part from Georgia and the Carolinas, and the remainder from the Continent. His interest in botany, added to the profits that he has made from it, has led him to undertake, at times, journeys of 100 miles solely to go into a forest to collect there a plant or a bush. ''Franklinia'' is a tree from Georgia, with a superb flower; ''Gotheria procumbens'' from Jersey with its little leaves of deep green speckled with red; they taste like honey; during the wars it was served instead of tea. The [[hothouse]] is neither big nor luxuriant. I have seen there green tea from China and Boh[e]a. Its leaves are a deep green, an inch and a half in length when they are allowed to grow; but for drinking they are picked very young, especially those of Imperial Tea. [[William Bartram|Bartram deals]] in plants, flowers, bushes, etc.; he sells much to Europe. He is the best botanist in this country.”

*[[Alexander Wilson|Wilson, Alexander]], August 10, 1804, “A Rural Walk. The Scenery drawn from Nature,” Gray’s Ferry (1876: 359, 361–64)<ref> Alexander Wilson, ''The Poems and Literary Prose of Alexander Wilson, the American Ornithologist'', ed. Alexander B. Grosart, 2 vols. (Paisley: Alex. Gardner, 1876), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VK9Q28VZ view on Zotero].</ref>
:“The Summer sun was riding high,
::“The [[wood]] in deepest verdure drest;
:“From care and clouds of dust to fly,
::“Across yon bubbling brook I past;
<p></p>
:“And up the hill, with cedars spread,
::“Where vines through spice-[[wood]] [[thicket]]s roam;
:“I took the woodland path, that led
::“To [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] hospitable dome . . . .
<p> </p>
:“The squirrel chipp’d, the tree-frog whirr’d,
::“The dove bemoan’d in shadiest [[bower|bow’r]] . . . .
<p> </p>
:“A wide extended waste of [[wood]],
::“Beyond in distant [[prospect]] lay;
:“Where Delaware’s majestic flood
::“Shone like the radiant orb of day . . . .
<p> </p>
:“There market-maids, in lovely rows,
::“With wallets white, were riding home;
:“And thund’ring gigs, with powder’d beauxs [''sic''],
::“Through [[Gray’s Garden|Gray’s]] green festive shade to roam.
<p> </p>
:“There Bacchus fills his flowing cup,
::“There Venus’ lovely train are seen;
:“There lovers sigh, and gluttons sup,
::“By [[shrubbery|shrubb’ry]] [[walks]], in [[arbor|arbours]] green.
<p> </p>
:“But dearer pleasures warm my heart,
::“And fairer scenes salute my eye;
:“As thro’ these cherry-rows I dart
::“Where [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] fairy landscapes lie.
<p> </p>
:“Sweet flows the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill’s]] winding tide,
::“By [[John Bartram|Bartram’s]] emblossomed [[bower|bow’rs]];
:“Where nature sports, in all her pride
::“Of choicest plants, and fruits, and flow’rs.
<p></p>
:“These sheltering pines that shade the path,—
::“That tow'ring cypress moving slow,—
:“Survey a thousand sweets beneath,
::“And smile upon the [[groves]] below. . . .
<p> </p>
:“From pathless [[woods]], from Indian plains,
::“From shores where exil’d Britons rove;
:“Arabia’s rich luxuriant scene,
::“And Otaheite’s ambrosial [[grove]].
<p> </p>
:“Unnumber’d plants and [[shrubbery|shrubb'ry]] sweet,
::“Adorning still the circling year;
:“Whose names the Muse can ne’er repeat,
::“Display their mingling blossoms here. . . .
<p> </p>
:“For them thro’ Georgia’s sultry clime,
::“And Florida’s sequester’d shore;
:“Their streams, dark [[woods]], and cliffs sublime,
::“His dangerous way he did explore.
<p> </p>
:“And here their blooming tribes he tends,
::“And tho’ revolving Winters reign,
:“Still Spring returns him back his friends,
::“His shades and blossom’d [[bowers]] again.”

*[[William Bartram|Bartram, William]], 1807, Preface to ''A Catalogue of Trees, Shrubs, and Herbaceous Plants, Indigenous to the United States of America'' (1996: 586–87)<ref>Bartram 1996, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3XMTDFZR view on Zotero].</ref>
:“KINGSESS GARDENS were begun about 80 years since by [[John Bartram|JOHN BARTRAM]] the elder. . . . They are situated on the west banks of the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], four miles from Philadelphia, and contain about eight acres of land. The mansion and [[greenhouse|green houses]] stand on an [[eminence]] from which the garden descends by gentle [[slope]]s to the edge of the river, and on either side the ground rises into hills of moderate elevation to the summits of which its [[border]]s extend. From this scite [''sic''] are distinctly seen the winding course of the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], its broad-spread [[meadow]]s and cultivated farms, for many miles up and down. . . . The whole comprehends an extensive [[prospect]], rich in the beauty of its scenery and endless in diversity.
:“His [Bartram’s] view in the establishment [of the garden] was to make it a deposite [''sic''] of the vegetables of these United States, (then British Colonies), as well as those of Europe and other parts of the earth, that they might be the more convenient for investigation. He soon furnished his grounds with the curious and beautiful vegetables in the environs, and by degrees those more distant, which were arranged according to their natural soil and situation, either in the garden, or on his [[plantation]], which consisted of between 200 and 300 acres of land, the whole of which he termed his garden. . . .
:“Thus these extensive gardens became the Seminary of American vegetables, from whence they were distributed to Europe, and other regions of the civilized world. They may with propriety and truth be called the ''Botanical Academy of Pennsylvania'', since, being near Philadelphia, the Professors of Botany, Chemistry, and Materia Medica, attended by their youthful train of pupils, annually assemble here during the Floral season.
:“The revered founder lived to see his garden flourish beyond him most sanguine expectations, and extend its reputation both at home and abroad, as the [[Botanic Garden]] of America. In this condition it descended to his son, whose care it has been to preserve its well-earned fame, as well by continuing the collection already there, as by making annual excursions to increase the variety. Finding old age coming on, he has lately associated his son with him in the concern, and hopes by their untied exertions the gardens will continue to be worthy of the attention of the lovers of science and the admirers of nature.”

*[[Frederick Purch|Pursh, Frederick]], 1814, recalling a visit to Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery in 1799 (1814: 1:vi)<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Near Philadelphia I found the [[botanic garden]] of Messrs. John and [[William Bartram]]. This is likewise an old establishment, founded under the patronage of the late Dr. Fothergill, by the father of the now living Bartrams. This place, delightfully situated on the banks of the Delaware, is kept up by the present proprietors, and probably will increase under the care of the son of [[John Bartram]], a young gentleman of classical education, and highly attached to the study of botany. Mr. [[William Bartram]], the well known author of “Travels through North and South Carolina,” I found a very intelligent, agreeable, and communicative gentleman; and from him I received considerable information about the plants of that country, particularly respecting the habitats of a number of rare and interesting trees. It is with the liveliest emotions of pleasure I call to mind the happy hours I spent in this worthy man’s company, during the period I lived in his neighbourhood.

*Baldwin, William, August 14, 1818, letter from Philadelphia to William Darlington (Darlington 1843: 277–78)<ref>William Baldwin, ''Reliquiae Baldwinianae: Selections from the Correspondence of the Late William Baldwin with Occasional Notes, and a Short Biographical Memoir'', ed. William Darlington (Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1843), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XZCT2UNV view on Zotero].</ref>
:“ I spent several hours yesterday with our worthy old friend BARTRAM; and have made an arrangement with Col. ROBERT CARR, who has the management of the garden, to cultivate my S. American plants. He has now the ''Lantana Bratrami'' [''sic''] (for the first time) in flower in his garden . . . . Mrs. CARR (daughter of the late [[John Bartram|JOHN BARTRAM]],) draws elegantly,—and has engaged to execute as many drawings for me as I want. . . . .
:“I found yesterday . . . a new species of ''Prunella'' . . . .On showing a specimen of it to Mr. BARTRAM, he thought he had seen it,—and considered it a new species. He will search for it, and let me know.”

*[[James Thacher|Thacher, James]], 1828, describing history of Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1828: 1:67)<ref>James Thacher, ''American Medical Biography: Or, Memoirs of Eminent Physicians Who Have Flourished in America'', 2 vols. (Boston: Richardson & Lord and Cottons & Barnard, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/A6TFSIKP view on Zotero].</ref>
:“[[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] was the first native American who conceived and carried into effect the plan of a [[botanic garden|botanical garden]] for the reception and cultivation of indigenous as well as exotic plants, and of travelling for the purpose of accomplishing this plan. He purchased a situation on the banks of Schuylkill, and enriched it with every variety of the most curious and beautiful vegetables, collected in his excursions, which his sons have since continued to cultivate.”

*Committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1830, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (quoted in Boyd 1929: 428)<ref>James Boyd, ''A History of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1827–1927'' (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1929), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UN9TRH8T view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Mr. Carr’s fruit [[nursery]] has been greatly improved, and will be enlarged next spring to twelve acres—its present size is eight. The trees are arranged in systematical order, and the [[walk]]s well gravelled. The whole is abundantly stocked, from the seed bed to the tree. Here are to be found 113 varieties of apples, 72 of pears, 22 of cherries, 17 of apricots, 45 of plums, 39 of peaches, 5 of nectarines, 3 of almonds, 6 of quinces, 5 of mulberries, 6 of raspberries, 6 of currants, 5 of filberts, 8 of walnuts, 6 of strawberries, and 2 of medlars. The stock, considered according to its growth, has in the first class of ornamental trees, esteemed for their foliage, flowers, or fruit, 76 sorts; of the second class 56 sorts; of the third class 120 sorts; of ornamental evergreens 52 sorts; of vines and creepers, for covering [[wall]]s and [[arbor|arbours]], 35 sorts; of honey suckle 30 sorts, and of roses 80 varieties.”

*Wynne, William, June 1832, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia,” describing the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery, vicinity of Philadelphia (''Gardener’s Magazine'' 8: 272–73)<ref>William Wynne, “Some Account of the Nursery Gardens and the State of Horticulture in the Neighbourhood of Philadelphia, with Remarks on the Subject of the Emigration of British Gardens to the United States,” ''Gardener’s Magazine and Register of Rural & Domestic Improvement'' 8, no. 38 (June 1832): 272–76, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CKN7ZG86 view on Zotero.] </ref>
:“I shall begin with Bartram’s Botanic Garden; the precedence being due to it, both for antiquity (it having been established 100 years), and from its containing the best collection of American plants in the United States. There are above 2000 species (natives) contained in a space of six acres, not including the fruit [[nursery]] and vineyard, which comprise eight acres. . . . Indeed, the most remarkable feature in this [[nursery]], and that which renders it superior to most of its class, is the advantage of possessing large specimens of all the rare American trees and [[shrubs]]; which are not only highly ornamental, but likewise very valuable, from the great quantities of seed they afford for exportation to London, Paris, Petersburgh, Calcutta, and several other parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This garden is the regular resort of the learned and scientific gentlemen of Philadelphia.”

*[[C. M. (Charles Mason) Hovery|Hovey, C. M. (Charles Mason)]], June 1837, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (''Magazine of Horticulture'' 3: 210)<ref>C. M. Hovey, “Notes on some of the Nurseries and Private Gardens in the neighborhood of New York and Philadelphia, visited in the early part of the month of March, 1837,” ''Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries and Improvements in Rural Affairs'' 3, no. 6 (June 1837): 201–13, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/32HMSJRW view on Zotero].</ref>
:“It is with deep regret that we learn that one of the principal rail roads in the State of Pennsylvania, now constructing, will run to the city directly through the [[nursery]] of Col. Carr, and will cut up the grounds in such a manner as to entirely destroy their beauty; but what is a source of yet deeper regret, is the destruction which it will cause of some of the old and still beautiful specimens of trees which ornament the place; several of these, which have long served as a memento of the zealous labors of the elder [[John Bartram|Bartram]] and [[William Bartram|his sons]], will fall by the woodman’s axe. It is a melancholy scene to the American horticulturist to see the few beautiful private residences and [[nursery|nurseries]] of which our country can boast, one by one, purchased by individuals or companies, to be cut up into building lots, or otherwise destroyed, by rail roads running directly through them. [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack’s]], at [[Hyde Park]], N.Y., the best specimens of gardening in this country, was the first; [[Henry Pratt|Mr. Pratt’s]], [[Lemon Hill|Laurel [Lemon] Hill]], but little inferior in its style, next; and now one of the oldest [[nursery|nurseries]], bounded by one of the best naturalists this country ever produced, is to follow, though not the same, a similar fate.”

[[File:2074.jpg|thumb|252.px|Fig. 2, Louise Françoise Jacquinot after Pancrace Bessa, “Bartram’s Oak (''Quercus heterophilla''),” 1841, plate 18 from François André Michaux, ''North American Sylva'' (1841).]]
*[[François André Michaux|Michaux, François André]], 1841, describing the Bartram Oak at the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1841: 1:37)<ref>François André Michaux, ''The North American Sylva; Or, A Description of the Forest Trees of the United States, Canada, and North America . . .'', trans. Augustus L. Hillhouse, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1841), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/BTCGCMGG view on Zotero].</ref>
:“Every botanist who has visited different regions of the globe must have remarked certain species of vegetables which are so little multiplied that they seem likely at no distant period to disappear from the earth. To this class belongs the Bartram Oak. Several English and American naturalists who, like my father and myself, have spent years in exploring the United States, and who have obligingly communicated to us the result of their observations, have like us, found no traces of this species except a single stock in a field belonging to [[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]], on the banks of the [[Schuylkill River|Schuylkill]], 4 miles from Philadelphia . . . . [Fig. 2]<p></p>
:“Several young plants, which I received from [[John Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] himself, have been placed in our public gardens to insure the preservation of the species.”

*Darlington, William, 1849, describing Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery (1849: 18–19)<ref name="Darlington_1849"></ref>
:“He [John Bartram] was, perhaps, the first Anglo-American who conceived the idea of establishing a [[botanic garden|BOTANIC GARDEN]] for the reception and cultivation of the various vegetables, natives of the country, as well as exotics, and of travelling for the discovery and acquisition of them.<p></p>
:“*The BARTRAM BOTANIC GARDEN, (established in or about the year 1730,) is most eligibly and beautifully situated, on the right bank of the river Schuylkill, a short distance below the city of Philadelphia. Being the oldest establishment of the kind in this western world, and exceedingly interesting, from its history and associations,—one might almost hope, even in this utilitarian age, that, if no motive more commendable could avail, a feeling of state or city pride, would be sufficient to ensure its preservation, in its original character, and for the sake of its original objects. But, alas! there seems to be too much reason to apprehend that it will scarcely survive the immediate family of its noble-hearted founder,—and that even the present generation may live to see the accumulated treasures of a century laid waste—with all the once gay [[parterre]]s and lovely [[border]]s converted into lumberyards and coal-landings.”

*[[J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon|Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius)]], 1850, describing [[nursery|nurseries]] in America (1850: 339)<ref>J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening'', new ed., corr. and improved (London: Longman et al., 1850), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/W8EQFZUG view on Zotero].</ref>
:“884. ''At and near Philadelphia'' are Bartram’s botanic garden, now the nursery of Colonel Carr, and accurately described by his foreman, Mr. Wynne (''Gard. Mag''., vol. viii. p. 272.); Messrs. Landreth and Co.’s [[nursery]]; and that of Messrs. Hibbert and Buist; besides some commercial gardens in which, to a small [[nursery]] with [[greenhouse|green]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]], are added the appendages of a tavern. These tavern gardens, Mr. Wynne informs us, are the resort of many of the citizens of Philadelphia, more especially the gardens of M. Arran, and M. d’Arras; the first having a very good museum, and the latter a beautiful collection of large orange and lemon trees.”

<hr>

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:0056.jpg| John or William Bartram, “A Draught of John Bartram’s House and Garden as it appears from the River,” 1758.

Image:2074.jpg|Louise Françoise Jacquinot after Pancrace Bessa, “Bartram’s Oak (''Quercus heterophilla''),” 1841, plate 18 from François André Michaux, ''North American Sylva'' (1841).
</gallery>

<hr>

==Map==
{{#display_map:
39.930556, -75.2125
| service=google
| enablefullscreen=yes
}}

<hr>

==Other Resources==
[http://tclf.org/landscapes/bartrams-garden The Cultural Landscape Foundation]

<hr>

==Notes==
<references/>

<hr>

[[Category: Places]]

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T19:27:43Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25
[[File:1285a.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, George Washington, Plan for the greenhouse quarters at Mount Vernon, Plan No. 1, c. 1785.]]
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.
[[File:0000.jpg|right|Fig. 14, ]]
==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:58:35Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25
[[File:1285a.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, George Washington, Plan for the greenhouse quarters at Mount Vernon, Plan No. 1, c. 1785.]]
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:58:01Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25
[[File:1285a.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, George Washington, Plan for the greenhouse quarters at Mount Vernon, Plan No. 1, c. 1785.]]
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:57:30Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]
[[File:1285a.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, George Washington, Plan for the greenhouse quarters at Mount Vernon, Plan No. 1, c. 1785.]]
Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:57:06Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]
Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.
[[File:1285a.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, George Washington, Plan for the greenhouse quarters at Mount Vernon, Plan No. 1, c. 1785.]]
==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:56:39Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]
Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25
[[File:1285a.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, George Washington, Plan for the greenhouse quarters at Mount Vernon, Plan No. 1, c. 1785.]]
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:54:25Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
[[File:0099.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:
[[File:0073.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 12, Thomas Jefferson, Plan of serpentine walk and flower beds at Monticello, May 23, 1808.]]
Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

File:0099.jpg

2017-10-19T18:52:48Z

T-omalley:

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, c. 1802–05, pen and ink with lead pencil additions, 9 3/4 x 15 7/8 in. (24.7 x 40.3 cm). Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:48:26Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:48:02Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==
[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:47:42Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, The Architect (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==
[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:46:14Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==
[[File:1338.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 10, J. C. Loudon, Ground-lines of gardens and parterres, in An Encyclopædia of Gardening (1826), p. 375, figs. 361 and 362.]]
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:44:03Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 9, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, ''The Architect'' (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, ]]
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:43:30Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]
[[File:0357.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 8, Alexander Jackson Davis, "Montgomery Place," in A. J. Downing, ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 2, no. 4 (October 1847): pl. opp. p. 153.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 9,]]
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==
[[File:0771.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 10, Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot of Brier Cottage," in William H. Ranlett, ''The Architect'' (1849), vol. 1, pl. 2.]]
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:39:35Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==
[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:39:11Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:38:54Z

T-omalley:

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''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T18:38:11Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0076.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4, Thomas Jefferson, Design for a decorative outchamber at Monticello, c. 1778.]]
[[File:0077.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Drawing for a gate in Chinese lattice at Monticello, c. 1771.]]
[[File:0013.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6, Samuel McIntire, Study for summerhouse at the Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1798.]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:1190.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Green house in the East Building, Elias Hasket Derby House, c. 1799.]]

Dézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for different methods of preparing drawings that could be easily followed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:

[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.

==Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings==

While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ, and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25

Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34

As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being transformed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.

How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two handsome Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38

In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulfill his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41

While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].

The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appearance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-19T13:36:55Z

T-omalley:

__NOTOC__

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T18:40:07Z

T-omalley:

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Downing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Argenville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings continued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproducing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing perspective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and working drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily annotated with specific botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s questions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the perspective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and contrast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional training as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional representation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural drawings. Davis attached much significance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrangement, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civilized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do affirm that architectural drawing has that tendency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architectural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architectural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are significant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

==Cartography==

Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their audiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the community.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difficult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in surveying and measuring the landscape, including George Washington (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscriptions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.

Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth century, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identification of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.

While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help members “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the smallest particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exemplified by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscriptions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and dependencies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of specific information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estate plans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed landscape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identifying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every proprietor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

==Topographical Views==

In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American landscape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogonal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Fourdrinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was characterized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sublime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic category had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making produced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

==Portrait and Landscape Painting==

The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Country house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both interior decorations and social signifiers is expressed by a 12 October 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from preexisting models: In several articles written for Scientific American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wallpaper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, villages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consistency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of designing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house portraits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical landscape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadelphia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exemplifies the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatrical landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, therefore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s surroundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers and patrons, validated them as real and natural. This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist, although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production, particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking reference to the professional or academic language of art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48 Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism and therefore may seem problematic for the historians seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment, these images are nevertheless an important source of information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework, for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman, executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals the relationship between such social practices and the physical spaces of the landscape.

==Conclusion==

The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, garden design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by plantations,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Affinity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject or change every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborer who levels a hill, or fills a hollow, or plants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50

Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between landscape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Nottingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deficiency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the letter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

'''Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed communication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.'''

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T16:41:33Z

T-omalley:

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800-1820.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Down.ing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Ar.genville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings con.tinued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproduc.ing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing per.spective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and work.ing drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily anno.tated with speciﬁc botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s ques.tions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the per.spective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and con.trast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional train.ing as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional rep.resentation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural draw.ings. Davis attached much signiﬁcance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrange.ment, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civi.lized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do afﬁrm that architectural drawing has that ten.dency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architec.tural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architec.tural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are signiﬁcant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

Cartography
Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their

udiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph
S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the com.munity.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difﬁcult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in survey.ing and measuring the landscape, including George Washing.ton (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscrip.tions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.
Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth cen.tury, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identiﬁcation of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.
While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help mem.bers “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the small.est particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exempliﬁed by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscrip.tions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and depend.encies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of speciﬁc information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estateplans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed land.scape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identi.fying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every propri.etor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

Topographical Views
In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American land.scape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogo.nal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Four.drinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was character.ized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sub.lime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic cate.gory had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making pro.duced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

Portrait and Landscape Painting
The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Coun.try house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both inte.rior decorations and social signiﬁers is expressed by a 12 Octo.ber 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from pre.existing models: In several articles written for Scientiﬁc American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wall.paper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, vil.lages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consis.tency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of design.ing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house por.traits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical land.scape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadel.phia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exempli.ﬁes the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatri.cal landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, there.fore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s sur.roundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers
and patrons, validated them as real and natural.
This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic
traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and
other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist,
although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the
requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production,
particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds
of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition
and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking
reference to the professional or academic language of
art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48
Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism
and therefore may seem problematic for the historians
seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment,
these images are nevertheless an important source of
information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how
the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house
and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally
associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework,
for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was
the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed
light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the
province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of
burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists
depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in
this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman,
executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed
by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary
Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates
the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals
the relationship between such social practices and the physical
spaces of the landscape.

Conclusion
The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, gar.den design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by planta.tions,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Afﬁnity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject orchange every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborerwho levels a hill, orﬁlls a hollow, orplants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50
Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between land.scape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Not.tingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deﬁciency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the let.ter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers. generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of com-sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed munication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T16:41:12Z

T-omalley:

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800-1820.]]

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Down.ing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Ar.genville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings con.tinued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproduc.ing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing per.spective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and work.ing drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily anno.tated with speciﬁc botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s ques.tions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the per.spective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and con.trast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional train.ing as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional rep.resentation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural draw.ings. Davis attached much signiﬁcance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrange.ment, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civi.lized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do afﬁrm that architectural drawing has that ten.dency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architec.tural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architec.tural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are signiﬁcant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

Cartography
Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their

udiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph
S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the com.munity.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difﬁcult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in survey.ing and measuring the landscape, including George Washing.ton (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscrip.tions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.
Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth cen.tury, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identiﬁcation of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.
While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help mem.bers “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the small.est particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exempliﬁed by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscrip.tions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and depend.encies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of speciﬁc information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estateplans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed land.scape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identi.fying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every propri.etor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

Topographical Views
In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American land.scape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogo.nal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Four.drinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was character.ized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sub.lime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic cate.gory had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making pro.duced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

Portrait and Landscape Painting
The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Coun.try house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both inte.rior decorations and social signiﬁers is expressed by a 12 Octo.ber 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from pre.existing models: In several articles written for Scientiﬁc American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wall.paper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, vil.lages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consis.tency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of design.ing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house por.traits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical land.scape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadel.phia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exempli.ﬁes the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatri.cal landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, there.fore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s sur.roundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers
and patrons, validated them as real and natural.
This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic
traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and
other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist,
although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the
requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production,
particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds
of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition
and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking
reference to the professional or academic language of
art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48
Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism
and therefore may seem problematic for the historians
seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment,
these images are nevertheless an important source of
information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how
the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house
and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally
associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework,
for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was
the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed
light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the
province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of
burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists
depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in
this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman,
executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed
by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary
Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates
the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals
the relationship between such social practices and the physical
spaces of the landscape.

Conclusion
The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, gar.den design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by planta.tions,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Afﬁnity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject orchange every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborerwho levels a hill, orﬁlls a hollow, orplants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50
Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between land.scape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Not.tingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deﬁciency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the let.ter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers. generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of com-sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed munication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T16:40:56Z

T-omalley:

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3
[[File:0004.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800-1820.]]

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Down.ing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Ar.genville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings con.tinued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproduc.ing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing per.spective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and work.ing drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily anno.tated with speciﬁc botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s ques.tions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the per.spective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and con.trast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional train.ing as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional rep.resentation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural draw.ings. Davis attached much signiﬁcance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrange.ment, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civi.lized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do afﬁrm that architectural drawing has that ten.dency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architec.tural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architec.tural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are signiﬁcant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

Cartography
Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their

udiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph
S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the com.munity.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difﬁcult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in survey.ing and measuring the landscape, including George Washing.ton (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscrip.tions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.
Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth cen.tury, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identiﬁcation of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.
While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help mem.bers “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the small.est particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exempliﬁed by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscrip.tions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and depend.encies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of speciﬁc information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estateplans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed land.scape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identi.fying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every propri.etor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

Topographical Views
In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American land.scape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogo.nal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Four.drinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was character.ized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sub.lime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic cate.gory had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making pro.duced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

Portrait and Landscape Painting
The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Coun.try house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both inte.rior decorations and social signiﬁers is expressed by a 12 Octo.ber 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from pre.existing models: In several articles written for Scientiﬁc American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wall.paper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, vil.lages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consis.tency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of design.ing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house por.traits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical land.scape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadel.phia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exempli.ﬁes the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatri.cal landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, there.fore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s sur.roundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers
and patrons, validated them as real and natural.
This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic
traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and
other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist,
although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the
requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production,
particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds
of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition
and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking
reference to the professional or academic language of
art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48
Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism
and therefore may seem problematic for the historians
seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment,
these images are nevertheless an important source of
information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how
the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house
and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally
associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework,
for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was
the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed
light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the
province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of
burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists
depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in
this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman,
executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed
by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary
Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates
the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals
the relationship between such social practices and the physical
spaces of the landscape.

Conclusion
The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, gar.den design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by planta.tions,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Afﬁnity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject orchange every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborerwho levels a hill, orﬁlls a hollow, orplants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50
Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between land.scape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Not.tingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deﬁciency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the let.ter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers. generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of com-sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed munication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T16:40:41Z

T-omalley:

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3
[[File:0004.jpg|left|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800-1820.]]

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Down.ing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|left|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Ar.genville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings con.tinued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproduc.ing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing per.spective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and work.ing drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily anno.tated with speciﬁc botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s ques.tions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the per.spective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and con.trast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional train.ing as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional rep.resentation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural draw.ings. Davis attached much signiﬁcance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrange.ment, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civi.lized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do afﬁrm that architectural drawing has that ten.dency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architec.tural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architec.tural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are signiﬁcant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

Cartography
Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their

udiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph
S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the com.munity.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difﬁcult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in survey.ing and measuring the landscape, including George Washing.ton (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscrip.tions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.
Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth cen.tury, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identiﬁcation of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.
While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help mem.bers “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the small.est particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exempliﬁed by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscrip.tions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and depend.encies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of speciﬁc information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estateplans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed land.scape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identi.fying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every propri.etor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

Topographical Views
In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American land.scape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogo.nal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Four.drinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was character.ized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sub.lime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic cate.gory had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making pro.duced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

Portrait and Landscape Painting
The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Coun.try house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both inte.rior decorations and social signiﬁers is expressed by a 12 Octo.ber 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from pre.existing models: In several articles written for Scientiﬁc American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wall.paper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, vil.lages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consis.tency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of design.ing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house por.traits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical land.scape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadel.phia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exempli.ﬁes the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatri.cal landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, there.fore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s sur.roundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers
and patrons, validated them as real and natural.
This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic
traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and
other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist,
although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the
requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production,
particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds
of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition
and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking
reference to the professional or academic language of
art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48
Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism
and therefore may seem problematic for the historians
seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment,
these images are nevertheless an important source of
information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how
the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house
and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally
associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework,
for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was
the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed
light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the
province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of
burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists
depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in
this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman,
executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed
by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary
Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates
the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals
the relationship between such social practices and the physical
spaces of the landscape.

Conclusion
The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, gar.den design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by planta.tions,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Afﬁnity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject orchange every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborerwho levels a hill, orﬁlls a hollow, orplants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50
Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between land.scape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Not.tingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deﬁciency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the let.ter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers. generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of com-sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed munication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T16:40:04Z

T-omalley:

''Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley''

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3
[[File:0004.jpg|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800-1820.]]

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Down.ing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|right|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Ar.genville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings con.tinued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproduc.ing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing per.spective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and work.ing drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily anno.tated with speciﬁc botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s ques.tions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the per.spective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and con.trast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional train.ing as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional rep.resentation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural draw.ings. Davis attached much signiﬁcance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrange.ment, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civi.lized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do afﬁrm that architectural drawing has that ten.dency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architec.tural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architec.tural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are signiﬁcant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

Cartography
Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their

udiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph
S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the com.munity.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difﬁcult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in survey.ing and measuring the landscape, including George Washing.ton (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscrip.tions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.
Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth cen.tury, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identiﬁcation of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.
While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help mem.bers “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the small.est particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exempliﬁed by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscrip.tions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and depend.encies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of speciﬁc information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estateplans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed land.scape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identi.fying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every propri.etor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

Topographical Views
In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American land.scape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogo.nal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Four.drinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was character.ized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sub.lime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic cate.gory had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making pro.duced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

Portrait and Landscape Painting
The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Coun.try house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both inte.rior decorations and social signiﬁers is expressed by a 12 Octo.ber 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from pre.existing models: In several articles written for Scientiﬁc American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wall.paper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, vil.lages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consis.tency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of design.ing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house por.traits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical land.scape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadel.phia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exempli.ﬁes the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatri.cal landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, there.fore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s sur.roundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers
and patrons, validated them as real and natural.
This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic
traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and
other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist,
although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the
requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production,
particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds
of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition
and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking
reference to the professional or academic language of
art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48
Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism
and therefore may seem problematic for the historians
seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment,
these images are nevertheless an important source of
information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how
the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house
and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally
associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework,
for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was
the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed
light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the
province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of
burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists
depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in
this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman,
executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed
by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary
Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates
the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals
the relationship between such social practices and the physical
spaces of the landscape.

Conclusion
The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, gar.den design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by planta.tions,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Afﬁnity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject orchange every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborerwho levels a hill, orﬁlls a hollow, orplants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50
Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between land.scape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Not.tingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deﬁciency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the let.ter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers. generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of com-sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed munication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.

Modes of Representations in American Landscape and Garden Design

2017-10-18T16:39:50Z

T-omalley:

Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O'Malley

[[File:0753.jpg|thumb|left|[[John Notman]], "Plan of Grounds, Fieldwood, near Princeton," Oct. 19, 1846.]]

This essay introduces the categories of visual representations of gardens, landscapes, and landscape features used in Keywords and considers how these materials contribute to a fuller understanding of the history of American landscape design. From the purportedly empirical mode of map-making to the fanciful world of imagined landscapes, what all the images in this book have in common is that they provide a conventional basis with which people can communicate with others the social production and materialization of a design, recording of a place, or sharing of an imagined fantasy and actual experience.1 This idea, articulated by Edward Robbins in Why Architects Draw, is fundamental to this study, which assumes that all representations of the designed landscape have been shaped by the conventions associated with a particular medium or genre and by the cultural context in which the representations were produced and circulated.2 The very materials of an image—oil on canvas, painted ceramics, furniture, or printed advertisement, all of which were used to represent the designed landscape—can dictate, to a large degree, its function and suggest to whom it was directed and how it was intended to signify to its intended receiver(s) [Figs. 1 and 2]. The image’s medium and form were sometimes deter.mined solely by its makers, sometimes by the dictates of a patron/commission, and often by a negotiation between the two. Using an image as a source of information about the designed landscape, therefore, requires visual analysis in con.cert with an understanding of the complexity of image-making and reception. It also demands recognition that we are often seeking information of the image that it was perhaps never intended to provide. In other words, we must consider whether an image was intended to convey information about the designed landscape and, if so, how that information may have been shaped by the demands of ideology and/or aesthetics, or, if, as is the case in many of the works collected for this study, conveying information about the designed landscape was only incidental to the image.

[[File:0043.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 1, John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.]]
[[File:1734.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, Oscar Alexander Lawson, ''Robert Buist: Nurseryman & Florist'', n.d.]]

The body of visual material used in this study can be categorized into two broad groups: reproductions, whether bound in books or in the form of single sheets; and unique objects, including paintings and drawings. Like other forms of early American material culture, many images of gardens accessible to us today are the survivors of history because of the short-lived nature of their intended use. As a result, widely reproduced and disseminated prints represent the largest portion of the works collected here. Plans and drawings made for specific sites were more vulnerable to destruction, not least because those used in the construction of gardens suffered from use and exposure to the elements. Many of the drawings in our study have been preserved because they were associated with a well-known individual or site. Working and presentation drawings for public sites commissioned through open competition have a relatively good rate of preservation through the efforts of local, state, and federal archives. Nevertheless, when compared to the body of extant architectural drawings from this same period, the corpus of preparatory or presentation landscape drawings is
small. Whether their scarcity today reﬂects rarity of preservation is unclear. Oil paintings have often been preserved by virtue of the relative importance of the artist, the individual or site depicted, or the intrinsic value of the high-art medium of oil painting. Far more vulnerable to destruction have been such media as wall frescoes; Rufus Porter (1792–1884), for example, decorated numerous homes in New England, but today his work is represented by only a handful of extant examples. A small number of household objects recording landscapes, such as samplers, ceramics, and painted furniture, have been preserved, often through the interests of collectors such as Abby Aldrich Rockefeller [Fig. 3].3
[[File:0004.jpg|right|Fig. 3, Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800-1820.]]

==Illustrated Books and Periodicals==

As in the closely aligned ﬁeld of architecture, illustrations in published volumes played an important role in the dissemination of landscape and garden-design principles. Treatises communicated visual information about the design, construction, and embellishment of gardens through didactic illustrations of topics such as the layout of the kitchen garden or the proper manner of ornamenting a lawn. Treatise illustrations were on a par with ﬁne art printmaking in terms of the quality of the workmanship and the handling of the medium. The ﬁnely worked perspectival views and allegorical scenes used as frontispieces indicate that many garden treatises were costly items intended for the library of a gentleman collector rather than the workroom of the gardener.4 Recognized artists were often commissioned to make illustrations: Philip Miller’s The Gardeners Dictionary (1731), for example, included prints by the well-known German botanical illustrator Georg Dionysius Ehret (1709–1770). High-quality illustrations were regularly included in treatises imported from Great Britain in the eighteenth century, such as John Evelyn’s translation of Jean de la Quintinie’s The Compleat Gard’ner (1693),5 John James’s 1712 translation of A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville’s La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (1709),6 and Batty Langley’s New Principles of Gardening (1728).7 More.over, there is ample visual evidence that Americans actively consulted and used such imported treatises. Thomas Jefferson’s design for a decorative out-chamber was based on plate 73 in William Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) [Fig. 4], his Chi.nese lattice gate was inspired by William Chambers’s Designs of Chinese Buildings (1757) [Fig. 5], and his niece’s drawings of garden seats were based on designs by William Kent in William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).8 The New England architect Samuel McIntire, who designed garden structures in addition to residential and public buildings, adopted and modified elements from both a wide array of European and British architectural theorists, including Andrea Palladio, Batty Langley, and Isaac Ware, as well as from American architectural treatises, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Country Builder’s Assistant (1797) and The American Builder’s Companion (1806) [Figs. 6 and 7].9
Innovations in printmaking technology toward the end of the eighteenth century reduced the cost of printed illustrations, leading to a boom in illustrated books generally; the authors of architectural and gardening treatises eagerly exploited these new media. Humphry Repton used advances in aquatint publishing to produce his Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1794), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816), which reproduced “before and after” sketches that he created for clients in his “Red Books.” These printed volumes, collected by Americans as well as British, were a calculated venture on Repton’s part and intended to cultivate upper-class clients.10

[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 5,]]
[[File:0000.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6,]]

By contrast, the British treatise writer John Claudius Loudon and his American disciple, Andrew Jackson Down.ing, used relatively inexpensive wood engravings to illustrate their respective encyclopedias and treatises.11 The illustrations that A. J. Davis prepared for Downing’s books were drawn on wood-blocks and engraved by wood carvers such as Alexander Anderson, America’s ﬁrst important wood engraver. In 1838, Downing commissioned Davis to prepare illustrations for his ﬁrst book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (New York, 1841). This led to a twelve-year period of collaboration as Davis both supplied his own designs and corrected and amplified Downing’s designs for his journal, Horticulturist [Fig. 8].12 In Davis and Downing’s volumes in particular, a close correspondence between treatise and practice in landscape design becomes evident by virtue of developments in printing technology that allowed illustrations to be inserted into passages of text. Unlike earlier garden treatise illustrations, these illustrations frequently represented sites and objects in perspective, surrounded by plant material, and were thus perhaps more easily imagined as realizable.13 For example, when Downing asked Davis to create new images for the revised, second edition of his Treatise, he asked for vignettes that placed “the house more distant and showing more trees and grounds—than in those other cuts,” that were more “landskippish,” to use Downing’s term.14 Such images addressed new audiences for treatises, which included not only craftsmen and master builders (including gentlemen amateurs), but also potential middle-class clients who were interested in the values of style as explained by writers regarded as knowledgeable professionals. Moreover, by discussing and picturing the house in relationship to its environment, Davis and Downing promoted their agenda of unifying and stylistically thematizing house and grounds, thus creating a niche for their services as both architect and landscape architect. The number of buildings erected following Downing’s designs indicates their enormous popularity with the middle classes. The success of Davis and Downing’s treatises can also be judged by the number of architects who followed their model; for example, in his treatise The Architect (1849), William Ranlett published lithographs of perspectival views and ground plans by Frances (Fanny) Palmer after his proposed or executed designs [Fig. 9].15 Treatise literature was also instrumental in promoting the use of drawings to aid in the process of designing and building gardens and landscapes. One chapter in Dézallier d’Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712), entitled “Of the Manner of tracing out all Sorts of Designs upon the Ground,” described how to transfer the scaled plan “designed upon a Roll of Paper” to the ground through a system of measuring and staking that was akin to surveying.

[[File:0000.jpg|right|Fig. 7,]]

ézallier d’Argenville provided exacting instructions for dif.ferent methods of preparing drawings that could be easily fol.lowed by both the designer/surveyor and the planter.16
Although the features described in Dézallier d’Ar.genville’s text, such as parterres and bowling greens, declined in fashion in the nineteenth century, his instructions for a design process that emphasized the making of drawings con.tinued to be used. J. C. Loudon, in his chapter “Transferring Designs,” also recommended the same technique, reproduc.ing ﬁgures from the Dézallier d’Argenville treatise to illustrate his point [Fig. 10]. Treatise writers in the period between Dézallier d’Argenville and Loudon also recommended using drawings to guide the design process. Stephen Switzer, in his Ichnographia Rustica (1718), advised the following:
[W]hen, therefore, you have ﬁx’d upon the Center of a Design, (viz.) the Place where the House is to be, and have from thence taken the Survey of your Ground round, and the same is plotted on Paper; you are to begin to cast it ﬁrst on a Method on Paper, I mean, that Part that lies next the House, which is intended to be divided into Court Yards, Parterres, &c.17
And Batty Langley (1728), like Dézallier d’Argenville, included a chapter on geometry to help his readers solve problems of scale and proportion.
Design Documents: Sketches, Working Drawings, Presentation Drawings
While treatises clearly provide exemplars of design, we ﬁnd that sketches, working drawings, and presentation drawings take us much closer to the actual production of designed landscapes. They are not just graphic expressions of what one sees but also the record of processes of thinking, creating, and imagining.18
Presentation drawings, which were intended for the client or the public, were often highly ﬁnished, employing per.spective views that, according to James Ackerman, tended toward rhetorical exposition.19 In contrast, sketches and work.ing drawings were used by the designer, builder, and gardener to work out design proposals and guide construction. Latrobe’s sketch for the White House grounds made around 1807, for example, is loosely drawn, and particular areas have been redrawn several times [Fig. 11]. Thomas Jefferson adopted the practice of drawing on coordinate or gridded paper to develop his designs and perhaps help transfer them to the ground. These drawings, of varying degrees of ﬁnish, are heavily anno.tated with speciﬁc botanical names and instructions, indicating that these drawings were an essential part of his working process as well as a means of communicating his designs to others [Fig. 12].20 In response to George Washington’s ques.tions in 1784 regarding the internal construction of the orangery at Mount Clare, Tench Tilghman supplied Washing.ton with a written description of the ﬂues as well as a sketch.21 Washington, in turn, produced sketches of the greenhouse as instructions for his workmen [Fig. 13].

Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s innovative use of the per.spective drawing allowed the building to be shown in situ22 and encouraged a relative broadening of the graphic means employed in architectural drawings, including “an optical use of colors, shades, and shadows along with landscape settings to project the visual effect of a ﬁnished design.”23 Latrobe was proﬁcient in watercolor and exploited its potential to achieve both detail and breadth in his perspective renderings. As William H. Pierson, Jr., has argued, watercolor “opened the way for the full development of those visual qualities so essential to the picturesque—irregularity, variety, and con.trast.”24 Born in Britain, Latrobe received professional train.ing as an engineer before moving to America in the 1790s. His inﬂuence on American architecture is due not only to his buildings but also to those of his students, including Robert Mills [Fig. 14], Frederick Graff, William Strickland, and Strickland’s student Thomas Ustick Walter, whose designs reveal an interest in the techniques of three-dimensional rep.resentation introduced by Latrobe.
A. J. Davis, who had attended the Antique School in New York (later renamed the National Academy of Design), also made use of painterly means in his architectural draw.ings. Davis attached much signiﬁcance to drawing as revealed by the passage from J. C. Loudon that he transcribed (loosely) in his notebook:

Drawing has now become an essential part of polite education. The mere circumstance of familiarizing the mind with orderly arrange.ment, regular ﬁgures, symmetry, and means adapted to the end in view, either in buildings, in furniture, or fundamental principle of all morals; for what is immorality but a disturbance of the order of civi.lized society, a disturbance of the relations between man and man? We do not say that all kinds of drawing have a tendency to produce an orderly mind, but we do afﬁrm that architectural drawing has that ten.dency in an eminent degree.25
Davis’s drawings of Blithewood, Robert Donaldson’s estate near Tarrytown, N.Y., presented the building in harmony with its surroundings: “irregular and suited to scenery of a picturesque character” [Fig. 15].26 Davis depicted the house in a park-like setting with a ﬂower bed just before the front door and vegetation planted along the approach. In the view of the veranda, he made the connection between the house and the landscape even more explicit; rather than showing the house, the watercolor presents the view from the veranda to the river below and the pathways leading from the house to the park beyond (see Piazza). The ﬂoor plans of Davis’s and A. J. Downing’s “rural architecture” show a strong interest in porches, porticoes, verandas, and conservatories, architec.tural features that connected the house and its surroundings [Fig. 16]. These designs, reproduced in the popular architec.tural and landscape treatises of the mid-nineteenth century, are signiﬁcant here since they are often clearly labeled and are therefore useful in identifying liminal architectural structures and analyzing how they acted as physical links between the residence and the landscape.

Cartography
Maps were crucial to the early history of America as records of exploration and settlement.27 When reproduced in print form and disseminated as single images or bound in published texts, they played a formative role in shaping public perceptions of the use of design. At the same time, they could transmit to their

udiences the cultural biases that historians have long noted were inevitably exposed in the process of map-making. Joseph
S. Wood described how on maps of New England villages meetinghouses “were often exaggerated beyond proportion,” drawing attention to their social prominence within the com.munity.28 The Castello maps of New York (ﬁrst executed in 1660 and redrafted the same year) are an excellent case in point [Fig. 17]. The subdivided and elaborated spaces punctuating the urban landscape have been construed as gardens, and, indeed, were interpreted as such by the directors in Amsterdam who complained of the excessive space given over to gardens. Yet, it should be remembered that the map functioned as a sort of annual report from the city burgomasters, who may have been inclined to overstate to what degree the lands of New Amsterdam were under cultivation. Moreover, in many early maps it is difﬁcult to determine if gardens actually existed as portrayed or were simply part of the mapmaker’s vocabulary for indicating a settled region.
In the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, many cartographers and landowners were engaged in survey.ing and measuring the landscape, including George Washing.ton (whose ﬁrst profession was surveying) and Thomas Jefferson, who made maps himself and who set out a system of land survey in the Northeast Territory that was extended to the trans-Mississippi West [Fig. 18]. Early maps and surveys show a broad range of design scales, on the level of city and state or of plantation and estate. Legends, keys, and inscrip.tions used in these documents to name features and sites and provide locations have been essential in this study to linking terminology and feature.
Attendant upon the public land survey of America and accelerating settlement after the end of the eighteenth cen.tury, rural areas and, in particular, townships were mapped with increasing frequency. With the growing interest in improving urban spaces, nineteenth-century city mapmakers took pains to record public parks and gardens in detail. An example is an 1843 lithograph of Washington Square in Philadelphia that records the more than ﬁfty species of trees planted in the 1820s [Fig. 19]. The borders of the park and the circulation system are shown in the plan, but the landscape is represented as a highly abstract elevation of trees, each drawn distinctly, quite removed from what Karen Tehve has described as “approximating a phenomenological substance.”29 The text provides the true identiﬁcation of the design elements, with botanic and English plant names.
While the majority of urban maps in this study are in the print medium, many unique manuscript maps were made to circulate within a small community, such as maps of Shaker communities. Robert Emlen has analyzed how Shaker maps shifted from basic site plans to drawings employing two systems of perspective—“sketching elevations of the buildings in combination with a plan of the site”—that could indicate both the scope of the property and its development.30 Emlen argues that Shaker village maps “were used as planning tools for active villages” [Fig. 20].31 While strict plan views and bird’s-eye views became the mode of choice for professional cartographers, the Shakers produced unique drawings by combining different systems of representation to help mem.bers “visually organize and comprehend a large and complex property” and to create a repository for a unifying communal memory.32

Maps vary in detail from those showing general outlines of property boundaries to detailed plans indicating the small.est particulars of a landscape design. The former functioned to record the extent of property, while the latter often recorded the improvements (in both the landscape and the architecture) undertaken. The variation among different modes of representing the landscape is exempliﬁed by four approximately contemporary maps or plan views of Mount Vernon. The survey of Mount Vernon and neighboring estates drawn by George Washington in December 1793 pro.vides the location of his various farms and their division into ﬁelds, indicated by numbered lots with occasional inscrip.tions. Areas not under cultivation are indicated by a system of outlined trees and hatched lines. The representation of the ornamental landscape around the mansion house is denoted simply by the lyre-shaped approach to the house and depend.encies [see TO’M essay, Fig. 9]. By contrast, the ground plan of the house lot that Washington commissioned from Samuel Vaughan was undertaken on a scale much smaller than that of the survey and, therefore, provides a great deal of speciﬁc information about the ornamental landscape. Vaughan, for example, indicated the shrubberies that lined the approach, the upper and lower gardens, the groves that ﬂanked the house, and the deer wall protecting the lawn [Fig. 21]. The drawing’s legend indicates the important design features of the landscape. Two insurance surveys from 1803 and 1805 provide another type of survey, richly informative because of their inscriptions and detailed rendering of the features of the plantation house and ornamental grounds from a legalistic perspective [see TO’M essay, frontispiece]. Detailed estateplans are rare but rich with terminology and design information. John Nancarrow’s plan of the seat of John Penn (c. 1784) provides a valuable level of detail, with the addition of a key that names several garden features, including a wilderness, bowling green, ﬂower garden, and ha-ha [Fig. 22].

Plan views were also made to record the designed land.scape at a particular moment and to provide a foundation from which to plan future changes. One of the earliest, securely dated site drawings in this study is a March 1762 plan for a garden apple nursery that John Pickering (a resident of Salem, Mass.) drew in his day book as a record of his planted trees [Fig. 23]. Eighty years later, Daniel Gould, probably of Salem, Mass., began a record of his garden, and indicated where individual trees were planted by using a system of numbers inscribed on a sketchy plan view [Fig. 24].
Some estates surveys or plans were published in treatises and periodicals and thereby served as exemplars or models. The commercial gardener André Parmentier published a broadside of his garden, shown in plan view with a key identi.fying different features and the contents of marked beds, which was disseminated through such publications as the New England Farmer, in which it was recommended as a paragon: “one of the few examples in our neighborhood, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of the landscape with the conveniences of the nursery or orchard: and every propri.etor who may have a piece of land which he wishes to arrange and embellish in this manner may ﬁnd it to his advantage to consult Mr. parmentier” [Fig. 25].33

Topographical Views
In addition to surveys and map-making, topographical views, which most often took the form of bird’s-eye prospects, were among the earliest representations of the American land.scape. Scholars argue that the bird’s-eye view perspective became the cartographer’s preferred representation because it supported an illusion of coherence and order. It was also a pictorial convention more widely understood than orthogo.nal drawings such as plans.34
As Edward Nygren has demonstrated, the form and content of topographical views were shaped by the desire to show the New World as prosperous. In the case of the Four.drinier print of Savannah, Ga., the woods have been pushed back to make room for a symmetrically laid-out city, ﬁlled with identical houses and nearly barren of vegetation.
According to Nygren, “It portrays a world being trans.formed, controlled, and tamed by European civilization” [Fig. 26].35
In the late eighteenth century, landscapes purporting to depict an accurate, or unmediated, vision of the land began to give way to landscapes that exhibited the characteristics of the “picturesque.” This term was applied to landscapes that exhibited the aesthetic qualities of landscape “pictures” as they had been developed by landscape painters during the previous two centuries. It owed its origins to the Rev. William Gilpin, who developed the concept in his accounts of his tours of Britain during the 1780s. Rejecting Edmund Burke’s aesthetic dichotomy of the sublime and the beautiful, Gilpin added a third term—the picturesque—which was character.ized not by the dramatic mountainous landscapes of the sub.lime nor by the smooth rolling hills of the beautiful, but by variety, irregularity, and roughness. This new aesthetic cate.gory had a tremendous impact on landscape gardening in both Britain and the United States and led to hotly debated guidelines for the production of designed landscapes.36 A fashion for picturesque tours, during which tourists could undertake their own picturesque sketches as instructed by the innumerable guidebooks to sketching and view-making pro.duced at this time, created a market for souvenir prints of picturesque sites and views [Fig. 27].

Portrait and Landscape Painting
The tradition of producing portraits or views of country houses can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century in Britain, and the tradition was quickly adopted in the colonies once the proper conditions for patronage developed.37 Coun.try house portraits could memorialize or represent a site in accordance with the owner’s conception of self-identity, refashioning the house and topography in accordance with prevailing codes of wealth and status.
How depictions of elite houses functioned as both inte.rior decorations and social signiﬁers is expressed by a 12 Octo.ber 1756 letter from Henry Laurens to Richard Shubrick:
Our Brother Elias Ball who has lately ﬁnished & got into his new house is desirous of completing the decorations within by adding two hand.some Landscapes of Kensington & Hyde Park [two plantations on the Cooper River, S.C., owned by Elias and John Corning Ball] which will just ﬁll up two vacancies over the Chimney pieces in the Hall and a large Parlour. . . . He would have handsome Views of those two places with the adjacent Woods, Fields, & Buildings & some little addition of Herds, Huntsmen, &ca., &ca., but not too expensive in the Painting.38
In short, Elias Ball wanted depictions of two nearby estates that would be readily recognizable and would fulﬁll his expectations of both decoration and landscape painting while making the extent of his property and social network visible to visitors. Ball appears well aware of the British precedent of overmantle and overdoor paintings as inexpensive substitutes for the large murals found in royal and aristocratic interiors.39 Overmantle paintings, as well as large wall frescoes or painting on paneling, date to at least the early eighteenth century in the colonies. As Nina Fletcher Little has observed, these paintings can be divided into three categories: those composed on the spot “from nature,” those that combined imaginative features with those observed from nature, and those that were almost entirely “inspired more or less directly by recognizable sources of design” [Fig. 28].40 The early nineteenth-century itinerant, self-trained painter Rufus Porter also advocated working from pre.existing models: In several articles written for Scientiﬁc American in 1846 and 1847, Porter produced prints of landscape scenes that he argued could be copied or used as stencils to pro.duce decorative wall paintings as ﬁne as more expensive wall.paper. His vision of the ideal landscape was an assemblage of features recognizable from everyday experience:
Some of the most prominent objects and scenes which may be often repeated, though under different arrangements, are farms, ﬁelds, forests, farmhouses, palaces, arbors, wind-mills, observatories, vil.lages, high rocks, ships, steamboats, sail-boats, islands, hunting scenes, carriages, cattle feeding or watering, children at play, military parades, water-falls, ﬂower gardens, ﬂocks of birds, balloons, canals, water-mills, railroads, bridges, &c. There must be a general consis.tency observed, and one scene made to connect with another, even although the different scenes should represent different seasons of the year. . . . The learner, for the purpose of acquiring the art of design.ing, should habituate himself to making close observations of objects, and scenery, and to imagine various scenes in his mind, diverse from anything he has seen, and practice sketching such designs when his mind is most free from other cares.41
While oil paintings of houses were generally intended for those who owned private homes, View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, an engraving reproduced in the Massachusetts Magazine in July 1789, would have enjoyed a much wider audience. This print reveals the adoption of some of the key motifs of eighteenth-century British country house portraiture in the American context. The bird’s-eye or an elevated viewpoint has been dropped in favor of an eye-level frontal view that encourages a more direct relationship between the object depicted and the spectator. The inclusion of a ﬁgure looking to the house, in the left-hand corner of the print, reinforces this relationship by creating a voyeuristic stand-in for the implied viewer [Fig. 29].
The chief practitioners of American country house por.traits around the turn of the century were William Groom-bridge (1748–1811), Ralph Earl (1751–1801), Francis Guy (1760–1820), Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), and William Birch (1755–1834), all of whom received training in Britain.42 While Ralph Earl worked primarily in New England [Fig. 30], the rest worked largely in Philadelphia, where the wealthy villas along the Schuylkill were said to emulate those along the Thames.43 Other regions boasting concentrations of wealthy houses and great plantations, such as the Chesapeake area and Charleston, S.C., were also popular sites for touring and sketching. Among the best-known examples are the works of Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville and Anthony St. John Baker, who both visited and sketched the famous sites of Washington, D.C., in the early nineteenth century, and those of Charles Fraser, a miniaturist and lawyer who produced numerous depictions of the great houses and monuments of the Charleston region.44

Designed landscapes were often featured in portraits executed in the grand manner tradition. Portraitists looked to the example of English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough to place their sitters in harmony with the natural world, as in Ralph Earl’s portrait of Daniel Boardman (1789), or placed them reposing indoors by a window, a motif that can be traced back to at least the sixteenth century [Fig. 31]. Despite the conventionalized aspects of portraiture, the genre remains a valuable source of evidence for the history of the designed landscape. As suggested above, portraits vividly convey the social status and importance assigned to gardens, gardening, and other horticultural practices.45

As in the case of architectural and topographical land.scape drawing and painting, English models were brought to America through British-trained artists and prints. William Williams’s portrait of Deborah Hall is a case in point. Williams, originally from Bristol, England, settled in Philadel.phia around 1740 and was one of Benjamin West’s early teachers. Williams’s Portrait of Deborah Hall (1766) exempli.ﬁes the Rococo style, using pastel colors and a highly theatri.cal landscape setting.46 Hall reposes in a landscape ﬁlled with symbolic features meant to refer to her upbringing and status: the pedestal frieze displays the virginal Diana transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo, and the leashed squirrel connotes both the taming of the wilderness and the restrictive lifestyle of a genteel, well-to-do young lady [Fig. 32].47

Portraits of individuals and houses functioned, there.fore, not only as a means of conveying information about the sitter or the site. They also embodied the ideals and ideological imperatives shaping the presentation of the self and one’s sur.roundings in the colonial and federal periods. These ideals and ideologies were given weight and credence largely because they were inscribed in an artistic language that, in the eyes of makers
and patrons, validated them as real and natural.
This artistic language of portraiture, derived from academic
traditions and disseminated by drawing manuals and
other didactic materials, belonged to the professional artist,
although amateurs often aspired to acquire proficiency in the
requisite skills. However, a significant portion of art production,
particularly in early America, fell outside the prescribed bounds
of professional art-making and the language of the academic tradition
and its rules regarding line, space, and form. Images lacking
reference to the professional or academic language of
art-making have been described as “naïve” or “folk” art.48
Although works by so-called “naïve” artists often eschewed naturalism
and therefore may seem problematic for the historians
seeking to uncover the former appearance of the built environment,
these images are nevertheless an important source of
information about attitudes to the designed landscape and how
the landscape was ordered and perceived. Images of the house
and surrounding landscapes in media that were traditionally
associated with women’s artistic practice, such as needlework,
for example, reinforced the prevailing notion that the house was
the natural and proper sphere of women. Such images also shed
light on aspects of social practice that were largely held as the
province of women. Early nineteenth-century illustrations of
burial grounds and grave markers executed by untrained artists
depict the cult of mourning and sentimentality that developed in
this period (see Cemetery). The Memorial to Jacob Cushman,
executed in silk embroidery and watercolor on silk, was completed
by Mary Cushman as part of her lessons at Miss Mary
Balch’s school in Providence, R.I. [Fig. 33].49 Such imagery reiterates
the importance of mourning as a genteel activity and reveals
the relationship between such social practices and the physical
spaces of the landscape.

Conclusion
The conventions of art-making in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reﬂected and shaped landscape and garden design. During most of the period under study, gar.den design and landscape imagery inﬂuenced each other in a reﬂexive exchange of conventions, aesthetics, and ideas. In 1752, the horticultural agent Peter Collinson wrote that the practice of garden design, “to embellish Nature by planta.tions,” was another means of “painting with Living Pencils.” Likewise, the painter Samuel Morse, who served as president of the National Academy of Design from 1826 to 1842, included landscape gardening in his Lectures on the Afﬁnity of Painting with the Other Fine Arts, delivered in 1826. Like numerous aestheticians before him, he used the language of painting to describe the task of the landscape gardener, whose goal was to “arrange the objects of Nature”:

He must to a certain extent possess the mind of the Landscape Painter, but he paints with the objects themselves. . . . His main object is to select from Nature all that is agreeable, and to reject orchange every thing that is disagreeable. Landscape Gardening is therefore a Fine Art; and here there is the same distinction between the mechanical and intellectual operation which exists in Architecture; it is not the laborerwho levels a hill, orﬁlls a hollow, orplants a grove that is the landscape gardener, it is he alone who with the “prophetic eye of taste,” sees prospectively the full grown forest in the young plantation, and selects with a poet’s feeling passages which he knows will affect agreeably the imagination.50
Morse’s reference to the “prophetic eye of taste” is telling not only for establishing the relationship between land.scape gardening and painting, but also for the production of designed landscapes in general. Art was not just a means by which to represent the built environment; garden design and painting shared conventions and traditions. The mutability of garden design and landscape painting in America developed, in part, because many individuals practiced both forms of art-making and insisted upon the applicability of lessons learned in one genre to the other. George Isham Parkyns, for example, produced both landscape views and worked as a landscape designer in Philadelphia. Parkyns was born in England, where his grandfather had a small estate.51 While stationed in Not.tingham as a soldier in the 1780s, Parkyns produced “Six Designs for Improving and Embellishing Grounds,” which were published as an appendix to John Soane’s Sketches in Architecture (1793). These designs reveals Parkyns’s interest in the natural style, and the accompanying text described his intent as “to assist nature, and, wherever she has failed in beauty, to supply the deﬁciency without suffering the appear.ance of art to intrude itself.”52 Parkyns’s reputation was such that Thomas Jefferson sought his advice for his designs at Monticello; but, according to Jefferson’s July 1806 letter to William Hamilton, he was unable to obtain Parkyns’s advice. In this letter, Jefferson also made use of allusions to painting to describe his ideal of garden design. He referred to English grounds, for example, as “a canvas of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste.” He closed the let.ter by characterizing its contents as a “treatise on gardening relates, to an aspect of the place or object to which it refers. generally” in which “art lessons” played a great role.53 Art, in The graphic or verbal descriptions do not always “accurately” Jefferson’s aesthetic, was a handmaiden to garden design. represent, but they do relate to the subject in some way that

Visual representation has proven to be a key means, and can be read. Both the graphic and the verbal are tools of com-sometimes the only means, by which the history of designed munication that work when the conventions mean the same landscape can be recovered. Thus, it is essential to under-thing to both observer and maker.54 An underlying assump.stand that in the production and preservation of the orna-tion of Keywords is that graphic and verbal conventions, once mental landscape in America, art and design always have established, maintain a relative consistency through time suf.been, and continue to be, interdependent. To paraphrase ﬁcient enough so that through their study we may better James Ackerman, an image that is used to represent an exist-understand the historical objects or complexes of the Ameri.ing place or object relates, somewhat as a verbal description can designed landscape.

File:0432.jpg

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T-omalley:

Attributed to Reuben Rowley, ''Dr. John Safford and Family'', c. 1830, oil on canvas, 27 3/8 x 33 7/16 in. (69.5 x 85 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Orchard

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T-omalley: /* Attributed */

(Hort-yard) {{break}}
See also: [[Yard]]

==History==

[[File:0969.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, [[Thomas Jefferson]], Plan of the grounds at Monticello, 1806.]]

[[File:1292.jpg|thumb|Fig. 2, Anonymous, "Orchards in Alternate Rows, or Quincunx Order," ''The Horticultural Register'', vol. 1 (Jan. 1, 1835), p. 37.]]

The definitions of orchard found in both English and American garden treatises describe an enclosed space devoted to the growth of fruit trees. <ref>When J. C. Loudon listed works on gardening published in North America, he cited three texts that were concerned with trees and orchards, including Humphrey Marshall’s ''Arbustrum Americanum'' (1785), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MJU57ISS view on Zotero], and William Coxe’s ''A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, with the Management of Orchards and Cider'' (1817), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7EB8GM2K view on Zotero]. The citations gathered here come primarily from treatises devoted to ornamental landscape design, as opposed to that of husbandry. Agricultural aspects of orchards, therefore, are not addressed fully here. Nonetheless, a substantial amount of literature on this latter topic was produced in the period c. 1600–1850.</ref> [[Noah Webster]], in his 1828 definition of the term, differentiated between British usage—as a department of the garden appropriated to fruit trees (chiefly apple)—and American usage—as any piece of land set with only apple trees. [[Noah Webster|Webster]]’s focus on one species reflected the popularity of this fruit in early nineteenth-century America. <ref>See Gordon P. De Wolf, Jr., “Andrew Jackson Downing and Pomology,” in ''Prophet with Honor: The Career of Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852'' (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989): 125–52, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9M4TXDMU/ view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:0592.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, George Kendall, "View of Whitewater," Ohio [detail], 1835.]]

[[File:0022.jpg|thumb|Fig. 4, Clarissa Deming, Orchard plan, after 1798.]]

Some British treatises distinguished between a fruit garden and an orchard. For example, according to Jean de La Quintinie (translated by John Evelyn in 1693), fruit gardens (like [[kitchen garden]]s) were generally walled and thus could sustain espaliered fruit trees. In contrast, orchards typically were enclosed with natural barriers, such as [[hedge]]s and ditches, and were planted with standard fruit trees. [[Thomas Jefferson]], for example, indicated the use of thorn [[hedge]]s surrounding his orchard [Fig. 1]. In American garden literature, the term “fruit garden” occurs in a few instances, as when [[George Washington]] referred to the space behind his stables laid out with closely set fruit trees. <ref>For George Washington’s description of this fruit garden, see the diary entries in Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., ''The Diaries of George Washington'', vol. 4 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 274, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9ZIIR3FT view on Zotero]. Dennis Pogue, “Archaeological Investigations at the ‘Vineyard Inclosure’ Mount Vernon Plantation, Mount Vernon, Virginia,” File Report 3, unpublished manuscript (Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, Mount Vernon, Va., March 1992), 45–49, contains an analysis of the archaeological remains of Washington’s fruit garden.</ref> The term also appeared in Thomas Green Fessenden’s ''New American Gardener'' (1833), but this may have been due more to the practice of emulation in treatise writing than to the circulation of the term in America. (Fessenden, in fact, borrowed heavily from his British predecessors.) More common to American culture was the term “orchard,” which appeared very early in accounts of the American designed landscape.

[[File:0285.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Nicholas Garrison, ''A View of Bethlehem, one of the Brethren's Principal Settlements, in Pennsylvania, North America'', 1757.]]

[[File:0072.jpg|thumb|Fig. 6, [[Thomas Jefferson]], Plan of an orchard at Monticello, c. 1778.]]

Although the American orchard was not considered a subgroup of a larger garden complex to the same degree as it was in the British [[flower garden]], it was nevertheless recognized as part of the broader designed landscape associated with a residence or [[plantation]]. Like many other features of the American design landscape, such as [[canal]], [[meadow]], or [[wood]], the orchard was both utilitarian and aesthetic. It united, in the words of [[J. C. Loudon|Loudon]], “[t]he agreeable with the useful” (1826). The primary function of orchards was growing fruit, and apples and peaches seem to have been the fruit of choice for many colonial and federalist landowners in New England and in the mid-Atlantic states. he orchard ground, as a cultivated area of land, also could be used for growing grass or hay under the trees. This practice was somewhat controversial, as indicated by the lengthy commentary on the subject by treatise writers. [[John Abercrombie]] (1817) suggested trimming the lower branches of trees to prevent damage by cattle.

[[File:0098.jpg|thumb|Fig. 7, Miller & Co., Map of the residence & park grounds, near Bordentown, New Jersey : of the late Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, 1847.]]

Like the planting of grasses in orchards, the arrangement of trees was disputed by treatise writers. John Smith’s 1629 account mentions the arrangement of fruit trees into rows, a practice recommended by numerous treatise writers. Another possibility, found in several treatises, was to arrange trees in a quincunx formation, where trees would be planted in a manner resembling the plan of a five-face on a die [Fig. 2]. Debate also focused on the spaces between trees that were aligned in rows and also on the distance between rows.

Images reveal much information about the arrangement of trees in American orchards. Orchards typically were represented as [[square]] or rectangular plots placed adjacent to or situated near houses, and they often were bounded by [[fence]]s, ditches, or [[hedge]]s [Fig. 3]. Most [[plot]]s contained regularly arranged trees, as in Clarissa Deming’s orchard plan, after 1798 [Fig. 4]. The frequency, however, with which regularized arrangements of trees appear in images suggests that many images may have been governed by a visual convention dictating that orchards be represented with straight rows of trees. This convention is apparent in a 1757 view of Bethlehem, Pa. [Fig. 5]. Nonetheless, a few plans imply that orchard trees could be arranged in patterns other than linear rows. A 1778 sketch by Thomas Jefferson of the orchard at Monticello depicts a pinwheel-like arrangement of fruit trees that included apple, peach, quince, pear, apricot, and plum [Fig. 6].

With the development of the so-called “[[Natural_style|natural]]” style in America in the early nineteenth century, orchards became more varied in character. The 1847 plan of [[Point Breeze]] in Bordentown, N.J., represents the orchard as an irregularly shaped piece of land located at a distance from the mansion and sited within [[wood|woodlands]] [Fig. 7]. In [[A. J. Downing|Downing]]’s 1849 plan for a “[[picturesque]] orchard,” he broke with the convention of rigidly arranging trees in straight lines and presented them loosely clumped in groups “for the sake of effect.”

In travelers’ accounts of America, the term “orchard” figures prominently in descriptions of the settled countryside. In these texts, as well as in treatises and descriptions of specific estates, orchards were imbued with both utilitarian and aesthetic values. (The practical associations of husbandry with orchards distinguished them from [[grove]]s, which except for citrus [[grove]]s, were generally discussed in only aesthetic terms.) Orchards signaled planning for the needs of the future, since trees took many years to mature. [[William Penn]], in his 1685 advertisement for potential colonialists, characterized an orchard as a property improvement and investment. Orchards also exemplified the careful grooming of the countryside by American settlers, who transformed uncultivated [[wood]]s and fields into ordered [[plantation]]s of fruit trees. [[Timothy Dwight]], in particular, offered a myriad of orchard descriptions in order to conjure up his early nineteenth-century vision of America as a highly cultivated, prosperous nation. That very prosperity, however, eventually seemed to threaten the existence of orchards. According to [[Edward Sayers]] (1835), the expansion of America’s transportation network of railroads, [[canal]]s, and roads promised to eradicate orchards as trees were cut down and not replaced. Yet sixteen years later, [[A. J. Downing|Downing]] claimed that railroads and steamboats had, in fact, brought about a boom in orchards as farmers could then easily transport their produce by rail and thus capitalize upon such markets.

-- ''Anne L. Helmreich''

==Texts==

===Usage===

* Smith, John, 1629, describing the Charles River in Massachusetts (quoted in Miller and Johnson 1963: 2:399) <ref>Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., ''The Puritans'', 2 vols (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9XGR26VH view on Zotero].</ref>

: “in the maine you may shape your '''Orchards''', Vineyards, Pastures, Gardens, [[Walkes]], [[Parkes]], and Corne fields out of the whole peece as you please into such [[plot]]s, one adjoyning to another, leaving every of them invironed with two, three, foure, or six, or so many rowes of well growne trees as you will, ready growne to your hands, to defend them from ill weather.”

* Donck, Adriaen van der, 1655, describing New York, N.Y. (quoted in Hedrick 1988: 55) <ref name="Hedrick">U. P. Hedrick, ''A History of Horticulture in America to 1860; with an Addendum of Books Published from 1861-1920 by Elisabeth Woodburn'' (Portland, Ore.: Timber Press, 1988), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/N7ZAW9D6 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The Netherlands settlers, who are lovers of fruit, on observing that the climate was suitable to the production of fruit trees, have brought over and planted various kinds of apple and pear trees which thrive well. . . . The English have brought over the first quinces, and we have also brought over stocks and seeds which thrive well and produce large '''orchards'''.”

* Anonymous, 1667, describing a proposed orchard in Somerset County, Md. (quoted in Lounsbury 1994: 247) <ref>Carl R. Lounsbury, ed., ''An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UK5TCUQQ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “[The planter stipulated in his will that his executors were] to make an '''orchard''' of 200 trees the one halfe winter fruite the other summer leaving sufficient fencing on it & aboute itt.”

* Glover, Thomas, 1676, describing fruits on [[plantation]]s in his ''Account of Virginia'' (quoted in Martin 1991: 18) <ref name="Martin 1991">Peter Martin, ''The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson'' (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/6TAHS88N view on Zotero].
</ref>

: “few planters but that have fair and large '''orchards''', some whereof have 1200 trees and upward bearing all sorts of English apples . . . of which they make great store of cider . . . likewise great peach-'''orchards''', which bear such an infinite quantity of peaches.”

*[[William Penn|Penn, William]], 12 October 1685, in a letter to Richard Blome, describing Pennsylvania (quoted in Blome 1687: 127–28) <ref>Richard Blome, ''The Present State of His Majesties Isles and Territories in America'' (London: H. Clark, 1687), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XKGSW3DC view on Zotero].</ref>

: “3. . . . Say I have five thousand Acres, I will settle ten Families upon them in way of Village . . . they shall continue seven years, or more, at half increase, being bound to leave the Houses in repair, and a Garden and '''Orchard''', I paying for the Trees, and at least twenty Acres of Land within [[Fence]], and improved to Corn and Grass. The charge will come to about sixty pounds English each Family; at the seven years end, the improvement will be worth, as things go now, one hundred and twenty pounds, besides the value of the encrease of the Stock.”

* Thomas, Gabriel, 1698, describing Pennsylvania (quoted in Hedrick 1988: 77) <ref name="Hedrick"></ref>

: “There are many Fair and Great Brick Houses on the outside of the Town which the Gentry have built for their Countrey Houses . . . having a very fine and delightful ''Garden'' and '''''Orchard''''' adjoyning it, wherein is variety of ''Fruits'', ''Herbs'', and ''Flowers''.”

*[[William Byrd II|Byrd, William, II]], 3 January 1712 and 13 July 1720, describing [[Westover]], seat of [[William Byrd II]], on the James River, Va. (Wright and Tinling, eds., 1972: 428, 464) <ref>Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling, eds., ''The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712'' (New York: Arno Press, 1972), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7CA6T8T2 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “I walked into the '''orchard''' and ate so many plums that I could not sleep.”
: “In the afternoon I set my razor and then went to prune the trees in the young '''orchard''' and then I took a walk about the [[plantation]] and my wife and Mrs. Dunn came to walk with me.”

* Jones, Hugh, 1724, describing the [[Governor’s Palace]], [[Williamsburg]], Va. (quoted in Hedrick 1988: 110) <ref name="Hedrick"></ref>

: “a magnificent structure, built at publick Expense, finished and beautified with [[Gate]]s, fine Gardens, Offices, [[Walk]]s, a fine [[Canal]], '''Orchards'''.”

* Anonymous, 28 July 1733, describing a property for sale in Charleston, S.C. (''South Carolina Gazette'')

: “A [[Plantation]] about two Miles above ''Goose-Creek'' [[Bridge]] . . . [having] an '''Orchard''' of very good Apple and Peach Trees.”

* Ball, Joseph, February 1734, letter regarding property in Virginia (Library of Congress, Joseph Ball Letterbook)

: “The young Peach '''orchard''' must be made up new all round, as Substantial, Close, Strong, and high, as I have made part of it already: and they must take up out of the old Peach '''orchard''', what trees may be wanting to fill up that piece of Tobacco Ground in the young Peach '''orchard'''. And I would have all the rest of the Peach trees in the old '''orchard''' Cut down; and that Ground laid into the Little Pasture. This mowing of the trees must be in a proper time next Spring. . . .
: “The Peach '''orchard''' must be how’d up, and after that Chopt over, once, or twice, to kill the Broom grass, else the Grass will kill the trees.”

* [[Pinckney, Eliza Lucas]], 1742, in a letter to Miss Bartlett, describing Wappoo Plantation, property of [[Eliza Lucas Pinckney]], Charleston, S.C. (1972: 35)<ref>Eliza Lucas Pinckney, ''The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, 1739-176''2, ed. by Elise Pinckney (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/EBQQ2RAU view on Zotero].</ref>

: “O! I had like to forget the last thing I have done a great while. I have planted a large figg '''orchard''' with design to dry and export them. I have reckoned my expence and the prophets to arise from these figgs, but was I to tell you how great an Estate I am to make this way, and how ’tis to be laid out you would think me far gone in romance.”

* Anonymous, 1 February 1746, describing in property for sale near Charleston, S.C. (''South Carolina Gazette'')

: “Whereas Thomas Wright intending to settle in ''Charles Town'', there will be sold at his [[Plantation]] in the Parish of ''St. James’s Goosecreek''....
: “N. B. The said [[plantation]] [has] . . . An '''Orchard''' with several apple, Pear and Peach Trees under [[Fence]], with a long [[Walk]] in the Middle.”

* Anonymous, 17 August 1747, describing property for sale in Somerset County, N.J. (''New York Gazette'')

: “TO BE SOLD, A pleasant Country [[Seat]], fitting for a Gentleman or Store-keeper . . . a good '''Orchard''', containing about 200 Apple Trees, and may be extended at Pleasure.”

* Alexiowitz, Iwan, 1769, describing [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery]], vicinity of Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Darlington 1849: 50)

: “He next showed me his '''orchard''', formerly planted on a barren, sandy soil, but long since converted into one of the richest spots in that vicinage.”

* Fithian, Philip Vickers, 3 April 1774, describing Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, Va. (1943: 121) <ref>Philip Vickers Fithian, ''Journal & Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773-1774: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion'', ed. by Hunter D. Farish (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg, 1943), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XJX4WV8F view on Zotero].</ref>

: “as I look from my Window & see [[Grove]]s of Peach Trees on the Banks of Nomini; (for the '''orchards''' here are very Large) and other Fruit Trees in Blossom.”

* Anburey, Thomas, 20 May 1778, describing Mystic, Conn., and Lancaster County, Pa. ([1789] 1969: 2:215–16, 285–86) <ref>Thomas Anburey, ''Travels through the Interior Parts of America'', 2 vols (New York: New York Times and Arno Press, 1969), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R77SENEZ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The trees are now in full blossom, and as every house has an '''orchard''' adjoining, the country looks quite beautiful; upon enquiry of the inhabitants, I find most of the European fruits have degenerated in New England, except the apple, which it is said, if it has not improved, it has multiplied exceedingly.”
: “Their [the Dumplers sect] little city [Euphrates] is built in the form of a triangle, and bordered with mulberry and apple-trees, very regularly planted. In the center of the town is a large '''orchard''', and between the '''orchard''' and the ranges of trees that are planted round the [[border]]s, are their houses, which are built of wood, and three stories high.”

* Stuart, John Ferdinand Smyth (J.F.D. Smyth), 1784, describing [[Williamsburg]], Va. (quoted in Lockwood 1934: 2:53) <ref name="Lockwood">Alice B. Lockwood, ed., ''Gardens of Colony and State: Gardens and Gardeners of the American Colonies and of the Republic before 1840'', 2 vols (New York: Charles Scribner’s for the Garden Club of America, 1931), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JNB7BI9T view on Zotero].</ref>

: “These are called [[plantation]]s and are generally from one to four or five miles distant from each other, having a dwelling house in the middle . . . at some little distance there are always large peach and apple '''orchards'''.”

* Giannini, Antionio, 1786, describing [[Monticello]], [[plantation]] of [[Thomas Jefferson]], Charlottesville, Va. (quoted in Nichols and Griswold 1978: 100)

: “The apples in the '''orchard''' below the garden are producing abundantly. All the varieties of cherry trees are growing well. The ‘Magnum bonum plumbs’ are turning out marvelously and so are the green gages. The apricots are growing satisfactorily. . . . The almonds are still alive but are not improving. The peaches are all doing well. . . . Has grafted many trees of the kinds TJ requested; but no one had told him about grafting the royal white, yellow, and red peaches. This will be done at once. They have not yet finished planting the apples of the north '''orchards''', but the ones planted are doing well and will have a full crop next autumn.” [See Fig. 6]

* [[Dwight, Timothy]], 1798, describing Boston, Mass. (quoted in Lockwood 1931: 1:26–27) <ref name="Lockwood">Frederick Doveton Nichols and Ralph E. Griswold, ''Thomas Jefferson, Landscape Architect'' (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1978), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/RUZC4Q3D view on Zotero].</ref>

: “‘Boston enjoys a superiority to all other great towns on this continent. . . . The soil is generally fertile, the agriculture neat, and productive; the gardening superior to what is found in most other places; the '''orchards''', [[grove]]s, and forests, numerous and thrifty.’”

* Parkinson, Richard, 1798–1800, describing the vicinity of Baltimore, Md. (1805: 2:612–13) <ref>Richard Parkinson, ''A Tour in America, 1798, 1799, and 1800: Exhibiting Sketches of Society and Manners, and a Particular Account of the American System of Agriculture, with Its Recent Improvements'', 2 vols (London: J. Harding, 1805), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/J8PV5PS4 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “from my own experience, what is the general custom of the people in regard to the '''orchards''' and fruit planted in fields in America, as it is not at all unusual to plant fields with fruit to the extent of from four to twenty acres: —my '''orchard''' [at Orange Hill] contained about six acres, three of which were planted with apples, the other three with peaches of various sorts . . . it being at some distance from the house, (which is the usual manner of planting them the first year).”

* [[Dwight, Timothy]], 1799, describing South Hadley, Mass. (1822: 3:262) <ref>Timothy Dwight, ''Travels in New England and New York'', 4 vols (New Haven, Conn.: Timothy Dwight, 1821), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KHT2AUCG view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Major White, a respectable inhabitant of South-Hadley, had an '''orchard''', which stood on the North-Western declivity of a hill, of so rapid a descent, that every tree was entirely brushed by the winds from that [[quarter]]. The spot lay about four miles direcly South-Eastward from the gap between Mount Tom, and Mount Holyoke. Through this gap these winds blow, as you will suppose, with peculiar strength. Accordingly they swept the dew from this '''orchard''' so effectually, that its blossoms regularly escaped the injuries of such late frosts in the spring, as destroy those of the surrounding country. So remarkable was the exemption, that the inhabitants of South-Hadley proverbially styled such a frost ''Major White’s harvest''; because his '''orchard''' yielded a great quantity of cider, which in such years commanded a very high price.”

* Ogden, John Cosens, 1800, describing the garden of the recitation room and Inspector’s study, Nazareth, Pa. (p. 46) <ref>John C. Ogden, ''An Excursion into Bethlehem & Nazareth, in Pennsylvania, in the Year 1799'' (Philadelphia: Charles Cist, 1800), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/U5CTTBGB view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The Pedagogium and town are seen from this place. In the rear is an '''orchard''' defended by a [[grove]].”

* Anonymous, 18 April 1800, describing Willow Brook, seat of John Donnell, Baltimore, Md. (''Federal Gazette'')

: “That beautiful, healthy and highly improved [[seat]], within one mile of the city of Baltimore, called Willow Brook, containing about 26 acres of land, the whole of which is under a good post and rail [[fence]], divided and laid off into grass lots, '''orchards''', garden, &c. . . . The garden and '''orchard''' abounds with the greatest variety of the choicest fruit trees, [[shrub]]s, flowers, &c collected from the best [[nurseries]] in America and from Europe, all in perfection and full bearing.”

* Michaux, François André, 1802, describing an orchard in St. Anastasia, Fla. (1805: 349) <ref>François André Michaux, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains, in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessea, and back to Charleston, by the Upper Carolines… Undertaken, in the Year 1802'', 2nd edn (London: B. Crosby & Co. and J.F. Hughes, 1805), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/69576KK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “It is fifty years since the seeds of this species [sweet orange] were brought from India, and given to an inhabitant of this island [Sant Anastasia], who has increased them so much as to have made an '''orchard''' of them of forty acres. I had an opportunity of seeing this fine [[plantation]] when I was in Florida, in 1788.”

*[[Manasseh Cutler|Cutler, Rev. Manasseh]], 2 January 1802, describing [[Mount Vernon]], [[plantation]] of [[George Washington]], Fairfax County, Va. (1987: 2:57) <ref>William Parker Cutler, ''Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL. D'' (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1987), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3PBNT7H9 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “On the right [of the house] is an '''orchard''', consisting principally of large cherry and peach trees. At the bottom of this '''orchard''', and nearly opposite the eastern end of the house, is the venerable tomb, which contains the remains of the great [[George Washington|Washington]].”

*[[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], c. 1804, describing improvements for [[Monticello]], [[plantation]] of [[Thomas Jefferson]], Charlottesville, Va. (quoted in Martin 1991: 157) <ref name="Martin 1991"></ref>

: “all the farm grounds of [[Monticello]] had better be turned into '''orchard''' grounds of cyder [''sic''] apple & peach trees, & '''orchard''' grass cultivated under them.”

* Anonymous, 9 August 1805, describing in ''The Virginia Herald'' a property for sale in Stafford County, Va. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

: “FOR LEASE, A Lot of Land. . . . Also, on the above lot there is . . . a considerable '''Orchard''' of young Apple trees of choice fruit, now in a bearing state.”

* [[Charles Drayton|Drayton, Charles]], November 2, 1806, describing [[The Woodlands]], seat of [[William Hamilton]], near Philadelphia, Pa. (1806: 58)<ref>Charles Drayton, "The Diary of Charles Drayton I, 1806," 1806, Drayton Hall: A National Historic Trust Site, http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:27554, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HAARCGXN view on Zotero].</ref>
:"The [[kitchen garden|<u>kitchen</u> garden]] & '''Hort. yard'''/<u>'''Orchyard'''</u>, which I did not see, are, I suppose behind the Stables, & adjacent."

* Flint, Timothy, 1816, describing his journey from Frankfort to Louisville, Ky. (quoted in Jones 1957: 10) <ref>Katharine M. Jones, ''The Plantation South'' (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AT62T7KC view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Travelling through the village in this fertile region, where the roads are perfectly good, and where every elevation brings you in view of a noble farm-house, in the midst of its '''orchards''', and sheltered by its fine [[grove]]s of forest and sugar-maple trees, you would scarcely realize that the first settlers of the country, and they men of mature age when they settled it, were, some of them, still living.”

* Cobbett, William, 1819, describing Long Island, N.Y. (Cobbett 1819b: 12)<ref>William Cobbett, ''A Year’s Residence in the United States of America'' (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1819), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HA3Q8TX8 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The '''Orchards''' constitute a feature of great beauty. Every farm has its '''orchard''', and, in general, of cherries as well as of apples and pears.”

* S., J. W., September 1829, describing [[André Parmentier]]’s horticultural and [[botanic garden|botanical garden]], Brooklyn, N.Y. (''Gardeners’ Magazine'' 8: 72)

: “In short, this establishment is well worthy of notice as one of the few examples in the neighbourhood of New York, of the art of laying out a garden so as to combine the principles of [[landscape-gardening]] with the conveniences of the [[nursery]] or '''orchard'''.”

* Anonymous, 15 October 1830, “Trespassers in Orchards” (''New England Farmer'' 9: 101)

: “''The following is an abstract of the Statute 1818, Cap. 3d. for the prevention of trespasses in '''Orchards''', and Gardens, &c.''
: “Sec. 1. If any person ''enter'' upon any grassland, '''orchard''', or garden, without permission, ''with intent'' to cut, destroy, take, or carry away, any grass, hay fruit, or vegetables, with intent to injure or defraud the owner: such person shall, on conviction, before a justice of the peace, forfeit and pay, for every such offence, a sum not less than two, nor more than ten dollars; and be also liable in damages to the party injured.”

*[[H.A.S. Dearborn|Dearborn, H.A.S.]], 1832, describing [[Mount Auburn Cemetery]], Cambridge, Mass. (quoted in Harris 1832: 65)<ref>Thaddeus William Harris, ''A Discourse Delivered before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on the Celebration of Its Fourth Anniversary, October 3, 1832'' (Cambridge, Mass.: E. W. Metcalf, 1832), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3A3UDHF3 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “On the southeastern and northeastern [[border]]s of the tract can be arranged the [[nurseries]], and portions selected for the culture of fruit-trees and esculent vegetables, on an extensive scale; there may be arranged the [[Arboretum]], the '''Orchard''', the Culinarium, Floral departments, Melon grounds, and Strawberry beds, and [[Green house]]s.”

* Bryant, William Cullen, 26 February 1834, in a letter to his brother, John Howard Bryant, describing Putnam County, Ill. (1975: 394) <ref>William Cullen Bryant, ''The Letters of William Cullen Bryant'', ed. by William Cullen II Bryant and Thomas G. Voss (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3X5XUJ6A view on Zotero].</ref>

: “You talk in your letter to my wife of planting an '''orchard''' and eating the fruit of it if you live to be old. Why do you not graft your crab apple trees with scions produced from the older settlements of your state? You would then have apples in a very few years. Did you ever think of this?”

* Martineau, Harriet, 1835, describing Northhampton, Mass. (1838: 2:83)<ref>Harriet Martineau, ''Retrospect of Western Travel,'' 2 vols (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H2BW5FRU view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The stage was stopped by a gentleman who asked for me. It was Mr. Bancroft, the historian, then a resident of Northhampton. He cordially welcomed us as his guests, and ordered the stage up the hill to his house; such a house! It stood on a lofty [[terrace]], and its balcony overlooked first the garden, then the '''orchard''' stretching down the [[slope]], then the delicious village, and the river with its meadows, while opposite rose Mount Holyoke.”

* Bryant, William Cullen, 24 April 1843, describing St. Anastasia, Fla., in ''A Tour in the Old South'' (quoted in Clarke 1993: 2:161)<ref>Graham Clarke, ed., ''The American Landscape: Literary Sources and Documents'', 3 vols (East Sussex, England: Helm Information, 1993), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TRGJ9W95 view on Zotero].
</ref>

: “In another part of the same island, which we visited afterward, is a dwelling-house situated amid orange-[[grove]]s. Closely planted rows of the sour orange, the native tree of the country, intersect and shelter '''orchards''' of the sweet orange, the lemon, and the lime.”

* B., P., January 1844, “Progress of Horticulture in Rochester, N.Y.,” residence of John Robert Murray, Mount Morris, N.Y. (''Magazine of Horticulture'' 10: 18)

: “The '''orchard''' contains between thirty and forty varieties of well selected pears, an equal number of peach of which over one hundred and fifty trees have borne the past season; among them are five seedlings, raised by J.R. Murray, Esq., senior, said to be superior fruit; ten varieties of plum, eight of cherry, five of apricot and five of nectarine; in all six or eight acres devoted to the culture of fruits.”

* O’Conner, Rachel, 1844, in a letter to William F. Weeks, describing Evergreen Plantation, estate of Rachel O’Connor, Bayou Sarah, La. (quoted in Turner 1993: 495) <ref>Suzanne Turner, ''Historic Landscape Report: The Landscape at the Shadows-on-the-Teche'' (New Ibera, La.: Shadows-on-the-Teche, 1993), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7H7V8W3P view on Zotero].</ref>

: “[24 February] I have my '''orchard''' planted with better than four hundred young fruit trees. I did not think I had so many friends. The people sent me trees from all [[quarter]]s untill [''sic''] the ground was filled. It adds much to the beauty of the place. . . .
: “[23 March] My new '''orchard''' is my idol. I am afraid I think too much of it, & that God will punish me for letting my heart cling to earthly treasures. I am not afraid to love the little black children. Christ suffered on the cross for us all.”

*[[C. M. Hovey|Hovey, C. M.]], December 1846, “Notes of a Visit to several Gardens in the Vicinity of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York,” describing the garden of H. N. Langworthy, near Rochester, N.Y. (''Magazine of Horticulture'' 14: 529–30)<ref>Charles Mason Hovey, "Notes of a Visit to Several Gardens in the Vicinity of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, in October, 1845", ''The Magazine of Horticulture, Botany, and All Useful Discoveries and Improvements in Rural Affairs'', 12 (1846), 241–48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/S9UVTJM3 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “One '''orchard''' planted with alternate rows of the Early York and Early Crawford, had this year just begun to bear, producing specimens of the latter, which quickly sold at five dollars per bushel; the Early York is a very early and profitable peach; the trees vigorous, healthy and abundant bearers: this is the Early York, figured in our Fruits of America, with serrate leaves. The ground is manured and ploughed the first year after the trees are planted; the next year, it is sown to clover, which is turned in as a green crop; this, with a light application of manure, is repeated every year. The trees are thus kept in a vigorous growing condition, and we saw no evidence of a yellow peach tree in the whole '''orchard'''.
: “The apple '''orchards''', with one or two exceptions, are cultivated in the same manner, that is, manure and a crop of clover every year: pursuing this system, the trees make an exceedingly vigorous growth, and when they begin to bear, are loaded with finest specimens of fruit.”

[[File:0378.jpg|thumb|Fig. 8, Anonymous, "Plan of a Suburban Villa Residence" in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 118, fig. 26. Downing notes that "At ''e'', is a picturesque orchard."]]
* [[Downing, A. J.]], 1849, describing a suburban villa residence in Burlington, N.J. (pp. 117–18)<ref>A. J. [Andrew Jackson] Downing, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America'', 4th edn (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/K7BRCDC5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The house, ''a'', stands quite near the bank of the river, while one front commands fine water [[view]]s, and the other looks into the [[lawn]] or [[pleasure ground]]s, ''b''. On one side of the area is the [[kitchen garden]], ''c'', separated and concealed from the [[lawn]] by thick groups of evergreen and deciduous trees. At ''e'', is a [[picturesque]] '''orchard''', in which the fruit trees are planted in groups instead of straight lines, for the sake of effect.” [Fig. 8]

* Eppes, Francis, c. 1850, describing Eppington, plantation of Francis Eppes, on the James River, Va. (quoted in Weaver 1969: 31) <ref>Bettie Woodson Weaver, "Mary Jefferson and Eppington", ''Virginia Cavalcade'', 19 (1969), 30–38, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NUKABDJW view on Zotero].</ref>

: “and to the right of the [[lawn]], as you entered, was an extensive '''orchard''' of the finest fruit, with the stables between, at the corner and on the road. The mansion . . . was almost imbedded in a beautiful double row of the tall Lombardy poplar—the most admired of all trees in the palmy days of old Virginia—and this row reached to another double row or [[avenue]] which skirted one side of the [[lawn]], dividing it from the '''orchard''' and stables.”

* Committee on the [[Capitol Square]], Richmond City Council, 26 July 1851, describing [[John Notman]]’s plans for the Capitol Square, Richmond, Va. (quoted in Greiff 1979: 162) <ref>Constance Greiff, ''John Notman, Architect, 1810-1865'' (Philadelphia: Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 1979), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SXT2RI6Z view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The most beautiful feature of the contemplated alterations of the [[Square]], however, will be found in the arrangement of the trees and [[shrubbery]]. Instead of planting these in parallel rows, like an ordinary '''orchard''' some attention will be paid to [[landscape gardening]]—[[grove]]s, [[arbour]]s, [[parterre]]s, and [[fountain]]s will combine to render the [[Square]] a place of delightful resort.”
{{break}}

===Citations===

* Lawson, William, 1618, ''A New Orchard and Garden'' ([1618] 1982: 11, 13)<ref>William Lawson, ''A New Orchard and Garden... with the Country Housewifes Garden'' (New York: Garland, 1982), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3IEF2TJD view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The goodnesse of the Soyle, and Site, are necessarie to the well being of an '''Orchard''' simplie, but the forme is so far necessarie, as the owner shall think meets for that kinde of forme wherewith every particular man is delighted, we leave it to himselfe, ''fuumcuig pulchrum''. The forme that men like in generall is a [[square]], for although roundnes, be ''forma perfectissima'', yet y principle is good where necessitie by art hath not force forme other forme. And for as much as one principall end of '''Orchards''' is recreation by [[walk]]s, and universallie [[walk]]s are streight, it followes that the best forme must be [[square]], as best agreeing with streight [[walk]]s: yet if any man be rather delighted with some other forme, or if the ground will not beare a [[square]], I risceommend not any forme, so it be formall. . . .
: “All your labour past and to come about an '''Orchard''' is lost, unlesse you [[fence]] well. It that grieve you much to see your young lets rubble ofe at the rootes, the barke pilld, the boughs and twigs cropt, your fruit stolne, your trees broke, and all your many yeares Labours and hopes destroyed, for want of [[fence]]s.”

* Parkinson, John, 1629, ''Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris'' ([1629] 1975: 535–37)<ref>John Parkinson, ''Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris'' (Norwood, N.J.: W.J. Johnson, 1975), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7G5933QV view on Zotero].</ref>

: “And first, I hold that an '''Orchard''' which is, or should bee of some reasonable large extent, should be so placed, that the house should have the [[flower garden|Garden of flowers]] just before it open upon the South, and the [[Kitchen Garden]] on the one side thereof, should also have the '''Orchard''' on the other side of the [[pleasure garden|Garden of Pleasure]], for many good reasons: First, for that the fruit trees being grown great and tall, will be a great shelter from the North and East windes, which may offend your chiefest Garden, and although that your '''Orchard''' stand a little bleake upon the windes, yet trees rather endure these strong bitter blasts, then other smaller and more tender [[shrub]]s and herbes can doe. Secondly, if your '''Orchard''' should stand behinde your [[flower garden|Garden of flowers]] more Southward, it would shadow too much of the Garden, and besides, would so binde in the North and East, and North and West windes upon the Garden, that it would spoile many tender things therein, and so much abate the edge of your pleasure thereof, that you would willingly wish to have no '''Orchard''', rather then that it should so much annoy you by the so ill standing thereof. Thirdly, the falling leaves being still blowne with the winde so aboundantly into the Garden, would either spoile many things, or have one daily and continuall attending thereon, to cleanse and sweepe them away. Or else to avoide these great inconveniences, appoint out an '''Orchard''' the farther off, and set a greater distance of ground betweene. . . .
: “According to the situation of mens grounds, so must the [[plantation]] of them of necessitie be also; and if the ground be in forme, you shall have a formall '''Orchard''': if otherwise, it can have little grace or forme. And indeed in the elder ages there was small care or heede taken for the formality; for every tree for the most part was planted without order, even where the master or keeper found a vacant place to plant them in, so that oftentimes the ill placing of trees without sufficient space betweene them, and negligence in not looking to uphold them, procured more waste and spoile of fruit, then any accident of winde or weather could doe. '''Orchards''' in most places have not bricke or stone wals to secure them, because the extent thereof being larger then of a Garden, would require more cost, which every one cannot undergoe; and therefore mud [[Wall|wals]], or at the best a quicke set [[hedge]], is the ordinary and most usuall defence it findeth almost in all places: but with those that are of ability to compasse it with bricke or stone [[Wall|wals]], the gaining of ground, and profit of the fruit trees, planted there against, will in short time recompense that charge. . . . Having an '''Orchard''' containing one acre of ground, two, three, or more, or lesse, walled about, you may so order it, by leaving a broad and large [[walk]]e betweene the [[wall]] and it, . . . and by compassing your '''Orchard''' on the inside with a [[hedge]] (wherein may bee planted all sorts of low [[shrub]]s or bushes . . .) therefore to describe you the modell of an '''Orchard''', both rare for comelinesse in the proportion, and pleasing for the profitablenesse in the use, and also durable for continuance, regard this figure is here placed for your direction, where you must observe, that your trees are here set in such an equall distance one from another every way, & as is fittest for them, that when they are grown great, the greater branches shall not gall or rubbe one against another; for which purpose twenty or sixteene foot is the least to be allowed for the distance every way of your trees, & being set in rowes every one in the middle distance, will be the most graceful for the [[plantation]], and besides, give you way sufficient to passe through them, to pruine, loppe, or dresse them, as need shall require, and may also bee brought (if you please) to that grace-full delight, that every [[alley]] or distance may be formed like an [[arch]], the branches of either side meeting to be enterlaced together.”

* La Quintinie, Jean de, 1693, “Dictionary,” ''The Compleat Gard’ner'' ([1693] 1982: n.p.)<ref>Jean de La Quintinie, ''The Compleat Gard’ner, or Directions for Cultivating and Right Ordering of Fruit-Gardens and Kitchen Gardens'', trans. by John Evelyn (New York: Garland, 1982), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ET5N5PKH view on Zotero].</ref>

: “''Gardens'' are choice inclosed pieces of Ground planted with Edible Plants, Fruit-Trees, and Flowers, and differ from '''Orchards''', which are commonly planted with Standard Fruit-Trees, and are seldom walled, or so curiously inclosed as Gardens. . . .
: “'''''Orchards''''', or ''Hort-yards Ort-yards'', are inclosed pieces of Ground planted chiefly with ''Standards Fruit-Trees'', and more often fenced with ''[[Hedge]]s'', or ''Ditches'', and other [[fence]]s than with [[Wall]]s.”

* Bradley, Richard, 1720, ''New Improvements of Planting and Gardening'' (2.3: 27)<ref>Richard Bradley, ''New Improvements of Planting and Gardening, Both Philosophical and Practical; Explaining the Motion of the Sapp and Generation of Plants. With Other Discoveries Never before Made in Publick, for the Improvement of Forest-Trees, Flower-Gardens or Parterres; with a New Invention Where by More Designs of Garden Platts May Be Made in an Hour, than Can Be Found in All the Books Now Extant. Likewise Several Rare Secrets for the Improvement of Fruit-Trees, Kitchen-Gardens, and Green-House Plants.'', 3rd edn, 2 vols (London: W. Mears, 1719), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/U8DEKNZ4 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “There are two Ways of Planting an '''Orchard'''; the one to make it entirely for Fruit, the other to plant the Trees at such distances as to admit of an Under-crop. I must confess, was I to make an '''Orchard''' to please my self, I would first divide the Ground into parcels, allowing handsome [[Walk]]s between them, which should some of them be fenced on the Sides with [[Espalier]]s of Fruit, others left open with [[Border]]s only on their Sides, adorn’d with Rows of ''Standard-Apples''....
: “In these several [[Quarter]]s plant your Trees at about sixteen Foot distance, if you design a close '''Orchard''', or near thirty Foot asunder if the Ground is design’d for Beans, Peas, or such like Under-crops.”

* [[Chambers, Ephraim]], 1741–43, ''Cyclopaedia'' (2:n.p.)<ref>Ephraim Chambers, ''Cyclopaedia, or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. . . .'', 5th edn, 2 vols (London: D. Midwinter et al, 1741), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/PTXK378N view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''ORCHARD''', a seminary or [[plantation]] of fruit trees, chiefly apples and pears. See FRUIT-''tree''.
: “It is a rule among gardeners, that those '''''orchards''''', caeteris paribus, thrive best, which lie open to the south, south-west, and south-east; and are screened from the north: the soil dry, and deep. See EXPOSURE.
: “'''''Orchards''''' are stocked by transplantation; seldom by semination.”

*[[Philip Miller|Miller, Philip]], 1754, ''The Gardeners Dictionary'' ([1754] 1969: 977–78)<ref>Philip Miller, ''The Gardeners Dictionary'' (New York: Verlag Von J. Cramer, 1969), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/356Q24EP view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''ORCHARD'''. In planting of an '''Orchard''', great Care should be had of the Nature of the Soil, that such Sorts of Fruit as are adapted to grow upon the Ground intended to be planted, may be chosen. . . .
: “As to the Position of the '''Orchard''' (if you are at full Liberty to choose), a rising Ground, open to the South-east is to be preferr’d . . . where the Rise [of a hill] is gentle, it is of great Advantage to the Trees by admitting the Sun and Air between them better than it can upon an intire [''sic''] Level. . . .
: “You should also have a great regard to the Distance of planting the Trees, which is what few People have rightly consider’d; for if you plant them too close, they will be liable to Blights; and the Air hereby pent in amongst them, will cause the Fruit to be ill-tasted. . . .
: “Wherefore I can’t but recommend the Method which has been lately practised by some particular Gentlemen with very good Success; and that is, to plant the Trees fourscore Feet asunder, but not in regular Rows. The Ground between the Trees they plow and sow with Wheat, and other Crops, in the same manner as if it were clear from Trees; and they observe their Crops to be full as good as those quite exposed.”

*[[Samuel Johnson|Johnson, Samuel]], 1755, ''A Dictionary of the English Language'' (n.p.)<ref>Samuel Johnson, ''A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words Are Deduced from the Originals and Illustrated in the Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers'', 2 vols (London: W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton, 1755), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/GE2JPJR3 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''O’RCHARD'''. ''n.s''. [either ''hortyard'' or ''wortyard'', says ''Skinner'' . . . Saxon. Junius.] A garden of fruit-trees.”

* Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, 1769, ''The Complete Farmer'' (n.p.)<ref>Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, ''The Complete Farmer, or A General Dictionary of Husbandry'', 2nd edn (London: R. Baldwin et al, 1769), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/54RDSC63 view on Zotero].
</ref>

: “'''ORCHARD'''....
: “for a family only, it is hardly worth while to plant an '''orchard'''; since a [[kitchen-garden]] well planted with [[espalier]]s will afford more fruit than can be eaten while good, especially if the [[kitchen-garden]] be proportioned to the largeness of the family: and if cyder be required, there may be a large avenue of apple-trees extended cross a neighbouring field, which will render it pleasant, and produce a great quantity of fruit; or there may be some single rows of trees planted to surround the fields, &c. which will fully answer the same purpose, and be less liable to the fire-blasts before-mentioned.”

* Deane, Samuel, 1790, ''The New-England Farmer'' (pp. 188–89, 197–98)<ref>Samuel Deane, ''The New-England Farmer, or Georgical Dictionary'' (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1790), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/S8QQDHP6 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “[[NURSERY]]. . . .
: “In this situation they are to grow till they are transplanted into '''orchards''', &c. . . . “Trees to be transplanted into forests, may be cultivated in a [[nursery]] in the same manner as fruit trees. . . .
: “'''ORCHARD''', a [[plantation]] of fruit-trees, not again to be removed.
: “An '''orchard''' may consist wholly of pear-trees; or of quince, peach, plum, &c. or it may be a mixture of various kinds of trees. But '''orchards''' of apple-trees are almost the only ones in this country. Other fruit-trees are commonly planted in the [[border]]s of fields, or gardens; because only a small number of them is desired. ...
: “Plains, hollows, or high summits, are not so good situations for '''orchards''', as land gently sloping: And a south-eastern exposure is generally the best. ...
: “Concerning the right distance of the trees, there are a variety of opinions. But the coldness and wetness of the climate, an argument used in England for placing them far asunder, does not apply in this country. It should be considered at the time of planting, to what size the trees are likely to grow: And they should be set so far asunder, that their limbs will not be likely to interfere with each other when they arrive to their full growth. . . . Twenty five feet may be the right distance in some soils; but thirty five feet will not be too much in the best, or even forty. . . .
: “An '''orchard''' must be constantly well fenced, to keep out cattle. It should be enclosed by itself. . . .
: “After an '''orchard''' is planted, it is best to keep the land continually in tillage, till the trees have nearly got their full growth. The trees will grow faster, and be more fruitful.”

* Anonymous, 1798, ''Encyclopaedia'' (13:471–72)<ref>Anonymous, ''Encyclopaedia, or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature'', 18 vols (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1798), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/F6T8DNDF view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''ORCHARD''', a garden-department, configured entirely to the growth of standard fruit trees, for furnishing a large supply of the most useful kinds of fruit.
: “In the '''orchard''' you may have, as standards, all sorts of apple-trees, most sorts of pears and plums, and all sorts of cherries. . . . But to have a complete '''orchard''' you may also have quinces, medlars, mulberries; service trees, filberts, Spanish nuts, berberries; likewise walnuts and chesnuts; which two latter are particularly applicable for the boundaries of '''orchards''', to screen the other trees from the insults of impetuous winds and cold blasts. All the trees ought to be arranged in rows from 20 to 30 feet distance, as hereafter directed. . . .
: “A general '''orchard''', however composed of all the beforementioned fruit-trees, should consist of a double portion of apple-trees or more, because they are considerably the most useful fruit, and may be continued for use the year round.
: “The utility of a general '''orchard''', both for private use and profit, stored with the various sorts of fruit-trees, must be very great, as well as afford infinite pleasure from the delightful appearance it makes from early spring till late in autumn: In spring the various trees in blossom are highly ornamental; in summer, the pleasure is heightened by observing the various fruits advancing to perfection; and as the season advances, the mature growth of the different species arriving to perfection in regular succession, from May or June, until the end of October, must afford exceding delight, as well as great profit. . . .
: “With respect to the situation and aspect for an '''orchard''', we may observe very thriving '''orchards''' both in low and high situations, and on declivities and plains, in various aspects or exposures, provided the natural soil is good; we should, however, avoid very low damp situations as much as the nature of the place will admit.”

* Marshall, Charles, 1799, ''An Introduction to the Knowledge and Practice of Gardening'' (1:43–45)<ref>Charles Marshall, ''An Introduction to the Knowledge and Practice of Gardening, 1st American ed. from the 2nd London ed.'', 2 vols (Boston: Samuel Etheridge, 1799), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DVB7T4I2 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “AN '''ORCHARD''' may be spoken of here; i. e. a spot to plant ''standard trees'' in, which are forbidden a place in the garden; but it must not be a small spot. . . .
: “The trees being planted, at proper distances, the ground may be kept under some sort of crops, for several years to come, with proper dressing. . . .
: “On this subject, it may not be amiss to give the instructions of one of our best gardeners.
: “It is an error (says he) to let ''turf'' cover the surface of the ground in an '''orchard'''. The trees should be at such distances, that a ''plough'' may go between them, and in that case the trees thrive every way better.”

*[[John Beale Bordley|Bordley, J. B.]], 1801, ''Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs'' (pp. 74–75)<ref>J. B. [John Beale] Bordley, ''Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs'', 2nd edn (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1801), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DA5ISGKS view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The ''homestead'' includes this [[yard]]; together with its [[stackyard]], the garden, [[nursery]], '''orchard''', and some acres of grass; enough for occasionally letting mares, or sick beasts run on, at liberty.”

*[[Bernard M'Mahon|M’Mahon, Bernard]], 1806, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' (p. 38)<ref>Bernard M’Mahon, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....'' (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Graves for the author, 1806), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C view on Zotero].</ref>

: “THE '''Orchard''' is a department consigned entirely to the growth of standard fruit-trees, for furnishing a large supply of the most useful kinds of fruit; in which you may have as standards, apple, pear, plum, cherry, peach, apricot, quince, almond, and nectarine trees. . . .
: “But sometimes, '''Orchards''' consist entirely of apple trees. . ..
: “The utility of a general '''Orchard''', or '''Orchards''', both for private use and profit, stored with the various sorts of fruit-trees, must be very great; as well as afford infinite pleasure from the delightful appearance it makes from early spring, until late in autumn.”

* [[Gregory, G.]], 1816, ''A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences'' (2:n.p.)<ref>George Gregory, ''A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, First American, from the second London edition, considerably improved and augmented'', 3 vols (Philadelphia: Isaac Peirce, 1816), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2H8KAZ5E/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''ORCHARD''', a [[plantation]] of fruit-trees. In planting an '''orchard''' great care should be taken that the soil is suitable to the trees planted in it; and that they are procured from a soil nearly of the same kind, or rather poorer than that laid out for an '''orchard'''. As to the situation, an easy rising ground, open to the south-east, is to be preferred. [[Philip Miller|Mr. Miller]] recommends planting the trees fourscore feet asunder, but not in regular rows and would have the ground between the trees plowed and sown with wheat and other crops, in the same manner as if it was clear from trees; by which means the trees will be more vigorous and healthy, will abide much longer, and produce better fruit.”

*[[John Abercrombie|Abercrombie, John]], with James Mean, 1817, ''Abercrombie’s Practical Gardener'' (p. 180) <ref> John Abercrombie, ''Abercrombie’s Practical Gardener Or, Improved System of Modern Horticulture'' (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1817), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TH54TADZ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “AN '''orchard''' is a [[plantation]] of standard fruit-trees which in general have stems high enough to keep the boughs, leaves, and fruit, from the reach of cattle; but where cattle are excluded, dwarf and half-standards may occupy two rows next to the sunny side.”

* Coxe, William, 1817, ''A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, and the Management of Orchards and Cider'' (pp. 30, 33–34)<ref>William Coxe, ''A View of the Cultivation of Fruit Trees, and the Management of Orchards and Cider'' (Philadelphia: M. Careyard, 1817), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/7EB8GM2K view on Zotero].</ref>

: “ON THE SITUATION OF '''ORCHARDS'''.
: “A south east aspect, which admits the influence of the early morning Sun, and is protected from the pernicious effects of northerly winds, will be found the best site for an '''orchard'''. The situation should be neither too high nor too low. . . .
: “ON THE PLANTING AND CULTIVATION OF '''ORCHARDS'''.
: “The first thing to be determined upon in the planting of an '''orchard''', is the proper distance of the trees: if a mere fruit [[plantation]] be the object, the distance may be small—if the cultivation of grain and grass be in [[view]], the space between the trees must be wider: at thirty feet apart, an acre will contain forty-eight trees. . . . it will probably be found, that forty feet is the most eligible distance for a farm '''orchard'''.—It will admit sufficient sun and air, in our dry and warm climate; and until the trees shall be fully grown, will allow of a profitable application of the ground to the cultivation of grain and grass.”

* Thacher, James, 1822, ''The American Orchardist'' (pp. 10–11)<ref>James Thacher, ''The American Orchardist; Or, A Practical Treatise on the Culture and Management of Apple and Other Fruit Trees, with Observations on the Diseases to Which They Are Liable, and Their Remedies. To Which Is Added the Most Approved Method of Manufacturing and Preserving Cider. Compiled from the Latest and Most Approved Authorities, and Adapted to the Use of American Farmers'' (Boston: Joseph W. Ingraham, 1822), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/6CK7XAFB view on Zotero].</ref>

: “It must be confessed, as a notorious truth, that an '''orchard''', planted and cultivated in the most advantageous manner in point of beauty, profit, and convenience, is scarcely to be found in the sphere of our observation. The most palpable neglect prevails in respect of proper pruning, cleaning, and manuring round the roots of trees, and of perpetuating choice fruit, by engrafting from it on other stocks. Old '''orchards''' are, in general, in a state of rapid decay; and it is not uncommon to see valuable and thrifty trees exposed to the depredations of cattle and sheep, and their foliage annoyed by caterpillars and other destructive insects. In fact, we know of no branch of agriculture so unaccountably and so culpably disregarded. . . . It may, with propriety, be affirmed, that a judiciously-cultivated '''orchard''' of select fruit, if situated at a convenient distance from a large town or village, would yield an annual profit equal to any production of the industrious husbandman. ...
: “In every rural establishment, a fruit '''orchard''' should be considered an indispensable appendage, as a source of real emolument, and as contributing to health, pleasure, and recreation. It will be conceded, that, in the whole department of rural economy, there is not a more noble, interesting, and beautiful exhibition, than a fruit '''orchard''', systematically arranged, while clothed with nature’s foliage, and decorated with variegated blossoms perfuming the air, or when bending under a load of ripe fruit of many varieties. It is among the excellences of a fruit '''orchard''', that it affords a salubrious ''beverage'', an adequate supply of which would have a happy tendency to diminish, if not supersede, the consumption of ardent spirits, so destructive to the health and moral character of our citizens.”

* [[Loudon, J. C.]], 1826, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening'' (pp. 105, 451, 482)<ref>J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening'', 4th edn (London: Longman et al, 1826), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KNKTCA4W view on Zotero]. </ref>

: “482. . . .
: “''The first work after a settlement'' [in North America] is to plant a peach and apple '''orchard''', placing the trees alternately. The peach, being short-lived, is soon removed, and its place covered by the branches of the apple-trees. . . .
: “2355. ''To unite the agreeable with the useful'' is an object common to all the departments of gardening. The [[kitchen-garden]], the '''orchard''', the [[nursery]], and the forest, are all intended as scenes of recreation and visual enjoyment, as well as of useful culture; and enjoyment is the avowed object of the [[flower-garden]], [[shrubbery]], and [[pleasure-ground]]. ...
: “2527. ''An '''orchard''', or separate [[plantation]] of the hardier fruit-trees'' is a common appendage to the [[kitchen-garden]], where that department is small, or does not contain an adequate number of fruit-trees to supply the contemplated demand of the family. Sometimes this scene adjoins the garden, and forms a part of the slip; at other times it forms a detached, and, perhaps, distant enclosure, and not unfrequently, in countries where the soil is propitious to fruit-trees, they are distributed in the [[lawn]], or in a scene, or field kept in pasture. Sometimes the same object is effected by mixing fruit-trees in the [[plantation]]s near the garden and house.”

*[[André Parmentier|Parmentier, André]], 1828, ''The New American Gardener'' (p. 186)<ref>André Parmentier, "The Art of Landscape Gardening", in ''The New American Gardener'', ed. by Thomas Fessenden (Boston: J. B. Russell, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3C29XRTH/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The apple-tree alone, on account of its horizontal branches, should be confined to the '''orchard''', where its useful products are ornamental and valuable.”

* [[Webster, Noah]], 1828, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language'' (n.p.)<ref>Noah Webster, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language'', 2 vols (New York: S. Converse, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/N7BSU467 view on Zotero]. </ref>

: “'''OR’CHARD''', ''n''. [Sax. ''ortgeard''; Goth. ''aurtigards''; Dan. ''urtegaard''; Sw. ''ortegard''; that is, ''wort-yard'', a yard for herbs. The Germans call it ''baumgarten'', tree-garden, and the Dutch ''boomgaard'', tree-[[yard]]. See ''[[Yard]]''.]
: “An inclosure for fruit trees. In Great Britain, a department of the garden appropriated to fruit trees of all kinds, but chiefly to apples trees. In America, any piece of land set with apple trees, is called an '''orchard'''; and '''orchards''' are usually cultivated land, being either grounds for mowing or tillage. In some parts of the country, a piece of ground planted with peach trees is called a peach-'''orchard'''. But in most cases, I believe the '''orchard''' in both countries is distinct from the garden.”

* Fessenden, Thomas Green, 1833, ''The New American Gardener'' (pp. 220–22)<ref>Thomas Fessenden, ed., ''The New American Gardener'', 7th edn (Boston: Russell, Odiorne, 1833), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VPB9HKX3 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''ORCHARD'''.—''Soil''.—Any soil is suitable for an '''orchard''', which produces good crops of grain, grass, or garden vegetables; but a good, deep, sandy loam, not too dry, nor very moist, is to be preferred. In the stiffest part of the ground, you may plant pear-trees; in the lighter, apples, plums, and cherries; and, in the lightest, peach, nectarine, and apricots.
: “''Aspect''.—A south-eastern aspect is generally recommended; but, when this exposes the trees to the sea winds, a south-western may be better. Some recommend a northern aspect, and planting trees the north side of a [[wall]], to prevent them from budding and blowing so early in the spring as to expose them to frosts. . . .
: “''Distance of trees in an '''orchard'''''.—‘It should be considered, at the time of planting, to what size the trees are likely to grow. And they should be set so far asunder, that their limbs will not be likely to interfere with each other, when they arrive at full growth. In a soil that suits them best they will become largest. Twenty-five feet may be the right distance in some soils; but thirty-five feet will not be too much in the best, or even forty.’—Deane.
: “''Cropping''.—‘It is proper to crop the ground among new-planted '''orchard'''-trees, for a few years, in order to defray the expense of hoeing and cultivating it; which should be done until the temporary plants are removed, and the whole be sown down to grass. But it is by no means advisable to carry the system of cropping with vegetables to such an excess as is frequently done. If the bare expense of cultivating the ground, and the rent, be paid, by such cropping, it should be considered enough. As the trees begin to produce fruit, begin also to relinquish cropping. When by their productions they defray all expenses, crop no longer. I consider these as being wholesome rules, both for the trees and their owners.’—''Loudon''
: “'''Orchards''' which are laid down to grass last longest; but it is necessary to keep the ground clear of weeds and grass, for some little distance from the roots.”

* Anonymous, 17 December 1834, “Orchards Around Farm Houses” (''New England Farmer'' 13: 181)

: “It is expedient that every farm should have some portion of '''orchard''' ground attached to it. The most convenient and guarded situation for it is immediately behind the house, so that the back kitchen door may open into it. . . . The most profitable kind of '''orchard''' is that which contains all kinds of hardy fruit trees and bushes, and where the land is solely appropriated to that purpose. This kind resembles gardening more than farming, and is therefore unsuitable to large farms, but quite applicable to small ones, to which an acre of '''orchard''', requiring no horse labor, would be of essential benefit. In such '''orchards''', half standard apples are planted in rows eighteen feet from each other, the trees being twelve feet apart. In the same line with the apple trees are planted either gooseberries or currant bushes, or what sometimes pay equally well, filberts.”

*[[Edward Sayers|Sayers, Edward]], September 1835, “The Apple Orchard” (''American Gardeners’ Magazine'' 1: 330)

: “The constructing of rail-roads, [[canal]]s and public thoroughfares, also deter, in a measure, the formation of the apple '''orchard''' in almost all parts of the country, which will be seen by observation. Many trees are also cut down, owing to old age, and many for fire-wood and other purposes of domestic use; but few young trees are planted at the present day, to fill up the deficiency of those decaying, and yearly dwindling away, which, in time, must prove, that scarcity will be the result in general, especially if the crops are light.”

* Hooper, Edward James, 1842, ''The Practical Farmer, Gardener and Housewife'' (pp. 11, 279)<ref>Edward James Hooper, ''The Practical Farmer, Gardener and Housewife, or Dictionary of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Domestic Economy'' (Cincinnati, Ohio: George Conclin, 1842), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2T83BDXR view on Zotero].</ref>

: “When put in an '''orchard''' they should be 6 or 7 feet high; 30 feet each way is the proper distance apart in the '''orchard'''. The mode should be thus, [illus.] or quincunx form which is best for close room. . . .
: “'''ORCHARD'''. '''Orchards''' are the parts of a farm appropriated to the growth of standard fruit trees. They may be reckoned among the permanent improvements of a farm, and should be kept in [[view]] in its first management and laying out.”

[[File:0377.jpg|thumb|Fig. 9, Anonymous, "Plan of a Mansion Residence, laid out in the natural style" in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 115, fig. 25. The "orchard" is indicated at "''e''."]]
* [[Downing, A. J.]], 1849, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (pp. 115–17)<ref>A. J. [Andrew Jackson] Downing, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America'', 4th edn (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/K7BRCDC5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “''Figure'' 25 is the plan of an American mansion of considerable extent, only part of the farm lands, l, being here delineated. In this residence, as there is no extensive view worth preserving beyond the bounds of the estate, the [[pleasure ground]]s are surrounded by an irregular and [[picturesque]] belt of [[wood]]. . . . The small arabesque beds near the house are filled with masses of choice flowering [[shrub]]s and plants; the [[kitchen garden]] is shown at ''d'', and the '''orchard''' at ''e''.” [Fig. 9]

* [[Downing, A. J.]], July 1851, “A Few Words on Fruit Culture” (''Horticulturist'' 6: 297–98)

: “Within the last five years, the planting of '''orchards''' has, in the United States, been carried to an extent never known before. In the northern half of the Union, apple trees, in '''orchards''', have been planted by thousands and hundreds of thousands, in almost every state. The rapid communication established by means of railroads and steamboats in all parts of the country, has operated most favorably on all the lighter branches of agriculture, and so many farmers have found their '''orchards''' the most profitable, because least expensive part of their farms, that '''orchard'''ing has become in some parts of the west, almost an absolute distinct species of husbandry.”

==Images==

===Inscribed===

<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
File:1382.jpg|[[Batty Langley]], "An Improvement of a beautiful Garden at Twickenham," in ''New Principles of Gardening'' (1728), pl. IX.

File:0681.jpg|Anonymous, ''The Plan and Elevation of the Present and Intended Buildings of the Georgia Orphan House Academy'' (1768).

File:0972.jpg|Pierre Pharoux, "General Map of the honorable Wm. frederic Baron of Steuben's Mannor" [detail], c. 1793.

File:0553.jpg|Anonymous, ''A Plan of a Lot and Wharf Belonging to Florian Charles Mey, Esq.'', 1797.

File:1295.jpg|[[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]], ''Sketch of the Estate of Henry Banks Esqr. on York River'', March 1797.

File:0874.jpg|[[John Beale Bordley|J. B. Bordley]], ''Plan of a Farmyard, with details in section'', in [[John Beale Bordley|J. B. Bordley]], ''Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs'' (1801), pl. I.

File:0092.jpg|[[Thomas Jefferson]], "Plan of Spring Roundabout at Monticello," c. 1804.

File:0969.jpg|[[Thomas Jefferson]], Plan of the grounds at Monticello, 1806.

File:0601.jpg|Anonymous, A plan of the section of land on which the Believers live in the state of Ohio, Nov. 7, 1807.

File:0116.jpg|[[Charles Willson Peale]], Sketches of Belfield, 1810.

File:1292.jpg|Anonymous, "Orchards in Alternate Rows, or Quincunx Order," ''The Horticultural Register'', vol. 1 (Jan. 1, 1835), p. 37.

File:0592.jpg|George Kendall, "View of Whitewater," Ohio [detail], 1835.

File:0960.jpg|John J. Thomas, "Plan of a Garden," in ''The Cultivator'' 9, no. 1 (January 1842): p. 22, fig. 8.

File:0823.jpg|Joshua Barney, ''Map of Hampton'', 1843.

File:0098.jpg|Miller & Co., Map of the residence & park grounds, near Bordentown, New Jersey : of the late Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, 1847.

File:1111.jpg|Henry Clay Blinn, ''Plan of Canterbury'', 1848. See detail.

File:0377.jpg|Anonymous, "Plan of a Mansion Residence, laid out in the natural style" in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 115, fig. 25. The "orchard" is indicated at "''e''."

File:0378.jpg|Anonymous, "Plan of a Suburban Villa Residence" in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 118, fig. 26. Downing notes that "At ''e'', is a picturesque orchard."

File:0376.jpg|Anonymous, "Plan of the foregoing grounds as a Country Seat, after ten years' improvement," in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 114, fig. 24.

File:0379.jpg|Anonymous, "View of a Picturesque farm (''ferme ornée'')," in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 120, fig. 27.

File:0333.jpg|G. & F. Bill (firm), Birds eye view of Mt. Vernon the home of Washington, c. 1859.

File:0019.jpg|Anonymous, House Lot, Gardens, and Orchard of Bacon's Castle (after an 1843 survey plan), 1911, in Peter Martin, ''The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson'' (1991), p. 10. fig. 5.

</gallery>

===Associated===

<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
File:0600.jpg|Edward Penington (artist), William Fletcher Boogher (publisher), "A description of two lotts in the city of Philadelphia, the one belonging to the Proprietary, William Penn, the other to his daughter, Lætitia Penn, together with the streets & lotts bounding them. Drawn this 23d day of the 12th month 1698 by Edward Penington, Surv. Genll" [detail], 1882 [1698].

File:0599.jpg|[[George Washington]], A Plan of My Farm on Little Huntg. Creek & Potomk R., 1766.

File:0072.jpg|[[Thomas Jefferson]], Monticello: orchard and vineyard (plat), c. 1778.

File:0022.jpg|Clarissa Deming, Orchard plan, after 1798.

File:0208.jpg|Francis Guy, ''Mount Deposit from the North'', 1805.

File:1176.jpg|Eliza Susan Quincy, ''View of the seat of Edmund Quincy Esqr.'', 1822.

File:0662.jpg|Anonymous, Rose-Lawn, residence of Edgar M. Vanderburgh, c. 1830-40, in Alice B. Lockwood, ''Gardens of Colony and State'' (1931), vol. 1, p. 296.

</gallery>

===Attributed===

<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">
File:0187.jpg|Anonymous, Mount Clare, n.d.

File:0002.jpg|Anonymous, Surveyor’s plat of the courthouse and adjacent land in Charles County, Md., 1697.

File:0180.jpg|Anonymous, "Fairhill, The Seat of Isaac Norris Esq.," 18th century.

File:0208.jpg|Francis Guy, ''Mount Deposit from the North'', 1805.

File:0285.jpg|Nicholas Garrison, ''A View of Bethlehem, one of the Brethren's Principal Settlements, in Pennsylvania, North America'', 1757.

File:0993.jpg|Unknown, Map showing the Bowery Lane area of Manhattan, c. 1760.

File:0161.jpg|Jonathan Budington, ''View of the Cannon House and Wharf'', 1792.

File:0165.jpg|Jonathan Budington or Dr. Francis Forgue, attr., ''View of Main Street in Fairfield, Connecticut'', c. 1800.

File:0594.jpg|[[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]], ''Section of the northern course of the canal from the tide in the Elk River at Frenchtown to the forked [oak] in Mr. Rudulph's swamp'', 1803.

File:0184.jpg|Caroline Betts, “A view of Col. Lincoln’s seat, Casnovia,” c. 1821.

File:0608.jpg|W. Weingartner, Map of Harmony, Ind., 1832.

File:0007.jpg|Charles H. Wolf, attr., ''Pennsylvania Farmstead with Many Fences'', c. 1847.

File:0435.jpg|Edward Hicks, ''The Cornell Farm'', 1848.

File:1232.jpg|Orsamus Turner, Life Cycle of a Pioneer Woodsman ("Third Sketch of the Pioneer"), in ''Pioneer History of the Holland Purchase'' (1850), opp. p. 565.

File:1156.jpg|Mary Steiner Denke (possibly), ''View of Salem from the West'', c. 1852.
</gallery>

==Notes==

<references></references>

[[Category: Keywords]]
[[Category: Garden Types]]
[[Category: Planting Arrangements]]

Fence

2017-09-26T16:01:40Z

T-omalley: /* History */

See also: [[Espalier]], [[Gate]], [[Ha-Ha/Sunk fence|Ha-Ha]], [[Hedge]], [[Wall]]

==History==

[[File:1467.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, John Lewis Krimmel, Tree and rocks near a split-rail fence, c. 1813.]]

[[File:0234.jpg|thumb|Fig. 2, [[Lewis Miller]], “Jesse Hines. Black Smith, menden his pale fence,” 1813, in Lewis Miller, ''Sketches and Chronicles: The Reflections of a Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania German Folk Artist'' (1966), p. 86.”]]

Humphry Repton wrote in 1803 in reference to England that “every county has its peculiar mode of fencing, both in the construction of [[hedge]]s and ditches, which belong rather to the farmer than the landscape gardener.”<ref>Humphry Repton, ''Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (London: Printed by T. Bensley for J. Taylor, 1803), 84. </ref> In America, where the tasks of partitioning, cultivating, and embellishing the landscape were considered inseparable, the distinction between farmer and gardener was less easily made. Frequent references to the fence in both the written and visual record place it among the most fundamental elements of the designed landscape in America. A fence, as dictionary definitions agree, enclosed areas such as gardens, cornfields, [[park]]s, [[woods]], or groups of trees. As <span id="Gregory_cite"></span>[[G. Gregory]] (1816) noted, the feature could be formed by a [[hedge]], [[wall]], ditch, or bank ([[#Gregory|view citation]]). Terms for different fence types abound in American landscape design vocabulary: blind, board, close, cradle, cross, double, foss, hurdle, invisible, live, open board, pale/paling, palisade, picket, post-and-plank, post-and-rail, snake, sunk, [[trellis]], Virginia, wattle, wire, worm, and zigzag.<ref>For a more detailed discussion of fence types, see Vanessa Patrick, “Partitioning the Landscape,” ''Colonial Williamsburg Research Report''(Williamsburg, Va.: Williamsburg Foundation, 1983); Elizabeth Wilkinson and Marjorie Henderson, eds., ''Decorating Eden: A Comprehensive Sourcebook of Classic Garden Details'' (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), 42–69; Wilbur Zelinsky, “Walls and Fences,” in ''Changing Rural Landscapes'', ed. Ervin H. and Margaret J. Zube (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 53–63 [reprinted from ''Landscape'' 8, no. 3 (1959)].</ref>

[[File:0197.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, [[Francis Guy]], ''Rose Hill'', 1798. The home of William Gibson in Baltimore, Md., which is depicted in this detail from a John and Hugh Finley armchair, illustrates the use of a fence to frame the view of the façade. ]]

[[File:1701.jpg|thumb|Fig. 4, [[J. C. Loudon]], Diagram of worm fence, in ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening'' (1834), p. 412, fig. 276.]]

The choice of fence type was dictated by the materials available, local custom, and the need at hand. For instance, worm fences (also called zigzag, snake, split rail, or Virginia fences) did not require posts or post holes and therefore were easily moved to accommodate changing field use and avoided the problem of posts rotting in soil. They were also useful in areas where rocky soil made it difficult to dig post holes or in wooded areas where trees made straight fence lines impractical, as seen in the watercolor sketch by John Lewis Krimmel [Fig. 1]. Paled fences offered a more solid line of defense against deer and rabbits, but had less flexibility and required more labor and finished lumber [Fig. 2]. Such high fences were effective barriers for animals as well as humans, as attested by <span id="Waln_cite"></span>Robert Waln, Jr.’s 1825 description of the board fence at the Friends Asylum for the Insane in Pennsylvania ([[#Waln|view citation]]).

[[File:0476.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, James Smillie (artist), Sarony & Major (printers), ''View of Union Park, New York, from the Head of Broadway,'' 1848. The ironwork fence, at 14th Street, encircles what was known as Union Square Park.]]

[[File:0424.jpg|thumb|Fig. 6, [[Alexander Jackson Davis]], Ithiel Town, and James Dakin, ''New York University, Washington Square'', 1833.]]

Paling fences created visual barriers and were sometimes erected to screen unpleasant views or to provide privacy, particularly in urban settings. For instance, in 1857 <span id="Watson_cite"></span>John Fanning Watson complained that “in the usual selfish style of Philadelphia improved grounds” at William Bingham’s Philadelphia residence, “the whole was surrounded and hid from the public gaze by a high fence” ([[#Watson|view citation]]). Fences were also used to direct the gaze, whether toward a house, as in [[Francis Guy|Francis Guy’s]] chairback painting of Rose Hill in Baltimore [Fig. 3], or other focal point. In other cases, fences such as sunken types (later replaced by wire fences) were desired for their inconspicuous presence in the landscape. Numerous descriptions and horticultural advice columns praised the effect of unobstructed views created by enclosures that kept animals or human traffic at bay with minimal visibility (see [[Ha-ha]]).

[[File:1086.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, James Smillie (artist), O.J. Hanks (engraver), "The Tour -- Oaken Bluff," in Nehemiah Cleaveland, ''Green-Wood Illustrated'' (1847), pl. opp. p. 40.]]

[[File:1078.jpg|thumb|Fig. 8, George W. Stilwell, Patterns of railings at Greenwood Cemetery, in Nehemiah Cleaveland, ''Green-wood Illustrated'' (1847), pl. after p. 94. This book includes a description of a “neat iron paling surrounds the hill, marking it as the appropriate final home of a large family.”]]

Fences were constructed from a variety of materials. In the Tidewater’s sedimentary soils where stone was scarce, wood was the most common material and was used mainly in paled, post-and-rail or board, and worm fences. Although types of wood that could be used were varied, a typical paling fence utilized different types of wood. For example, hard wood, such as locust, cedar, or oak, was often used for posts; wood with tensile strength, such as oak, poplar, or pine, was used for rails; and lightweight wood, such as pine, could be employed for the pales.<ref>Patrick, “Partitioning the Landscape,” 2, 16.</ref> Although worm fences [Fig. 4] have been documented in Delaware, New York, and as far north as Canada, they were so common in the Tidewater area that they were often identified as Virginia fences. <span id="Anburey_cite"></span>Thomas Anburey even reported that New Englanders described a drunken man’s impaired movements as “making Virginia fences” ([[#Anburey|view citation]]). In southern New England’s glacier-formed topography, abundant fieldstone was used for stone [[wall]]s, which sometimes were referred to as stone fences.<ref>While treatise and dictionary definitions of “fence” list stone and brick as building materials, it was common practice in America to refer to stone and brick barriers as [[wall]]s. In 1871, the first year for which statistics were kept, a study of fence types in New England revealed that stone fences ranged from 32 percent in Vermont and 33 percent in Connecticut to 67 percent in Maine and 79 percent in Rhode Island (see Zelinsky, “Walls and Fences,” 59).</ref> Fences could also be created from live plants, predominantly thorn (hawthorn and buckthorn), although writers including Edward James Hooper (1842) and Charles Wyllys Elliott (1848) recommended osage orange, cedar, Chinese arbor vitae, privet, holly, honey and black locust, beech, willow, and hemlock. The advantages of live fences were a matter of great debate, particularly in early nineteenth-century publications that advocated the “new agriculture.” These writings included those by the New York and Massachusetts Agricultural Societies, and later, in periodical form, the ''Horticulturist''. In addition to their durability and long-term cost savings, it was argued that live fences harmonized better with the surrounding landscape (see [[Hedge]]). A similar effect could also be achieved with other fences, as suggested by <span id="Sayers_cite"></span>Edward Sayers (1838), by training “vines and creepers” to conceal old and unsightly fences ([[#Sayers|view citation]]).

[[File:1677.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 9, [[W. R. Hamilton]], ''Landscape View of a House and Garden'' [detail], 1836.]]

[[File:1752.jpg|thumb|Fig. 10, [[William Halfpenny]], "A Chinese Acute angular Paleing" and "A Chinese Obtuse & Diamond Paleing," in ''Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste'' (1755), pl. 3.]]

Iron [[gate]]s were used in the eighteenth century at such sites as [[Westover]], on the James River, Va., and the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, and iron fences were employed for the fronts of elite dwellings and notable institutions.<ref>At Westover, research has revealed that the iron-[[gate]] was originally painted white (Carl Lounsbury, personal communication).</ref> It was not, however, until the second quarter of the nineteenth century when the expansion of America’s domestic iron industry and advances in cast iron made iron fences affordable for those of more modest means. This availability is reflected in the more than one hundred fence patents that were registered between 1801 and 1857.<ref>See Gregory K. Dreicer, “Wired! The Fence Industry and the Invention of Chain Link,” in ''Between Fences'', ed. Gregory K. Dreicer (Washington, D.C.: National Building Museum; New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 71.</ref> Treatises, such as those by [[A. J. Downing]] (1849) and [[William H. Ranlett]] (1851), provided examples of fashionable designs to be installed in front of suburban [[yard]]s. Elaborate iron-work fences were particularly popular as enclosures for urban [[park]]s [Fig. 5], educational institutions [Fig. 6], and family burial [[plot]]s [Fig. 7]. These [[plot]]s, with their elaborate fences, were favorite subjects in illustrated books of the new rural [[cemetery|cemeteries]] [Fig. 8].

[[File:0184.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 11, [[Caroline Betts]], “A view of Col. Lincoln’s seat, Casnovia,” c. 1821.]]

[[File:0754.jpg|thumb|Fig. 12, [[Samuel Barnard]], ''View Along the East Battery, Charleston'', 1831.]]

Despite the variety of materials and designs, fences shared many common functions. Garden fences, like [[wall]]s, created micro-climates for plants: southern façades were ideal for promoting early harvests of fruit trees trained on [[espalier]]s or protecting tender [[nursery]] plants, while northern sides provided sheltered, shady spots in long dry summers. <span id="Cobbett_cite"></span>William Cobbett (1819) emphasized the value of fences as shelters in America, given its extremes of heat and cold in contrast to the more temperate English climate ([[#Cobbett|view citation]]).

[[File:1130.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 13, [[Marie L. Pilsbury]], ''Louisiana Plantation Scene'', 1820.]]

[[File:0203_detail.jpg|thumb|Fig. 14, [[Francis Guy]], ''Perry Hall from the northwest'' [detail], c. 1805.]]

Fences were the primary boundary markers that defined property lines and distinguished “improved” from “unimproved” land, and early legislation frequently required the fencing of landholdings. Fences also marked divisions within a property owner’s estate, such as those between field, [[meadow]], pasture, [[orchard]], and [[yard]]; and, within the garden itself, fences separated areas such as the [[flower garden]], [[kitchen garden]], and [[nursery]] [Fig. 9]. The form of the fence often reflected its position or function. For example, post-and-rail fences would mark the boundaries and the divisions of the fields, while a palisaded brick [[wall]] served as a retaining [[wall]] along a [[slope]], and a picket fence delineated the [[geometric style|geometrically]] regular garden adjacent to the house. Not surprisingly, the public [[view]] of the property was often framed by more ornamented fence types, and aspiring owners could draw from pattern books, such as that by [[William and John Halfpenny]] (1755), for inspiration [Fig. 10]. Numerous images, including Caroline Betts’s painting of Lorenzo on Lake Cazenovia [Fig. 11], show a more elaborate treatment given to the fences in front of houses in contrast to the pale or post-and-rail fences that lined roads and enclosed [[meadow]]s. <span id="Cobbett_cite"></span>[[William Cobbett]] (1819), in this vein, described a hierarchy of fences from the “rudest barriers” to the “grandest” and “noblest,” along with “every degree of gradation” in between ([[#Cobbett|view citation]]), and <span id="Benjamin_cite"></span>Asher Benjamin (1830) recommended that the size of front fences be suited to the scale of the house ([[#Benjamin|view citation]]).

[[File:0003-detail.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 15, [[William Dering]], attr., ''Portrait of George Booth'' [detail], 1748-1750.]]

[[File:0515.jpg|thumb|Fig. 16, [[Eunice Pinney]], attr., ''Mother and Child in Mountain Landscape'', 1805–1825.]]

Distinctions in the fence in the landscape were also made by painting sections or the sides of fences. In several New England examples, including the Dennie overmantle, utilitarian fences were painted red, while more formal fence sections near the house were painted white. In still other instances, such as the painting ''View Along the East Battery'' [Fig. 12], parts of the fence furthest from the house were left unpainted in contrast to the painted fence in front of the house. [[View]]s, such as Marie L. Pilsbury’s Louisiana [[plantation]] scene [Fig 13], are especially striking since the white [[gate]] of the [[drive]] stands out in sharp contrast to the unpainted brown post-and-rail fence. While the selective use of white served to highlight portions of the fence, it also conserved white paint, which was more costly.<ref>Robert Emlen, ''Shaker Village Views: Illustrated Maps and Landscape Drawings by Shaker Artists of the Nineteenth Century'' (Hanover, N.H., and London: University Press of New England, 1987), 8.</ref>

[[File:0020.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 17, [[Janika de Fériet]], ''The Hermitage'', c.1820. This sketch depicts a fence demarcating the boundary between the house’s yard and the landscape beyond.]]

Fences were critical for keeping livestock in and garden pests contained. During the early years of settlement when livestock (such as pigs) were not restrained, colonists fenced their garden [[plot]]s, while animals wreaked havoc on the open fields of Native Americans.<ref> William Cronon, ''Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England'' (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 130–31.</ref> In large estates, above-ground fences or [[ha ha|sunken fences]] around the house were used to separate animals grazing in the open land of larger, more naturalistic landscape [[park]]s from more densely planted areas immediately surrounding the house, as depicted in [[Francis Guy|Francis Guy’s]] 1805 painting of [[Perry Hall]] in Baltimore [Fig. 14]. Urban gardens faced their share of potential intruders as well, both animal and human, and fences were an important element in defining urban public spaces such as [[common]]s, [[squares]], roads, and [[park]]s.

Fences were symbolic, as well as practical, boundaries.<ref> The functions, both symbolic and practical, of fences have been explored in an exhibition and catalogue organized and edited by Gregory K. Dreicer, ''Between Fences'', cited in note 6.</ref> Churchyards were often fenced, in part to protect them from wandering animals, and in part to demarcate the sacred space within. The similarity of [[yard]]-like enclosures created around family burials suggests an expression of the eternal domestic unit represented within. In both images and actual landscapes, fences around residences signified the division between personal property and the world beyond. This boundary made the presence and treatment of openings, such as [[gate]]s, particularly important as they marked the passage between these realms of the public and the private (see [[Gate]]). Residential fences were also a visual statement of their owners’ resources and abilities. For example, in William Dering’s portrait of George Booth, the fence in the background divides the near and middle grounds [Fig. 15]. Dering extended the [[view]] into the distant, irregular landscape, but signaled the proprietor’s control over the space within the confines of his fence with the regular plantings and trimmed path. Countless representations of houses offer a similar demarcation, usually from the reverse perspective, showing the area surrounding the dwelling separated from the larger landscape by a fence. This division of domestic space is seen in modest gardens from Eunice Pinney’s ''Mother and Child in Mountain Landscape'' [Fig. 16] to more elaborate estates such as [[Janika de Fériet|Janika de Fériet’s]] ''The Hermitage'' [Fig. 17].

Descriptions by travelers, such as Timothy Dwight, also demonstrate the significance of fences as an indication of the prosperity or decline of an area. <span id="Bigelow_cite"></span>Timothy Bigelow (1805) described the Shaker Village of Hancock, N.Y., as “much better fenced than any other in [the] vicinity” ([[#Bigelow|view citation]]). With some pride, a writer in the <span id="Register_1836_cite"></span>''Horticultural Register'' in 1836 found Maine wanting in comparison to Massachusetts since there was “not that attention paid to the appearance of fences about the dwellings, door [[yard]]s, &c. as with us” ([[#Register_1836|view citation]]). In something of an horticultural parable the <span id="Register_1837_cite"></span>''Horticultural Register'' (1837) described the proprietor who spent all his money on his house leaving it to stand “dreary and alone . . . an unsightly broken fence to enclose it” while, with more foresight, “a more finished appearance is presented; the house is neatly painted . . . and a picket fence encircles it” ([[#Register_1837|view citation]]).

--''Elizabeth Kryder-Reid''

==Texts==

===Usage===

* Rex, Charles, August 1641, instructions to Sir William Berkeley (quoted in Billings 1975: 56) <ref>Billings, Warren M., ed. 1975. ''The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689''. Williamsburg, Va.: Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/S2TZJIN9 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“25. That they apply themselves to the Impaling of [[orchard]]s and gardens for Roots and fruits, which that Country is so proper for and that every Planter be compelled for every 200 Acres Granted unto him to inclose and sufficiently '''Fence''', either with Pales or Quick sett, and ditch, and so from time to time to preserve inclosed and '''Fenced''' a Quarter of an Acre of Ground in the most Convenient place near his dwelling house for [[Orchard]]s and Gardens.”

* Fitzhugh, William, April 1686, in a letter to Dr. Ralph Smith, describing Greensprings, Va. (quoted in Lockwood 1934: 2:46) <ref>Lockwood, Alice B., ed. 1931-1934. ''Gardens of Colony and State: Gardens and Gardeners of the American Colonies and of the Republic before 1840''. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s for the Garden Club of America. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JNB7BI9T view on Zotero]</ref>
:“the [[Plantation]] where I now live contains a thousand acres, grounds and '''fencing''' . . . a large [[orchard]] of about 2500 Apple trees most grafted, well '''fenced''' with a locust '''fence''', which is as durable as most brick [[wall]]s, a Garden, a hundred foot square, well pailed in, a [[yard|Yeard]] wherein is most of the aforesaid necessary houses, pallizad’d in with locust Punchens which is as good as if it were walled in and more lasting than any of our bricks.”

* [[William Penn|Penn, William]], c. 1687, in a letter to James Harrison, inquiring about Pennsbury Manor, country estate of [[William Penn]], near Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Thomforde 1986: 1) <ref>Thomforde, Charles. 1986. “William Penn’s Estate at Pennsbury and the Plants of Its Kitchen Garden”. Master’s thesis, Public Horticulture Administration, University of Delaware. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MSV2MR5T view on Zotero]</ref>
:“I should be glad to see a draugh of Pennsberry w<sup>ch</sup> an Artist would quickly take, w<sup>th</sup> y<sup>e</sup> land scip of y<sup>e</sup> hous, out houses, [[orchard]]s, also w<sup>t</sup> grounds you have cleered w<sup>t</sup> improvem<sup>t</sup>s made. an account how the peach & apple [[orchard]]s grow; Bear. if any [[walk]]s be made, & steps at ye water & how yt garden next y<sup>e</sup> water towards ye house, is layd out & thrives, how farr you advance . . . w<sup>t</sup> '''fence''' about ye yards gardens & [[orchard]]s.”

* Virginia General Assembly, 23 October 1705, describing a legislative ruling in Virginia (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; hereafter CWF)
:“(I) Be it enacted . . . that if any horses, mares, cattle, hogs, sheep, or goats, shall break into any grounds, being inclosed with a strong and sound '''fence''', four foot and half high, and so close that the beasts or kine breaking into the same, could not creep through; or with an [[hedge]] two foot high, upon a ditch of three foot deep, and three foot broad, or instead of such [[hedge]], a rail '''fence''' of two foot and half high, the [[hedge]] or '''fence''' being so close that none of the creatures aforesaid can creep through, (which shall be accounted a lawful '''fence''',) the owner . . . shall for the first trespass by any of them committed, make reparation to the party injured.”

* Anonymous, 4 August 1733, describing in the ''South Carolina Gazette'' a cemetery in Berkeley County, S.C. (CWF)
:“The new [[Burying Ground]] '''Fence''' to be done in the same manner it formerly was, the posts of both to be of the best light wood, Chinquepin or Cedar.”

* Ball, Joseph, February 1734, describing a property in Virginia (Library of Congress, Joseph Ball Letterbook)
:“The apple [[Nursery]] '''Fence''' must be kept upright good & strong, but set upon blocks, so that small hogs may go in, to keep down the weeds.”

* Kalm, Pehr, 21 September 1748 and 22 January 1749, describing fences in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York (1937: 1:47, 238–39) <ref>Kalm, Pehr. 1937. ''The America of 1750: Peter Kalm’s Travels in North America. The English Version of 1770''. 2 vols. New York: Wilson-Erickson. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/94EZM2V4 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The '''fences''' and pales are generally made here of wooden planks and posts. But a few good economists, having already thought of sparing the [[woods]] for future times, have begun to plant quick [[hedge]]s round their fields; and for this purpose they take the above-mentioned privet, which they plant in a little bank that is thrown up for it.”
:“'''''Fences'''''. The '''fences''' built in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but especially in New York, are those which on account of their serpentine form resembling worms are called ‘worm '''fences'''’* in English. The rails which compose this '''fence''' are taken from different trees, but they are not all of equal duration. . . . In order to make rails the people do not cut down the young trees . . . but they fell here and there large trees, cut them in several places, leaving the pieces as long as it is necessary, and split them into rails of the desired thickness; a single tree affords a multitude of rails. . . . Thus the worm '''fence''' is one of the most useful sorts of inclosures, especially as they cannot get any posts made of the wood of this county to last above six or eight years in the ground without rotting . . . the worm '''fences''' are easily put up again, when they are forced down. . . . Considering how much more wood the worm-'''fences''' require (since they zigzag) than other '''fences''' which go in straight lines, and that they are so soon useless, one may imagine how the forests will be consumed, and what sort of an appearance the country will have forty or fifty years hence.
:“* The well-known zigzag '''fence''' of rails crossing at the ends. It is also called ‘snake '''fence'''’ or ‘Virginia rail '''fence'''.’

* Alexiowitz, Iwan, 1769, in a letter describing [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery]], vicinity of Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Darlington 1849: 50) <ref>Darlington, William. 1849. ''Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall: With Notices of Their Botanical Contemporaries''. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKNVQG76 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“Thence we rambled through his fields, where the rightangular '''fences''', the heaps of pitched stones, the flourishing clover, announced the best husbandry, as well as the most assiduous attention.”

*<div id="Anburey"></div>Anburey, Thomas, 20 January 1779, describing Jones’s Plantation, near Charlottesville, Va. ([1789] 1969: 2:323–24) <ref>Anburey, Thomas. [1789] 1969. ''Travels through the Interior Parts of America''. 2 vols. New York: New York Times and Arno Press. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/R77SENEZ view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Anburey_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“The '''fences''' and enclosures in this province are different from others, for those to the northward are made either of stone or rails let into posts, about a foot asunder; here they are composed of what is termed '''''fence''''' ''rails'', which are made out of trees cut or sawed into lengths of about twelve feet, that are mauld or split into rails from four to six inches diameter.

:“When they form an inclosure, these rails are laid so, that they cross each other obliquely at each end, and are laid zig zag to the amount of ten or eleven rails in height, then stakes are put against each corner, double across, with the lower ends drove a little into the ground, and above these stakes is placed a rail of double the size of the others, which is termed the rider, which, in a manner, locks up the whole, and keeps the '''fence''' firm and steady.

:“These enclosures are generally seven or eight feet high, they are not very strong but convenient, as they can be removed to any other place, where they may be more necessary; from a mode of constructing these enclosures in a zig zag form, the New-Englanders have a saying, when a man is in liquor, ''he is making Virginia'' '''''fences'''''.”

* Cutler, Rev. Manasseh, 13 July 1787, describing the [[State House Yard]], Philadelphia, Pa. (1987: 1:263) <ref>Cutler, Manasseh. 1987. ''Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler''. Edited by William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkin Cutler. 2 vols. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ASAS6SD5 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The [[Mall]] is at present nearly surrounded with buildings, which stand near to the board '''fence''' that incloses it, and the parts now vacant will, in a short time, be filled up.”

* Brissot de Warville, J. P., 9 August 1788, describing the journey from Boston to New York, N.Y. (1792: 127–28) <ref>Brissot de Warville, J.-P. (Jacques-Pierre). 1792. ''New Travels in the United States Performed in 1788''. New York: T. & J. Swords. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKXB2WAU view on Zotero]</ref>
:“But the uncleared lands are all located, and the proprietors have inclosed them with '''fences''' of different sorts. These several kinds of '''fences''' are composed of different materials, which announce the different degrees of culture in the country. Some are composed of the light branches of trees; others, of the trunks of trees laid one upon the other; a third sort is made of long pieces of wood, supporting each other by making angles at the end; a fourth kind is made of long pieces of hewn timber, supported at the ends by passing into holes made in an upright post; a fifth is like the garden '''fences''' in England; the last kind is made of stones thrown together to the height of three feet. This last is most durable, and is common in Massachusetts.”

* Bentley, William, 22 October 1790, describing [[Elias Hasket Derby Farm]], Peabody, Mass. (1962: 1:180) <ref>Bentley, William. 1962. ''The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusett''s. Vol. 1, 2 and 4. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/B63ABACF view on Zotero]</ref>
:“[231] 22. . . . The Principal Garden is in three parts divided by an open slat '''fence''' painted white, & the '''fence''' white washed. It includes 7/8 of an Acre. . . . The House is [lined?] with a superb '''fence''', but is itself a mere country House, one story higher than common with a rich owner.”

* Moreau de Saint-Méry, M.L.E., 25 May 1794, describing the fences of houses in America (Roberts and Roberts, eds., 1947: 121–22) <ref>Roberts, Kenneth, and Anna M. Roberts, eds. 1947. ''Moreau de St. Méry’s American Journey, [1793-1798]''. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5TDSZ2UB view on Zotero]</ref>
:“In America almost everything is sacrificed to the outside [[view]]. To accomplish this the '''fences''' of the houses are sometimes varied by these six combinations: 1. Planks are laid vertically and close together. 2. Planks are laid the same way, with a space between them. 3. Little narrow boards are laid across without joining. 4. Vertically placed laths are joined. 5. Vertically placed laths are not joined. 6. Laths are placed vertically, but passing alternately on the outside and the inside of cross members. Further elegance is obtained by using different shades of paint on lattices and partitions.”

* [[François-Alexandre-Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld Liancourt|François-Alexandre-Frédéric, duc de]], 1795–97, describing Norristown, Pa. (1800: 1:18) <ref>La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, François-Alexandre-Frédéric, duc de. 1800. ''Travels through the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797''. Edited by Brisson Dupont and Charles Ponges. Translated by H. Newman. 2nd ed. 4 vols. London: R. Philips. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SRMDWJ2M view on Zotero]</ref>
:“Yet the uninterrupted and high '''fences''' of dry wood greatly disfigure the landscape, and produce a tedious sameness. These might be easily replaced by trees which endure the frost, as thorns are supposed here (I think without any just ground) to be unsuitable to the climate. Some of the fields along the road are bordered with ''traga'' or cedar, but these experiments are rare; and, in general, the land is inclosed with double '''fences''' of wood.”

* [[Timothy Dwight|Dwight, Timothy]], 1796, describing New Haven Green, New Haven, Conn. (1821: 1:184) <ref>Dwight, Timothy. 1821-1822. ''Travels in New England and New York''. 4 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Timothy Dwight. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KHT2AUCG view on Zotero]</ref>
:“'''Fences''', and out-houses are also in the same style [neat and tidy]: and being almost universally painted white, make a delightful appearance to the eye; and appearance, not a little enhanced, by the great multitude of shade-trees: a species of ornament, in which this town is unrivalled.”

* Anonymous, 18 April 1800, describing in the ''Federal Gazette'' Willow Brook, seat of John Donnell, Baltimore, Md. (quoted in Sarudy 1989: 137) <ref> Sarudy, Barbara Wells. 1989. “Eighteenth-Century Gardens of the Chesapeake.” ''Journal of Garden History'' 9, no.3 (July-September): 104–59. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/PGSNXHMJ view on Zotero]</ref>
:“That beautiful, healthy and highly improved [[seat]], within one mile of the city of Baltimore, called Willow Brook, containing about 26 acres of land, the whole of which is under a good post and rail '''fence''', divided and laid off into grass lots, [[orchard]]s, garden.”

*<div id="Bigelow"></div>Bigelow, Timothy, 1805, describing visit to Hancock Shaker Village, N.Y. (quoted in Hammond 1982: 201) <ref>Hammond, Charles Arthur. 1982. “‘Where the Arts and the Virtues Unite’: Country Life Near Boston, 1637-1864”. Ph.D. diss., Boston University. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VVFZVIKT view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Bigelow_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“[The] lands (are) easily ascertained by the most transient observer; for they are more highly cultivated, laid out with more taste and regularity, and much better '''fenced''' than any other in their vicinity.”

* [[Charles Drayton|Drayton, Charles]], November 2, 1806, describing [[The Woodlands]], seat of [[William Hamilton]], near Philadelphia, Pa. (1806: 54–55)<ref>Charles Drayton, "The Diary of Charles Drayton I, 1806," 1806, Drayton Hall: A National Historic Trust Site, http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:27554, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HAARCGXN view on Zotero].</ref>
:"The '''Fences''' separating the [[Park]]-[[lawn]] from the Garden on one hand, & the office [[yard]] on the other, are 4 ft. 6 high. The former are made with posts & lathes—the latter with posts, rails & boards. They are concealed with evergreeens [[hedge]]—of juniper I think. A common post & rail '''fence''', [not in sight from the house,] winds from the public road [[gate]], & joins to the garden '''fence''', which is a double sloped ditch, with a low '''fence''' of posts & 3 rails. They seemed insufficient—at least for turbulent horses or even Sheep. The [[park]] [[lawn]] is not in good order, for lack of being fed upon. Its '''fences''' where it is not visible from the house, is of common posts & rails."

* Stebbins, William, 6 February 1810, describing the [[White House]], Washington, D.C. (1968: 37) <ref>Stebbins, William. 1968. ''The Journal of William Stebbins''. Edited by Pierce W. Gaines. Hartford, Conn.: Acorn Club. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2TA7CCFU view on Zotero]</ref>
:“Extended my walk alone to the President’s House:—a handsome edifice, tho’ like the capitol of free stone: the south [[yard]] principally made ground, bank’d up by a common stone [[wall]]: a plain picket '''fence''' on each side, the passage way to the house on the north: —some of the pickets lying on the ground.”

[[File:0116.jpg|thumb|Fig. 18, [[Charles Willson Peale]], Sketches of Belfield, 1810.]]
* [[Charles Willson Peale|Peale, Charles Willson]], 29 July 1810, in letter to his son, [[Rembrandt Peale]], describing [[Belfield]], estate of [[Charles Willson Peale]], Germantown, Pa. (Miller, Hart, and Ward, eds., 1991: 3:55) <ref>Miller, Lillian B., and et al, eds. 1983–2000. ''The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family: Charles Willson Peale: Artist in Revolutionary America, 1735-1791''. Vol. 1; ''Charles Willson Peale, Artist as Museum Keeper, 1791-1810''. Vol 2, Pts. 1-2; ''The Belfield Farm Years, 1810-1820''. Vol. 3; ''The Autobiography of Charles Willson Peale''. Vol. 5. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/IZAKPCBG view on Zotero]</ref>
:“This [[View]] is taken at a point [from] the Tennants house a small distance, by which you see the Roof of the Mantion over the Garden '''fence''' which are of boards on a Stone [[Wall]].” [Fig. 18]

* Lambert, John, 1816, describing Skenesborough, N.Y., and the Northern and Mid-Atlantic states (2:28–29, 231–32) <ref>Lambert, John. 1816. ''Travels through Canada, and the United States of North America in the Years 1806, 1807, and 1808''. 2 vols. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/T9KUEDWH view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The other parts of the farms were covered with the stumps of trees, and enclosed by worm '''fences''', which gave to these settlements a very rough appearance.”

:“A contrary practice is adopted in the northern and middle states, where a succession of farms, [[meadow]]s, gardens, and habitations, continually meet the eye of the traveller; and if [[hedge]]s were substituted for rail '''fences''', those States would very much resemble some of the English counties.”

* Hulme, Thomas, 28 June 1818, describing the settlement of Morris Birkbeck, New Harmony, Ind. (quoted in Cobbett 1819: 475) <ref>Cobbett, William. 1819. ''A Year’s Residence in the United States of America''. London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HA3Q8TX8 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“910. I very much admire Mr. Birkbeck’s mode of '''''fencing'''''. He makes a ditch 4 feet wide at top, sloping to 1 foot wide at bottom, and 4 feet deep. With the earth that comes out of the ditch he makes a bank on one side, which is turfed towards the ditch. Then a long pole is put up from the bottom of the ditch to 2 feet above the bank; this is crossed by a short pole from the other side, and then a rail is laid along between the forks. The banks were growing beautifully, and looked altogether very neat as well as formidable; though a live [[hedge]] (which he intends to have) instead of dead poles and rails, upon top, would make the '''fence''' far more effectual as well as handsomer.”

* Green, Samuel, 13 May 1820, receipt for Hermitage, estate of Andrew Jackson, Nashville, Tenn. (Hermitage Collections, Andrew Jackson Papers: DLC 9967)
:“To putting up one hundred & twenty one pannel of post and rail cedar '''fence''' at half a dollar pr pannel, $60.50”

* Hening, William Waller, 1823, describing a legislative action by the Virginia General Assembly (quoted in Lounsbury 1994: 138) <ref>Lounsbury, Carl R., ed. 1994. ''An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape''. New York: Oxford University Press. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UK5TCUQQ view on Zotero]</ref>
:“every freeman shall '''fence''' in a quarter of an acre of ground before Whitsuntide next to make a garden.”

*<div id="Waln"></div>Waln, Robert, Jr., 1825, describing the Friends Asylum for the Insane, near Frankford, Pa. (p. 231) <ref>Waln, Robert Jr. 1825. “An Account of the Asylum for the Insane, Established by the Society of Friends, near Frankford, in the Vicinity of Philadelphia.” ''Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences'' 1 (new series), no.2: 225–51. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D39BHTPH view on Zoter]</ref> [[#Waln_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“In the rear of the wings are situated the [[yard]]s or airing grounds, for the use of the male and female patients, separated by the space in the rear of the centre building, and each containing about five-ninths of an acre of ground, in grass, surrounded by [[walk]]s. These are enclosed by board '''fences''', ten feet in height, on the top of which is a simple, but effectual, apparatus for preventing escape of the patients. Boards about eight feet long and eight inches broad, and apparently forming part of the stationary '''fence''', but detached from it, are placed around the whole circuit of the enclosure: these are connected to the '''fence''' beneath by hinges. Blocks of wood, about two feet long, are attached to these boards on the outside, at the lower part of which, are rings through which a strong wire is conducted: at the extremities of these wires alarum bells are attached. When the patient, in attempting to escape, seizes one of these moveable boards, it turns inwards on its hinges, the adventurer falls back into the [[yard]], and the appendant blocks of wood, protruding, stretch the wire, and sound the alarm, which is distinctly heard through the building.”

* Committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1830, describing Sweet Briar, seat of Samuel Breck, vicinity of Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Boyd 1929: 425) <ref name="Boyd_1929">Boyd, James. 1929. ''A History of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1827-1927''. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UN9TRH8T view on Zoter]</ref>
:“Mr. Breck has taken considerable pains with a [[hedge]] of white hawthorn (Crataegus), which he planted in 1810, and caused to be plashed, stalked, and dressed last Spring by two Englishmen, who understood the business well. Yet he apprehends the whole of the plants will gradually decay, and oblige him to substitute a post and rail '''fence'''. Almost every attempt to cultivate a live '''fence''' in the neighborhood of Philadelphia seems to have failed. The foliage disappears in August, and the plant itself is short lived in our climate.”

* Committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, 1830, describing [[Eaglesfield]], country residence of John J. Borie, vicinity of Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Boyd 1929: 441) <ref name="Boyd_1929"></ref>
:“The [[lawn]] is extensive, and divided from the house by a handsome chain '''fence''', supported by posts painted green and very neatly turned. We notice this triple chained barrier, so light and beautiful, because we were informed that its price is as cheap as wood; to which, its graceful curve, and light appearance, render it every way superior.”

* Mason, General John, c. 1830, describing Gunston Hall, seat of George Mason, Mason Neck, Va. (quoted in Rowland 1964: 1:100) <ref>Rowland, Kate Mason. 1964. ''The Life of George Mason: 1725-1792''. 2 vols. New York: Russell and Russell. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HTZXK292 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The isthmus on the northern boundary is narrow and the whole estate was kept completely enclosed, by a '''fence''' on that side of about one mile in length running from the head of Holt’s to the margin of Pohick Creek. This '''fence''' was maintained with great care and in good repair in my father’s time, in order to secure his own stock the exclusive range within it, and made of uncommon height, to keep in the native deer which had been preserved there in abundance from the first settlement of the country, and indeed are yet there in considerable numbers.”

* Ingraham, Joseph Holt, 1835, describing the villas and gardens along the Mississippi River (1:230) <ref>Ingraham, Joseph Holt. 1835. ''The South-West''. 2 vols. New York: Harper. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DTFA8CCM view on Zotero]</ref>
:“An hour’s drive, after clearing the suburbs, past a succession of isolated [[villa]]s, encircled by slender [[column]]s and airy galleries, and surrounded by richly foliaged gardens, whose '''fences''' were bursting with the luxuriance which they could scarcely confine, brought us in front of a charming residence.”

* <div id="Register_1836"></div>B., J., 1 October 1836, “Horticulture in Maine” (''Horticultural Register'' 2: 385) [[#Register_1836_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“Through the whole country, the substantials of life seem to be more attended to than ornament or the luxuries of horticulture.—There is not that attention paid to the appearance of '''fences''' about the dwellings, door [[yard]]s, &c. as with us.”

* Adams, Rev. Nehemiah, 1842, describing [[Boston Common]], Boston, Mass. ([Adams] 1842: 42–43) <ref>Adams, Nehemiah. 1842. ''Boston Common''. Boston: William D. Ticknor and H. B. Williams. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VXTWGJ58 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The iron '''fence''' and brick side-walk which surround the [[Common]] are noble monuments of public enterprise and of the energy of American mechanics. The [[burial ground|burial-ground]] formerly reached to the southern line of the [[Common]]. It was resolved to continue the [[mall]] through the [[burial ground|burial-ground]], but it was foreseen that, in doing it, public accomodation would interfere with the private and sacred attachment of individuals to their ancestral tombs. . . . [After the burials were moved] The [[mall]] was continued through the [[burial ground|burial-ground]] to make the entire circuit of the [[Common]]. A slight and graceful iron '''fence''' was thrown around the tombs, and a rich and durable '''fence''' of the same material, with a brick [[wall]] outside, surrounding the whole [[Common]], a circumference of five thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven feet, was begun and completed within six months.”

[[File:1047.jpg|thumb|Fig. 19, [[Alexander W. Longfellow]], Sketch of the grounds of the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, 1844.]]
* Longfellow, Samuel, 3 September 1845, describing the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, Cambridge, Mass. (quoted in Evans 1993: 1:40) <ref>Evans, Catherine. 1993. ''Cultural Landscape Report for Longfellow National Historic Site, History and Existing Conditions''. Vol. 1. Boston: National Park Service, North Atlantic Region. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9TI9GUQN view on Zotero]</ref>
:“A buckthorn [[hedge]] has been made between us & Mr. Hastings, and Mr. Worcester not satisfied with the rustic open '''fence''' which separates between us demands a [[hedge]] there also which will cover up entirely the glimpse that I get from my western window and which I do not at all like to loose [''sic''].” [Fig. 19]

* Cleaveland, Nehemiah, 1847, describing Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass. (quoted in Walter 1847: 20) <ref>Walter, Cornelia W. 1847. ''Mount Auburn Illustrated in a Series of Views from Drawings by James Smillie''. New York: Martin and Johnson. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CN79BMN8 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“In 1844, the increasing funds of the corporation justified a new expenditure for the plain but massy iron '''fence''' which encloses the front of the [[Cemetery]]. This '''fence''' is ten feet in height, and supported on granite posts extending four feet into the ground. It measures half a mile in length, and will, when completed, effectually preserve the [[Cemetery]] inviolate from any rude intrusion. The cost of the gateway was about $10,000—the '''fence''', $15,000.

:“A continuation of the iron '''fence''' on the easterly side is now under contract, and a strong wooden palisade is, as we learn, to be erected on the remaining boundary during the present year.”

* Notman, John, 1848, describing his designs for the Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va. (quoted in Greiff 1979: 145) <ref>Greiff, Constance. 1979. ''John Notman, Architect, 1810-1865''. Philadelphia: Athenaeum of Philadelphia. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SXT2RI6Z view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The east hill should be planted densely, the plants may be of any kinds—better it should be overgrown with the common pine than remain in its present state; anything growing on that side would make the [[Cemetery]] seem more private, which is very desirable, as all who feel must know—and indeed it may be laid down as a rule, that all the exterior '''fences''' of a rural [[cemetery]] ought to be enveloped in shade of trees or young plantings of trees, else why do we '''fence''' our lots, or shut out the world’s otherwise, if not in grief—therefore, all along the east and west '''fences''' should be thickly planted, occasionally spreading out wide as I have marked upon the plan on these two lines.”

* Kirkbride, Thomas S., April 1848, describing [[pleasure ground]]s and farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, Philadelphia, Pa. (''American Journal of Insanity'' 4: 347, 349)
:“The [[pleasure ground]]s of the two sexes are very effectually separated on the eastern side, by the [[deer park|deer-park]], surrounded by a high palisade '''fence''', but the [[Park]] itself is so low that it is completely overlooked from both sides; and the different animals in it are in full view from the adjoining grounds used by the patients of both sexes. . . .

:“Between the north lodge and the [[deer park|deer-park]], separated from the latter by a sunk palisade '''fence''', is a neat [[flower garden]]. . . .

:“The '''fences''' that have been put up, were rendered necessary by the uses to which the different parts of the grounds were appropriated. A large part of the palisade '''fences''', like those enclosing the [[deer park|deer-park]] and drying-[[yard]], were to effect the separation of the sexes, and the close '''fences''' have been made, almost invariably, for the sole purpose of protecting the patients from observation, and giving them the proper degree of privacy.”

* Tuthill, Louisa C., 1848, describing New Haven Burying Ground, New Haven, Conn. ([1848] 1988: 337) <ref>Tuthill, Louisa C. [1848] 1988. ''History of Architecture, from the Earliest Times; Its Present Condition in Europe and the United States; with a Biography of Eminent Architects, and a Glossary of Architectural Terms, by Mrs. L. C. Tuthill''. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/4ACTS7DK view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The ‘[[cemetery|burying-ground]]’ at New Haven, Connecticut, has long been celebrated for its beauty. It has recently been enclosed with a massive [[wall]] on three sides, and a bronzed iron '''fence''' in front. The entrance is of free-stone, in the Egyptian style. . . . H. Austin architect.”

*<div id="Watson"></div>Watson, John Fanning, 1857, describing the house of Israel Pemberton, Washington Square, and the house of William Bingham, Philadelphia, Pa. (1:375, 405, 414) <ref>Watson, John Fanning. 1857. ''Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time; Being a Collection of Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Incidents of the City and Its Inhabitants, and of the Earliest Settlements of the Inland Part of Pennsylvania, from the Days of the Founders''. 2 vols. Philadelphia: E. Thomas. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5PTKBUW2 view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Watson_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“The low '''fence''' along the garden on the line of Third street, gave a full expose of the garden [[walk]]s and [[shrubbery]], and never failed to arrest the attention of those who passed that way.”

:“THIS beautiful [[square]], now so much the resort of citizens and strangers, as a [[promenade]], was, only twenty-five years ago, a ‘Potter’s Field.’ . . . It was long enclosed in a post and rail '''fence''', and always produced much grass.”

:“The grounds generally he had laid out in beautiful style, and filled the whole with curious and rare [[clump]]s and shades of trees; but in the usual selfish style of Philadelphia improved grounds, the whole was surrounded and hid from the public gaze by a high '''fence'''.”

===Citations===

* Worlidge, John, 1669, ''Systema Agriculturae'' (pp. 85–86) <ref>Worlidge, John. 1669. ''Systema Agriculturae, The Mystery of Husbandry Discovered''. London: T. Johnson. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/GP82B2GE view on zotero]</ref>
:“Seeing that '''Fencing''', and Enclosing of Land is most evident to be a piece of the highest Improvement of Lands, and that all our [[Plantation]]s of Woods, Fruits, and other Tillage, are thereby secured from external Injuries, which otherwise would lie open to the Cattel. . . . And also subject to the lusts of vile persons. . . .

:“For which reason we are obliged to maintain a good '''Fence''', if we expect an answerable success to our Labors.”

* Marshall, Charles, 1799, ''An Introduction to the Knowledge and Practice of Gardening'' (1:114–15, 124) <ref>Marshall, Charles. 1799. ''An Introduction to the Knowledge and Practice of Gardening''. 1st American ed. from the 2nd London ed.. 2 vols. Boston: Samuel Etheridge. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/DVB7T4I2 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“For ''[[hedge]]s'' about a garden, (i.e. for the ''divisions'' of it) the ''laurel'', ''yew'', and ''holly'' are the principal ''evergreens'': the former as a lofty and open '''fence''', the second as close and moderate in height, and to be cut to any thing, the last as trainable by judicious pruning to an impregnable and beautiful '''fence'''. . . .

:“Here [about the house] should be also a good portion of grass [[plat]], or ''[[lawn]]''which so delights the eye when neatly kept, also [[border]]s of shewy ''flowers'', which, if backed by any kind of '''fence''', it should be hid with evergreens, or at least with deciduous [[shrub]]s, that the scene may be as much as possible vivacious.”

* Marshall, William, 1803, ''On Planting and Rural Ornament'' (1:258–59) <ref>Marshall, William. 1803. ''On Planting and Rural Ornament: A Practical Treatise. . . .'' 2 vols. London: G. and W. Nicol, G. and J. Robinson, T. Cadell, and W. Davies. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/K48D75JJ view on Zotero]</ref>
:“THE '''FENCE''', where the place is large, becomes necessary: yet the eye dislikes constraint. Our ideas of liberty carry us beyond our species: the imagination feels a dislike in seeing even the brute creation in a state of confinement. Beside, a tall '''fence''' frequently hides, from the sight, objects the most pleasing; not only the flocks and herds, but the surface they graze upon. These considerations have brought the ''unseen'' '''''fence''''' into general use.”

* Repton, Humphry, 1803, ''Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (pp. 80, 84) <ref>Repton, Humphry. 1803. ''Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening''. London: Printed by T. Bensley for J. Taylor. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VVQPC3BI view on Zotero]</ref>
:“That the boundary '''fence''' of a place should be concealed from the house, is among the few general principles admitted in modern gardening; but even in this instance, want of precision has led to error; the necessary distinction is seldom made between the '''fence''' which incloses a [[park]], and those '''fences''' which are adapted to separate and protect the subdivisions within such inclosure. . . .

:“To describe the various sorts of '''fences''' suitable to various purposes, would exceed the limits and intentions of this work: every county has its peculiar mode of '''fencing''', both in the construction of [[hedge]]s and ditches, which belong rather to the farmer than the landscape gardener; and in the different forms and materials of pales, rails, hurdles, [[gate]]s, &c.”

* M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' (pp. 57, 65) <ref>M’Mahon, Bernard. 1806. ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....'' Philadelphia: Printed by B. Graves for the author. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The [[pleasure ground|[pleasure] ground]] should be previously '''fenced''', which may be occasionally a [[hedge]], paling or [[wall]], &c. as most convenient. . . .

:“It being absolutely necessary to have the whole of the [[pleasure ground]] surrounded with a good '''fence''' of some kind, as a defence against cattle, &c. a foss being a kind of concealed '''fence''', will answer that purpose where it can conveniently be made, without interrupting the [[view]] of such neighbouring parts as are beautified by art or nature, and at the same time affect an appearance that these are only a continuation of the [[pleasure ground|pleasure-ground]]. Over the foss in various parts may be made [[Chinese style|Chinese]] and other curious and fanciful [[bridge]]s, which will have a romantic and pleasing effect.”

* Main, Thomas, 28 September 1807, ''Directions for the Transplantation and Management of Young Thorn or Other Hedge Plants'' (pp. 37–38) <ref>Main, Thomas. 1807. ''Directions for the Transplantation and Management of Young Thorn or Other Hedge Plants, Preparative to Their Being Set in Hedges, with Some Practical Observations on the Method of Plain Hedging''. Washington, D.C.: A. G. and Way. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UEDDDN6J/q/main view on Zotero]</ref>
:“A promiscuous assemblage of several different kinds of plants in a [[hedge]] cannot be recommended; such a heterogeneous composition will neither make a good '''fence''' nor look handsome.

:“It may, however, be allowable for me to say, that this mode of '''fencing''', whenever it is practised in the United States, will contribute its share to give an orderly and systematic turn to our plans of rural policy, conducive to a permanent neatness and regularity among arrangements that are commonly in a continual state of confusion and change.”

*<div id="Gregory"></div>[[G. Gregory|Gregory, G.]], 1816, ''A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences'' (2:n.p.) <ref>Gregory, G. 1816. ''A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences''. 3 vols. Philadelphia: Isaac Peirce. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2H8KAZ5E view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Gregory_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“'''FENCE''', in country affairs, a [[hedge]], [[wall]], ditch, bank, or other inclosure, made around gardens, [[woods]], cornfields, &c. See HUSBANDRY. . . .

:“GARDENING. . . .

:“The situation of a garden should be dry, but rather low than high, and as sheltered as can be from the north and east winds. These points of the compass should be guarded against by high and good '''fences'''; by a [[wall]] of at least ten feet high; lower [[wall]]s do not answer so well for fruit-trees, though one of eight may do. A garden should be so situated, to be as much warmer as possible than the general temper of the air is without, or ought to be made warmer by the ring and subdivision '''fences'''. This advantage is essential to the expectation we have from a garden locally considered.”

* Abercrombie, John, with James Mean, 1817, ''Abercrombie’s Practical Gardener'' (pp. 3, 339, 461–63) <ref>Abercrombie, John. 1817. ''Abercrombie’s Practical Gardener Or, Improved System of Modern Horticulture''. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TH54TADZ view on Zotero]</ref>
:“Competent '''fences''' are also serviceable in sheltering tender seedlings, and in forming warm [[border]]s for early crops and winter-standing plants; while, in another direction, some part of the line of '''fence''' will afford a shady [[border]] in summer, which is required by the peculiar constitutions of many small annual plants. . . .

:“'''''Fences'''''.—The [[Flower Garden]], which is not an appendage to ornamented grounds, will require a '''fence''', wherever the domestic buildings do not serve as a boundary. For the inclosure, a [[wall]] or close paling is on two accounts to be preferred on the north side; both to serve as a screen, and to afford a warm internal face for training fruit-trees. When one of those is not adopted, recourse may be had to a good hedge-'''fence''', planted on a bank, and defended by an outward ditch. The best outer hedge-'''fence''' is formed of white-thorn and holly. The [[ha-ha]], or sunk-''fence'' in a fosse, is a happy contrivance for preserving a distant [[prospect]]: but this is seldom adopted when the adjoining land belongs to another occupier. . . .

:“''External'' '''''Fences'''''.—'''Fences''' of all kinds are rather necessary and useful, as instruments of shelter and security, than to be chosen as materials of ornament. Whether the [[view]] terminates on the '''fence''', or is directed beyond it, the effect on the scene at best is negative: thus a '''fence''' is sometimes made higher than its proper use requires, merely to shut out something more unsightly; and, in judiciously employing that capital invention, the sunk '''fence''' or ''[[ha-ha]]'', the advantage, though great, is purely negative—some [[prospect]] worth retaining at considerable cost is not obstructed. . . .

:“''Internal'' '''''Fences'''''.—These must be lighter and more elegant: but the materials will equally vary with the local position and purpose. What has been said of [[shrub]]s for internal '''fences''' under ''[[Flower Garden]]'', is applicable to the most extensive ornamented grounds; except that regularity is less requisite, if not out of place; and primness ought to be avoided. Posts, with a single chain, or a rope well pitched, are sometimes enough to keep cattle from a [[walk]]. When a stronger barrier is wanted against animals grazing the pasture near the house, so as not to intercept a distant [[view]], one of the best devices is what is termed the ''invisible'' '''fence'''; which is composed of lines of elastic wire passed through upright iron stancheons, the whole painted green. . . .

:“Instead of the ''ha-ha'', or the ''invisible'' '''''fence''''', the landscape-gardener sometimes forms a [[terrace]] three feet high; at the verge of this, an iron rail, or a double rail, run along two feet high, is a sufficient '''fence'''. . . . ''Raised'' '''''fences''''', in straight lines, and meeting so as to form angles, are totally at variance with all ideas of picturesque beauty: but a perfectly straight ''fence'', drawn across a valley, appears to the eye as though serpentine; and therefore, without controverting any assumed principle, '''fences''' may run in the shortest direction over unequal surfaces; a few trees or bushes may be planted where the straightness, in a coincident line of view from the garden, would be most visible.”

*<div id="Cobbett"></div>Cobbett, William, 1819, ''The American Gardener'' (pp. 19–21, 28–29, 106, 355, 957) <ref>Cobbett, William. 1819. ''The American Gardener''. 1st ed. Claremont, N.H.: Manufacturing Company. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9CBPIU6H view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Cobbett_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“31. The '''''fence''''' of a garden is an important matter; for, we have to view it not only as giving ''protection'' against intruders, two-legged as well as four-legged, but as affording ''shelter'' in cold weather and ''shade'' in hot, in both which respects a '''fence''' may be made of great utility in an American Garden, where cold and heat are experienced in an extreme degree. . . .

:“33. In America a '''fence''' is not wanted for this purpose [raising fruit]; but it is very necessary for ''protection''; for ''shelter''; and for ''shade''. . . .

:“34. With regard to the second point; the ''shelter''; this is of great consequence; for, it is very well known, that, on the south side of a good high '''fence''', you can have peas, lettuces, radish, and many other things, full ten days earlier in the spring, than you can have them in the unsheltered ground. . . .

:“49. And why should America not possess this most beautiful and useful plant [the Haw-Thorn]? She has English gew-gaws, English Play-Actors, English Cards and English Dice and Billiards; English fooleries and English vices enough in all conscience; and why not English ''[[hedge|Hedges]]'', instead of post-and-rail and board '''fences'''? If, instead of these steril-looking and cheerless enclosures the gardens and [[meadow]]s and fields, in the neighbourhood of New York and other cities and towns, were divided by quick-set [[hedge]]s, what a difference would the alteration make in the look, and in the real ''value'' too, of those gardens, [[meadow]]s and fields! . . .

:“486. ''Forest trees''. . . . From the Transactions of the Society of Agriculture of New York, we learn, that hawthorn [[hedge]]s and other live '''fences''' are generally adopted in the cultivated districts; but the time is not yet arrived for forming timber-[[plantation]]s. . . .

:“1803. ''Rails or'' '''''fences''''', for [[park]]s and garden-scenery, are, as to lines, similarly characterized as [[gate]]s; and, like [[gate]]s, '''fences''' are of many species, from the rudest barriers without nails or iron work . . . to the numerous sorts of iron and wire barriers. . . .

:“1804. ''[[Wall]]s'' are unquestionably the grandest '''fences''' for [[park]]s; and arched portals, the noblest entrances; between these and the [[hedge]] or pale, and [[rustic style|rustic]] [[gate]], designs in every degree of gradation, both for lodges, [[gate]]s, and '''fences''', will be found in the works of Wright, Gandy, Robertson, Aikin, Pocock, and other architects who have published on the rural department of their art. The pattern books of manufacturers of iron [[gate]]s and hurdles, and of wire workers, may also be advantageously consulted. . . .

:“6874. '''''Fences'''''. Masses, in the [[ancient style]] of planting, were generally surrounded by [[wall]]s or other durable '''fences'''. Here the barrier was considered as an object or permanent part of the scene, and for that reason was executed substantially, and even ornamentally. They were generally [[wall]]s substantially coped, and furnished with handsome [[gate]]s and piers. The rows of [[avenue]]s and small [[clump]]s, or platoons intended to be finally thrown open, were enclosed by the most convenient temporary '''fence'''.”

* Parmentier, André, 1828, ''The Art of Landscape Gardening'' (p. 186) <ref>Parmentier, André. 1828. “The Art of Landscape Gardening.” In ''The New American Gardener'', edited by Thomas Fessenden. Boston: J. B. Russell. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3C29XRTH view on Zotero]</ref>
:“The most should be made of the agreeable and interesting [[view]]s which may be had in the neighbouring landscape. They may be made useful to the general plan by being represented as the property of the proprietor.

:“For this reason, I highly approve of blind '''fences''', and live [[hedge]]s. But '''fences''', necessary as enclosures, should be concealed so as not to appear as boundaries to the establishment, and present to the eye a disagreeable interruption in the [[prospect]].”

[[File:1294.jpg|thumb|Fig. 20, Asher Benjamin, “Front Fences,” in ''The Practical House Carpenter'' ([1830] 1972), pl. 33. ]]
*<div id="Benjamin"></div>Benjamin, Asher, 1830, “Front Fences” ([1830] 1972: 68–69) <ref>Benjamin, Asher. 1972. ''The Practical House Carpenter''. New York: Da Capo. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/B9AW7F95 view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Benjamin_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“PLATE XXXIII. On this plate are three designs for '''fences''', suitable for the enclosure of a country residence, which may be made of wood, when iron is not to be obtained, or when expense is to be avoided. . . .

:“It is not supposed that the size of these examples will suit all situations. There are many situations which require the size of front '''fences''' to be varied; as for instance, when the house is very large and located on an elevated piece of ground, and at a considerable distance from the road: in this case the '''fence''' should be of the largest dimensions. But if the house be small, and so situated as to have the '''fence''' near it, the '''fence''' ought then to be small and low, so that it may not appear as a principal in the structure.” [Fig. 20]

* Bridgeman, Thomas, 1832, ''The Young Gardener’s Assistant'' (pp. 110, 134, 170) <ref>Bridgeman, Thomas. 1832. ''The Young Gardener’s Assistant''. 3rd ed. New York: Geo. Robertson. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9FU4SNZK view on Zotero]</ref>
:“A [[Flower Garden]] should be protected from cold cutting winds by close '''fences''', or [[plantation]]s of [[shrub]]s, forming a close and compact [[hedge]], which should be neatly trimmed every year. . . .

:“When [[Shrub]]s, Creepers, or Climbers are planted against [[wall]]s or [[trellis|trellises]], either on account of their rarity, delicacy, or to conceal a rough '''fence''' or other unsightly object, they require different modes of training. . . .

:“The following observations on Fruit Gardens are taken from the third volume of the New-York Farmer and Horticultural Reposity [''sic'']. Article 190, page 225, communicated by an ''Old Man'':

:“‘A ''fruit garden'' in this ''free'' country ought to be protected by nothing less formidable than a pale or picket '''fence'''. It is in vain to think of having good fruit in small quantities, unless the proprietor can control every thumb and finger within his grounds, so that his stone-fruit, more especially, may be fully ripe before it be removed from the tree. . . .

:“‘A pale or picket '''fence''' is a great protection to a ''fruit garden''; for though some desperadoes may break through a few times in a season, it will effectually prevent the inroads of the small fry; and it has another important advantage: there are men and grown boys whose ''business'' frequently leads them across lots, through Peach [[orchard]]s, and directly under Pear trees, that stand in a common enclosure, but who are too cautious to scale a garden '''fence''', because they have no excuse for appearing on the inside; and these constitute a majority of the prowlers.

:“‘Further, ''those who shoot into a garden at night, generally take aim in the day time''. Prevent their observations, (this '''fence''' will in many cases prevent it,) and the temptation and danger will greatly be lessened.’”

* Teschemacher, James E., 1 November 1835, “On Horticultural Architecture” (''Horticultural Register'' 1: 409)
:“Suppose the area or garden space to be small, one great object would be to shut out by [[shrubbery]] the boundaries, so that the small extent might not appear, to fill every angle and corner with the Lilac or other large and spreading plant, and to take every advantage of the adjoining land. Thus imagine the neighboring piece to be grass; by means of a very open or of a sunk '''fence''' and a grass [[plat]] the grass on both lands would appear to combine and present an extensive expanse of green, or if [[wood]] adjoins, then by judicious transplantation an uninterrupted line of copse would be formed, on which the eye would rest with pleasure. The invisible '''fences''' commonly used in England, might here be of great service, they are made of thick iron wire, about four feet high, with thin iron posts at distances of eight or ten feet, painted black, so that they form no impediment to such combinations of [[prospect]] with contiguous properties. The same may be done where a rivulet or a piece of water exists near, observing always that such innocent appropriations of our neighbor’s property is much better enjoyed when only caught at glimpses and between intervals of [[shrubbery]] . . .”

*<div id="Register_1837"></div>Anonymous, 1 April 1837, “Landscape Gardening” (''Horticultural Register'' 3: 121–23) [[#Register_1837_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“The first thing, when a spot is fixed on for a house, if it be in a new country especially, is to cut down all the native trees and [[shrub]]s within several rods of it. The proprietor then sets to work and applies his whole resources to build as large a house as possible. When the work is completed his funds are exhausted; he can make no further improvements about his house; it is left standing, dreary and alone, perhaps unpainted, an unsightly broken '''fence''' to enclose it, and the nakedness of the [[yard]] only relieved by an old barrel, a pile of wood, and broken hoops and boards. Sometimes indeed a more finished appearance is presented; the house is neatly painted, a handsome grass [[plat]] extends before it, and a picket '''fence''' encircles it.”

*<div id="Sayers"></div>Sayers, Edward, 1838, ''The American Flower Garden Companion'' (pp. 18, 129) <ref>Sayers, Edward. 1838. ''The American Flower Garden Companion, Adapted to the Northern States''. Boston: Joseph Breck. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/GHTFN8B2 view on Zotero]</ref> [[#Sayers_cite|back up to discussion]]
:“Ivy and Virginian creepers [are most proper] for [[wall]]s, tall [[shrub]]s for concealing old boarded '''fences''', and unsightly objects. . . .

:“The ''[[trellis|trellises]], [[arbor]]s, [[wall]]s'', '''''fences''''', and so on, should be covered with ''vines'' and ''creepers'', so that the whole may have a corresponding appearance.”

* [[A. J. Downing|Downing, A. J.]], February 1838, “On the Cultivation of [[Hedge]]s in the United States” (''Magazine of Horticulture'' 4: 6, 43)
:“In many sections of the Union, where timber is becoming scarce, and stone for '''fencing''' does not abound, a substitute is anxiously sought after, and must be found in some species of plant, capable of making a close and impenetrable [[hedge]]. The advantages of live '''fences''' are great durability, imperviousness to man and beast, a trifling expense in keeping in order, and the great beauty and elegance of their appearance. Harmonizing in color with the pleasant green of the [[lawn]] and fields, they may, without (like board '''fences''') being offensive to the eye, be brought, in many places, quite near to the dwelling-house. . . .

:“The [[wall]] of masonry, the iron paling, or the wooden '''fence''', may be well suited to the vicinity of houses or crowded towns; but for harmony of color, freshness of foliage, durability, and, in short, all that is most desirable for beauty and protection, the ''verdant [[hedge]]'' is without an equal.”

* Kenrick, William, April 1838, “Live [[Hedge]]s” (''Magazine of Horticulture'' 4: 16)
:“Live [[hedge]]s constitute the most durable and effectual, as well as the most beautiful '''fences''' known, when properly managed and well trained. A perfect [[hedge]] should form a barrier, close and compact to the surface of the earth.”

* Gentle, Andrew, 1841, ''Every Man His Own Gardener'' (1841: 93)<ref> Andrew Gentle, ''Every Man His Own Gardener; Or, a Plain Treatise on the Cultivation of Every Requisite Vegetable in the Kitchen Garden, Alphabetically Arranged. With Directions for the Green & Hothouse, Vineyard, Nursery, &c. Being the Result of Thirty-Five Years’ Practical Experience in This Climate. Intended Principally for the Inexperienced Horticulturist'' (New York: The author, 1841), iii-iv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X7253QTQ view on Zotero].</ref>
: "I would prefer a [[kitchen garden]] near the house, but not fully in sight, partly surrounded with trees, ornamental as well as fruit, or grape vines, sloping a little to the south, and facing the sun at 11 o’clock, with a variety of soils, all of good depth, and free from stones or gravel, or rain water standing on it. It may be either square or oblong, but is most convenient to work when the sides are straight, with a [[fence]] of moderate height. In laying out, I would prefer a [[border]] all round the width of the [[fence]], the [[walk]] half the width of the [[border]], the main cross [[walk]]s four feet wide, to plant currants, gooseberry, and raspberry bushes, four feet apart, or strawberry plants near the farmyard, and convenient for water. <p></p>
: "For a market garden the same sort of ground, with a good [[fence]] all round…."

* Hooper, Edward James, 1842, ''The Practical Farmer, Gardener and Housewife'' (pp. 99–100, 155) <ref>Hooper, Edward James. 1842. ''The Practical Farmer, Gardener and Housewife, or Dictionary of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Domestic Economy''. Cincinnati, Ohio: George Conclin. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2T83BDXR view on Zotero]</ref>
:“'''FENCES'''. This subject is of great importance to the farmer. There is no tax upon his purse and labor so great, as that which demands the continual making and repairing of his '''fences'''. . . . According to the present system, hundreds of half starved animals of all kinds are continually breaking into, or jumping over, or knocking down, the best kind of worm '''fences'''. It would be much to the ultimate advantage of the proprietors of land, if they would, wherever it is practicable, resort to the making of stone '''fences'''. . . . With respect to live '''fences''', they are found, in England, to be the best sort under general circumstances, excepting where there is abundance of stone at hand. . . . In making '''fences''' of this kind, we should of course try our native plants and trees, before resorting to foreign kinds, on account of the uncertainties of climate. . . . The plants in America which are at all suitable for [[hedge]]s, are the American thorn, the cedar, the holly, the crab, the honey locust, the beech, the willow, the hemlock and the black locust. . . .

:“[[hedge|HEDGES]]. These are becoming, and in some situations have become, highly desirable. Where there is plenty of rail timber, it will naturally be used for '''fences''' before any live enclosures. Where there is plenty of rocks also, these are the best and in the end the most economical materials for '''fences''' that can be used. But where no rocks are found, and no rail timber, it will be useful to substitute live [[hedge]]s. In different sections of the country different kinds of plants proper for live '''fences''' will naturally exist. The locust for this purpose is one of the most valuable trees in the south. The Buckthorn in New England. . . . The European hawthorn . . . in the west.”

* Anonymous, 28 July 1842, “Words of a Solomon and Sacred Roll . . .” (Western Reserve Historical Society Library, Shaker Manuscript Collection, reel 67VIIA43)
:“I do require that ye '''fence''' your meeting ground after the following order, as soon as ye consistently can, after you have ascertained the sacred spot which I have chosen. Build ye a smooth board '''fence''' and paint it white. ** Make it 4 1/2 feet high, with a board flatwise on top.”

* [[Jane Loudon|Loudon, Jane]], 1845, ''Gardening for Ladies'' (pp. 205–6) <ref>Loudon, Jane. 1845. ''Gardening for Ladies; and Companion to the Flower-Garden''. Edited by A. J. Downing. New York: Wiley & Putnam. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3Q5GCH4I view on Zotero]</ref>
:“'''FENCES''' for [[flower garden|flower-gardens]] and [[shrubbery|shrubberies]], are either such as are intended to be invisible, or, more properly, not acknowledged,—such as barriers of wire, or, light iron rods, and sunk '''fences'''; or such as are intended to be acknowledged, and to form part of the landscape,—such as architectural parapets and [[hedge]]s. . . .

:“Architectural '''fences''' are used in small gardens, close to the house; and they should generally be low [[wall]]s, of open work, in the style of the architecture of the building; and these [[wall]]s may have piers at regular distances, terminating in [[vase]]s, or other architectural ornaments, provided these are in harmony with the house. These [[wall]]s, and indeed all other architectural '''fences''', should be varied with [[shrub]]by plants planted against them, so as to harmonize them with the plants in the [[bed]]s and [[border]]s within.”

* Johnson, George William, 1847, ''A Dictionary of Modern Gardening'' (pp. 221–22) <ref>Johnson, George William. 1847. ''A Dictionary of Modern Gardening''. Edited by David Landreth. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D6PQSNAN view on Zotero]</ref>
:“'''FENCES''' are employed to mark the boundary of property, to exclude trespassers, either human or quadrupedal, and to afford shelter. They are either live '''fences''', and are then known as ''[[hedge|hedges]]'', or dead, and are then either ''banks, ditches, palings'', or ''[[wall|walls]]''; or they are a union of those two, to which titles the reader is referred.

:“The following is the English law on the subject:—

:“In the eye of the law a [[hedge]], '''fence''', ditch, or other inclosure of land, is for its better manuring and improvement; and various remedies are therefore provided for their preservation. . . .

:“Stealing metal garden-'''fencing''' is a felony. In America each State has its own peculiar laws on this as on other subjects. In Pennsylvania, by an Act of 1700, entitled ''‘An act for the regulating and maintaining of '''Fences''',’'' it was provided that ‘all cornfields and grounds kept for inclosures within the said province and counties annexed, shall be well '''fenced''' with '''fence''' at least five feet high, and close at the bottom, &c.’ By an Act of 1729, it was provided that ‘to prevent disputes about the sufficiency of '''fences''', all '''fences''' shall be esteemed lawful and sufficient, though they be not close at the bottom, so that the distance from the ground to the bottom thereof, exceed not nine inches; and that they be four feet and a half high, and not under.’ Both acts are operative in certain counties only.—See ''Purdon’s Digest''.

:“Ornamental '''fences''' for enclosing gardens, [[yard]]s, &c., are almost as diversified as the ideas of beauty in the human mind. ‘The impression, on viewing grounds laid out with some pretension to taste, is governed in a degree, by the style and character of the surrounding '''fence'''. It is a great mistake to suppose the most elaborate (and of course costly) are the most pleasing; yet acting on this supposition, we see exhibited '''fences''' which appear to have been planned as if to show the amount of money which could be thus expended, and after all, they rather disgust than please.

:“‘The figures 42, 43, 44, illustrate three simple designs, formed by straight slats or pales, and therefore of the least expense; they are readily executed, and agreeable from their simplicity. The colour which should be used, is of course a matter of taste; white is generally preferred, though dark shades, even jet black, are the most pleasing to many; for ourselves, we should choose the latter, though it be not the best, so far as the preservation of the wood is concerned.’—''Rural Reg''.”

* Elliott, Charles Wyllys, October 1848, “Reviews, ''Cottages and Cottage Life''” (''Horticulturist'' 3: 181)
:“As far as practicable, make divisions which are ''necessary'' about the house of the [[ha-ha]] or blind '''fence''', or of [[hedge]]s, for which purpose the Maclura or Osage Orange is believed to be one of the most desirable plants.”

* Elder, Walter, 1849, ''The Cottage Garden of America'' (p. 218) <ref>Elder, Walter. 1849. ''The Cottage Garden of America''. Philadelphia: Moss. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/NNC7BTFT view on Zotero]</ref>
:“A. What a fine place you have got! that is a neat, well painted front '''fence'''; the flower [[plat]] between it and the house, with the evergreen in the centre is beautiful, and that [[veranda|verandah]] over the door, covered with flowering vines, looks well.”

* [[A. J. Downing|Downing, A. J.]], 1849, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (pp. 343–44) <ref>Downing, A. J. [Andrew Jackson]. 1849. ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America; with a View to the Improvement of Country Residences. Comprising Historical Notices and General Principles of the Art, Directions for Laying out Grounds and Arranging Plantations, the Description and Cultivation of Hardy Trees, Decorative Accompaniments to the House and Grounds, the Formation of Pieces of Artificial Water, Flower Gardens, Etc.: With Remarks on Rural Architecture''. 4th ed. New York: G. P. Putnam. [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5M4S2D64 view on Zotero]</ref>
:“'''''Fences''''' are often among the most unsightly and offensive objects in our country [[seat]]s. Some persons appear to have a passion for subdividing their grounds into a great number of fields; a process which is scarcely ever advisable even in common farms, but for which there can be no apology in elegant residences. The close proximity of '''fences''' to the house gives the whole place a confined and mean character. . . . It is frequently the case that, on that side of the house nearest the outbuildings, '''fences''' are, for convenience, brought in its close neighborhood, and here they are easily concealed by [[plantation]]s; but on the other sides, open and unobstructed views should be preserved, by removing all barriers not absolutely necessary.

:“An old stone [[wall]] covered with creepers and climbing plants, may become a [[picturesque]] barrier a thousand times superior to such a '''fence'''. But there is never one instance in a thousand where any barrier is necessary.”

* Sargent, Henry Winthrop, November 1849, “Invisible Iron Fences” (''Horticulturist'' 4: 212–13)
:“Too much has been already said and written upon the subject of wire '''fences''', to require any remarks from me upon their beauty and economy. Even upon farms, they are cheaper and more durable, and vastly more economical, than anything else, since no ground is lost on either side; and the plough and the scythe can be used immediately up to and under them. Upon ornamental places, especially of any size, I consider them almost indispensable to high keeping.

:“The great fault of our places in America, is the want of a proper termination to the ornamental grounds; or, rather, some intelligible division between the ornamental and practical. . . .

:“The wire '''fence''', therefore, forms an agreeable termination or setting to our ornamental grounds; or, if needs be, a division between the dressed and undressed portions of the estate. By its adoption, we might materially diminish the amount of [[lawn]] now kept under the scythe,—producing similar effects by substituting cattle—especially sheep—and increasing very much the charm of the landscape by the introduction of animated nature.

:“I doubt if the keenest eye can detect my '''fence''' at 30 or 40 yards distance. Consequently, our finest places even do not require a [[lawn]] larger than twice this breadth in diameter, provided the grass on the other side is kept equally short by sheep.”

* Jeffreys [pseud.], January 1850, “Critique on November Horticulturist” (''Horticulturist'' 4: 313)
:“''Invisible Wire'' '''''Fences'''''.—Yes, and visible ones too, I trust, will soon begin to appear in this rail-'''fence''' and stone-[[wall]] distracted country of ours. Why it is that in the grounds of our wealthy country residents, they have not long ago been adopted, is passing strange. In all the long catalogue of farm, [[park]], [[lawn]] and garden enclosures, there is nothing equal to it. . . .

:“The substitution of wire '''fences''' for those now in use, will give to every farm, [[park]], or [[lawn]] where they are introduced, a higher value. The improvement will be incalculable. Instead of rickety, zig-zag rail and board '''fences''', and dilapidated stone [[wall]]s with their interminable attendants of brush, briars and vermin, they will afford clean cultivation, and save a great amount of labor and waste now suffered by every one who has them to support.”

==Images==
===Inscribed===
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:0056.jpg|[[John Bartram|John]] or [[William Bartram]], ''A Draught of John Bartram’s House and Garden as it appears from the River'', 1758.

Image:0555a.jpg|Unknown, Plat of 117 Broad Street, 1797.

Image:0555b.jpg|Unknown, Plat of 117 Broad Street, 1797.

Image:0116.jpg|[[Charles Willson Peale]], Sketches of Belfield, 1810.

Image:0234.jpg|Lewis Miller, “Jesse Hines. Black Smith, menden his pale fence,” 1813, in Lewis Miller, ''Sketches and Chronicles: The Reflections of a Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania German Folk Artist'' (1966), p. 86.

Image:0237.jpg|Lewis Miller, "Old Philip Waltemeyer makeing a fence of boards at the old Southern Church yard," 1813.

Image:1294.jpg|Asher Benjamin, “Front Fences,” in ''The Practical House Carpenter'' ([1830] 1972), pl. 33.

File:1701.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], Diagram of worm fence, in ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening'' (1834), p. 412, fig. 276.

Image:0098.jpg|Miller & Co., Map of the residence & park grounds, near Bordentown, New Jersey : of the late Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, 1847.

Image:1097.jpg|Thomas S. Sinclair, "Plan of the Pleasure Grounds and Farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane at Philadelphia," in ''American Journal of Insanity'', vol. 4, (April 1848).

Image:0377.jpg|Anonymous, “Plan of a Mansion Residence, laid out in the natural style,” in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 115, fig. 25.

Image:0788.jpg|Frances Palmer, Elevations and profiles of wood fences, in William H. Ranlett, ''The Architect'' vol. 2 (1851), pl. 30.

</gallery>

===Associated===
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:0342.jpg|Edward Savage, ''The East Front of Mount Vernon'', c.1787-1792.

Image:0408.jpg|David Leonard, "A S.W. View of the College in Providence, together with the President's House & Gardens," c.1790.

Image:0477.jpg|John Scoles, "Government House," January 1795.

Image:0022.jpg|Clarissa Deming, Orchard plan, after 1798.

Image:0345.jpg|Alexander Robertson (artist), Francis Jukes (engraver), ''Mount Vernon in Virginia,'' 1800.

Image:0344.jpg|George Ropes, ''Mount Vernon'', 1806.

Image:0001.jpg|George Ropes, ''Salem Common on Training Day'', 1808.

Image:0560.jpg|[[Charles Willson Peale]], Ground plot of Belfield, 1810.

Image:0816.jpg|W. H. Bartlett, "Yale College. (Newhaven)," in Nathaniel Parker Willis, ''American Scenery'', Vol I (1840), pl. 35.

Image:0758.jpg|Robert Brammer and Augustus Von Smith, ''Oakland House and Race Course, Louisville'', 1840.

Image:0648.jpg|John Warner Barber, "Eastern View of the Public Square or Green in New Haven," 1840.

File:1086.jpg|James Smillie (artist), O.J. Hanks (engraver), "The Tour -- Oaken Bluff," in Nehemiah Cleaveland, ''Green-Wood Illustrated'' (1847), pl. opp. p. 40.

File:1078.jpg|George W. Stilwell, Patterns of railings at Greenwood Cemetery, in Nehemiah Cleaveland, ''Green-wood Illustrated'' (1847), pl. after p. 94.

Image:0497.jpg|Anonymous, "Bowling Green Fountain," in E. Porter Belden, ''New-York, Past, Present, and Future'' (1850), opp. p. 30.

Image:0334.jpg|Middleton, Strobridge & Co. (engraver), "Mount Vernon, the home of Washington," c. 1861.

</gallery>

===Attributed===
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:0086.jpg|[[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]], "Greenspring, home of William Ludwell Lee, James City County, Virginia," n.d.

Image:0002.jpg|Anonymous, Surveyor’s plat of the courthouse and adjacent land in Charles County, Md., 1697.

Image:0180.jpg|Anonymous, "Fairhill, The Seat of Isaac Norris Esq.," 18th century.

File:0883.jpg|Edward Crisp (surveyor), James Akins (engraver), ''A Plan of Charles-Town'', 1704 [1969].

Image:0463.jpg|Anonymous, Overmantle painting from Morattico Hall, 1715.

Image:0171.jpg|Anonymous, "Issac Norris: his house at Fairhill," 1717.

Image:0017.jpg|Anonymous, Modern impression taken from the original 1740s copperplate [Bodleian Plate re-strike].

Image:0008.jpg|William Dering, attr., ''Portrait of Anne Byrd Carter (Mrs. Charles Carter) (1725-1757)'', c. 1742-1746.

Image:0003.jpg|William Dering, attr., ''Portrait of George Booth'', 1748-1750.

Image:1752.jpg|William Halfpenny, "A Chinese Acute angular Paleing" and "A Chinese Obtuse & Diamond Paleing," in ''Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste'' (1755), pl. 3.

Image:0134.jpg|Christian Remick, ''A Prospective View of part of the Commons'', c. 1768.

Image:0026.jpg|[[Charles Willson Peale]], ''Parnassus'', c. 1769.

Image:0065.jpg|Anonymous, ''The South West Prospect of the Seat of Colonel George Boyd of Portsmouth, New Hampshire'', 1774.

Image:0126.jpg|Eliza Coggeshall, Brick House with Flowers and Birds on Fence, 1784, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 53.

Image:0131.jpg|Unknown, ''Overmantel of Rev. Joseph Wheeler House'', c. 1787-1793.

Image:0048.jpg|[[John Nancarrow]], ''Plan of the Seat of John Penn jun’r: Esqr: in Blockley Township and County of Philadelphia,'' c. 1785.

Image:0021.jpg|[[Cornelius Tiebout]], "A View of the present Seat of His Excel. the Vice President of the United States," 1790.

Image:0015.jpg|Samuel McIntire, Design for a Fence, c. 1791.

Image:0153.jpg|John Drayton, ''A View of the Battery and Harbour of New York, and the Ambuscade Frigate'', 1794.

Image:0140.jpg|Thomas Coram, "View at St. James's Goose Creek," 1792.

Image:0130.jpg|Anne Pope, Beige House, Birds Flying Over with Foreyard, 1796, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 15.

Image:0274.jpg|Ralph Earl, ''Houses Fronting New Milford Green'', c. 1796.

File:0197.jpg|Francis Guy, ''Rose Hill'', 1798.

Image:0272.jpg|Ralph Earl, ''Captain Elijah Dewey'', 1798.

File:0449.jpg|Anonymous, ''The End of the Hunt'', c. 1800.

File:0450.jpg|Anonymous, ''The Sargent Family'', 1800.

Image:0142.jpg|Thomas Coram, "View on the Road, Foot of Coll. Motte's Rice field, Goose Creek," 1800.

Image:0141.jpg|Thomas Coram, "The Grove, seat of G.A. Hall esq.," c. 1800.

Image:0005.jpg|Amy Cox, ''Box Grove'', c. 1800.

Image:0029.jpg|Michele Felice Cornè, ''Ezekiel Hersey Derby Farm'', c. 1800.

Image:0135.jpg|Unknown, Gardiner Gilman House Overmantle, c. 1800.

Image:0165.jpg|Jonathan Budington or Dr. Francis Forgue, attr., ''View of Main Street in Fairfield, Connecticut'', c. 1800.

Image:0004.jpg|Anonymous, ''The Beehive'', 1800–1820.

Image:0418.jpg|Anonymous, ''Landscape with a Stag Hunt'', 1800-50.

Image:0471.jpg|Anonymous, “Vauxhall Garden,” 1803.

Image:0123.jpg|Rebecca Couch, ''Connecticut House'', c. 1805.

Image:0203.jpg|Francis Guy, ''Perry Hall from the northwest'', c. 1805.

Image:0515.jpg|Eunice Pinney, attr., ''Mother and Child in Mountain Landscape'', 1805–1825.

Image:0124.jpg|Jane Shearer, Brick House with Terraces, 1806, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 80.

Image:0125.jpg|Mary Antrim, Brick House with Two Foreyards and Animals, 1807, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 72.

Image:0043.jpg|John Archibald Woodside, ''Lemon Hill'', 1807.

Image:0301.jpg|[[William Russell Birch]], "View from Belmont Pennsyla. the Seat of Judge Peters," 1808, in William Russell Birch and Emily Cooperman, ''The Country Seats of the United States'' (2009), p. 73, pl. 16.

Image:0150.jpg|Rebecca Chester, ''A Full View of Deadrick’s Hill'', 1810.

Image:1468.jpg|John Lewis Krimmel, ''Black Sawyers Working in front of the Bank of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,'' c. 1811-1813.

Image:0669.jpg|[[Cornelius Tiebout]], after John James Barralet, ''View of the Water Works at Centre Square Philadelphia'', c. 1812.

Image:0128.jpg|Mary Moulton, Needlework Sampler, 1813, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 27.

File:1467.jpg|John Lewis Krimmel, Tree and rocks near a split-rail fence, c. 1813.

Image:0122.jpg|Abigail Warren (possibly), ''Part of the Town of Chelmsford, Massachusetts'', c. 1813.

Image:0103.jpg|Lewis and Goodwin (lithographers), after a drawing by Joseph Jacques Ramée, ''Union College. Schenectady, N.Y.'' [detail], 1815, in Roger G. Kennedy, ''Orders from France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World, 1780-1820'' (1990), p. 271.

Image:0118.jpg|Eunice Pinney, A Couple in a Landscape, c. 1815, in Susan Foster, "Couple & Casualty: The Art of Eunice Pinney Unveiled," ''Folk Art'' (Summer 1996), p. 30.

Image:0044.jpg|[[Charles Willson Peale]], ''View of the Garden at Belfield'', 1816.

Image:1023.jpg|David J. Kennedy, "Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences," 1817.

File:0284.jpg|William Strickland after John Moale, ''Baltimore in 1752'', 1817.

Image:0129.jpg|Dorcas Berry, White House, 1818, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 39.

Image:0063.jpg|[[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]], "Plan of the public Square in the city of New Orleans, as proposed to be improved . . ." [detail], March 20, 1819.

Image:1130.jpg|Marie L. Pilsbury, ''Louisiana Plantation Scene'', 1820.

Image:0020.jpg|Janika de Fériet, ''The Hermitage'', c. 1820.

Image:0184.jpg|Caroline Betts, “A view of Col. Lincoln’s seat, Caznovia,” c. 1821.

Image:2119.jpg|Robert Campbell, after [[Thomas Birch]], ''View of the Dam and Water Works at Fairmount, Philadelphia'', 1824.

Image:0038.jpg|Arthur J. Stansbury, ''City Hall Park, From the Northwest Corner of Broadway and Chambers Street'', c. 1825.

Image:0457.jpg|Anonymous, ''The Plantation'', c. 1825.

Image:0053.jpg|[[Alexander Jackson Davis]], Castle Garden, N. York, c. 1825-1828.

Image:0132.jpg|Rufus Porter and J.D. Poor, Josiah Stone House [also known as the Holsaert House/Cobb House], 1825-1830.

Image:0052.jpg|W. J. Bennett, ''Broad Way from the Bowling Green'', c. 1826.

Image:0112.jpg|[[Anthony St. John Baker]], "View of the White House," 1826, in ''Mémoires d’un voyageur qui se repose'' (1850).

Image:1140.jpg|[[Hugh Bridport]], ''The Pagoda and Labyrinth Garden'', c. 1828.

Image:0754.jpg|Samuel Barnard, ''View Along the East Battery, Charleston'', 1831.

File:0424.jpg|[[Alexander Jackson Davis]], Ithiel Town, and James Dakin, New York University, Washington Square, 1833.

Image:1981.jpg|John Smith Rubens (artist), J.B. Neagle (engraver), ''Washington'', in Conrad Malte-Brun, ''A System of Universal Geography'' Vol. II (1834), opp. p. 222.

Image:1677.jpg|W. R. Hamilton, ''Landscape View of a Garden and House'' [detail], 1836.

File:0764.jpg|F. A. Holtzwart, ''A View of Reading Taken from the West Side of the Schuylkill'', 1837.

Image:0040.jpg|W. H. Bartlett, "Washington from the President's House," in Nathaniel Parker Willis, ''American Scenery'', Vol. II (1840), pl. 26.

Image:1193.jpg|David J. Kennedy, "McAran's Garden," 1840.

Image:0113.jpg|Mary Blades, Woodbury, c. 1840, in ''The Magazine Antiques'' 55 (February 1949), p. 132.

Image:0032.jpg|[[Robert Mills]], “Picturesque View of the Building, and Grounds in front,” 1841.

File:0441.jpg|Susan C. Waters, ''Henry L. Wells'', 1845.

Image:0523.jpg|Frances Palmer (artist), Nathaniel Currier (lithographer), "Union Place Hotel, Union Square New-York," c. 1845.

Image:0007.jpg|Charles H. Wolf, attr., ''Pennsylvania Farmstead with Many Fences'', c. 1847.

File:0349.jpg|George Washington Mark, ''Marion Feasting the British Officer on Sweet Potatoes'', 1848.

File:0476.jpg|James Smillie (artist), Sarony & Major (printers), ''View of Union Park, New York, from the head of Broadway'', 1849.

Image:0025.jpg|Robert P. Smith, "View of Washington," c. 1850.

File:1213.jpg|C. A. Hedin, "Front Elevation on Live Oak Street," 1853.

Image:0041.jpg|Anonymous, Capitol Under Construction, View Looking East Toward the Capitol From Third Street Vicinity, July 1860.

</gallery>

== Notes ==

<references/>

[[Category: Keywords]]
[[Category: Boundaries]]

Wall

2017-09-26T15:52:03Z

T-omalley: /* History */

See also: [[Botanic garden]], [[Espalier]], [[Fence]], [[Greenhouse]], [[Kitchen garden]], [[Orchard]]

==History==

[[File:0556.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 1, John William Hill, ''Blandford Church, Petersburg, Virginia'', 1847.]]

[[File:0154.jpg|thumb|Fig. 2, C. Milbourne, ''View of Broadway at Bowling Green with the Government House, New York City'', 1797.]]

In American landscape design, the wall was a masonry construction of dry laid or mortared stone or brick. While treatises and dictionaries often referred to walls as a type of [[fence]] and sometimes as a “stone fence,” in American usage, wooden barriers were referred to exclusively as [[fence]]s.

[[File:0121.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 3, Alexander Francis, ''Ralph Wheelock's Farm'', c. 1822.]]

[[File:1432.jpg|thumb|Fig. 4, Milo Osborne, "Deaf and Dumb Asylum," in Theodore S. Fay, ''Views in New-York and its Environs from Accurate, Characteristic, and Picturesque Drawings'' (1831).]]

As [[J. C. Loudon]] noted in 1834, walls were generally composed of three sections: the foundation, the body formed by courses of stone or brick, and, if desired, the coping (a decorative or protective course on top of a masonry wall). Foundations varied from a single course to a three-foot, below-ground stone foundation, such as the one used for the hog yard at Waldwic Cottage (formerly Little Hermitage), described by [[William Ranlett]] (1851). The coping could consist of the same material as the wall, as seen in John William Hill’s 1847 painting of Blandford Church in Petersburg, Va. [Fig. 1], or could be built of contrasting material such as stone or marble, which was used at St. Philip’s Parish in Charleston, S.C., in 1826. William Forsyth recommended wooden coping in order to attach nets that would discourage birds from eating nearby fruit. <ref>William Forsyth, ''A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees'' (Philadelphia: J. Morgan, 1802), 150, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZSNDFTE9/ view on Zotero]. </ref> Walls were sometimes topped with palisades, which extended their height and deterred intruders while providing a visually permeable barrier. This feature provided additional ornament, as the ironwork palisade on the wall at the Governor’s House in New York [Fig. 2] demonstrates.

[[File:0168.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 5, Thomas Jefferson, Third variant for range and gardens, showing serpentine walls at the University of Virginia, c. 1817-22.]]

[[File:0112.jpg|thumb|Fig. 6, [[Anthony St. John Baker]], "View of the White House," 1826, in ''Mémoires d’un voyageur qui se repose'' (1850).]]

The choice of materials for the body of the wall depended upon its use and upon the materials that were available. In arid regions, particularly areas with Spanish building traditions, adobe was frequently used. <ref>For an analysis of the function and significance of walls and gates in Latin American vernacular architecture, and particularly in the enclosure of the patio garden, see William J. Siembieda, “Walls and Gates: A Latin Perspective,” ''Landscape Journal'' 15 (fall 1996): 113–32, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/RPIU68EV view on Zotero].</ref> Stone walls were common in New England, where field stones turned up by plows provided ready material for dry laid walls, as that depicted in the painting of Ralph Wheelock’s farm in Pennsylvania (1822) [Fig. 3]. <ref>Wilbur Zelinsky cites in 1871 that the Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture included data for fence types in New England. The frequency of stone fences ranged from 32 percent in Vermont to a high of 79 percent in Rhode Island. See Ervin H. Zube and Margaret J. Zube, eds., ''Changing Rural Landscapes'', reprint of 1951 ed. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 59, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X8FV99J7 view on Zotero].</ref> It has been suggested that wall designs from British treatise and pattern books, such as those published in [[Batty Langley]]’s ''The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs'' (1740), were reworked in wood in the American context. Wooden posts were used in place of piers, wooden members in place of stone fenestration, and baseboards in place of stone bases. <ref>Philip Dole, “The Picket Fence at Home,” in ''Between Fences'', ed. Gregory K. Dreicer (Washington, D.C.: National Building Museum, 1996), 28–30, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/GG78VBCM view on Zotero].</ref> The earthen- and pitch-covered wooden walls described by Loudon do not appear to have been employed in America, but fence posts were tarred as a preservative measure.

Walls, like related features such as [[fence]]s, [[hedge]]s, and [[ha-ha]]s, served as barriers, supports, and markers of property boundaries. Because of their strength, walls were also used to retain earth; this use is illustrated by the deer wall at [[Mount Vernon]] (1798) and the [[terrace]] wall at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in New York [Fig. 4]. Walls were also used to shore up banks at waterfront gardens, as at [[Westover]] in Virginia, described by Thomas Lee Shippen (1783), where they served as bulkheads along the banks of the James River.

The vast majority of treatise references to walls discuss their use as supports and protection for fruit trees in [[orchard]]s and fruit gardens. The length and detail of the instructions suggest the importance of walls as an adaptation to the range of American climatic challenges for fruit growers. A brick wall reflected heat during the day and retained warmth at night, providing a moderating micro-climate and promoting earlier ripening. Fruit walls for “forwarding” the fruit season were useful in the middle and eastern states, but they were not necessary in warmer climates. Brick walls with flues, discussed in detail in numerous treatises, were used in [[hothouse]] and [[conservatory]] construction (see also [[Greenhouse]]. [[Trellis]]es for training trees and vines were easily attached to brick walls’ porous surfaces. Bricks’ porosity also helped them retain heat much better than stone, even when the stone was painted a dark color. In the rare instance when stone was used, authors suggested that it be faced with several courses of brick on the side on which fruit trees were to be grown.

[[File:1469.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 7, John Lewis Krimmel, ''Sunday Morning in front of the Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia'', c. 1811–13.]]

[[File:0165.jpg|thumb|Fig. 8, Jonathan Budington or Dr. Francis Forgue, attr., ''View of Main Street in Fairfield, Connecticut'', c. 1800.]]

Most walls were straight, although the merits of serpentine walls were debated in the literature. Some authors, such as [[Ephraim Chambers]] (1741–43), argued that the serpentine wall was strong and economical, requiring less thickness to maintain the same strength as a straight wall. These walls also could be used to shelter plants from winds coming from all directions. [[Thomas Jefferson]] used a serpentine wall for the faculty gardens at the University of Virginia [Fig. 5]. Others, such as [[J.C. Loudon|Loudon]] (1834) and [[George William Johnson]] (1847), criticized the serpentine form, arguing that such walls had to be too thick to retain the necessary heat for fruit ripening.

While the practical functions of walls were much discussed, they also made significant aesthetic contributions to landscape design. [[Philip Miller]] suggested in 1759 that walls be disguised with “[[Plantation]]s of Flowering Shrubs, intermixed with laurels, and some evergreens.” [[Thomas Bridgeman]] (1832), [[Edward Sayers]] (1838), and [[A. J. Downing]] (1849) all suggested the use of creeping vines and [[trellis]]es to incorporate the wall into a naturalistic or [[picturesque]] garden setting.

Unlike worm and wire [[fence]]s, a wall was a decidedly immovable barrier. Its permanence, durability, and scale made it particularly suitable to the monumental and stately requirements of churchyards, [[cemeteries]], and [[public ground]]s, as noted in a 1770 description of the Annapolis Parade and as depicted in a [[view]] of the [[White House]] in Washington, D.C. [Fig. 6]. [[J.C. Loudon|Loudon]] in 1834 described walls as the “grandest [[fence]]s for [[park]]s,” although images of American urban parks suggest that by the second quarter of the nineteenth century ironwork [[fence]]s were the enclosures of choice. In urban settings, walls provided residents with a visual screen from what lay beyond [Fig. 7] and, although not noted in descriptions, they probably served as an effective noise barrier as well. Walls were also used to ornament the front approaches to houses. An over-mantle painting of a house in Fairfield, Conn., illustrates a more decorative treatment of a wall directly in front of the house in contrast to walls and [[fence]]s on other parts of the property [Fig. 8]. A well-kept wall came to signify the prosperity and good management of the farmer, and, as [[Timothy Dwight]] noted in 1796, such walls were “the image of tidy, skilful, profitable agriculture.”

-- ''Elizabeth Kryder-Reid''

==Texts==

===Usage===

* Fitzhugh, William, April 1686, describing Greensprings, Va. (quoted in Lockwood 1934: 2:46) <ref>Alice B. Lockwood, ed., ''Gardens of Colony and State: Gardens and Gardeners of the American Colonies and of the Republic before 1840,'' 2 vols (New York: Charles Scribner’s for the Garden Club of America, 1931), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JNB7BI9T view on Zotero].</ref>

: “the [[Plantation]] where I now live contains a thousand acres, grounds and fencing . . . a large [[orchard]] of about 2500 Apple trees most grafted, well fenced with a locust fence, which is as durable as most brick '''walls''', a Garden, a hundred foot square, well pailed in, a [[Yeard]] wherein is most of the aforesaid necessary houses, pallizad’d in with locust Punchens which is as good as if it were '''walled''' in and more lasting than any of our bricks.”

* Anonymous, 8 May 1704, describing in the ''Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia'' the construction in [[Williamsburg]], Va. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; hereafter CWF)

: “Ordered. That the consideration of the proposall of the said Committee relating, [''sic''] to the Capitol being inclosed with a brick '''wall''' be referred til tomorrow morning. Ordered. That the Overseer appointed to inspect and oversee the building of the Capitol make a Computation what the Charges may amount to of inclosing the Capitol with a Brick '''Wall''' of two Bricks thick and four feet and a half high to be distant sixty foot from the fronts of the East and West Building and the said building and that he lay the same before the House to morrow.”

* [[Washington, George]], 27 March 1760, describing [[Mount Vernon]], plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (quoted in Johnson 1953: 75) <ref>Gerald W. Johnson, ''Mount Vernon: The Story of a Shrine'' (New York: Random House, 1953), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/F2JS5DHZ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Agreed to give Mr. William Triplet, 18 to build the two houses in the Front of my House (plastering them also), and running '''walls''' for Pallisades to them from the Great house and from the Great House to the Wash House and Kitchen also.”

* [[Bartram, John]], 3 December 1762, describing Charleston, S.C. (quoted in Darlington 1849: 242–43) <ref>William Darlington, ''Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall: With Notices of Their Botanical Contemporaries'' (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1849), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TKNVQG76 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “I can’t find, in our country, that south '''walls''' are much protection against our cold, for if we cover so close as to keep out the frost, they are suffocated.”

* Anonymous, 4 January 1770, describing the State House, Annapolis, Md. (''Maryland Gazette'')

: “The General Assembly having been pleased to grant to the Value of 7500 l. Sterling, for building a State-House . . . and for enlarging, repairing, and enclosing the Parade, not exceeding its present Length of 245 feet, and 160 in Breadth, designed to be enclosed with Stone or Brick '''Wall''', and Iron Palisadoes, if the Iron Inclosure should not exceed 500 Sterling.”

* Chastellux, François Jean Marquis de, 1780–82, describing [[Westover]], seat of William Byrd III, on the James River, Va. (1787: 2:172) <ref>François Jean, Marquis de Chastellux, ''Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782'', 2 vols (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ITD6E8FB/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The '''walls''' of the garden and the house were covered with honey-suckles.”

* Shippen, Thomas Lee, 30 December 1783, describing [[Westover]], seat of William Byrd III, on the James River, Va. (1952: n.p.) <ref>Thomas Lee Shippen, ''Westover Described in 1783: A Letter and Drawing Sent by Thomas Lee Shippen, Student of Law in Williamsburg, to His Parents in Philadelphia'' (Richmond, Va.: William Byrd Press, 1952), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3IWWPMJ5/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “the river is backed up by a '''wall''' of four feet high, and about 300 yards in length, and above this '''wall''' there is as you may suppose the most enchanting walk in the world.”

* Morse, Jedidiah, 1789, describing the [[State House Yard]], Philadelphia, Pa. ([1789] 1970: 331) <ref>Jedidiah Morse, ''The American Geography; Or, A View of the Present Situation of the United States of America'' (Elizabeth Town, N.J.: Shepard Kollock, 1789), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/93EGD8Q5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The [[state house yard]], is a neat, elegant and spacious public [[walk]], ornamented with rows of trees; but a high brick '''wall''', which encloses it, limits the [[prospect]].”

* Bentley, William, 3 October 1789, describing the Collins and Ingersoll Gardens, Salem, Mass. (1962: 1:127) <ref>William Bentley, ''The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts'' (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/B63ABACF view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Capt Collins laid the foundation of his new Sea '''Wall''' which makes his garden [[square]] at the bottom of Turner’s Lane, on the east side. Capt. S. Ingersoll on Turner’s Estate has added a new picketed fence to his excellent stone '''wall''', which gives a good appearance.”

* [[Dwight, Timothy]], 1796, describing Worcester County, Mass. (1821: 1:375) <ref>Timothy Dwight, ''Travels in New England and New York'', 4 vols (New Haven, Conn.: Timothy Dwight, 1821), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KHT2AUCG view on Zotero].</ref>

: “In no part of this country are the barns universally so large, and so good; or the inclosures of stone so general, and every where so well formed. These inclosures are composed of stones, merely laid together in the form of a '''wall''', and not compacted with mortar. . . . This relative beauty these enclosures certainly possess: for they are effectual, strong, and durable. Indeed where the stones have a smooth regular face, and are skilfully laid in an exact line, with a true front, the '''wall''' independently of this consideration, becomes neat, and agreeable. A farm well surrounded, and divided, by good stone-'''walls''', presents to my mind, irresistibly, the image of tidy, skilful, profitable agriculture; and promises to me within doors, the still more agreeable prospect of plenty and prosperity.”

[[File:0331.jpg|thumb|Fig. 9, [[George Washington]], ''Drawing and Notes for a Ha-Ha Wall at Mount Vernon, October 1798'', 1798.]]
* [[Washington, George]], October 1798, describing [[Mount Vernon]], plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (Mount Vernon Ladies Association)

: “Supposing the dot at A to be the highest part of the hill in front of the House. & at the black line from B to C by A the natural shape of the hill (or fall of the hill) the pricked line may be a good direction for the '''wall''', in order to prevent its being too serpentine or crooked—this, in some places, will come in upon the level (or that which is nearly so) of the hill—as at 1, 2, 3—and is often as at 5, 6, 7 & 8 will be below the declivity, & require filling up in order to bring the whole to a level which is to be affected by the Earth which may be taken from 1, 2, 3.—
: “There are two reasons for doing it in this manner—the one is, to prevent the '''wall''' from being too serpentine & crooked (as the black line)—and the second is, that the hill below the '''wall''' may be more of a sameness.—otherwise it would descend very suddenly in some places and very gradually in others.—
: “You will observe that this '''wall''' is not to be laid out, as worked by a line—the whole of it is serpentine, which I am particular in mentioning least by the expression in your letter of zig-zag. You had an idea that it was to be laid out by line 20 or 30 feet or yards (as the hill would admit) one way then angling & as far as it would go strait another in the following manner.” [Fig. 9]

* Adams, Abigail, 1800, describing the Peacefield, estate of John Adams, Quincy, Mass. (quoted in Hammond 1982: 182) <ref>Charles Arthur Hammond, ""Where the Arts and the Virtues Unite”: Country Life Near Boston, 1637-1864" (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1982), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VVFZVIKT view on Zotero].</ref>

: “the President has authorised me to have a number of Lombardy poplars set out opposite the house near the '''wall''' which was new just two years ago. . . . he says he will have them extended from the [[gate]] . . . to the corner.”

* Ogden, John Cosens, 1800, describing a graveyard in Bethlehem, Pa. (p. 15) <ref>John C. Ogden, ''An Excursion into Bethlehem & Nazareth, in Pennsylvania, in the Year 1799'' (Philadelphia: Charles Cist, 1800), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/U5CTTBGB view on Zotero].</ref>

: “It is surrounded partly with a stone '''wall''', towards the street, where it cannot be enlarged, partly with a neat wooden [[fence]], on those sides where it may be extended from time to time.”

* Scott, Joseph, 1806, describing a public prison in Philadelphia, Pa. (p. 46) <ref>Joseph Scott, ''A Geographical Description of Pennsylvania'' (Philadelphia: Printed by R. Cochran, 1806), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/55XKIWPN view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The [[yard]] belonging to the criminal prison extends nearly to Prune street, on which is the debtors’ apartment. The whole is surrounded by a lofty stone '''wall'''.”

* [[Charles Drayton|Drayton, Charles]], November 2, 1806, describing [[The Woodlands]], seat of [[William Hamitlon]], near Philadelphia, Pa. (1806: 55–58)<ref>Charles Drayton, "The Diary of Charles Drayton I, 1806," 1806, Drayton Hall: A National Historic Trust Site, http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:27554, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HAARCGXN view on Zotero].</ref>
:"The <u>[[Conservatory]]</u> consists of a [[green house]], & 2 [[hot house]]s—one being at each end of it. The [[green house]] may be about 50 feet long. The front only is glazed. Scaffolds are erected, one higher than another, on which the plants in pots or tubs are placed—so that it is representing the declivity of a mountain. At each end are step-ladders for the purpose of going on each stage to water the plants—& to a walk at the back-'''wall'''. On the floor a walk of 5 or 6 feet extends along the glazed '''wall''' & at each end a door opens into an [[Hot house]]—so that a long walk extends in one line along the stove '''walls''' of the houses & the glazed '''wall''' of the [[green house]].
: "The [[hothouse|Hot houses]], they may extend in front, I suppose, 40 feet each. They have a '''wall''' heated by flues—& 3 glazed '''walls''' & a glazed roof each. In the center, a frame of wood is raised about 2 1/2 feet high, & occupying the whole area except leaving a passage along by the '''walls'''. In the flue '''wall''', or adjoining, is a cistern for tropic aquatic plants. Within the frame, is composed a hot [[bed]]; into which the pots & tubs with plants, are plunged. This [[conservatory|Conservatory]] is said to be equal to any in Europe. It contains between 7 & 8000 plants. To this, the Professor of botany is permitted to resort, with his Pupils occasionally. . . .
:". . . .From the Cellar one enters under the bow window & into this Screen, which is about 6 or 7 feet square. Through these, we enter a narrow area, & ascend some few Steps [close to this side of the house,] into the garden—& thro the other opening we ascend a paved winding [[slope]], which spreads as it ascends, into the [[yard]]. This sloping passage being a segment of a circle, & its two outer '''walls''' <u>concealed</u> by loose [[hedge]]s, & by the projection of the flat roofed Screen of masonry, keeps the [[yard]], & I believe the whole passage <u>out of sight</u> from the house—but certainly from the garden & [[park]] [[lawn]]."

* Stebbins, William, 6 February 1810, describing the [[White House]], Washington, D.C. (1968: 37) <ref>William Stebbins, ''The Journal of William Stebbins'', ed. by Pierce W. Gaines (Hartford, Conn.: Acorn Club, 1968), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2TA7CCFU view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Extended my walk alone to the President’s House:—a handsome edifice, tho’ like the [[United States Capitol|capitol]] of free stone: the south [[yard]] principally made ground, bank’d up by a common stone '''wall'''.”

* [[Hosack, David]], 1811, describing the establishment of the [[Elgin Botanic Garden]], New York, N.Y. (pp. 10, 15) <ref>David Hosack, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden'' (New York: C. S. Van Winkle, 1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/SE9V2UDD view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Accordingly, in the following year, 1801, I purchased of the corporation of the city of New York twenty acres of ground. . . .
: “At a considerable expense, the establishment was inclosed by a well constructed stone '''wall'''....
: “The whole establishment was enclosed by a stone '''wall''', two and an half feet in breadth, and seven and an half feet high.”

* [[Peale, Charles Willson]], 15, 27, 29 March 1814, in a letter to his sons, Benjamin Franklin Peale and Titian Ramsey Peale, describing [[Belfield]], estate of Charles Willson Peale, Germantown, Pa. (Miller, Hart, and Ward, eds., 1991: 3:239) <ref>Lillian B. Miller et al, eds., ''The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family: Charles Willson Peale: Artist in Revolutionary America, 1735-1791. Vol. 1; Charles Willson Peale, Artist as Museum Keeper, 1791-1810. Vol 2, Pts. 1-2; The Belfield Farm Years, 1810-1820. Vol. 3; The Autobiography of Charles Willson Peale. Vol. 5.'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983–2000), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/IZAKPCBG view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The stone and ground is remooved at the Bottom of the Garden but the '''Wall''' is not as high and access into the Garden is not so easey as it used to be, even before any '''wall''' is made.”

* Bryant, William Cullen, 25 August 1821, describing the [[Vale]], estate of Theodore Lyman, Waltham, Mass. (1975: 108) <ref>William Cullen Bryant, ''The Letters of William Cullen Bryant'', ed. by William Cullen II Bryant and Thomas G. Voss (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3X5XUJ6A view on Zotero].</ref>

: “He took me to the [[seat]] of Mr. Lyman. . . . It is a perfect paradise. . . . A hard rolled [[walk]], by the side of a brick '''wall''', about ten feet in height and covered with peach and apricot [[espalier]]s which seemed to grow to it, like the creeping sumach to the bark of an elm.”

* Hunt, Henry, Wm. P. Elliot, and William Thornton, 1826, requesting a Memorial to the House of Representatives of the Congress in Washington, D.C. (U.S. Congress, 19th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives, doc. 123, book 138)

: “That, with a [[view]] to promote the public good, and to ornament and improve the [[public ground]]s, they would recommend . . . That a '''wall''' five feet high, with a stone coping, be put round the ground appropriated for a [[Botanic Garden]].”

* Anonymous, 16 July 1826, describing in the ''St. Philip’s Parish Vestry Book'' meeting resolutions made in Charleston, S.C. (CWF)

: “The Vestry inform the Meeting that they have entered into an agreement with Corporation of the City to take down the present old brick '''walls''' around the church, on Church Street, and to erect in its place a low '''wall''' of brick to be capped with marble and finished with an iron pallisade and three iron [[gate]]s.”

* Viator [pseud.], 15 August 1828, “Nurseries and Gardens on Long Island,” describing [[André Parmentier]]’s horticultural and botanical garden, Brooklyn, N.Y. (''New England Farmer'' 7: 25)

: “At Brooklyn we called at the celebrated Horticultural Garden of Mr. [[ANDRE PARMENTIER]]. This is a recent establishment begun in 1825. It contains 20 acres, and is surrounded by a '''wall''' of masonry, after the manner which we are told is practised on the old continent.”

* [[Breck, Joseph]], 1 February 1836, “Gardens, Hothouses, &c., in the vicinity of Boston,” describing Bellmont Place, residence of John Perkins Cushing, Watertown, Mass. (''Horticultural Register'' 2: 43–44) <ref>Joseph Breck, "Gardens, Hot-Houses, &c., in the Vicinity of Boston", ''The Horticultural Register and Gardener’s Magazine'', 2 (1836), 41–47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/IK2ZAWSC view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The garden is a [[square]], level [[plot]], bounded on the north side by the [[conservatories]], which, if we are not mistaken, are four hundred feet in length. On the east and west are high, substantial brick '''walls''', to which are trained a choice collection of fruit trees imported the last season, already formed for the purpose, some of which are protected by glass. The southern '''wall''' is very ornamental and substantial, and so low that the whole area and houses may be seen at a single glance outside the '''wall'''.”

* Kirkbride, Thomas S., 1841, describing the [[Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane]], Philadelphia, Pa. (1851: 17) <ref>Thomas Story Kirkbride, ''Reports of the Pennsylvania Hospital for The Insane: For the Years 1846-7-8-9 and 50'' (Philadelphia: Published by order of the Board of Managers, 1851), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/IS9R2SUW view on Zotero].
</ref>

: “[[PLEASURE GROUND]] AND FARM.—Of the one hundred and eleven acres in the farm, about forty-one around the Hospital are specially appropriated as a vegetable garden and the pleasure ground of the patients, and are surrounded by a substantial stone-'''wall'''. This '''wall''' is five thousand four hundred and eighty-three feet long, and is ten and a half feet high.
: “Owing to the favourable character of the ground, the '''wall''' has been so placed that it can be seen but in a very small part of its extent, from any one position; and the enclosure is so large, that its presence exerts no unpleasant influence upon those within. Although it is probably sufficient to prevent the escape of a large proportion of the patients, that is a matter of small moment, in comparison with the quiet and privacy which it at all times affords, and the facility with which the patients are enabled to engage in labour, to take exercise, or to enjoy the active scenes which are passing around them, without fear of annoyance from the gaze of idle curiosity or the remarks of unfeeling strangers.”

* [[Smith, Margaret Bayard]], 1841, describing the [[White House]], Washington, D.C. (1906: 393) <ref>Margaret Bayard Smith, ''The First Forty Years of Washington Society'', ed. by Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1906), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FTDFHRFH view on Zotero].</ref>

: “He [[[Thomas Jefferson]]] was very anxious to improve the ground around the President’s House; but as Congress would make no appropriation for this and similar objects, he was obliged to abandon the idea, and content himself with enclosing it with a common stone '''wall''' and sewing it down in grass.” [See Fig. 6]

* [[Mills, Robert]], 23? February 1841, describing the [[national Mall]], Washington, D.C. (Scott, ed., 1990: n.p.) <ref>Pamela Scott, ed., ''The Papers of Robert Mills'' (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9CEBJWW8 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “A range of trees is proposed to surround three sides of the [[square]] which is intended to be laid open by an iron or other railing, the north side to be enclosed with a high brick '''wall''' to serve as a shelter and to secure the various hot houses and other buildings of an inferior character.”

* Trego, Charles, 1843, describing Harrisburg, Pa. (p. 233) <ref>Charles B. Trego, ''A Geography of Pennsylvania'' (Philadelphia: Edward C. Biddle, 1843), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HC6JKU7N view on Zotero].</ref>

: “These public buildings stand in a large enclosure, planted with trees, and surrounded by a brick '''wall''' on which is a neat paling.”

* Kirkbride, Thomas S., April 1848, describing the pleasure grounds and farm of the [[Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane]], Philadelphia, Pa. (''American Journal of Insanity'' 4: 347) <ref>Thomas S. Kirkbride, "Description of the Pleasure Grounds and Farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, with Remarks", ''The American Journal of Insanity'', 4 (1848), 347–54, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9RWM2FH8 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “As much as possible of the grounds belonging to a hospital for the insane should be permanently enclosed by a substantial '''wall''' of stone or brick. This '''wall''' should always be so arranged as in at least a considerable part of its extent, to be completely out of [[view]] from the buildings, either by being placed in low ground, if that is practicable, or if not, it can readily be arranged by being sunk in certain places in an artificial trench, and thus to prevent its being an unpleasant feature, or to give the idea of a prison enclosure. Such a '''wall''' however, useful as it is, had much better not be put up, unless to enclose a large number of acres, or unless it can be kept from being a prominent object from the buildings.”

* [[Loudon, J. C.]], 1850, describing Waltham House at the Vale, estate of Theodore Lyman, Waltham, Mass. (p. 330) <ref>J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening'', new ed., corr. and improved (London: Longman et al., 1850), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/W8EQFZUG view on Zotero].</ref>

: “844. ''Waltham House''. . . . to the left and rear of the house are the [[kitchen-garden]], grapery, [[greenhouse]], [[hothouse]], '''wall''' for fruit, &c. ...(''Downing’s Landscape Gardening''.)”

* [[Ranlett, William H.]], 1851, describing Waldwic Cottage (formerly Little Hermitage), property of Elijah Rosencrantz, Hohokus, N.J. ([1851] 1976: 2:43) <ref>William H. Ranlett, ''The Architect'', 2 vols (New York: Da Capo, 1976), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/QGQPCB5J view on Zotero].</ref>

: “hog pen and [[yard]], 20 by 27, with a good substantial stone '''wall'''.”
{{Break}}

===Citations===

* Parkinson, John, 1629, ''Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris'' ([1629] 1975: 537) <ref>John Parkinson, ''Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris'' (London: Humfrey Lownes and Robert Young, 1629), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/GVTA97MJ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “Having an [[Orchard]] containing one acre of ground, two, three, or more, or lesse, walled about, you may so order it, by leaving a broad and large [[Walk|walke]] betweene the '''wall''' and it . . . and by compassing your [[Orchard]] on the inside with a hedge (wherein may bee planted all sorts of low shrubs or bushes.”

* [[Chambers, Ephraim]], 1741–43, ''Cyclopaedia'' (2:n.p.) <ref>Ephraim Chambers, ''Cyclopaedia, or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. . . .'', 5th edn, 2 vols (London: D. Midwinter et al, 1741), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/PTXK378N view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''WALLS''', in gardening, ''&c.''—The position, matter, and form of '''''walls''''', for fruit-trees, are found to have a great influence on the fruit: though authors differ as to the preference. See GARDEN, [[ORCHARD]], &c.
: “The reverend Mr. Lawrence directs, that the '''WALLS''' of a garden be not built directly to face the four cardinal points, but rather between them, viz. south-east, south-west, north-east, and northwest: in which the two former will be good enough for the best fruit, and the two latter for plums, cherries, and baking pears. See EXPOSURE. Mr. Langford, and some others, propose garden-'''''walls''''' to consist chiefly of semicircles; each about six or eight yards in front, and two trees; and between every two semicircles, including-a space of two feet of plain '''''wall'''''.—By such a provision every part of a '''''wall''''' will enjoy an equal share of the sun, one time with another; beside, that the warmth will be increased, by the collecting and reflecting of the rays in the semicircles; and the trees within be screened from injurious winds.
: “As to the materials of '''''walls''''' for fruit-trees, brick, according to Mr. Switzer, is the best; as being the warmest and kindest for the ripening of fruit, and affording the best conveniency for nailing.
: “Mr. Lawrence, however, affirms, on his own experience, that ''mud-'''walls''''', made of earth and straw tempered together, are better for the ripening of fruit, than either brick or stone '''''walls''''': he adds, that the coping of straw laid on such '''''walls''''', is of great advantage to the fruit, in sheltering them from perpendicular rains, &c. ''
: “M. Fatio, in a particular treatise on the subject, instead of the common perpendicular '''walls''', proposes to have the '''walls''''' built sloping, or reclining from the sun; that what is planted against them, may lie more exposed to his perpendicular rays; which must contribute greatly to the ripening of fruit in our cold climate.”

* [[Miller, Philip]], 1754, ''The Gardeners Dictionary'' ([1754] 1969: 1505–14) <ref>Philip Miller, ''The Gardeners Dictionary'' (New York: Verlag Von J. Cramer, 1969), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/356Q24EP view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''WALLS''' are absolutely necessary in Gardens, for the ripening of all such Fruits as are too delicate to be perfected in this Country, without such Assistantce. These are built with different Materials; in some Countries they are built of Stone, in others with Brick, according as the Materials can be procured best and cheapest.
: “Of all Materials proper for building '''Walls''' for Fruit-trees, Brick is the best; in that it is not only the handsomest, but the warmest and kindest for the ripening of Fruit; besides that, it affords the best Conveniency of Nailing. . . .
: “Where the '''Walls''' are built intirely of Stone, there should be Trelases fix’d up against them, for the more convenient fastening of the Branches of the Trees. . . .
: “There have been several Trials made of '''Walls''' built in different Forms; some of them having been built semicircular, others in Angles of various Sizes, and projecting more toward the North, to screen off the cold Winds: but there has not been any Method as yet, which has succeeded near so well, as that of making the '''Walls''' strait, and building them upright. . . .
: “According to the modern Taste in Gardening, there are very few '''Walls''' built round Gardens; which is certainly very right, not only with regard to the Pleasure of viewing the neighbouring Country from the Garden, but also in regard to the Expence, 1. Of building these '''Walls''': 2. If they are planted with Fruit, as is frequently practised, to maintain them will be a constant Charge . . . therefore the Quantity of '''Walling''' should be proportion’d to the Fruit consumed in the Family: but as it will be necessary to inclose the [[Kitchen-garden]], for the Security of the Garden-stuff, so, if that be '''walled''' round, it will contain as much Fruit as will be wanted in the Family. ...
: “In the building of the '''Walls''' round a [[Kitchen-garden]], the Insides, which are design’d to be planted with Fruit-trees, should be made as plain as possible, so that the Piers should not project on those Sides above four Inches at most. . . .
: “The usual Thickness which Garden-'''walls''' are allow’d, if built with Bricks, is thirteen Inches, which is one Brick and an half: but this should be proportionable to the Height. . . .
: “But I shall now proceed to give some Directions for the building of Hot-'''walls''', to promote the ripening of Fruits, which is now pretty much practis’d in ''England''.
: “In some Places these '''Walls''' are built at a very great Expence, and so contriv’d as to consume a great Quantity of Fuel; but where they are judiciously built, the first Expence will not be near so great, nor will the Charge of Fuel be very considerable. . ..
: “The ordinary Height of these Hot-'''walls''' is about ten Feet, which will be sufficient for any of those Sorts of Fruits which are generally forced. . . .
: “The Foundations of these '''Walls''' should be made four Bricks and an half thick, in order to support the Flues; otherwise, if Part of them rest on Brick-work, and the other on the Ground, they will settle unequally, and soon be out of Order. . . .
: “The Ovens in which the Fires are made, must be contrived on the Back-side of the '''Walls''', which should be in Number proportionable to the Length of the '''Walls'''....
: “The Borders in Front of these Hot-'''walls''' should be about four Feet wide, which will make sufficient Declivity for the sloping Glasses. . . . On the Outside of these [[Border]]s should be low '''Walls''' erected, which should rise an Inch or two above the Level of the [[Border]]s; upon which the Plate of Timber should be laid, on which the sloping Glasses are to rest: and this '''Wall''' will keep up the Earth of the [[Border]], as also preserve the [[Wood]] from rotting.”

* Ware, Isaac, 1756, ''A Complete Body of Architecture'' (pp. 641, 649) <ref>Isaac Ware, ''A Complete Body of Architecture'' (London: T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2EK2USKV view on Zotero].</ref>

: “When a garden is already made in an ill spot, all that can be done is to open agreeable [[view]]s by clearing away '''walls''' and [[hedge]]s in the ground; and trees, and sometimes even buildings, when ill-placed, ill-looking and of little value: this is to be done when something pleasing, some [[view]] of elegant, wild nature can be let in; and where that cannot be, some [[pavilion]], such as we have described, or shall describe, must shut out unalterable deformity.”
: “Extent and freedom we have directed largely. He who builds high '''walls''' about a small garden must climb to his [[summer-house]]: this we have named with due contempt. . . .
: “This closeness of a garden is one of the first things against which a person of any degree of taste will resolve.”

* [[Miller, Philip]], 1759, ''The Gardeners Dictionary'' (n.p.) <ref>Philip Miller, ''The Gardeners Dictionary: Containing the Methods of Cultivation and Improving the Kitchen, Fruit, and Flower Garden. As Also, the Physick Garden, Wilderness, Conservatory, and Vineyard... Interspers’d with the History of the Plants, the Characters of Each Genus and the Names of All the Particular Species, in Latin and English; and an Explanation of All the Terms Used in Botany and Gardening, Etc.'', 7th edn (London: Philip Miller, 1759), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/4XH23U3R view on zotero].</ref>

: “Another thing absolutely necessary is where the Boundaries of the Garden are fenced with '''Walls''' or Pales, they should be hid by [[Plantation]]s of Flowering Shrubs, intermixed with laurels, and some Evergreens, which will have a good effect, and at the same time conceal the [[fence]]s which are disagreeable, when left naked and exposed to the Sight.”

* Sheridan, Thomas, 1789, ''A Complete Dictionary of the English Language'' (n.p.) <ref>Thomas A. Sheridan, ''A Complete Dictionary of the English Language, Carefully Revised and Corrected by John Andrews....'', 5th edn (Philadelphia: William Young, 1789), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/T5GU4CBQ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''WALL''', wa’l. s. A series of brick or stone carried upwards and cemented with mortar. . . .
: “'''WALL'''FRUIT, wa’l-frot. s. Fruit which, to be ripened, must be planted against a '''wall'''.”

* [[Deane, Samuel]], 1790, ''The New-England Farmer'' (pp. 88–89) <ref>Samuel Deane, ''The New-England Farmer, or Georgical Dictionary'' (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1790), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/S8QQDHP6 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “[[FENCE]], a [[hedge]], '''wall''', ditch, or other enclosure made about farms, or parts of farms, to exclude cattle, or include them. Fencing is a matter of great consequence with farmers. . . .
: “When ground is wholly subdued, and the stumps of its original growth of trees quite rotted out, if stones can be had without carrying too far, stone '''walls''' are the fences that ought to be made. Though the cost may be greater at first than that of some other [[fence]]s, they will prove to be cheapest in the end.”

* Forsyth, William, 1802, ''A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees'' (pp. 146–47, 150) <ref>William Forsyth, ''A Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees'' (Philadelphia: J. Morgan, 1802), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZSNDFTE9/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “It [a garden] should be '''walled''' round with a brick '''wall''' from ten to twelve feet high: But, if there be plenty of '''walling''', which there may be when you are not stinted with respect to ground, I would prefer '''walls''' ten feet high, to those that are higher, and I am convinced they will be found more convenient. . . .
: “By making slips on the outside of the garden '''wall''', you will have plenty of ground for gooseberries, currants, strawberries &c. You may allot that part of the slips which lies nearest to the stables . . .for melon and cucumber beds; and you can plant both sides of the garden-'''wall'''....
: “'''Walls''' of kitchen gardens should be from ten to fourteen feet high; the foundation should be two bricks or two bricks and a half thick; the offset should not be above one course higher than the level of the [[border]]; and the '''wall''' should then set off a brick and a half thick. If the '''walls''' are long, it will be necessary to strengthen them with piers from forty to sixty feet apart; and these piers should not project above half a brick beyond the '''wall'''.”

* M’Mahon, Bernard, 1806, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar'' (p. 57) <ref>Bernard M’Mahon, ''The American Gardener’s Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. Containing a Complete Account of All the Work Necessary to Be Done... for Every Month of the Year....'' (Philadelphia: Printed by B. Graves for the author, 1806), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HU4JIS9C view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The [pleasure] ground should be previously fenced, which may be occasionally a [[hedge]], paling or '''wall''', &c. as most convenient.”

* [[Gregory, G.]], 1816, ''A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences'' (n.p.) <ref>George Gregory, ''A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, First American, from the second London edition, considerably improved and augmented'', 3 vols (Philadelphia: Isaac Peirce, 1816), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/2H8KAZ5E view on Zotero].</ref>

: “[vol. 2] GARDENING. . . .
: “The situation of a garden should be dry, but rather low than high, and as sheltered as can be from the north and east winds. These points of the compass should be guarded against by high and good [[fence]]s; by a '''wall''' of at least ten feet high; lower '''walls''' do not answer so well for fruit-trees, though one of eight may do. A garden should be so situated, to be as much warmer as possible than the general temper of the air is without, or ought to be made warmer by the ring and subdivision [[fence]]s. This advantage is essential to the expectation we have from a garden locally considered. . . .
: “Yet the fall of the leaves by autumnal winds is troublesome, and a high '''wall''' is therefore advisable. Spruce firs have been used in close-shorn hedges; which, as evergreens, are proper enough to plant for a screen in a single row, though not very near to the '''wall'''; but the best evergreens for this purpose are the evergreen oak and the cork-tree. ...
: “[vol. 3] '''WALL''', in gardening. Of all materials for building '''walls''' for fruit-trees, brick is the best, it being not only the handsomest, but the warmest and kindest for the ripening of fruit; and affording the best conveniency for nailing, as smaller nails will serve in brick than will in stone '''walls''', where the joints are larger; and if the walls are caped with free-stone, and stone pilasters or [[column]]s at proper distances to separate the trees, and break off the force of the winds; they are very beautiful, and the most profitable walls of any others. In some parts of England there are '''walls''' built both of brick and stone, which are found very commodious. The bricks of some places are not of themselves substantial enough for '''walls'''; and therefore some persons, that they might have walls both substantial and wholesome, have built these double, the outside being of stone, and the inside of brick; but there must be great care taken to bond the bricks well into the stone, otherwise they are very apt to separate one from the other, especially when frost comes after much wet.
: “There have been several trials made of '''walls''' built in different forms; some of them having been built semicircular; others in angles of various sizes; and projecting more towards the north, to screen off the cold winds; but there has not as yet been any method which has succeeded near so well as that of making the '''walls''' straight, and building them upright. Where persons are willing to be at the expense in the building of their '''walls''' substantial, they will find it answer much better than those which are slightly built, not only in duration, but in warmth; therefore a '''wall''' two bricks thick will be found to answer better than that of one brick and a half. The best aspect for ripening fruit is south, with a point to the east; and the next best due south. It is a great improvement to have a trellis of wood against the '''wall''', to train the trees to, as it prevents the '''wall''' being spoiled by nails, &c.”

* Gardiner, John, and David Hepburn, 1818, ''The American Gardener'' (pp. 136–37) <ref>John Gardiner and David Hepburn, ''The American Gardener'', Expanded ed. of 1804 original (Georgetown, D.C.: Joseph Milligan, 1818), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/RISZAN8M/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “For gardens, [[hedge]]s are advisable for two distinct purposes: The first, outward [[fence]]s to serve as a '''wall''' for the exclusion of tresspassers [sic]; the other inward, for the purposes of ornament and shade.
: “For the former, the haw-thorn is excellent. . . .
: “For internal ornamental [[hedge]]s, privet, yew, laurel and box, cedar and juniper, are most generally used.”

* [[Webster, Noah]], 1828, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language'' (n.p.) <ref>Noah Webster, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language'', 2 vols (New York: S. Converse, 1828), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/N7BSU467 view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''WALL''', ''n''. [L. ''vallum''; Sax. ''weal''; D. ''wal''; Ir. Gaelic, ''balla'' and ''fal''; Russ. ''val''; W. ''gwal''. In L. ''vallus'' is a stake or post, and probably ''vallum'' was originally a [[fence]] of stakes, a palisade or stockade; the first rude fortification of uncivilized men. The primary sense of ''vallus'' is a shoot, or that which is set, and the latter may be the sense of '''''wall''''', whether it is from ''vallus'', or from some other root.].
: “1. A work or structure of stone, brick or other materials, raised to some highth [''sic''], and intended for a defense or security. '''''Walls''''' of stone, with or without cement, are much used in America for [[fence]]s on farms; '''''walls''''' are laid as the foundation of houses and the security of cellars. '''''Walls''''' of stone or brick from the exterior of buildings, and they are often raised round cities and forts as a defense against enemies.”

* [[Bridgeman, Thomas]], 1832, ''The Young Gardener’s Assistant'' (p. 134) <ref>Thomas Bridgeman, ''The Young Gardener’s Assistant'', 3rd edn (New York: Geo. Robertson, 1832), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/9FU4SNZK view on Zotero].</ref>

: “When [[Shrub]]s, Creepers, or Climbers are planted against '''walls''' or [[trellis]]es, either on account of their rarity, delicacy, or to conceal a rough fence or other unsightly object, they require different modes of training.”

* [[Loudon, J. C.]], 1834, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening'' (pp. 575–80, 615, 728, 1131) <ref> J. C. (John Claudius) Loudon, ''An Encyclopaedia of Gardening; Comprising the Theory and Practice of Horticulture, Floriculture, Arboriculture, and Landscape-Gardening'', New ed., considerably improved and enlarged (London: Longman et al, 1834), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/TGQ5WTNR view on Zotero].</ref>

: “2413. ''Fixed structures'' consist chiefly of erections for the purpose of improving the climate of plants by shelter, by supplying heat, and by exposing them to the influence of the sun. The genera are '''walls''' and [[espalier]] rails, of each of which the species are numerous.
: “2414. ''Garden-'''walls''''' are formed either of brick, wood, stone, or earth, or brick and stone together; and they are either solid, flued, or cellular, upright or sloping, straight or angular.
: “2415. ''Brick, stone, or mud '''walls''''' consist of three parts, the foundation, the body of the '''wall''', and the coping. . . .
: “2416. ''The brick and stone '''wall''''' is a stone '''wall''' faced with four inches of brick-work, or what is called ''brick'' and ''bed'', on the side most exposed to the sun, as on the south sides of east and west '''walls''', and on the insides for the sake of appearance of the two end, or north and south '''walls''' of enclosed gardens. . . .
: “2417. ''The solid brick '''wall''''' is the simplest of all garden-'''walls''', and where the height does not exceed 6 feet, 9 inches in thickness will suffice; when above that to 13 feet, 14 inches, and when from 13 to 20 feet, 18 inches in width are requisite. . . .
: “2418. ''The flued '''wall''', or hot-'''wall'''''. . . is generally built entirely of brick, though where stone is abundant and more economical, the back or north side may be of that material. A flued wall may be termed a hollow '''wall''', in which the vacuity is thrown into compartments (''a, a, a, a''), to facilitate the circulation of smoke and heat, from the base or surface of the ground to within one or two feet of the coping. . . . A wooden or wire [[trellis]] is also occasionally placed before flued '''walls'''....
[[File:1314.jpg|thumb|Fig. 10, [[J. C. Loudon]], "The cellular wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1834), p. 577, figs. 562a and b.]]
: “2420. ''The cellular '''wall''''' (''fig''. 562.) is a recent invention (''Hort. Trans''. vol. iv), the essential part of the construction of which is, that the '''wall''' is built hollow, or at least with communicating vacuities, equally distributed from the surface of the ground to the coping. . . . The advantages of this '''wall''' are obviously considerable in the saving of material, and in the simple and efficacious mode of heating; but the bricks and mortar must be of the best quality. . . . [Fig. 10]
: “2421. ''Hollow '''walls''''' may also be formed by using English instead of Flemish bond: that is, laying one course of bricks along each face of the '''wall''' on edge, and then bonding them by a course laid across and flat. . . .
: “2422. ''Where '''wall'''-fruit is an object of consideration'', the whole of the '''walls''' should be flued or cellular, in order that in any wet or cold autumn, the fruit and wood may be ripened by the application of gentle fires, night and day, in the month of September. . . .
: “2423. ''The mud or earth-'''wall'''''. . . is formed of clay, or better of brick earth in a state between moist and dry, compactly rammed and pressed together between two moveable boarded sides ... retained in their position by a frame of timber . . . which form, between them the section of the '''wall''' . . . these boarded sides are placed, inclining to each other, so as to form the '''wall''' tapering as it ascends. . . .
: “2424. ''Boarded or wooden '''walls'''''. . . are variously constructed. One general rule is, that the boards of which they are composed, should either be imbricated or close-jointed, in order to prevent a current of air from passing through the seams; and in either case well nailed to the battens behind, in order to prevent warping from serpentine wall.'' . . has two avowed objects; first, the saving of bricks, as a '''wall''' in which the centres of the segments composing the line are fifteen feet apart, may be safely carried fifteen feet high, and only nine inches in thickness from the foundations; and a four-inch '''wall''' may be built seven feet high on the same plan. The next proposed advantage is, shelter from all winds in the direction of the '''wall'''; but this advantage seems generally denied by practical men. ...
: “2428. ''The angular '''wall'''''. . . is recommended on the same general principles of shelter and economy as above; it has been tried nearly as frequently, and as generally condemned on the same grounds. . . .
: “2429. T''he zig-zag '''wall''''' (''fig''. 568.) is an angular '''wall''' in which the angles are all right angles, and the length of their external sides one brick or nine inches. This '''wall''' is built on a solid foundation, one foot six inches high, and fourteen inches wide. It is then commenced in zig-zag, and may be carried up to the height of fifteen or sixteen feet of one brick in thickness, and additional height may be given by adding three or four feet of brick on edge. . . .
[[File:1316.jpg|thumb|Fig. 11, [[J. C. Loudon]], “The zig-zag wall” and “The square fret wall,” in ''An Encyclopædia of gardening'' (1834), pp. 578 and 579, figs. 568 and 569. ]]
: “2430. ''The square fret '''wall'''''. . . is a four-inch '''wall''' like the former, and the ground-plan is formed by joining a series of half-[[square]]s, the sides of which are each of the proper length for training one tree during two or three years. [Fig. 11]
: “2431. ''The nurseryman’s, or self-supported four-inch '''wall'''''. . . is formed in lengths of from five to eight feet, and of one brick in breadth, in alternate planes, so that the points of junction form in effect piers nine by four and a half inches. . . .
: “2432. ''The piered '''wall'''''. . . may be of any thickness with piers generally of double that thickness, placed at regular distances, and seldom exceeding the '''wall''' in height, unless for ornament. . . .
: “2441. Of ''fixed structures'', the brick '''wall''', both as a fence, and retainer of heat, may be reckoned essential to every [[kitchen-garden]]; and in many cases the mode of building them hollow may be advantageously adopted. . . .
: “2617. '''''Walls''''' are unquestionably the grandest [[fence]]s for [[park]]s; and arched portals, the noblest entrances; between these and the [[hedge]] or pale, and [[Rustic_style|rustic]] [[gate]], designs in every degree of gradation, both for lodges, [[gate]]s, and [[fence]]s, will be found in the works of Wright, Gandy, Robertson, Aikin, Pocock, and other architects who have published on the rural department of their art. . . .
: “3257. '''''Walls''''' are built round a garden chiefly for the production of fruits. A [[kitchen-garden]], Nicol observes, considered merely as such, may be as completely fenced and sheltered by hedges as by '''walls''', as indeed they were in former times, and examples of that mode of fencing are still to be met with. But in order to obtain the finer fruits, it becomes necessary to build '''walls''', or to erect pales and railings. . . .
: “6380. ''Fences''. Masses, in the [[ancient style]] of planting, were generally surrounded by '''walls''' or other durable [[fence]]s. Here the barrier was considered as an object or permanent part of the scene, and for that reason was executed substantially, and even ornamentally. They were generally '''walls''' substantially coped, and furnished with handsome [[gate]]s and piers. The rows of [[avenue]]s and small [[clump]]s, or platoons intended to be finally thrown open, were enclosed by the most convenient temporary [[fence]].”

* [[Sayers, Edward]], 1838, ''The American Flower Garden Companion'' (p. 129) <ref>Edward Sayers, ''The American Flower Garden Companion, Adapted to the Northern States'' (Boston: Joseph Breck and Company, 1838), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/GHTFN8B2/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “The ''[[trellis]]es, [[arbor]]s, '''walls''', [[fence]]s'', and so on, should be covered with ''vines'' and ''creepers'', so that the whole may have a corresponding appearance.”

* [[Loudon, Jane]], 1845, ''Gardening for Ladies'' (pp. 410–11) <ref>Jane Loudon, ''Gardening for Ladies; and Companion to the Flower-Garden'', ed. by A. J. Downing (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1845), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3Q5GCH4I view on Zotero].</ref>

: “'''WALLS''' for gardens are either used as boundary [[fence]]s, and at the same time for the purpose of training plants on, or they are erected in gardens for the latter purpose only. They may be formed of different materials, according to those that are most abundant in any given locality; but the best of all '''walls''' for garden purposes are those which are built of brick. . . . In no case, however, ought garden '''walls''', or indeed division or [[fence]] '''walls''' of any kind which have not a load to support perpendicularly, or a pressure to resist on one side, to be built with piers. . . . Walls of nine inches in thickness, and even four-inch '''walls''', if built in a winding or zigzag direction, may be carried to a considerable height without either having piers or being built hollow; and such '''walls''' answer perfectly for the interior of gardens.”

* [[Johnson, George William]], 1847, ''A Dictionary of Modern Gardening'' (pp. 221, 620–21) <ref>George William Johnson, ''A Dictionary of Modern Gardening'', ed. by David Landreth (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1847), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/D6PQSNAN view on Zotero].</ref>

: “[[FENCE]]S are employed to mark the boundary of property, to exclude trespassers, either human or quadrupedal, and to afford shelter. They are either live [[fence]]s, and are then known as ''[[hedge]]s'', or dead, and are then either ''banks'', ''ditches'', ''palings'', or '''''walls'''''; or they are a union of those two, to which titles the reader is referred. . . .
: “'''WALLS''' are usually built in panels, from fifteen to thirty feet in length, one brick thick, with [[pillar]]s for the sake of adding to their strength, at these specified distances; the foundation a brick and a half thick. . . .
: “It is a practice sanctioned by economy, to build the '''wall''' half brick thick, on a nine inch foundation, and to compensate for its want of strength, a waved form is given. Both the smallness of its substance and its form, are found, however, to be inimical to the ripening of fruit.
: “In every instance a '''wall''' should never be lower than eight feet. The thickness usually varies with the height of the '''wall''', being nine inches, if it is not higher than eight feet; thirteen and a half inches, if above eight and under fourteen feet; and eighteen inches, from fourteen up to twenty feet.
: “Fruit trees will succeed quite as well against a stone '''wall''' as against a brick one, although the former is neither so neat in appearance, nor can the trees be trained in such a regular form upon it as upon the latter. The last disadvantage may be in a great measure remedied by having a wooden or wire [[trellis]] affixed to it.—''Gard. Chron''.
: “If it be desirable that the roots of the trees should benefit by the pasturage outside the '''wall''', it is very common to build it upon an arched foundation.
: “Colour has very considerable influence over a body’s power of absorbing heat. . . . The lightest coloured rays are the most heating, therefore light colored '''walls''', but especially white, are the worst for fruit trees. The thermometer against a '''wall''' rendered black by coal tar, rises 5° higher in the sunshine, than the same instrument suspended against a red brick structure of the same thickness; nor will it cool lower at night, though its radiating power is increased by the increased darkness of its colour, if a proper screen be then employed.— ''Johnson’s Princ. of Gard''.
: “''Inclined or Sloping '''Walls''''' have been recommended, but have always failed in practice. It is quite true that they receive the sun’s rays at a favourable angle, but they retain wet, and become so much colder by radiation at night than perpendicular '''walls''', that they are found to be unfavourable to the ripening of fruit.”

* [[Downing, A. J.]], 1849, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (pp. 343–44) <ref>A. J. [Andrew Jackson] Downing, ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America'', 4th edn (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/K7BRCDC5/ view on Zotero].</ref>

: “An old stone '''wall''' covered with creepers and climbing plants, may become a [[picturesque]] barrier a thousand times superior to such a fence.”

==Images==

===Inscribed===

<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

File:1042.jpg|Michael van der Gucht, Illustration for chapter entitled: "Of different Terrasses and Stairs, with their most exact Proportions," in [[A.-J. Dézallier d'Argenville]], ''The Theory and Practice of Gardening''(1712), pl. opp. p. 117.

File:0078.jpg|Anonymous, Plan for a garden, mid-18th century.

File:0554.jpg|John Hawks, "Plan and Elevation of a Prison for the District of Edenton," June 1, 1773.

File:0072.jpg|[[Thomas Jefferson]], Plan of an orchard at Monticello, c. 1778.

File:0553.jpg|Anonymous, ''A Plan of a Lot and Wharf Belonging to Florian Charles Mey, Esq.'', 1797.

File:0555.jpg|Anonymous, Plat of 117 Broad Street, Charleston, 1797.

File:0331.jpg|[[George Washington]], ''Drawing and Notes for a Ha-Ha Wall at Mount Vernon, October 1798'', 1798.

File:0095.jpg|Anonymous, "Plan of Mr. Derby['s] Land," 1800.

File:1237.jpg|[[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]], ''General Plan of a Marine Asylum and Hospital proposed to be built at Washington'', 1812.

File:0414.jpg|[[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]], ''Plan of the west end of the public appropriation in the city of Washington, called the Mall, as proposed to be arranged for the site of the university'', 1816.

File:1313.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "The flued wall, or hot-wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1826), p. 304, figs. 236 and 237.

File:1315.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "The wavy or serpentine wall" and "the angular wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1826), p. 307, figs. 241 and 242.

File:1340.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "Cross walls," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1826), p. 471, fig. 427.

File:1820.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "The mud or earth-wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1826), p. 306, fig. 239.

File:1821.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "The nurseryman's, or self-supported four-inch wall" and "The piered wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1826), p. 308, figs. 245 and 246.

File:1982.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "The cellular wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1826), p. 305, fig. 238.

File:1314.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], "The cellular wall," in ''An Encyclopædia of Gardening'' (1834), p. 577, figs. 562a and b.

File:1316.jpg|[[J. C. Loudon]], “The zig-zag wall” and “The square fret wall,” in ''An Encyclopædia of gardening'' (1834), pp. 578 and 579, figs. 568 and 569.

File:0877.jpg|Anonymous, Section of a terrace of the Messrs. Winship, in ''Magazine of Horticulture'' 6 (November 1840): 403, fig. 10.

File:0787.jpg|Frances Palmer, "Ground Plot," in [[William H. Ranlett]], ''The Architect'' (1851), vol. 2, pl. 29.

</gallery>

===Associated===

<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

File:0168.jpg|Thomas Jefferson, Third variant for range and gardens, showing serpentine walls at the University of Virginia, c. 1817-22.

File:1804.jpg|Sophie Madeleine du Pont, "Starecatus's gallant exploit--(ie) putting Azor [''sic''] to fight with no other weapon but the broomstick--," November 17, 1824.

File:1103.jpg|W. Mason, "Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane," c. 1841.

File:0034.jpg|[[Robert Mills]], Alternative plan for the grounds of the National Institution, 1841.

File:1097.jpg|Thomas S. Sinclair, "Plan of the Pleasure Grounds and Farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane at Philadelphia," in Thomas S. Kirkbride, ''American Journal of Insanity'' 4 (April 1848): plate opp. p. 280.

File:0942.jpg|Anonymous, "Plan of a Suburban Garden," in [[A. J. Downing]], ed., ''The Horticulturist'' 3, no. 8 (February 1849): pl. opp. p. 353.

File:0333.jpg|G. & F. Bill (firm), ''Birds eye view of Mt. Vernon the home of Washington'', c. 1859.

</gallery>

===Attributed===

<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

File:0290.jpg|William Burgis, ''A Prospect of the Colledges'' [sic] ''in Cambridge in New England'', 1743.

File:0925.jpg|William Burgis, ''A South East View of ye Great Town of Boston in New England in America'', 1743.

File:0056.jpg|[[John Bartram|John]] or [[William Bartram]], A Draught of John Bartram's House and Garden as it appears from the River, 1758.

File:0037.jpg|[[Charles Willson Peale]], ''William Paca'', 1772.

File:0613.jpg|Samuel Hill, "View of the Seat of His Excellency John Hancock, Esq., Boston," in ''The Massachusetts Magazine'' 1, no. 7 (July 1789): pl. 7, opp. p. 394.

File:0161.jpg|Jonathan Budington, ''View of the Cannon House and Wharf'', 1792.

File:0262.jpg|John Brewster, Jr., ''Lucy Gallup Eldredge (Mrs. James Eldredge)'', 1795.

File:0408.jpg|David Leonard, ''A S.W. view of the College in Providence, together with the President's House & Gardens'', c. 1795.

File:0154.jpg|C. Milbourne, ''View of Broadway at Bowling Green with the Government House, New York City'', 1797.

File:0176.jpg|Samuel B. Malcolm, ''The President's House'', 1798.

File:0236.jpg|[[Lewis Miller]], "The Light Horseman," 1799.

File:0029.jpg|Michele Felice Cornè, ''Ezekiel Hersey Derby Farm'', c. 1800.

File:0135.jpg|Unknown, Gardiner Gilman House Overmantle, c.1800.

File:0165.jpg|Jonathan Budington or Dr. Francis Forgue, attr., ''View of Main Street in Fairfield, Connecticut'', c.1800.

File:0273.jpg|Ralph Earl, ''Thomas Earle'', 1800.

File:0307.jpg|[[William Russell Birch]], "Pennsylvania Hospital, in Pine Street Philadelphia," 1800.

File:0127.jpg|Nancy Baker, Brick House with Brick Wall and People, 1803, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 58.

File:0909.jpg|Barthélémy Lafon, "Plan de l'Habitation de Feu Jn. Bte. de Marigny Pour servir au partage des héritiers. . .," September 15, 1806.

File:0125.jpg|Mary Antrim, Brick House with Two Foreyards and Animals, 1807, in Sotheby's New York, ''Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring'' (January 2012), p. 72.

File:0325.jpg|[[William Russell Birch]], ''Sweet Briar'', c. 1808, in Emily T. Cooperman and Lea Carson Sherk, ''William Birch: Picturing the American Scene'' (2011), p. 201, fig. 116.

File:1469.jpg|John Lewis Krimmel, ''Sunday Morning in front of the Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia'', c. 1811-13.

File:0054.jpg|[[Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville]], ''Le coin de F. Street Washington vis-à-vis nôtre maison été de 1817'', 1817.

File:1015.jpg|George Flower, ''Park House, Albion, Edwards County, Illinois—Home of George Flower'', c. 1820.

File:0157.jpg|[[Anne-Marguerite-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny Hyde de Neuville]], ''Washington City'', 1821.

File:0121.jpg|Alexander Francis, ''Ralph Wheelock's Farm'', c. 1822.

File:0112.jpg|[[Anthony St. John Baker]], "View of the White House," 1826, in ''Mémoires d’un voyageur qui se repose'' (1850).

File:1112.jpg|[[Anthony St. John Baker]] (artist), B. King (lithograper), ''Riversdale, near Bladensburg'', 1827.

File:1432.jpg|Milo Osborne, "Deaf and Dumb Asylum," in Theodore S. Fay, ''Views in New-York and its Environs from Accurate, Characteristic, and Picturesque Drawings'' (1831).

File:1458.jpg|[[Henry Cheever Pratt]], ''The House of Gardiner Greene'', c. 1834.

File:0663.jpg|John Warner Barber, "College of New Jersey, Princeton," in ''Historical collections of the state of New Jersey'' (1844), pl. opp. p. 266.

File:0007.jpg|Charles H. Wolf, attr., ''Pennsylvania Farmstead with Many Fences'', c. 1847.

File:0556.jpg|John William Hill, ''Blandford Church, Petersburg, Virginia'', 1847.

File:0519.jpg|David Ryder, ''Arabella Sparrow'', 1848.

File:0383.jpg|Anonymous, "Residence of Gov. Morehead, North Carolina," in [[A. J. Downing]], ''A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'' (1849), p. 387, fig. 46.

File:0114.jpg|Rubens Peale, ''Old Museum'', 1858-60.

</gallery>

==Notes==

<references></references>

[[Category: Keywords]]
[[Category: Boundaries]]

File:0165.jpg

2017-09-26T15:51:13Z

T-omalley:

{{break}}
Jonathan Budington or Dr. Francis Forgue, attr., ''View of Main Street in Fairfield, Connecticut'', c. 1800. Fairfield Historical Society, Conn.

Elgin Botanic Garden

2017-09-19T18:39:06Z

T-omalley: /* Images */

The '''Elgin Botanic Garden''', established in 1801 in New York City by Dr. [[David Hosack]] (1769–1835), was a systematic arrangement of plants for scientific and pedagogical purposes. It served as a garden for teaching botany and materia medica at both the medical school of Columbia College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. It was located in the area that is now midtown Manhattan.
==Overview==

'''Alternate Names''': Botanic Garden of the State of New York <br/>
'''Site Dates''': 1801–1811 <br/>
'''Site Owner(s)''': [[David Hosack]] (1769–1835); The State of New York; The College of Physicians and Surgeons; Columbia College <br/>
'''Associated People''': Andrew Gentle (gardener); Frederick Pursh (1774–1820, gardener); Michael Dennison (seedsman) <br/>
'''Location''': New York, NY<br/>
[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7587402,-73.9797679,18z View on Google maps]

==History==
[[File:0050.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, Hugh Reinagle, ''Elgin Garden on Fifth Avenue'', c. 1812.]]
While serving as professor of botany at Columbia College, Samuel Latham Mitchill proposed the development of a [[botanic garden]] in New York City to be administered either by the College or by New York's Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures. As Mitchill explained in a report to the Society in 1794, a garden comprised of indigenous and imported plants <span id="Mitchill_cite"></span>would be "one of the genteelest and most beautiful of public improvements," while also providing essential aid in the teaching of botany and the conducting of agricultural experiments ([[#Mitchill|view text]]).<ref>Significantly, when David Hosack later quoted Mitchill, he altered his words to emphasize the garden's practicality, changing Mitchill's phrase "genteelest and most beautiful" to "most useful and most important"; see David Hosack, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden: And the Subsequent Disposal of the Same to the State of New-York'' (New York: C.S. Van Winkle, 1811), 6, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> Mitchill's proposal reflects his medical education at the University of Edinburgh, where [[botanic garden]]s served as essential adjuncts to courses in botany and materia medica.<ref>Christine Chapman Robbins, ''David Hosack: Citizen of New York'' (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1964), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B51 view on Zotero].</ref> Although nothing came of his plan, the idea was revived by his successor, [[David Hosack]], another Edinburgh-educated physician, who was appointed professor of botany at Columbia in May 1795, and professor of materia medica two years later. In November 1797 [[David Hosack|Hosack]] informed the trustees of Columbia College that even his "large and very extensive collection of coloured [botanical] engravings" fell short of the pedagogic utility that a [[botanic garden]] would provide. <span id="1797_cite"></span>He therefore requested that "the professorship of botany and materia medica be endowed with a certain annual salary to defray the necessary expenses of a small garden, in which the professor may cultivate, under his immediate notice, such plants as furnish the most valuable medicines, and are most necessary for medical instruction" ([[#1797|view text]]). Despite agreeing with [[David Hosack|Hosack]] in principle, the trustees provided no funds. He next directed his request to the state legislature, but his letter of February 1800 requesting an annual stipend of £300 met with equally disappointing results.<ref>Hosack 1811, 7–10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:1136.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, John Trumbull, ''Dr. Hosack's Green houses'', Elgin Botanic Garden, June 1806.]]
Finally, in 1801, [[David Hosack|Hosack]] resolved to take the matter into his own hands, personally financing the purchase of twenty acres of land in the countryside to the north of the city, between what is now 47th and 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues (an area that now includes Rockefeller Center) [Fig. 1].<ref>Hosack 1811, 10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> Columbia College was then located four miles to the south in lower Manhattan, a distance that limited the garden's practicality from the outset. In other respects, however, the situation was ideal. <span id="variegated_cite"></span>Hosack noted that "the view from the most elevated part, is variegated and extensive, and the soil itself of that diversified nature, as to be particularly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of vegetable productions" ([[#variegated|view text]]). He named the garden "Elgin" after his father's birthplace in Scotland. Soon after purchasing the property, he wrote to "friends in Europe and in the East and West Indies [asking] for their plants."<ref>David Hosack, letter of July 25, 1803, to Dr. Thomas Parke, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Boston Public Library, quoted in Robbins 1964, 65, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Parke_cite"></span>In July 1803, while his collection was "yet small," he made a similar request of the Philadelphia physician Thomas Parke, asking for his help in obtaining duplicate specimens of "rare and valuable plants" owned by their mutual friend [[William Hamilton]], as well as medicinal plants and a catalog from the [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery]] ([[#Parke|view text]]). Dr. Parke had already provided [[David Hosack|Hosack]] with plans of the elaborate [[greenhouse]] with flanking [[hothouse]]s that [[William Hamilton|Hamilton]] built ten years earlier at [[The Woodlands]].<ref>Timothy Preston Long, "The Woodlands: A 'Matchless Place'" (unpublished Master of Science thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JQS7HETZ view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Elegance_cite"></span>[[David Hosack|Hosack]] adopted roughly the same design and dimensions for the Elgin [[greenhouse]] complex, which he described as "constructed with great architectural taste and elegance" ([[#Elegance|view text]]). After completing the central block in 1803, [[David Hosack|Hosack]] added the [[hothouse]]s in 1806 and 1807. The artist John Trumbull documented the buildings in a drawing made in June 1806 [Fig. 2], probably as a study for the background of his portrait of [[David Hosack|Hosack]], presently known only through a related engraving [Fig. 3].
[[File:2052.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Charles Heath after Thomas Sully and John Trumbull, ''David Hosack, M.D., F.R.S.'', c. 1816.]]

<span id="Sketch_cite"></span>[[David Hosack|Hosack]] reportedly had "in cultivation at the commencement of 1805, nearly fifteen hundred American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics" ([[#Sketch|view text]]). <span id="Indies_cite"></span>The following year, when he published the first catalog of the garden, the number of plants had grown to nearly 2,000 species, with the "the greater part of [the twenty acres]... now in cultivation" ([[#Indies|view text]]). <span id="Jefferson_cite"></span> While continuing to collect plants with the aid of well-connected friends such as [[Thomas Jefferson]] ([[#Jefferson|view text]]), Hosack turned his attention to laying out the grounds, ensuring that they were not only "arranged and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening," but also according to scientific taxonomies and the conditions of climate and terrain best suited to each plant.<ref>David Hosack, ''Description of the Elgin Garden, The Property of David Hosack, M.D.'' (New York: The author, 1810), 1–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero].</ref> By 1810 when he published his ''Description of the Elgin Garden'', [[David Hosack|Hosack]] had carried out the plan outlined in his 1806 ''Catalogue'' of encircling the garden with a "belt of forest trees and shrubs, native and exotic." This "judiciously chequered and mingled" collection was comprised of "the oak, the plane, the elm, the sugar maple, the locust, the horse chesnut, the mountain ash, the basket willow, and various species of poplar." In front of these trees a "similarly varied collection" of native and foreign shrubs was laid out in the form of an amphitheatre, "which, winding with the [[walk]]s, presents at every step something new and engaging." On the opposite side of the garden, "the eye reposes on the green [[lawn]] which is occasionally intercepted with groups of trees and shrubs happily adapted to its varied surface." [[Walk]]s on either side of the garden led to compartments of plants laid out according to their scientific order, and beyond them lay a nursery of fruit trees, a [[pond]] "devoted to the varieties of nymphoea, pontederia and other aquatics," and native plants, such as rhododendron, magnolias, and willows, which favored the moist ground adjacent to the [[pond]]. At higher elevations, rocky outcroppings were planted with "varied species of pine, juniper, yew, and hemlock." In the vicinity of the [[greenhouse]] and [[hothouse]]s were shrubs arranged in [[clump]]s and [[border]]s containing flowering plants. <span id="Description_cite"></span>Throughout the garden, every tree, shrub, and plant bore a label with its botanic name "for the instruction of the student." The entire garden was enclosed by a stone [[wall]], seven feet high and two and-a-half feet thick ([[#Description|view text]]).<ref>Hosack 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero]; cf. David Hosack, ''A Catalogue of Plants Contained in the Botanic Garden at Elgin: In the Vicinity of New York, Established in 1801'' (New York: T. & J. Swords, 1806), 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFGHH3VJ view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:2060.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4, William Satchwell Leney after James Inderwick, "The Canada Thistle," in David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): facing p. 212.]]
Following his appointment in 1808 as professor of natural history at New York's College of Physicians and Surgeons, Samuel Latham Mitchill conducted open-air classes at the Elgin Botanic Garden. An unidentified student who made multiple visits to the garden in 1810 reported that Mitchell was assisted by "two promising young botanists": James Inderwick (c. 1788–1815), a Columbia graduate who had stayed on to take anatomy and chemistry classes at the medical school in 1808–1809, and [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] nephew, Caspar Wistar Eddy (1790-1828), who in 1807, while still a medical student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, had created an herbarium and published a catalog, ''Plantae Plandomenses'', documenting plants indigenous to Mitchill's 230-acre Long Island estate.<ref>Caspar Wistar Eddy, "Plantae Plandomenses, or a Catalogue of the Plants Growing Spontaneously in the Neighbourhood of Plandome, the Country Residence of Samuel L. Mitchill," ''The Medical Repository'' 5, no. 2 (Aug–Oct. 1807): 123–131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3QEBP63M view on Zotero]; ''Catalogue of the Alumni, Officers and Fellows of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York'' (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1859), 22, 27, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FK359GQN view on Zotero]; ''Catalogue of Columbia College, in the City of New-York; Embracing the Names of Its Trustees, Officers, and Graduates'' (New York: Columbia College, 1844), 37, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MJAWNGN9 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Correspondent_cite"></span>According to the student, Eddy was responsible for "demonstrating the marks peculiar to the species," while Inderwick "expound[ed] the characters which distinguish the genus" ([[#Correspondent|view text]]). <span id="Eddy_lecture_cite"></span>After receiving his M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1811, Eddy himself began conducting lectures on botany at the Elgin Botanic Garden in May 1812 ([[#Eddy_lecture|view text]]).
[[File:2061.jpg|thumb|Fig. 5, John Eatton Le Conte, "Viola," in ''Observations on the genera Viola. Utricularia and Gratiola'', c. 1824.]]

<span id="American_Botany_cite"></span>Inderwick was involved in [[David Hosack|Hosack]]'s plan to scientifically document the plants at Elgin in "AMERICAN BOTANY, or a 'Flora of the United States,'" a publication [[David Hosack|Hosack]] intended to publish, he announced in 1811, as soon as he had secured the garden's permanent maintenance ([[#American_Botany|view text]]). Modeled on John Edward Smith's monumental ''English Botany'' (36 vols., 1790–1814), [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] flora was to include drawings by Inderwick, whom he had already employed to illustrate articles published in the ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'', the journal that he and the New York physician John Wakefield Francis (1789–1861) edited jointly from 1810 to 1814.<ref>Francis noted that his article was illustrated by "the ingenious Mr. Inderwick, a student of medicine of this city," and Hosack wrote, "To my friend, Mr. Inderwick, I am indebted for the very beautiful drawing from which this engraving has been made." See John W. Francis, "Case of Enteritis, Accompanied with a Preter-natural Formation of the Ileum," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (July 1810): 39; see also 41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/M2PEX3DF view on Zotero], and David Hosack, "Observations on Croup: Communicated in a Letter to Alire R. Delile, M.D. Physician in Paris," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (July 1811): 43; see also 40, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H2P2PHVF view on Zotero]. Other drawings by Inderwick were published in David Hosack, "Case of Aneurism of the Femoral Artery: Communicated in a Letter to John Abernethy," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 3 (July 1812): 48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X558G67M view on Zotero], and John W. Francis, ''Cases of Morbid Anatomy: Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, on the Eighth of June, 1815'' (New York: Van Winkle and Wiley, 1815), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/P8VK9XAT view on Zotero].</ref> Although most of Inderwick's drawings for the journal represented anatomical subjects, his illustration of the Canada Thistle (''Cnicus Arvensis'') [Fig. 4] for an article [[David Hosack|Hosack]] published in October 1810 indicates the kind of images he might have produced for [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] ''American Botany,'' had that project ever advanced beyond the planning stage.<ref>The drawing accompanied a letter to Samuel Latham Mitchill in which Hosack wrote, "The following description of the plant by Mr. Curtis [in the ''Flora Londinensis''] so perfectly corresponds with that with which our country is infested, that with the aid of the annexed drawing of the plant, made by my friend Mr. J. Inderwick, from the specimen you sent me, it will readily be recognised by the farmer into whose fields it may intrude itself." See David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis.... Communicated in a letter to the Hon. S. L. Mitchill, M.D.," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): 211–212, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero]. Inderwick was house surgeon at the New York Hospital for one year from February 1812 until February 1813. Stephen Decatur appointed him acting surgeon of the ''Argus'' on May 8, 1813. He died when his ship was lost at sea in 1815. See James Inderwick, ''Cruise of the U.S. Brig Argus in 1813: Journal of Surgeon James Inderwick'', ed. Victor H. Palsits (New York: New York Public Library, 1917), 3–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/F4K563GR view on Zotero]; William S. Dudley, ''The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History'', 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1992), 2: 219–222, 275–276, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WFEDBVFC view on Zotero].</ref> According to [[David Hosack|Hosack]], additional drawings for ''American Botany'' would be provided by another Columbia graduate, John Eatton Le Conte (1784–1860), who was probably then working on the catalog of plants indigenous to New York City that he would publish (with a dedication to [[David Hosack|Hosack]]) in the ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' in October 1811.<ref>John Eatton Le Conte, "Catalogue Plantarum Quas Sponte Crescentes in Insula Noveboraco, Observavit Johannes Le Conte, Eq.: Sub Forma Epistolae Ad D. Hosack, M.D. Missae," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1811): 134–41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/6CWDCT9M view on Zotero]. See also John Eatton Le Conte, "Observations on the Febrile Diseases of Savannah; in a Letter to Dr. Hosack, from John Le Conte, Esq., Woodmanston, December 18, 1809," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 4 (1814): 388–90, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AUZ3BNPD view on Zotero].</ref> Le Conte collected many plants for the garden while visiting his family's plantation, Woodmanston, in Georgia, and he went on to a distinguished natural history career, producing botanical illustrations that justify [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] early endorsement [Fig. 5].<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), 1: xiv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero]. For Le Conte's drawings, see: Viola Brainerd Baird "The Violet Water-Colors of Major John Eatton LeConte," ''The American Midland Naturalist'', 20 (1938), 245–47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HF8KNX8V view on Zotero]; Calhoun, John V., "John Abbot's 'Lost' Drawings for John E. Le Conte in the American Philosophical Society Library," ''Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society'', 60 (2006): 211–17, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5AFNFICJ view on Zotero].</ref>

The laboring figures represented in an oil painting of about 1810 hint at the numerous farmers and gardeners [[David Hosack|Hosack]] employed over many years to cultivate, plant, and maintain the Elgin garden.<ref>For an overview of expenses recorded in Hosack's memorandum book of 1803–1809, see Robbins 1964, 64, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> [Fig. 6] The Scottish nursery- and seedsman [[Andrew Gentle]] claimed to have "commenced operations for Dr. Hosack, in New-York, by laying out his grounds" in 1805, and he remained at the garden for the next few years.<ref>Andrew Gentle, ''Every Man His Own Gardener; Or, a Plain Treatise on the Cultivation of Every Requisite Vegetable in the Kitchen Garden, Alphabetically Arranged. With Directions for the Green & Hothouse, Vineyard, Nursery, &c. Being the Result of Thirty-Five Years’ Practical Experience in This Climate. Intended Principally for the Inexperienced Horticulturist'' (New York: The author, 1841), iii–iv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups//items/itemKey/X7253QTQ view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="MMahon_cite"></span>In 1809, on the recommendation of [[Bernard M'Mahon]] ([[#MMahon|view text]]), [[David Hosack|Hosack]] hired as gardener the German botanist Frederick Pursh, who had previously visited "the houses of the Botanick garden at New York" on October 3, 1807 while passing through the city on his way to Philadelphia.<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Journal of a Botanical Excursion in the Northeastern Parts of the States of Pennsylvania and New York: During the Year 1807'' (Philadelphia: Brinckloe & Marot, 1869), 87, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HSKRK5R7 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Pursh_cite"></span>According to [[David Hosack|Hosack]], Pursh made "very numerous contributions... during the period he had charge" of the garden, but by the close of 1810 he had been replaced by Michael Dennison, an English seedsman recommended by Lee and Kennedy, a well-known firm of nurserymen in Hammersmith, London ([[#Pursh|view text]]). Although [[David Hosack|Hosack]] expected Pursh to continue his association with Elgin in the capacity of "a very industrious and skilful botanist to collect from different parts of the union such plants as have not yet been assembled at the [[Botanic Garden]]," Pursh left America for England toward the end of 1811.
[[File:1986.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6, Anonymous, ''Elgin Botanic Garden'', c. 1810.]]

The high cost of maintaining the Elgin Botanic Garden soon swamped [[David Hosack]]'s financial resources. He had expected public support to be forthcoming once the garden's utility had been demonstrated, but his efforts to secure loans from the New York state legislature in 1805 and 1806 came to nothing, <span id="Lewis_cite"></span>despite the governor's support ([[#Lewis|view text]]).<ref>Hosack 1811, 12, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Stokes_cite"></span> Moreover, the market in fruits, vegetables, medicinal herbs, and hothouse plants—operated at the garden by [[Andrew Gentle]] ([[#Stokes|view text]])—failed to raise sufficient funds to offset the high cost of labor. In 1808 [[David Hosack|Hosack]] concluded that selling the garden was the only means of preserving it. Following considerable delay, the New York state legislature agreed to the purchase on January 3, 1811, with the provision that responsibility for the garden's management would be delegated to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.<ref>Robbins 1964, 79–84, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> The College lacked funds to maintain the garden, however, and it soon fell into disrepair. On a visit in August 1813 Hosack, who continued to collect seeds and plant materials for the garden, was distressed to find that the [[greenhouse]] plants had not been set outdoors during the summer, that many of them were missing, that the [[shrubbery]] in front of the [[greenhouse]] was choked with sunflowers, and that vegetation had overtaken the [[walk]]s.<ref> Hosack's report to the Trustees of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, August 30, 1813, quoted in Robbins 1964, 96, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero]. For Hosack's continued involvement in the garden, see, for example, David Hosack, "Report on Botany and Vegetable Physiology," ''The American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review'' 1 (May 1817): 47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MWBS8AMP view on Zotero].</ref>

The garden's condition continued to decline following the transfer of ownership to Columbia College in 1814. Two years later, Hosack complained to one of the College's trustees that the gardener, Michael Dennison, was "removing everything valuable from the collection."<ref>David Hosack to Clement C. Moore, October 16, 1816, quoted in Robbins 1964, 98; see also 97 for Dennison's letter of the previous month, informing the College of Physicians and Surgeons of repairs and horticultural care required at the garden, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> From early 1817 to 1823 [[Andrew Gentle]] returned to Elgin, granted a year-to-year lease free of charge in exchange for maintaining the [[greenhouse]] and grounds. In May 1819 the [[greenhouse]] plants along with "ornamental trees" and shrubs were transferred to the New York Hospital. Despite several attempts by [[David Hosack|Hosack]] to transfer care of the garden to an institution that could provide more attentive oversight, Columbia preferred to retain control, renting the property to a variety of tenants, including the seedsman David Barnett from 1825 to 1835.<ref>Addison Brown, ''The Elgin Botanic Garden, Its Later History and Relation to Columbia College'' (Lancaster, Pa.: The New Era Printing Company, 1908), 15–19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero]; Robbins 1964, 97–98, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> The rapid growth of New York City meant that by the late 1850s the garden was situated well within the urban hub, rather than on its outskirts. The value of the property had risen accordingly, from several thousand dollars to tens of millions. Columbia ultimately divided the land into numerous lots, which it sold or leased at high prices, generating the financial capital that allowed the college to expand into a world-class university.<ref>Brown 1908, 19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero].</ref>

--''Robyn Asleson''

==Texts==

* <div id="Mitchill"></div>Mitchill, Samuel Latham, 1794, report to the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures in the State of New York (1792: xxxix–xlv)<ref>"Introduction," ''Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, Instituted in the State of New York'' 1 (1794), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WSF4MDPU view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Mitchill_cite|back up to history]]

: "The establishment of a Garden is nearly connected with the Professorship of Botany under the College, and the Lectures on that branch must be always very lame and defective without one…. A [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] is not only one of the genteelest and most beautiful [Hosack changed to: most useful and most important] of public improvements; but it also comprises within a small compass the History of the Vegetable Species of our own Country; and by the introduction of Exotics, makes us acquainted with the plants of the most distant parts of the earth. Likewise, by facilitating experiments upon plants at this time, when a true Theory of Nutrition and Manures is such an interesting desideratum, a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] may be considered as one of the means of affording substantial help to the labours of the Agricultural Society, and be conducive to the improvement of modern husbandry. When these things are duly considered, it can scarcely be doubted, that a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], under the direction of the Society, or of the College, with a view to further the agricultural interest, will be set on foot and supported by legislative provision; to the end that young minds be early imbued with proper ideas on this important subject."

*<div id="1797"></div> [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], November 1797, memorial presented to the President and Members of the Board of Trustees of Columbia College (''Statement'', 1811: 7–8)<ref name="Hosack_Statement">Hosack 1811, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#1797_cite|back up to history]]

: "It has been to me a source of great regret that the want of a [[botanic garden|''Botanical Garden'']], and an extensive Botanical Library, have prevented that advancement in the interests of the institution which might reasonably have been expected....

: "To this end, I have purchased for the use of my pupils such of the most esteemed authors as are most essential in teaching the principles of Botany; and at a considerable expense I have been enabled to procure a large and very extensive collection of coloured engravings; but the difficulty of teaching any branch of natural philosophy, and of philosophy, and of rendering it interesting to the pupil, without a view and examination of the objects of which it treats, will readily be perceived: it will also occur to you that books, or engravings, however valuable and necessary, are of themselves insufficient for the purposes of regular instruction in medicine.

: "The obvious and only effectual remedy would be the establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanical Garden]]: this would invite a spirit of inquiry. The indigenous plants of our country would be investigated, and ultimately would promise important benefits, both to agriculture and medicine…. I beg leave to suggest…that the professorship of botany and material medica be endowed with a certain annual salary, sufficient to defray the necessary expenses of a small garden, in which the professor may cultivate, under his immediate notice, such plants as furnish the most valuable medicines, and are most necessary for medical instruction."

* Michaux, François André, 1802, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains'' (1802: 14)<ref>François André Michaux, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessea, and back to Charleston, by the Upper Carolines… Undertaken, in the Year 1802'', 2nd edn (London: B. Crosby & Co. and J.F. Hughes, 1805), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/69576KK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "During my stay at New York I frequently had an opportunity of seeing [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], who was held in the highest reputation as a professor of botany. He was at that time employed in establishing a [[botanic garden|botanical garden]], where he intended giving a regular course of lectures. This garden is a few miles from the town: the spot of ground is well adapted, especially for plants that require a peculiar aspect of situation."

* <div id="Parke"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], July 25, 1803, letter to Dr. Thomas Parke, regarding the [[greenhouse]]s at Elgin and [[The Woodlands]] (Long 1991: 144)<ref>Ms. letter in Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Boston Public Library, quoted in Timothy Preston Long, "The Woodlands: A 'Matchless Place'" (unpublished Master of Science thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JQS7HETZ view on Zotero] and Robbins 1964, 65, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref>[[#Parke_cite|back up to history]]

: "I duly received the plans of [[William Hamilton|Mr. Hamiltons]] [[greenhouse|green]] and [[hothouse|hot houses]]. My [[greenhouse]] [exclusive of the hothouses] is now finishing—it will not differ very individually from [[William Hamilton|Mr. Hamiltons]]. It is 62 feet long 23 deep—and 20 high in the clear.... I shall heat it by flues, they will run under the stays so they will not be seen—my [[walk]]s will be spacious... [[hothouse|hot houses]] are for next summer's operation. My collection of plants is yet small. I have written to my friends in Europe and in the East and West Indies for their plants. I will also collect the native productions of North and South America. What medical plants can [[William Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] supply—request him to send me a catalogue.... I hope [[William Hamilton]] will have duplicates of rare and valuable plants—I will supply him anything I possess."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], autumn 1806, preface to ''A Catalogue of Plants Contained in the Botanic Garden at Elgin'' (1806: 3–7)<ref>Hosack 1806, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFGHH3VJ view on Zotero].</ref>

: "The establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] in the United States, as a repository of native plants, and as subservient to medicine, agriculture, and the arts, is doubtless an object of great importance....
: "In the year 1801 I purchased, of the Corporation of the city of New-York, twenty acres of ground; the greater part of which is now in cultivation. Since that time, a [[Conservatory]], for the more hardy [[greenhouse|green-house]] plants, has been built; in addition to which, two [[hothouse|Hot-Houses]] are now erecting for the preservation of those plants which require a greater degree of heat.
: "The grounds will be arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of plants, and the whole enclosed by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, native and exotic.
: "A primary object of attention in this establishment will be to collect and cultivate the native plants of this country, especially such as possess medicinal properties, or are otherwise useful....
: "The numerous articles of medicine which this country has already furnished; the variety of soils and climates which it comprehends, encourage the belief that more remain to be discovered, and that the Materia Medica may still be enriched by the addition of many indigenous plants, whose virtues are yet unnoticed or unknown.
: "It is also my intention to introduce, from different parts of the world, such plants as are most useful in agriculture, in medicine, and the arts, and to ascertain which of them are capable of being naturalized to our soil and climate. There is no doubt that our agriculture may be much improved by the introduction of many foreign grasses and other plants cultivated as food for cattle; and many valuable additions may be made to our tables, by the importation of the best fruits and vegetables of foreign countries.
: "Another object of importance is, to afford to students of medicine the means of acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of plants, and the principles of botanic arrangement.... For this purpose the grounds will be divided into different compartments, calculated to exhibit the various plants according to their several properties; and these again will be arranged so as to afford a practical illustration of the systems of botany at present most esteemed, the sexual system of ''Linnaeus'', and the natural orders of ''Jussieu''.
: "I must acknowledge the obligations I am under to many gentlemen who have already befriended this establishment, especially to my most esteemed instructor and friend Dr. James Edward Smith, the President of the Linnaean Society of London; to Professor [Martin] Vahl, and Mr. [Niels] Hoffman Bang, of Copenhagen; to Professor [René Louiche] Desfontaines and [André] Thouin, of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] of Paris; to Mr. Alderman [George] Hibbert, and Dr. [John Coakley] Lettsom of London; Mr. [Richard Anthony] Salisbury, proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] of Brompton; Dr. [Giovanni Valentino Mattia] Fabroni, Director of the Royal Museum at Florence; and Mr. ''Andrew Michaux'', author of the ''Flora Boreali Americana'', &c. &c. From these gentlemen I have received many valuable plants, seeds, and botanical works, accompanied with the most polite offers of their further contributions to this institution.
: "Nor must I be unmindful of the obligations I am under to several gentlemen in this country, distinguished for their taste and talents in this department of science.
: "From John Stevens, Esq. of Hoboken, I have received many of the most valuable exotics in my collection. To Baron [Alexis] de Carandeffez I am indebted for a large collection of seeds of tropical plants.
: "Our late Minister in France, the Hon. Robert R. Livingston, has also largely contributed to my collection during his residence in Europe....
: "Those plants to which the asterisk * is prefixed, are prefixed, are natives of the neighbourhood of the city of New-York, and have been collected by my nephew and pupil, Caspar Wistar Eddy."

* <div id="Lewis"></div>Lewis, Morgan, governor of New York, January 28, 1806 (Hosack 1811: 12)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref> [[#Lewis_cite|back up to history]]

: "Application was made to the legislature at their last session, by a gentleman of the city of New-York, for aid in the support of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], which he had recently established. At the request of some of the members, I, in the course of last summer, paid it two visits, and am so satisfied with the plan and arrangement, that I cannot but believe, if not permitted to languish, it will be productive of great general utility. The objects of the proprietor are, a collection of the indigenous, and the introduction of exotic plants, shrubs &c. and by an intercourse with similar establishments, which are arising in the eastern and southern states, to insure the useful and ornamental products of southern to northern, and of northern to southern climes. In the article of grasses, I was pleased to see a collection of one hundred and fifty different kinds. A portion of ground is allotted to agricultural experiments, which cannot but be beneficial to an agricultural people. When it is considered that this branch of natural history embraces all the individuals of the vegetable which afford subsistence to the animal world, compose a large portion of the medicines used in the practice of physic, and mam of the ingredients essential to the useful arts, its utility and importance is not to be questioned. But in a country young as ours, the experimental sciences cannot be expected to arrive at any degree of excellence without the patronage and bounty of government; for individual fortune is not adequate to the task."

* <div id="Jefferson"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], September 10, 1806, letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]]<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-4259 Founders Online, National Archives]</ref> [[#Jefferson_cite|back up to history]]

: "Knowing your attachment to science and the interest you feel on the progress of it in the united states, I take the liberty of enclosing to you a Catalogue of plants [in the Elgin Botanic Garden] which I have been enabled to collect as the beginning of a [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]]—
: "you will readily perceive that my intention in this little publication is merely to announce the nature of the Institution and to facilitate my correspondence with Botanists as they will hereby know what plants will be accepteble to me and what they may expect in return—in two or three years when my collection may be more extensive I propose to publish it in a different shape arranging the plants under different heads viz Medicinal—Poisonous—those useful in the arts—in agriculture &c with notes relative to their use and culture accompanied with engravings of such as may be either entirely new or are not well figured in books—
: "I feel much interested in the result of the enquiries instituted by you relative to the Missouri—Black River &c. In Natural History much is also to be expected from exploring the territory in the course of Red River—that latitude is always rich in vegetable productions—if it should be contemplated to explore that or any other part of our country, there is now a gentleman in this state who might be induced to undertake it and whose talents abundantly qualify him for an employment of this sort, the person I refer to is Mr [André] Michaux the editor of the Flora Boreali America—he being at present in New York I take the liberty of mentioning his name to you—under your auspices Sir establishments of this nature may be encouraged:—it has occurred to me that much also might be done in exploring the native productions of the united states if the Government were to appropriate to every [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]] a small sum—for the express purpose of employing a suitable person to investigate the vegetable productions growing in its neighbourhood—an annual appropriation of this sort allotted to the [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]]s of Boston—New York—Virginia and South Carolina would in a short time be productive of great good—
: "Another object which will claim much of my attention will be to naturalize as far as possible to our climates the productions of the southern states and of the tropics—I believe much may be done upon this subject—four years since I planted some cotton seed, late in the spring—it grows to the usual size to which it attains in the southern states and ripened its seed before October—Those seeds were planted and succeeded equally well the second year—John Stevens Esq of Hoboken New Jersey has also succeeded in the same experiment and at this time has a considerable quantity of cotton ripening its seed, the growth from seeds raised by him the last year, it is also to be remarked that this summer has been unusually cool—I conceive it therefore not improbable that Virginia and Maryland if not Pennsylvania and New york—might cultivate this plant to advantage—the short staple doubtless would succeed—
: "If...the gentlemen who are at present on their travels to the Missouri, discover any new or useful plants I should be very happy in obtaining a small quantity of the seeds they may procure."

* <div id="Stokes"></div>[[Andrew Gentle|Gentle, Andrew]], June 4, 1807, Notice concerning the Elgin Botanic Garden, published in the ''New York Commercial Advertiser'' (Stokes 1926: 5: 1460–1461)<ref>Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, ''The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909'', 6 vols (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1926), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VBTRZVAB view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Stokes_cite|back up to history]]

: "As it was the original design in forming this establishment to render it not only useful as a source of instruction to the students of medicine but beneficial to the public by the cultivation of those plants useful in diseases, by the introduction of foreign grasses, and by the cultivation of the best vegetables for the table; our citizens are now informed that they can be supplied with medicinal Herbs and Plants, and a large assortment of [[greenhouse|green]] and [[Hot House]] Plants etc."

* [[Samuel Bard|Bard, Samuel]], November 14, 1809, address delivered to the Medical Society of Dutchess County (Hosack 1811: 30)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "Convinced as I am of the great and general importance of correct medical instruction, and anxious that our schools should be fostered by necessary patronage, I cannot but regret the failure of the proposal made last year in our legislature, for the purchase of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack's]] [[botanic garden]]. It would be too tedious at present to point out how much medicine may be benefitted, how greatly the arts may be enriched, and hor many of the comforts, the pleasures, and even the necessaries of life may be improved by such an institution....
: "By the purchase of the [[botanic garden]], a national ornament and most useful establishment, already brought to a great degree of perfection, will be preserved: by which our medicine, our agriculture and our arts, the elegancies, and the conveniences of life will necessarily be improved."

* <div id="MMachonlecture"></div>[[Bernard M'Mahon|M'Mahon, Bernard]] to [[Thomas Jefferson]], December 24, 1809 (Jefferson, 2005: 2: 89–91)<ref name="Jefferson_2005">Thomas Jefferson, ''The Papers of Thomas Jefferson'', ed. J. Jefferson Looney, Retirement Series, 4 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 2: 89–91, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XWVFP69T view on Zotero].</ref> [[#MMahon_cite|back up to history]]

: "On Governor Lewis’s departure from here, for the seat of his Government, he requested me to employ Mr Frederick Pursh, on his return from a collecting excurtion he was then about to undertake for Doctor Barton, to describe and make drawings of such of his collection as would appear to be new plants, and that himself would return to Philadelphia in the month of May following. About the first of the ensuing Novr Mr Pursh returned, took up his abode with me, began the work, progressed as far as he could without further explanation, in some cases, from Mr Lewis, and was detained by me, in expectation of Mr Lewis's arriv[al] at my expence, without the least expectation of any future remuneration, from that time till April last; when n[ot] having received any reply to several letters I had wri[tten] from time to time, to Govr Lewis on the subject, nor being able to obtain any in[dication?] when he probably might be expected here; I thought it a folly to keep Pursh longer idle, and recommended him as Gardener to [[David Hosack|Doctor Hosack]] of New York, with whom he has since lived.
: "The original specimens are all in my hands, but Mr Pursh, had taken his drawings and descriptions with him, and will, no doubt, on the delivery of them expect a reasonable compensation for his trouble."

* Newton, Joseph, Arthur Smith, John F. West, Timothy B. Crane, January 16, 1810, Estimate of the Buildings at the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 45)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "We, the subscribers, builders, and residents of the city of New-York, at the request of doctor [[David Hosack]], have valued the improvements on his land, near the four mile stone, called the [[botanic garden]], to wit: the hot [[bed]] frames, the [[conservatory]] or [[greenhouse|green house]], and its appendages, the dwelling house, the [[hot house]]s and their back buildings, the lodges, the gates and the [[fence]]s around the land, including the wells, at the sum of twenty-nine thousand three hundred dollars."

* [[Andrew Gentle|Gentle, Andrew]], January 22, 1810, Valuation of plants in the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 53–54)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "The sum of ''fourteen thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and fifty-nine cents'', is, I believe, to the best of my judgment, the value of your indigenous and exotic plants, tools, & c. at Elgin."

* Hastings, John, Frederick Pursh, and John Brown, January 24, 1810, Valuation of the plants in the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 53)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "We, the subscribers, in committee assembled, for the valuation of the plants, trees, and shrubs, including garden tools and utensils, necessary for the cultivation of the same, as appertaining to the [[greenhouse|green house]], [[hothouse|hot houses]], and grounds of the [[botanic garden]], at Elgin, after a very particular inventory and examination of the improvements, are unanimously agreed, that, to the best of our knowledge and ability, we consider them to be worth the sum of ''twelve thousand six hundred and thirty-five dollars and seventy-four and half cents''.
::: "John Hastings, Nursery-man, Brooklyn, L.I.
::: "Frederick Pursh, Botanist.
::: "John Brown, Nursery-man."

[[File:2051.jpg|thumb|Fig. 7, William Satchwell Leney after Louis Simond, ''View of the botanic garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York'', ca. 1810.]]
* <div id="Description"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], 1810, ''Description of the Elgin Garden'' (1810: 1–4)<ref>Hosack 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Description_cite|back up to history]]

: "The [[view]] from the most elevated part of Elgin-ground, is variegated and extensive. The East and North Rivers, with their vast amount of navigation, are plain in sight. Beyond these great thoroughfares of business, the fruitful fields of Long-Island, and the [[picturesque]] shores of New-Jersey, give beauty and interest to the [[prospect]]....
: <div id="Elegance"></div>"The [[conservatory]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]] present a front of one hundred and eighty feet. They are not only constructed with great architectural taste and elegance, but experience has also shown, they are well calculated for the preservation of the most tender exotics that require protection from the severity of our climate. The grounds are also arranged and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening. The whole is surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs judiciously chequered and mingled; and enclosed by a well constructed stone-[[wall]]. [Fig. 7] [[#Elegance_cite|[back up to history]]]
: "The interior is divided into various compartments, not only calculated for the instruction of the student in Botany, but subservient to agriculture, the arts, and to manufactures. A [[nursery]] is also begun, for the purpose of introducing into this country the choicest fruits of the table. Nor is the [[kitchen garden]] neglected in this establishment. An apartment is also devoted to experiments in the culture of those plants which may be advantageously introduced and naturalized to our soil and climate, that are at present annually imported from abroad....
: "The forest trees and shrubs which surround the establishment, first claim [the visitor’s] attention. Here are beautifully distributed and combined the oak, the plane, the elm, the sugar maple, the locust, the horse chesnut, the mountain ash, the basket willow, and various species of poplar. In front of these, a similarly varied collection of shrubs, natives and foreign, compose an amphitheatre, which, winding with the [[walk]]s, presents at every step something new and engaging. On the other side the eye reposes on the green [[lawn]] which is occasionally intercepted with groups of trees and shrubs happily adapted to its varied surface.
: "In extending his [[walk]]s to the garden, on each side, he [the visitor] is equally gratified and instructed by the numerous plants which are here associated in scientific order, for the information of the student in Botany or Medicine. Here the Turkey rhubarb, Carolina pink-root, the poppy and the foxglove, with many other plants of the Materia Medica are seen in cultivation....
: "As he proceeds he arrives at a [[nursery]] of the finest fruits, which the proprietor has been enabled to procure from various parts of the world, and from which the establishment will hereafter derive one of the principal means of its support.
: "The visitor next comes in view of a [[pond]] of water devoted to the varieties of nymphoea, pontederia and other aquatics which adorn its surface, while the adjacent grounds which are moist afford the proper and natural soil for a great variety of our most valuable native plants. The rhododendrons, magnolias, the kalmias, the willows, the stuartia; the candleberry myrtle; the cupressus disticha, and the sweet-smelling clethra alnifolia, here grow in rich luxuriance, and compose a beautiful picture in whatever direction they fall under his eye....
: "As he leaves this groupe, and passes to the higher situations of this delightfully varied surface, he finds a corresponding distribution of the numerous plants which compose this collection.
: "Here a rocky and elevated spot attracts his attention, by the varied species of pine, juniper, yew, and hemlock, with which it is covered. There a solitary oak breaks the surface of the [[lawn]]; here a group of poplars; there the more splendid foliage of the different species of magnolia, intermixed with the fringe tree, the thorny aralia, and the snow drop halesia, call his willing notice.
: "Entering the [[greenhouse|green-house]], his eye is saluted with a rich and varied collection: the silver protea, the lemon, the orange, the oleander, the citron, the shaddock, the myrtle, the jasmine and the numerous and infinitely varied family of geranium, press upon his view, while the perfumes emitted from the fragrant daphne, heliotropium, and the coronilla no less attract his notice than do the splendid petals of the camellia japonica, the amaryllis, the cistus, erica and purple magnolia.
: "In the [[hothouse|hot-house]] he finds himself translated to the heat of the tropics. Here he observes the golden pine, the sugar cane, the cinnamon, the ginger, the splendid strelitzia, and ixora coccinea intermixed with the bread fruit, the coffee tree, the plantain, the arrow root, the sago, the avigato pear, the mimosa yielding the gum arabic, and the fragrant farnesiana.
: "Here are also to be seen the succulent tribes of aloe, sedum, mesembryanthemum, the night blowing cereus, arid the cactus which feeds the cochineal, covered with its insects.
: "In front of the buildings are several beautiful [[clump]]s composed of the more delicate and valuable shrubs intermingled with a great variety of roses, kalmias and azaleas. Their [[border]]s are also successively enamelled with the crocus, the snow drop, the asphodel, the hyacinth, and the more splendid species of the iris.
: "Here also is ''viola tricolor''… saluting the senses with its beautiful assemblage of colours but yielding in fragrance to its rival ''viola odorata'' which…also adds zest to this delicious banquet.
: "Every tree, shrub, and herbaceous plant is labelled and designated by its botanic name for the instruction of the student.
: "[[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]] has also connected with this establishment, an extensive ''Herbarium'' which contains not only a great variety of plants collected by himself in Great Britain, and in this country, but is also enriched by many valuable specimens furnished by the late celebrated Danish professor Vahl; by Curtis, and Dickson, and by duplicates from the Hortus Siccus of Linnaeus, presented by Dr. Smith, the learned president of the Linnaean Society, and the present possessor of the rich collections of the celebrated Swede.
: "To this establishment [[David Hosack|Dr. H.]] has also added a well chosen ''Botanical Library'', consisting of the most celebrated works, both ancient and modern, which are necessary to illustrate that science, as well as its application to medicine, to agriculture and the arts to which it is subservient."

* [[Hosack, David|David Hosack]], August 9, 1810, letter to Daniel Hale, the New York Secretary of State (quoted in Robbins 1964: 83)<ref>Robbins 1964, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref>

: "A work is preparing in which the native plants are to be paited and engraved for publication taken from those now growing in Elgin Botanic Garden. Artists are engaged and at this moment are at work under my direction. They are employed with the understanding they could complete the work they are now preparing."

* Anonymous, July 1810, description of the Elgin Botanic Garden (1811: 116–117)<ref>Anonymous, "Elgin Botanic Garden, New York," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "Among the number of those distinguished friends of science in Europe, who have manifested an ardent desire for the extension of useful knowledge in these states, may be justly esteemed Monsieur [André] THOUIN, the celebrated professor of Botany and Agriculture, at the ''Jardin des Plantes'' of Paris....[[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], the proprietor of the Elgin Botanic Garden, has repeatedly been favoured by him with a great variety of seeds, from the rarest and most valuable plants of the continent; and he is happy to add, that they have always been received in such a state of preservation, as scarcely in a single instance to have frustrated the liberal intentions of the donor. Indeed, many of the most valuable plants in his collection are the products of the seeds presented him by Monsieur THOUIN.
: "To the Hon. SAMUEL L. MITCHELL [''sic''], M.D. Professor of Natural History…in the College of Physicians, the proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] is also indebted for many valuable additions made to his collection of living plants, as well as for many specimens added to his Herbarium, collected by the same gentleman, during his residence at Washington, (as Senator of the United States,) and in the Western parts of the state of New-York, when on his late tour to the falls of Niagara....
: "Important additions of the native plants of Georgia have also very recently been made to this institution by JOHN LECONTE, Esq. whose acquaintance with the various departments of natural history, gives us reason to regret that he has not yet made an offering to his country of the fruits of his researches."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], July 21, 1810, on grass planted at the Elgin Botanic Garden (October 1810: 216)<ref>Hosack, October 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "By pursuing the practice recommended by Lord Kames, of sowing from twenty to twenty-four pounds of clover seed to the acre, I have remarked that the grounds at the Elgin Botanic Garden are much more free from weeds than those of my neighbours, at the same time that the grass is much more delicate for feeding, less apt to be thrown down by the storm, and makes a less succulent hay, both more easily cured and better preserved than where it is more thinly spread, but of stronger growth."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], March 12, 1811, preface and addendum to ''Hortus Elginensis'' (''Hortus'' 1811: v–x, 66)<ref>David Hosack, ''Hortus Elginensis, or, A Catalogue of Plants, Indigenous and Exotic, Cultivated in the Elgin Botanic Garden, in the Vicinity of the City of New-York : Established in 1801''(New-York : Printed by T. & J. Swords, 1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FIEM4NZF view on Zotero].</ref>

: "The establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] in the United States, as a repository of the native plants of this country, and as subservient to the purposes of medicine, agriculture, and the arts, is doubtless an object of great importance. Impressed with the advantages to be derived from an institution of this nature, I have anxiously endeavoured ever since my appointment to the professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College, to accomplish its establishment. Disappointed, however, in my first applications to the legislature of this State, soliciting their assistance in so expensive and arduous an undertaking, I resolved to devote my own private funds to the prosecution of this object; trusting, that when the nature of the institution should be better, and more generally known, and its utility fully ascertained, it would receive the patronage and support of the public.
: <div id="variegated"></div>"Accordingly, in the year 1801, I purchased of the Corporation of the city of New-York, twenty acres of ground … distant from the city about three miles and an half. The [[view]] from the most elevated part, is variegated and extensive, and the soil itself of that diversified nature, as to be particularly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of vegetable productions. The greater part of the ground is at present in a state of promising cultivation, arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of vegetables, and planted agreeably to the most approved style of ornamental gardening. Since that time, an extensive conservatory, for the more hardy [[greenhouse|green house]] plants, and two spacious [[hothouse|hot houses]], for the preservation of those which require a greater degree of heat, the whole exhibiting a front of one hundred and eighty feet, have been erected, and which, experience has shown, are well calculated for the purpose for which they were designed. The whole establishment is surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, both native and exotic, and these again are enclosed by a stone [[wall]], two and an half feet in thickness, and seven feet in height. [[#variegated_cite|[back up to history]]]
: "As it has always been a primary object of attention to collect and cultivate in this establishment, the native plants of this country, especially such as are possessed of medicinal properties, or are otherwise useful, such gardeners as were practically acquainted with our indigenous productions, have been employed to procure them: how far this end has been attained, will be best seen by an examination of the Catalogue.
: "Although much has been done by the governments of Great-Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, and Germany, in the investigation of the vegetable productions of America: although much has been accomplished by the labours of [[Mark Catesby|[Mark] ''Catesby'']], [Pehr] ''Kalm'', [Friedrich Adam Julius von] ''Wangenheim'', [Johann David] ''Schoepf'', [Thomas] ''Walter'', and the ''Michaux'' [André and François André]; and by our countrymen [John] ''Clayton'', the ''Bartrams'' [[John Bartram|[John]] and [[William Bartram|William]]], [[Cadwallader Colden|[Cadwallader] ''Colden'']], [Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst] ''Muhlenberg'', [[Humphry Marshall|[Humphry] ''Marshall'']], [[Manasseh Cutler|[Manasseh] ''Cutler'']], and the learned Professor [Benjamin Smith] ''Barton'' of Pennsylvania, much yet remains to be done in this western part of the globe. The numerous articles of medicine which this country has already furnished; the variety of soils and climates which it comprehends, encourage the belief, that many more remain to be discovered, and that the Materia Medica may still be enriched by the addition of many indigenous plants, whose virtues yet remain undiscovered.
: "Another object of importance is, to afford to students of medicine, the means of acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of plants, and the principles of botanic arrangement; a science intimately connected with their profession, as it not only enables them to distinguish one plant from another, but frequently leads to an acquaintance with their medicinal virtues. For this purpose the grounds are divided into different compartments, calculated to exhibit the various plants according to their several properties: and these again are so arranged as to afford a practical illustration of the systems of botany at present most esteemed, viz. the sexual system of Linnaeus, and the natural orders of [Antoine Laurent de] ''Jussieu''.
: "Hitherto the [[botanic garden|botanical gardens]] of ''Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Leyden, Upsal, Goettengen'', &c. have instructed the American youth in this department of medical education; and it is in some degree owing to those establishments that the universities and colleges of those places have become so celebrated, and have been resorted to by students of medicine from all parts of the world.
: "Since the publication of the first edition of this catalogue, in 1806, this institution has been greatly improved…. It will also be perceived by a comparison of the present with the former edition, that very considerable additions have been made to the collection both of the foreign and indigenous plants contained in that establishment. Gratitude demands of me, on this occasion, an acknowledgment of the obligations I am under to many distinguished botanists, both abroad and at home, who have contributed to this institution. In this number are to be enumerated my much esteemed and respected friend and instructor, Dr. ''James Edward Smith'', the learned President of the Linnaean Society of London; the late Professor [Martin] ''Vahl'', and Mr. [Niels] ''Hoffman Bang'', of Copenhagen; Mons. [René Louiche] ''Desfontaines'' and [André] ''Thouin'', the celebrated Professors of Botany and Agriculture at the Medical Schools of Paris; Mr. [Richard Anthony] ''Salisbury'', Proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] at Brompton, near London; the late Dr. [Giovanni Valentino Mattia] ''Fabroni'', Director of the Royal Museum of Florence; Dr. [John] ''Bostock'', the learned President of the Botanic Institution of Liverpool; Dr. [John Coakley] ''Lettsom'', of London; Dr. ''Andrew Michaux'', Editor of the Flora Boreali Americana, and Author of the very valuable History of the Forest Trees of North-America, now publishing at Paris; my much esteemed friend Dr. ''Alire Raffineau Delile'', of the Institute of Egypt; Dr. ''Alexander Anderson'', Superintendant of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] at St. Vincents; and [Eduard Freiherr von Schack] ''Baron Be Schack'', of Martinique, From these gentlemen I have received many rare botanical works, and some of the most valuable plants in this collection.
: "Nor must I be unmindful of the obligations I am under to several gentlemen in this country, distinguished for their taste and talents in this department of science. The Hon. ''Robert R. Livingston'', our former Minister in France; Professor [Samuel Latham] ''Mitchill'', of this city; ''John Stevens'', Esq. of Hoboken; Mr. [[Bernard M'Mahon|''Bernard M'Mahon'']], of Philadelphia; Mr. ''Stephen Elliot'', of Beaufort, South-Carolina; Dr. ''Darlington'', and Mr. ''John Vaughan'', of Pennsylvania; ''John Le Conte'', Esq. of Georgia; Mr. ''William Prince'', of Long-Island; and Mr. ''Andrew Gentle'', seedsman, of this city; are also among the contributors to this institution. It is but justice to the merit of my nephew, Dr. ''Caspar Wistar Eddy'', a young but accurate botanist, to add, that he has largely augmented the collection of American plants, especially of those of the island of New-York; some of which, viz. two new species of ''Gerardia'', were first discovered by him in the vicinity of this city. From my other pupils now industriously prosecuting the study of botany and medicine, more especially Mr. ''John W. Francis'', and Mr. ''Isaac Roosevelt'', of this city, and Mr. ''Robert M. Barclay'', of Orange county, I also anticipate many fruits of their labours in this department of science.
: <div id="Pursh"></div> "It would be injustice to my late gardener, Mr. ''Frederick Pursh'', who with a knowledge of the science of botany unites a very extensive and accurate acquaintance with the plants of this country, not to notice the very numerous contributions he has made to the collection, of the native plants of the United States, during the period he had charge of this establishment. The institution is also at present, and has been for some months past, in a very flourishing condition, under the direction of Mr. [Michael] ''Dennison'', who has been very particularly recommended to me by Messrs. ''Lee'' and ''Kennedy'', of Hammersmith. The present state of the collection is an evidence of his attention and skill, and from which I expect great improvements in every part of the establishment. [[#Pursh_cite|[back up to history]]]
: <div id="American_Botany"></div>"I avail myself of this occasion to observe, that as soon as measures may be taken by the Regents of the University for the permanent preservation of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], it is my intention immediately to commence the publication of AMERICAN BOTANY, or a ''Flora of the United States''. In this work it is my design to give a description of the plant, noticing its essential characters, synonyms, and place of growth, with observations on the uses to which it is applied in medicine, agriculture, or the arts; to be illustrated by a coloured engraving, in the same manner in which the plants of Great-Britain have been published by Dr. ''J''[ohn]. ''E''[dward]. ''Smith'', in his English Botany. Considerable progress has already been made in obtaining materials for this publication: many of the drawings will be executed by Mr. ''James Inderwick'', a young gentleman of great genius and taste, and others by ''John Le Conte'', Esq. whose acquaintance with botany and natural history in general will enable him to execute this part of the work with great fidelity. In Mr. [Frederick] ''Pursh'', whose name has already been mentioned, I shall have a very industrious and skilful botanist to collect from different parts of the union such plants as have not yet been assembled at the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]].... [[#American_Botany _cite|[back up to history]]]
: "Since the foregoing Catalogue has been printed, I have received from that distinguished Botanist, M. [André] ''Thouin'', Professor of Agriculture and Botany at Paris, a third collection of seeds [from the Jardin des Plantes], amounting to 30 species, of such plants as are not contained in this collection. The unceasing exertions of that gentleman, for the promotion of science in this country, as well as his own, deserve a greater tribute of praise than I am able to bestow."

* <div id="Indies"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], March 12, 1811, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden'' (1811: 7, 14–15)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref> [[#Indies_cite|back up to history]]

: "Persuaded of the advantages to be derived from the institution of a [[botanic garden]], which could be made the repository of the native vegetable production of the country, and be calculated to naturalize such foreign plants are distinguished by their utility either in medicine, agriculture, or the arts, as well as for the purpose of affording the medical student an opportunity of practical instruction in this science, I, immediately after my appointment as professor [of botany and materia medica] in the college, endeavoured to accomplish its establishment....
: "I still, however, did not abandon the hope of ultimately obtaining legislative aid, and therefore continued, as before, my exertions to increase the collection of plants which I had begun, and to extend the improvements for their preservation. Accordingly, in 1806, I obtained from various parts of Europe, as well as from the East and West-Indies, very important additions to my collection of plants, especially of those which are most valuable as articles of medicine. I also erected a second building for their preservation, and laid the foundation of a third, which was completed the following year. In the autumn of the same year, 1806, I published a ''Catalogue'' of the plants, both native and exotics, which had been already collected, amounting to nearly 2000 species....
: "I had now erected, on the most improved plan, for the preservation of such plants as require protection from the severity of our climate three large and well constructed houses, exhibiting a front of one hundred and eighty feet… The greater part of the ground was brought to a state of the highest cultivation, and divided into various compartments....
: "The whole establishment was enclosed by a stone [[wall]], two and an half feet in breadth, and seven and an half feet high… Add to all this… the additional costs for the continual increase in the number of plants, particularly of those imported from abroad, though in this respect I was liberally aided by the contributions of my friends, both in Europe and in the East and West-Indies…."

* <div id="Sketch"></div>Anonymous [[David Hosack|[David Hosack?]]], July 1811, "Sketch of the Elgin Botanic Garden in the Vicinity of New York," (1812: 1–4)<ref>Anonymous, "Sketch of the Elgin Botanic Garden in the Vicinity of New York," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5EBVS4DZ view on Zotero]. Much of the article paraphrases Hosack's ''Hortus Elginensis'' (1811), quoted above.</ref> [[#Sketch_cite|back up to history]]

: "This institution, the first of the kind established in the United States, is situated about three and a half miles from this city, on the middle road between Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge....
: "Immediately after the purchase, the proprietor, at a very considerable expense, had the grounds cleared and put in a state of cultivation, arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of vegetables, and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening....
: "By the distinguished liberality of several scientific gentlemen in this country, there were in cultivation at the commencement of 1805 nearly fifteen hundred species of American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics....
: "Recently the institution has been committed to the superintendence of the trustees of the college of physicians and surgeons of this city, to be by them kept in a state of preservation, and in a condition fit for all medical students as may resort thereto for the purpose of acquiring botanical science. It is confidently hoped, that as the improvements of this establishment for nearly ten years, while in the hands of a private individual, have far exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine, that its future progress will be proportionably great under its present governance."

* <div id="Correspondent"></div>Anonymous ["A Correspondent"], c. October 1811, description of botany classes held at the Elgin Botanic Garden (1812: 154, 158–159)<ref>Anonymous ["A Correspondent"], "Cultivation of Natural History in the University College of New-York," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZT2AMZDS view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Correspondent_cite|back up to history]]

: "After he had finished the geological and mineralogical parts of his course, which he elucidated from his own select and ample cabinet of fossils, Professor Mitchill entered upon the vegetable kingdom. He discoursed day after day upon the anatomy and physiology of seeds, plants, and flowers; and when he had proceeded far enough at the college in town, he adjourned to meet his audience at the [[botanic garden|botanical garden]] of Elgin, about three miles in the country.
: "There, in the presence of his numerous auditors, he demonstrated the component parts of the flower, and developed the principles of the Linnaean system....
: "During the discussion which took place on the history of the vegetable kingdom, Professor Mitchill made repeated visits, with his disciples, to the garden of Elgin, founded by [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], but now the property of the state. And, while he was occupied in the classification, description and discrimination of plants, it was observed, that the two promising young botanists, Dr. Caspar W. Eddy and Mr. James Inderwick, acted as his assistants; the former, in demonstrating the marks peculiar to the species, and the latter, in expounding the characters which distinguish the genus, in the presence of the numerous attendants whom the occasion had led to embark in this delightful study. The purchase of this valuable establishment is not less useful to natural science than honourable to public spirit. The college of physicians, who are curators in behalf of the regents, take every care that repairs are made to the [[conservatory]], [[hot house]] and [[fence]]s, and that the plants are well nursed and attended."

* Anonymous, 1811, commenting on Hosack's recent publications on the Elgin Botanic Garden (1811: 162–166)<ref>Anonymous, "Review of ''Hortus Elginensis'' and ''A Statement of Facts relative to the…Elgin Botanic Garden''," ''The Medical and Physical Journal'' 26 (July 1811): 162–166, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8BUV9NIM view on Zotero].</ref>

: "Though the collection in the Elgin Garden is not so large as in some older establishments in Europe, it is respectable both for number and quality. Of the indigenous plants of America we notice 1215 species: among these upwards of 200 are employed in medicine. Of plants possessing medicinal properties this seems a great number, but many of them possibly derive their title from popular opinion only; but even this title, as founded on a species of experience, is not to be slighted. Some of them have an established reputation: cinchona, ipecacuanha, jalapium, & c. are instances. It is curious fact in the history of Medical Botany, that when Europe remained in utter darkness on this subject, the Mexicans had appropriated a considerable space of ground, near the capital, to the sole purpose of rearing the indigenous medicinal plants....
: "No region of the earth seems more appropriate to the improvement of Botany, by the collecting and cultivating of plants, than that where the Elgin Garden is seated. Nearly midway between the northern and southern extremities of the vast American continent, and not more than 40 degrees to the north of the equator, it commands resources of incalculable extent; and the European Botanist will look to it for additions to his catalogue of the highest interest. The indigenous Botany of America possesses most important qualities, and to that, we trust, [[David Hosack|Prof. Hosack]], the projector, and indeed, the creator of this Garden, will particularly turn his attention. It can hardly be considered as an act of the imagination, so far does what has already been discovered countenance the most sanguine expectations, to conjecture, that in the unexplored wilderness of mountain, forest, and marsh, which composes so much of the western world, lie hidden plants of extraordinary forms and potent qualities.
: "From the scientific spirit and persevering industry of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], every thing may be augured. Already has he projected an AMERICAN BOTANY, or a ''Flora of the United States'', to be illustrated with coloured Plates, similar to those in the ''English Botany'' of our ingenious countryman, Dr. [James Edward] Smith. Considerable progress, we are informed, has already been made in obtaining materials for this work; but we regret that its completion depends on a contingency—the permanent preservation of the Elgin Botanic Garden. In the madness of political contention, in the apathy with which governments contemplate the advance of science, in the illiberal finesse and the low juggling of party, we may look for the occasional destruction or suspension of every rational project; but we hope these accidents will not frustrate the enlarged and enlightened intention of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], but rather induce him to extend his ''Flora'', and make the whole of the American continent his GARDEN."

* <div id="Eddy_lecture"></div>Anonymous, April 1812, "Dr. Eddy's Lectures on Botany" (1812: 2: 466–467)<ref>"Dr. Eddy's Lectures on Botany," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HVJCGAJP view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Eddy_lecture_cite|back up to history]]

: "Dr. C[aspar] W[istar] Eddy, of this city, has announced his intention of delivering a course of Lectures on Botany, to commence on the first Wednesday in May next.... During the whole course, the lecturer will avail himself of all the advantages calculated to render the instruction that may be given, a system of practical botany; and for this purpose, rpeated visits will be made to the state [[botanic garden]]....We shall only add, that a science in itself highly useful and agreeable, will possess additional claims to attetion, when unfolded in the able manner now proposed."

* Spafford, Horatio Gates, 1813, ''A Gazetteer of the State of New-York'' (1813: 45–46)<ref>Horatio Gates Spafford, ''A Gazetteer of the State of New-York: Carefully Written from Original and Authentic Materials, Arranged on a New Plan, in Three Parts'' (Albany: H.C. Southwick, 1813), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "[[botanic garden|'''BOTANIC GARDEN'''.]] The Elgin Botanic Garden, in the city of New-York, the first institution of the kind in the United States, is now the property of the state…. Among the distinguished friends and patrons of science in this state, a common sentiment had long prevailed, friendly to the establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]]. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to engage public aid for this purpose; and their having failed, while it detracts nothing from the reputation of the state, has ensured a better success to the institution, growing up under the zealous efforts of individual enterprize, which will ensure lasting fame to its principal founder.… In 1801, having failed in all attempts for public aid, the zeal and enterprize of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], determined him to attempt the establishment on his own account. Accordingly he purchased 20 acres of ground of the corporation of New-York…. The soil is diversified, and peculiarly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of plants. The whole was immediately enclosed by a stone [[wall]], and put in the best state for ornamental gardening; and a [[conservatory]] was erected for the preservation of the more hardy [[greenhouse|green-house]] plants. A primary object was to cultivate the native plants, possessing any valuable properties, found in this country; and in 1805, this establishment contained about 1500 valuable native plants, beside a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics. In 1806, it contained in successful cultivation, 150 different kinds of grasses, and important article to an agricultural people.… A portion of ground was set apart for agricultural experiments; and all the friends to experimental science and a diffusion of knowledge saw that the institution promised all that had been expected from it; and that the professor’s knowledge and genius were occupied on a congenial field....
: "The [[view]] from the most elevated part of Elgin ground, is extensive and variegated. The aspect of the ground, is a gentle slope to the E. and S. The whole is enclosed by a well constructed stone [[wall]], lined all round by a belt of forest trees and shrubs. The [[conservatory]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]] present a front of 180 feet. The various allotments of ground, are chosen with as much taste as good judgment for the varied culture;—and the rocky summit, the subsiding plain, and the little pool, have each their appropriate products. The herbarium, the [[kitchen garden]], the [[nursery]] of choice fruits from all quarters and climes, and the immense collection of botanical subjects elegantly arranged and labelled, display the industry, taste and skill of a master. A very extensive Botanical library belongs to the late proprietor, who is now a professor in the University, and delivers a summer course of lectures on Botany. .. The garden is now committed to the superintendence of the college of Physicians and Surgeons, without any charge to the state."

*Pursh, Frederick, 1814, describing Elgin Botanic Garden, New York, N.Y. (2: xiv)<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero.]</ref>

: "While I was engaged in arranging my materials for this publication, I was called upon to take the management of the [Elgin] Botanic Garden at New York, which had been originally established by the arduous zeal and exertions of Dr. [[David Hosack]], Professor of Botany, &c. as his private property, but has lately been bought by the Government of the State of New York for the public service. As this employment opened a further prospect to me of increasing my knowledge of the plants of that country, I willingly dropped the idea of my intended publication for that time, and in 1807 [''sic''; 1809] took charge of that establishment.
: "Here I again endeavoured to pay the utmost attention to the collection of American plants, as the establishment was principally intended for that purpose. In this I was supported by my numerous botanical connections and friends, among whom I must particularly mention John Le Conte, Esq. of Georgia, whose unremitting exertions added considerably to the collection, particularly of plants from the Southern States.
: "The additions to my former stock of materials for a Flora were now considerable, and in conjunction with Dr. [[David Hosack|D. Hosack]] I had engaged to publish a periodical work, with coloured plates, all taken from living plants, and if possible from native specimens, on a plan similar to that of Curtis's Botanical Magazine; for which a great number of drawings were actually prepared. But…in 1810, took a voyage to the West Indies,… from which I returned in the autumn of 1811.
: "On my return to New York, I found things in a situation very unfavourable to the publication of scientific works, the public mind being then in agitation about a war in Great Britain. I therefore determined to take all my materials to England, where I conceived I should not only have the advantage of consulting the most celebrated collections and libraries, but also meet with that encouragement and support so necessary to works of science, and so generally bestowed upon them there."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], February 18, 1818, letter to [[David Hosack]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris) (1944: 578)<ref>Thomas Jefferson, ''The Garden Book'', ed. Edwin M. Betts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "I received some time ago from M. Thouin, Director of the [[botanic garden|Botanical]] or King's garden at Paris, a box containing an assortment of seeds, Non-American.... I have therefore this day sent the box to Richmond...to be forwarded to you for the use of the [[botanic garden|Botanical Garden]] of N. York.... I am happy in this disposition of it to fulfill the good intentions of the donor, and to make it useful to your institution."

* Eyrien Frères & Cie., April 2, 1821, letter from Havre to [[Thomas Jefferson]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref> [http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1955 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "We have the honor of informing you that we have put on The American ship Cad[mus]...Capn. Wethlet [''sic''; Whitlock], a small Box of seeds, which is sent to you by the Managing Directors of the King's Garden in Paris....
: "We have sent this letter as well as some other ones for several people in the United States, to the address of [[David Hosack|Mister Hosack]], Director of the Botanical Garden of the State of New york.
: "Corresponding in this day for the Administrators of the King’s Museum and Garden, we are taking the liberty of offering you our Services, for your relationship with this administration, or for anything else that could be of interest to you in France."

* Eyrien Frères & Cie., April 2, 1821, letter from Havre to James Madison concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris) (Madison, 2013: 2: 292–293)<ref>James Madison, ''The Papers of James Madison'', ed. David B. Mattern et al., Retirement Series (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 2: 292–293, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8ADSTGUB view on Zotero]</ref>

: "The administrators of the King’s Garden at Paris have forwarded to us a package of seeds for you. We added it with some other packages for the same shipment and sent it all on board the American ship Cadmus, Capt. Whitlock, addressed to Mr. [[David Hosack|Hosack]], director of the Botanical Garden of the State of New York, from whom you will please request it."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], June 25, 1821, letter to Jonathan Thompson concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-2138 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "I am thankful to you for your notice of the 14th respecting a box of seeds—this comes from the king’s garden at Paris. they send me a box annually, depending on my applying it for the public benefit. I have generally had them delivered for a public garden at Philadelphia or to [[David Hosack|Dr Hosack]] for the Botanical garden of N. York. I am inclined to believe that he now recieves such an one from the same place. if he does not, be so good as to deliver it to him. but if of no use to him let it come to Richmond to the care of Capt Bernard Peyton, my correspondent there, and your note of any expence attending it will be immediately replaced either by him or myself."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], July 12, 1821, letter to [[David Hosack]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-2173 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "I recieved a letter lately from mr Thompson, Collector of New York, informing me of a box of seeds from the king's gardens at Paris addressed to me. I rather suppose you recieve one annually from the same place for your botanical garden, but was not certain. I desired him therefore to present it to you if acceptable for your garden."

* Spafford, Horatio Gates, 1824 ''Gazetteer of the State of New York'' (1824: 605)<ref>Horatio Gates Spafford, ''Gazetteer of the State of New York'' (Albany: B.D. Packard, 1824), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WW7MHEFG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "[[botanic garden|''Botanic Garden'']].—This is a very respectable establishment, situated on New-York Island, in the 9th Ward of the City, 4 miles N. of the City Hall. It was purchased by the State, in 1810, and is an appendage of the Colleges in New-York. It comprises 20 acres of ground, and embraces a great variety of indigenous, naturalized, and exotic vegetables. The situation is commanding, on the rising ground, which embraces a good variety of soil, aspect, and position, and Elgin [[Grove]] has as many visitants as the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]]s, chasing pleasure, or catching knowledge."

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:1136.jpg|John Trumbull, ''Dr. Hosack's Green houses'', Elgin Botanic Garden, June 1806.

Image:2051.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after Louis Simond, ''View of the botanic garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York'', c. 1810.

Image:2060.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after James Inderwick, "The Canada Thistle," in David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): facing p. 212.

Image:1986.jpg|Anonymous, ''Elgin Botanic Garden'', c. 1810.

Image:0049.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after Hugh Reinagle, "View of the Botanic Garden of the State of New York," in David Hosack, ''Hortus Elginensis'' (1811), frontispiece.

Image:0050.jpg|Hugh Reinagle, ''Elgin Garden on Fifth Avenue'', c. 1812.

Image:2052.jpg|Charles Heath after Thomas Sully (head copied from portrait of 1815) and John Trumbull (body and background after portrait painted ca. 1806–1815 for Dr. John C. Lettsom, England), ''David Hosack, M.D., F.R.S.'', c. 1816.

Image:2061.jpg|John Eatton Le Conte, "Viola," in ''Observations on the genera Viola. Utricularia and Gratiola'', c. 1824.

</gallery>

==Other Resources==
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2009180531.html Library of Congress Authority File]

==Notes==

<references/>

[[Category: Sites]]

Elgin Botanic Garden

2017-09-19T18:38:52Z

T-omalley: /* Images */

The '''Elgin Botanic Garden''', established in 1801 in New York City by Dr. [[David Hosack]] (1769–1835), was a systematic arrangement of plants for scientific and pedagogical purposes. It served as a garden for teaching botany and materia medica at both the medical school of Columbia College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. It was located in the area that is now midtown Manhattan.
==Overview==

'''Alternate Names''': Botanic Garden of the State of New York <br/>
'''Site Dates''': 1801–1811 <br/>
'''Site Owner(s)''': [[David Hosack]] (1769–1835); The State of New York; The College of Physicians and Surgeons; Columbia College <br/>
'''Associated People''': Andrew Gentle (gardener); Frederick Pursh (1774–1820, gardener); Michael Dennison (seedsman) <br/>
'''Location''': New York, NY<br/>
[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7587402,-73.9797679,18z View on Google maps]

==History==
[[File:0050.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, Hugh Reinagle, ''Elgin Garden on Fifth Avenue'', c. 1812.]]
While serving as professor of botany at Columbia College, Samuel Latham Mitchill proposed the development of a [[botanic garden]] in New York City to be administered either by the College or by New York's Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures. As Mitchill explained in a report to the Society in 1794, a garden comprised of indigenous and imported plants <span id="Mitchill_cite"></span>would be "one of the genteelest and most beautiful of public improvements," while also providing essential aid in the teaching of botany and the conducting of agricultural experiments ([[#Mitchill|view text]]).<ref>Significantly, when David Hosack later quoted Mitchill, he altered his words to emphasize the garden's practicality, changing Mitchill's phrase "genteelest and most beautiful" to "most useful and most important"; see David Hosack, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden: And the Subsequent Disposal of the Same to the State of New-York'' (New York: C.S. Van Winkle, 1811), 6, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> Mitchill's proposal reflects his medical education at the University of Edinburgh, where [[botanic garden]]s served as essential adjuncts to courses in botany and materia medica.<ref>Christine Chapman Robbins, ''David Hosack: Citizen of New York'' (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1964), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B51 view on Zotero].</ref> Although nothing came of his plan, the idea was revived by his successor, [[David Hosack]], another Edinburgh-educated physician, who was appointed professor of botany at Columbia in May 1795, and professor of materia medica two years later. In November 1797 [[David Hosack|Hosack]] informed the trustees of Columbia College that even his "large and very extensive collection of coloured [botanical] engravings" fell short of the pedagogic utility that a [[botanic garden]] would provide. <span id="1797_cite"></span>He therefore requested that "the professorship of botany and materia medica be endowed with a certain annual salary to defray the necessary expenses of a small garden, in which the professor may cultivate, under his immediate notice, such plants as furnish the most valuable medicines, and are most necessary for medical instruction" ([[#1797|view text]]). Despite agreeing with [[David Hosack|Hosack]] in principle, the trustees provided no funds. He next directed his request to the state legislature, but his letter of February 1800 requesting an annual stipend of £300 met with equally disappointing results.<ref>Hosack 1811, 7–10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:1136.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, John Trumbull, ''Dr. Hosack's Green houses'', Elgin Botanic Garden, June 1806.]]
Finally, in 1801, [[David Hosack|Hosack]] resolved to take the matter into his own hands, personally financing the purchase of twenty acres of land in the countryside to the north of the city, between what is now 47th and 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues (an area that now includes Rockefeller Center) [Fig. 1].<ref>Hosack 1811, 10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> Columbia College was then located four miles to the south in lower Manhattan, a distance that limited the garden's practicality from the outset. In other respects, however, the situation was ideal. <span id="variegated_cite"></span>Hosack noted that "the view from the most elevated part, is variegated and extensive, and the soil itself of that diversified nature, as to be particularly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of vegetable productions" ([[#variegated|view text]]). He named the garden "Elgin" after his father's birthplace in Scotland. Soon after purchasing the property, he wrote to "friends in Europe and in the East and West Indies [asking] for their plants."<ref>David Hosack, letter of July 25, 1803, to Dr. Thomas Parke, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Boston Public Library, quoted in Robbins 1964, 65, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Parke_cite"></span>In July 1803, while his collection was "yet small," he made a similar request of the Philadelphia physician Thomas Parke, asking for his help in obtaining duplicate specimens of "rare and valuable plants" owned by their mutual friend [[William Hamilton]], as well as medicinal plants and a catalog from the [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery]] ([[#Parke|view text]]). Dr. Parke had already provided [[David Hosack|Hosack]] with plans of the elaborate [[greenhouse]] with flanking [[hothouse]]s that [[William Hamilton|Hamilton]] built ten years earlier at [[The Woodlands]].<ref>Timothy Preston Long, "The Woodlands: A 'Matchless Place'" (unpublished Master of Science thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JQS7HETZ view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Elegance_cite"></span>[[David Hosack|Hosack]] adopted roughly the same design and dimensions for the Elgin [[greenhouse]] complex, which he described as "constructed with great architectural taste and elegance" ([[#Elegance|view text]]). After completing the central block in 1803, [[David Hosack|Hosack]] added the [[hothouse]]s in 1806 and 1807. The artist John Trumbull documented the buildings in a drawing made in June 1806 [Fig. 2], probably as a study for the background of his portrait of [[David Hosack|Hosack]], presently known only through a related engraving [Fig. 3].
[[File:2052.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Charles Heath after Thomas Sully and John Trumbull, ''David Hosack, M.D., F.R.S.'', c. 1816.]]

<span id="Sketch_cite"></span>[[David Hosack|Hosack]] reportedly had "in cultivation at the commencement of 1805, nearly fifteen hundred American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics" ([[#Sketch|view text]]). <span id="Indies_cite"></span>The following year, when he published the first catalog of the garden, the number of plants had grown to nearly 2,000 species, with the "the greater part of [the twenty acres]... now in cultivation" ([[#Indies|view text]]). <span id="Jefferson_cite"></span> While continuing to collect plants with the aid of well-connected friends such as [[Thomas Jefferson]] ([[#Jefferson|view text]]), Hosack turned his attention to laying out the grounds, ensuring that they were not only "arranged and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening," but also according to scientific taxonomies and the conditions of climate and terrain best suited to each plant.<ref>David Hosack, ''Description of the Elgin Garden, The Property of David Hosack, M.D.'' (New York: The author, 1810), 1–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero].</ref> By 1810 when he published his ''Description of the Elgin Garden'', [[David Hosack|Hosack]] had carried out the plan outlined in his 1806 ''Catalogue'' of encircling the garden with a "belt of forest trees and shrubs, native and exotic." This "judiciously chequered and mingled" collection was comprised of "the oak, the plane, the elm, the sugar maple, the locust, the horse chesnut, the mountain ash, the basket willow, and various species of poplar." In front of these trees a "similarly varied collection" of native and foreign shrubs was laid out in the form of an amphitheatre, "which, winding with the [[walk]]s, presents at every step something new and engaging." On the opposite side of the garden, "the eye reposes on the green [[lawn]] which is occasionally intercepted with groups of trees and shrubs happily adapted to its varied surface." [[Walk]]s on either side of the garden led to compartments of plants laid out according to their scientific order, and beyond them lay a nursery of fruit trees, a [[pond]] "devoted to the varieties of nymphoea, pontederia and other aquatics," and native plants, such as rhododendron, magnolias, and willows, which favored the moist ground adjacent to the [[pond]]. At higher elevations, rocky outcroppings were planted with "varied species of pine, juniper, yew, and hemlock." In the vicinity of the [[greenhouse]] and [[hothouse]]s were shrubs arranged in [[clump]]s and [[border]]s containing flowering plants. <span id="Description_cite"></span>Throughout the garden, every tree, shrub, and plant bore a label with its botanic name "for the instruction of the student." The entire garden was enclosed by a stone [[wall]], seven feet high and two and-a-half feet thick ([[#Description|view text]]).<ref>Hosack 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero]; cf. David Hosack, ''A Catalogue of Plants Contained in the Botanic Garden at Elgin: In the Vicinity of New York, Established in 1801'' (New York: T. & J. Swords, 1806), 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFGHH3VJ view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:2060.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4, William Satchwell Leney after James Inderwick, "The Canada Thistle," in David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): facing p. 212.]]
Following his appointment in 1808 as professor of natural history at New York's College of Physicians and Surgeons, Samuel Latham Mitchill conducted open-air classes at the Elgin Botanic Garden. An unidentified student who made multiple visits to the garden in 1810 reported that Mitchell was assisted by "two promising young botanists": James Inderwick (c. 1788–1815), a Columbia graduate who had stayed on to take anatomy and chemistry classes at the medical school in 1808–1809, and [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] nephew, Caspar Wistar Eddy (1790-1828), who in 1807, while still a medical student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, had created an herbarium and published a catalog, ''Plantae Plandomenses'', documenting plants indigenous to Mitchill's 230-acre Long Island estate.<ref>Caspar Wistar Eddy, "Plantae Plandomenses, or a Catalogue of the Plants Growing Spontaneously in the Neighbourhood of Plandome, the Country Residence of Samuel L. Mitchill," ''The Medical Repository'' 5, no. 2 (Aug–Oct. 1807): 123–131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3QEBP63M view on Zotero]; ''Catalogue of the Alumni, Officers and Fellows of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York'' (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1859), 22, 27, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FK359GQN view on Zotero]; ''Catalogue of Columbia College, in the City of New-York; Embracing the Names of Its Trustees, Officers, and Graduates'' (New York: Columbia College, 1844), 37, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MJAWNGN9 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Correspondent_cite"></span>According to the student, Eddy was responsible for "demonstrating the marks peculiar to the species," while Inderwick "expound[ed] the characters which distinguish the genus" ([[#Correspondent|view text]]). <span id="Eddy_lecture_cite"></span>After receiving his M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1811, Eddy himself began conducting lectures on botany at the Elgin Botanic Garden in May 1812 ([[#Eddy_lecture|view text]]).
[[File:2061.jpg|thumb|Fig. 5, John Eatton Le Conte, "Viola," in ''Observations on the genera Viola. Utricularia and Gratiola'', c. 1824.]]

<span id="American_Botany_cite"></span>Inderwick was involved in [[David Hosack|Hosack]]'s plan to scientifically document the plants at Elgin in "AMERICAN BOTANY, or a 'Flora of the United States,'" a publication [[David Hosack|Hosack]] intended to publish, he announced in 1811, as soon as he had secured the garden's permanent maintenance ([[#American_Botany|view text]]). Modeled on John Edward Smith's monumental ''English Botany'' (36 vols., 1790–1814), [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] flora was to include drawings by Inderwick, whom he had already employed to illustrate articles published in the ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'', the journal that he and the New York physician John Wakefield Francis (1789–1861) edited jointly from 1810 to 1814.<ref>Francis noted that his article was illustrated by "the ingenious Mr. Inderwick, a student of medicine of this city," and Hosack wrote, "To my friend, Mr. Inderwick, I am indebted for the very beautiful drawing from which this engraving has been made." See John W. Francis, "Case of Enteritis, Accompanied with a Preter-natural Formation of the Ileum," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (July 1810): 39; see also 41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/M2PEX3DF view on Zotero], and David Hosack, "Observations on Croup: Communicated in a Letter to Alire R. Delile, M.D. Physician in Paris," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (July 1811): 43; see also 40, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H2P2PHVF view on Zotero]. Other drawings by Inderwick were published in David Hosack, "Case of Aneurism of the Femoral Artery: Communicated in a Letter to John Abernethy," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 3 (July 1812): 48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X558G67M view on Zotero], and John W. Francis, ''Cases of Morbid Anatomy: Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, on the Eighth of June, 1815'' (New York: Van Winkle and Wiley, 1815), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/P8VK9XAT view on Zotero].</ref> Although most of Inderwick's drawings for the journal represented anatomical subjects, his illustration of the Canada Thistle (''Cnicus Arvensis'') [Fig. 4] for an article [[David Hosack|Hosack]] published in October 1810 indicates the kind of images he might have produced for [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] ''American Botany,'' had that project ever advanced beyond the planning stage.<ref>The drawing accompanied a letter to Samuel Latham Mitchill in which Hosack wrote, "The following description of the plant by Mr. Curtis [in the ''Flora Londinensis''] so perfectly corresponds with that with which our country is infested, that with the aid of the annexed drawing of the plant, made by my friend Mr. J. Inderwick, from the specimen you sent me, it will readily be recognised by the farmer into whose fields it may intrude itself." See David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis.... Communicated in a letter to the Hon. S. L. Mitchill, M.D.," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): 211–212, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero]. Inderwick was house surgeon at the New York Hospital for one year from February 1812 until February 1813. Stephen Decatur appointed him acting surgeon of the ''Argus'' on May 8, 1813. He died when his ship was lost at sea in 1815. See James Inderwick, ''Cruise of the U.S. Brig Argus in 1813: Journal of Surgeon James Inderwick'', ed. Victor H. Palsits (New York: New York Public Library, 1917), 3–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/F4K563GR view on Zotero]; William S. Dudley, ''The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History'', 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1992), 2: 219–222, 275–276, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WFEDBVFC view on Zotero].</ref> According to [[David Hosack|Hosack]], additional drawings for ''American Botany'' would be provided by another Columbia graduate, John Eatton Le Conte (1784–1860), who was probably then working on the catalog of plants indigenous to New York City that he would publish (with a dedication to [[David Hosack|Hosack]]) in the ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' in October 1811.<ref>John Eatton Le Conte, "Catalogue Plantarum Quas Sponte Crescentes in Insula Noveboraco, Observavit Johannes Le Conte, Eq.: Sub Forma Epistolae Ad D. Hosack, M.D. Missae," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1811): 134–41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/6CWDCT9M view on Zotero]. See also John Eatton Le Conte, "Observations on the Febrile Diseases of Savannah; in a Letter to Dr. Hosack, from John Le Conte, Esq., Woodmanston, December 18, 1809," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 4 (1814): 388–90, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AUZ3BNPD view on Zotero].</ref> Le Conte collected many plants for the garden while visiting his family's plantation, Woodmanston, in Georgia, and he went on to a distinguished natural history career, producing botanical illustrations that justify [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] early endorsement [Fig. 5].<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), 1: xiv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero]. For Le Conte's drawings, see: Viola Brainerd Baird "The Violet Water-Colors of Major John Eatton LeConte," ''The American Midland Naturalist'', 20 (1938), 245–47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HF8KNX8V view on Zotero]; Calhoun, John V., "John Abbot's 'Lost' Drawings for John E. Le Conte in the American Philosophical Society Library," ''Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society'', 60 (2006): 211–17, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5AFNFICJ view on Zotero].</ref>

The laboring figures represented in an oil painting of about 1810 hint at the numerous farmers and gardeners [[David Hosack|Hosack]] employed over many years to cultivate, plant, and maintain the Elgin garden.<ref>For an overview of expenses recorded in Hosack's memorandum book of 1803–1809, see Robbins 1964, 64, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> [Fig. 6] The Scottish nursery- and seedsman [[Andrew Gentle]] claimed to have "commenced operations for Dr. Hosack, in New-York, by laying out his grounds" in 1805, and he remained at the garden for the next few years.<ref>Andrew Gentle, ''Every Man His Own Gardener; Or, a Plain Treatise on the Cultivation of Every Requisite Vegetable in the Kitchen Garden, Alphabetically Arranged. With Directions for the Green & Hothouse, Vineyard, Nursery, &c. Being the Result of Thirty-Five Years’ Practical Experience in This Climate. Intended Principally for the Inexperienced Horticulturist'' (New York: The author, 1841), iii–iv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups//items/itemKey/X7253QTQ view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="MMahon_cite"></span>In 1809, on the recommendation of [[Bernard M'Mahon]] ([[#MMahon|view text]]), [[David Hosack|Hosack]] hired as gardener the German botanist Frederick Pursh, who had previously visited "the houses of the Botanick garden at New York" on October 3, 1807 while passing through the city on his way to Philadelphia.<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Journal of a Botanical Excursion in the Northeastern Parts of the States of Pennsylvania and New York: During the Year 1807'' (Philadelphia: Brinckloe & Marot, 1869), 87, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HSKRK5R7 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Pursh_cite"></span>According to [[David Hosack|Hosack]], Pursh made "very numerous contributions... during the period he had charge" of the garden, but by the close of 1810 he had been replaced by Michael Dennison, an English seedsman recommended by Lee and Kennedy, a well-known firm of nurserymen in Hammersmith, London ([[#Pursh|view text]]). Although [[David Hosack|Hosack]] expected Pursh to continue his association with Elgin in the capacity of "a very industrious and skilful botanist to collect from different parts of the union such plants as have not yet been assembled at the [[Botanic Garden]]," Pursh left America for England toward the end of 1811.
[[File:1986.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6, Anonymous, ''Elgin Botanic Garden'', c. 1810.]]

The high cost of maintaining the Elgin Botanic Garden soon swamped [[David Hosack]]'s financial resources. He had expected public support to be forthcoming once the garden's utility had been demonstrated, but his efforts to secure loans from the New York state legislature in 1805 and 1806 came to nothing, <span id="Lewis_cite"></span>despite the governor's support ([[#Lewis|view text]]).<ref>Hosack 1811, 12, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Stokes_cite"></span> Moreover, the market in fruits, vegetables, medicinal herbs, and hothouse plants—operated at the garden by [[Andrew Gentle]] ([[#Stokes|view text]])—failed to raise sufficient funds to offset the high cost of labor. In 1808 [[David Hosack|Hosack]] concluded that selling the garden was the only means of preserving it. Following considerable delay, the New York state legislature agreed to the purchase on January 3, 1811, with the provision that responsibility for the garden's management would be delegated to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.<ref>Robbins 1964, 79–84, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> The College lacked funds to maintain the garden, however, and it soon fell into disrepair. On a visit in August 1813 Hosack, who continued to collect seeds and plant materials for the garden, was distressed to find that the [[greenhouse]] plants had not been set outdoors during the summer, that many of them were missing, that the [[shrubbery]] in front of the [[greenhouse]] was choked with sunflowers, and that vegetation had overtaken the [[walk]]s.<ref> Hosack's report to the Trustees of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, August 30, 1813, quoted in Robbins 1964, 96, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero]. For Hosack's continued involvement in the garden, see, for example, David Hosack, "Report on Botany and Vegetable Physiology," ''The American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review'' 1 (May 1817): 47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MWBS8AMP view on Zotero].</ref>

The garden's condition continued to decline following the transfer of ownership to Columbia College in 1814. Two years later, Hosack complained to one of the College's trustees that the gardener, Michael Dennison, was "removing everything valuable from the collection."<ref>David Hosack to Clement C. Moore, October 16, 1816, quoted in Robbins 1964, 98; see also 97 for Dennison's letter of the previous month, informing the College of Physicians and Surgeons of repairs and horticultural care required at the garden, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> From early 1817 to 1823 [[Andrew Gentle]] returned to Elgin, granted a year-to-year lease free of charge in exchange for maintaining the [[greenhouse]] and grounds. In May 1819 the [[greenhouse]] plants along with "ornamental trees" and shrubs were transferred to the New York Hospital. Despite several attempts by [[David Hosack|Hosack]] to transfer care of the garden to an institution that could provide more attentive oversight, Columbia preferred to retain control, renting the property to a variety of tenants, including the seedsman David Barnett from 1825 to 1835.<ref>Addison Brown, ''The Elgin Botanic Garden, Its Later History and Relation to Columbia College'' (Lancaster, Pa.: The New Era Printing Company, 1908), 15–19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero]; Robbins 1964, 97–98, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> The rapid growth of New York City meant that by the late 1850s the garden was situated well within the urban hub, rather than on its outskirts. The value of the property had risen accordingly, from several thousand dollars to tens of millions. Columbia ultimately divided the land into numerous lots, which it sold or leased at high prices, generating the financial capital that allowed the college to expand into a world-class university.<ref>Brown 1908, 19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero].</ref>

--''Robyn Asleson''

==Texts==

* <div id="Mitchill"></div>Mitchill, Samuel Latham, 1794, report to the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures in the State of New York (1792: xxxix–xlv)<ref>"Introduction," ''Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, Instituted in the State of New York'' 1 (1794), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WSF4MDPU view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Mitchill_cite|back up to history]]

: "The establishment of a Garden is nearly connected with the Professorship of Botany under the College, and the Lectures on that branch must be always very lame and defective without one…. A [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] is not only one of the genteelest and most beautiful [Hosack changed to: most useful and most important] of public improvements; but it also comprises within a small compass the History of the Vegetable Species of our own Country; and by the introduction of Exotics, makes us acquainted with the plants of the most distant parts of the earth. Likewise, by facilitating experiments upon plants at this time, when a true Theory of Nutrition and Manures is such an interesting desideratum, a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] may be considered as one of the means of affording substantial help to the labours of the Agricultural Society, and be conducive to the improvement of modern husbandry. When these things are duly considered, it can scarcely be doubted, that a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], under the direction of the Society, or of the College, with a view to further the agricultural interest, will be set on foot and supported by legislative provision; to the end that young minds be early imbued with proper ideas on this important subject."

*<div id="1797"></div> [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], November 1797, memorial presented to the President and Members of the Board of Trustees of Columbia College (''Statement'', 1811: 7–8)<ref name="Hosack_Statement">Hosack 1811, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#1797_cite|back up to history]]

: "It has been to me a source of great regret that the want of a [[botanic garden|''Botanical Garden'']], and an extensive Botanical Library, have prevented that advancement in the interests of the institution which might reasonably have been expected....

: "To this end, I have purchased for the use of my pupils such of the most esteemed authors as are most essential in teaching the principles of Botany; and at a considerable expense I have been enabled to procure a large and very extensive collection of coloured engravings; but the difficulty of teaching any branch of natural philosophy, and of philosophy, and of rendering it interesting to the pupil, without a view and examination of the objects of which it treats, will readily be perceived: it will also occur to you that books, or engravings, however valuable and necessary, are of themselves insufficient for the purposes of regular instruction in medicine.

: "The obvious and only effectual remedy would be the establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanical Garden]]: this would invite a spirit of inquiry. The indigenous plants of our country would be investigated, and ultimately would promise important benefits, both to agriculture and medicine…. I beg leave to suggest…that the professorship of botany and material medica be endowed with a certain annual salary, sufficient to defray the necessary expenses of a small garden, in which the professor may cultivate, under his immediate notice, such plants as furnish the most valuable medicines, and are most necessary for medical instruction."

* Michaux, François André, 1802, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains'' (1802: 14)<ref>François André Michaux, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessea, and back to Charleston, by the Upper Carolines… Undertaken, in the Year 1802'', 2nd edn (London: B. Crosby & Co. and J.F. Hughes, 1805), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/69576KK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "During my stay at New York I frequently had an opportunity of seeing [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], who was held in the highest reputation as a professor of botany. He was at that time employed in establishing a [[botanic garden|botanical garden]], where he intended giving a regular course of lectures. This garden is a few miles from the town: the spot of ground is well adapted, especially for plants that require a peculiar aspect of situation."

* <div id="Parke"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], July 25, 1803, letter to Dr. Thomas Parke, regarding the [[greenhouse]]s at Elgin and [[The Woodlands]] (Long 1991: 144)<ref>Ms. letter in Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Boston Public Library, quoted in Timothy Preston Long, "The Woodlands: A 'Matchless Place'" (unpublished Master of Science thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JQS7HETZ view on Zotero] and Robbins 1964, 65, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref>[[#Parke_cite|back up to history]]

: "I duly received the plans of [[William Hamilton|Mr. Hamiltons]] [[greenhouse|green]] and [[hothouse|hot houses]]. My [[greenhouse]] [exclusive of the hothouses] is now finishing—it will not differ very individually from [[William Hamilton|Mr. Hamiltons]]. It is 62 feet long 23 deep—and 20 high in the clear.... I shall heat it by flues, they will run under the stays so they will not be seen—my [[walk]]s will be spacious... [[hothouse|hot houses]] are for next summer's operation. My collection of plants is yet small. I have written to my friends in Europe and in the East and West Indies for their plants. I will also collect the native productions of North and South America. What medical plants can [[William Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] supply—request him to send me a catalogue.... I hope [[William Hamilton]] will have duplicates of rare and valuable plants—I will supply him anything I possess."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], autumn 1806, preface to ''A Catalogue of Plants Contained in the Botanic Garden at Elgin'' (1806: 3–7)<ref>Hosack 1806, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFGHH3VJ view on Zotero].</ref>

: "The establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] in the United States, as a repository of native plants, and as subservient to medicine, agriculture, and the arts, is doubtless an object of great importance....
: "In the year 1801 I purchased, of the Corporation of the city of New-York, twenty acres of ground; the greater part of which is now in cultivation. Since that time, a [[Conservatory]], for the more hardy [[greenhouse|green-house]] plants, has been built; in addition to which, two [[hothouse|Hot-Houses]] are now erecting for the preservation of those plants which require a greater degree of heat.
: "The grounds will be arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of plants, and the whole enclosed by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, native and exotic.
: "A primary object of attention in this establishment will be to collect and cultivate the native plants of this country, especially such as possess medicinal properties, or are otherwise useful....
: "The numerous articles of medicine which this country has already furnished; the variety of soils and climates which it comprehends, encourage the belief that more remain to be discovered, and that the Materia Medica may still be enriched by the addition of many indigenous plants, whose virtues are yet unnoticed or unknown.
: "It is also my intention to introduce, from different parts of the world, such plants as are most useful in agriculture, in medicine, and the arts, and to ascertain which of them are capable of being naturalized to our soil and climate. There is no doubt that our agriculture may be much improved by the introduction of many foreign grasses and other plants cultivated as food for cattle; and many valuable additions may be made to our tables, by the importation of the best fruits and vegetables of foreign countries.
: "Another object of importance is, to afford to students of medicine the means of acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of plants, and the principles of botanic arrangement.... For this purpose the grounds will be divided into different compartments, calculated to exhibit the various plants according to their several properties; and these again will be arranged so as to afford a practical illustration of the systems of botany at present most esteemed, the sexual system of ''Linnaeus'', and the natural orders of ''Jussieu''.
: "I must acknowledge the obligations I am under to many gentlemen who have already befriended this establishment, especially to my most esteemed instructor and friend Dr. James Edward Smith, the President of the Linnaean Society of London; to Professor [Martin] Vahl, and Mr. [Niels] Hoffman Bang, of Copenhagen; to Professor [René Louiche] Desfontaines and [André] Thouin, of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] of Paris; to Mr. Alderman [George] Hibbert, and Dr. [John Coakley] Lettsom of London; Mr. [Richard Anthony] Salisbury, proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] of Brompton; Dr. [Giovanni Valentino Mattia] Fabroni, Director of the Royal Museum at Florence; and Mr. ''Andrew Michaux'', author of the ''Flora Boreali Americana'', &c. &c. From these gentlemen I have received many valuable plants, seeds, and botanical works, accompanied with the most polite offers of their further contributions to this institution.
: "Nor must I be unmindful of the obligations I am under to several gentlemen in this country, distinguished for their taste and talents in this department of science.
: "From John Stevens, Esq. of Hoboken, I have received many of the most valuable exotics in my collection. To Baron [Alexis] de Carandeffez I am indebted for a large collection of seeds of tropical plants.
: "Our late Minister in France, the Hon. Robert R. Livingston, has also largely contributed to my collection during his residence in Europe....
: "Those plants to which the asterisk * is prefixed, are prefixed, are natives of the neighbourhood of the city of New-York, and have been collected by my nephew and pupil, Caspar Wistar Eddy."

* <div id="Lewis"></div>Lewis, Morgan, governor of New York, January 28, 1806 (Hosack 1811: 12)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref> [[#Lewis_cite|back up to history]]

: "Application was made to the legislature at their last session, by a gentleman of the city of New-York, for aid in the support of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], which he had recently established. At the request of some of the members, I, in the course of last summer, paid it two visits, and am so satisfied with the plan and arrangement, that I cannot but believe, if not permitted to languish, it will be productive of great general utility. The objects of the proprietor are, a collection of the indigenous, and the introduction of exotic plants, shrubs &c. and by an intercourse with similar establishments, which are arising in the eastern and southern states, to insure the useful and ornamental products of southern to northern, and of northern to southern climes. In the article of grasses, I was pleased to see a collection of one hundred and fifty different kinds. A portion of ground is allotted to agricultural experiments, which cannot but be beneficial to an agricultural people. When it is considered that this branch of natural history embraces all the individuals of the vegetable which afford subsistence to the animal world, compose a large portion of the medicines used in the practice of physic, and mam of the ingredients essential to the useful arts, its utility and importance is not to be questioned. But in a country young as ours, the experimental sciences cannot be expected to arrive at any degree of excellence without the patronage and bounty of government; for individual fortune is not adequate to the task."

* <div id="Jefferson"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], September 10, 1806, letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]]<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-4259 Founders Online, National Archives]</ref> [[#Jefferson_cite|back up to history]]

: "Knowing your attachment to science and the interest you feel on the progress of it in the united states, I take the liberty of enclosing to you a Catalogue of plants [in the Elgin Botanic Garden] which I have been enabled to collect as the beginning of a [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]]—
: "you will readily perceive that my intention in this little publication is merely to announce the nature of the Institution and to facilitate my correspondence with Botanists as they will hereby know what plants will be accepteble to me and what they may expect in return—in two or three years when my collection may be more extensive I propose to publish it in a different shape arranging the plants under different heads viz Medicinal—Poisonous—those useful in the arts—in agriculture &c with notes relative to their use and culture accompanied with engravings of such as may be either entirely new or are not well figured in books—
: "I feel much interested in the result of the enquiries instituted by you relative to the Missouri—Black River &c. In Natural History much is also to be expected from exploring the territory in the course of Red River—that latitude is always rich in vegetable productions—if it should be contemplated to explore that or any other part of our country, there is now a gentleman in this state who might be induced to undertake it and whose talents abundantly qualify him for an employment of this sort, the person I refer to is Mr [André] Michaux the editor of the Flora Boreali America—he being at present in New York I take the liberty of mentioning his name to you—under your auspices Sir establishments of this nature may be encouraged:—it has occurred to me that much also might be done in exploring the native productions of the united states if the Government were to appropriate to every [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]] a small sum—for the express purpose of employing a suitable person to investigate the vegetable productions growing in its neighbourhood—an annual appropriation of this sort allotted to the [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]]s of Boston—New York—Virginia and South Carolina would in a short time be productive of great good—
: "Another object which will claim much of my attention will be to naturalize as far as possible to our climates the productions of the southern states and of the tropics—I believe much may be done upon this subject—four years since I planted some cotton seed, late in the spring—it grows to the usual size to which it attains in the southern states and ripened its seed before October—Those seeds were planted and succeeded equally well the second year—John Stevens Esq of Hoboken New Jersey has also succeeded in the same experiment and at this time has a considerable quantity of cotton ripening its seed, the growth from seeds raised by him the last year, it is also to be remarked that this summer has been unusually cool—I conceive it therefore not improbable that Virginia and Maryland if not Pennsylvania and New york—might cultivate this plant to advantage—the short staple doubtless would succeed—
: "If...the gentlemen who are at present on their travels to the Missouri, discover any new or useful plants I should be very happy in obtaining a small quantity of the seeds they may procure."

* <div id="Stokes"></div>[[Andrew Gentle|Gentle, Andrew]], June 4, 1807, Notice concerning the Elgin Botanic Garden, published in the ''New York Commercial Advertiser'' (Stokes 1926: 5: 1460–1461)<ref>Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, ''The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909'', 6 vols (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1926), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VBTRZVAB view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Stokes_cite|back up to history]]

: "As it was the original design in forming this establishment to render it not only useful as a source of instruction to the students of medicine but beneficial to the public by the cultivation of those plants useful in diseases, by the introduction of foreign grasses, and by the cultivation of the best vegetables for the table; our citizens are now informed that they can be supplied with medicinal Herbs and Plants, and a large assortment of [[greenhouse|green]] and [[Hot House]] Plants etc."

* [[Samuel Bard|Bard, Samuel]], November 14, 1809, address delivered to the Medical Society of Dutchess County (Hosack 1811: 30)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "Convinced as I am of the great and general importance of correct medical instruction, and anxious that our schools should be fostered by necessary patronage, I cannot but regret the failure of the proposal made last year in our legislature, for the purchase of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack's]] [[botanic garden]]. It would be too tedious at present to point out how much medicine may be benefitted, how greatly the arts may be enriched, and hor many of the comforts, the pleasures, and even the necessaries of life may be improved by such an institution....
: "By the purchase of the [[botanic garden]], a national ornament and most useful establishment, already brought to a great degree of perfection, will be preserved: by which our medicine, our agriculture and our arts, the elegancies, and the conveniences of life will necessarily be improved."

* <div id="MMachonlecture"></div>[[Bernard M'Mahon|M'Mahon, Bernard]] to [[Thomas Jefferson]], December 24, 1809 (Jefferson, 2005: 2: 89–91)<ref name="Jefferson_2005">Thomas Jefferson, ''The Papers of Thomas Jefferson'', ed. J. Jefferson Looney, Retirement Series, 4 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 2: 89–91, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XWVFP69T view on Zotero].</ref> [[#MMahon_cite|back up to history]]

: "On Governor Lewis’s departure from here, for the seat of his Government, he requested me to employ Mr Frederick Pursh, on his return from a collecting excurtion he was then about to undertake for Doctor Barton, to describe and make drawings of such of his collection as would appear to be new plants, and that himself would return to Philadelphia in the month of May following. About the first of the ensuing Novr Mr Pursh returned, took up his abode with me, began the work, progressed as far as he could without further explanation, in some cases, from Mr Lewis, and was detained by me, in expectation of Mr Lewis's arriv[al] at my expence, without the least expectation of any future remuneration, from that time till April last; when n[ot] having received any reply to several letters I had wri[tten] from time to time, to Govr Lewis on the subject, nor being able to obtain any in[dication?] when he probably might be expected here; I thought it a folly to keep Pursh longer idle, and recommended him as Gardener to [[David Hosack|Doctor Hosack]] of New York, with whom he has since lived.
: "The original specimens are all in my hands, but Mr Pursh, had taken his drawings and descriptions with him, and will, no doubt, on the delivery of them expect a reasonable compensation for his trouble."

* Newton, Joseph, Arthur Smith, John F. West, Timothy B. Crane, January 16, 1810, Estimate of the Buildings at the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 45)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "We, the subscribers, builders, and residents of the city of New-York, at the request of doctor [[David Hosack]], have valued the improvements on his land, near the four mile stone, called the [[botanic garden]], to wit: the hot [[bed]] frames, the [[conservatory]] or [[greenhouse|green house]], and its appendages, the dwelling house, the [[hot house]]s and their back buildings, the lodges, the gates and the [[fence]]s around the land, including the wells, at the sum of twenty-nine thousand three hundred dollars."

* [[Andrew Gentle|Gentle, Andrew]], January 22, 1810, Valuation of plants in the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 53–54)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "The sum of ''fourteen thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and fifty-nine cents'', is, I believe, to the best of my judgment, the value of your indigenous and exotic plants, tools, & c. at Elgin."

* Hastings, John, Frederick Pursh, and John Brown, January 24, 1810, Valuation of the plants in the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 53)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "We, the subscribers, in committee assembled, for the valuation of the plants, trees, and shrubs, including garden tools and utensils, necessary for the cultivation of the same, as appertaining to the [[greenhouse|green house]], [[hothouse|hot houses]], and grounds of the [[botanic garden]], at Elgin, after a very particular inventory and examination of the improvements, are unanimously agreed, that, to the best of our knowledge and ability, we consider them to be worth the sum of ''twelve thousand six hundred and thirty-five dollars and seventy-four and half cents''.
::: "John Hastings, Nursery-man, Brooklyn, L.I.
::: "Frederick Pursh, Botanist.
::: "John Brown, Nursery-man."

[[File:2051.jpg|thumb|Fig. 7, William Satchwell Leney after Louis Simond, ''View of the botanic garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York'', ca. 1810.]]
* <div id="Description"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], 1810, ''Description of the Elgin Garden'' (1810: 1–4)<ref>Hosack 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Description_cite|back up to history]]

: "The [[view]] from the most elevated part of Elgin-ground, is variegated and extensive. The East and North Rivers, with their vast amount of navigation, are plain in sight. Beyond these great thoroughfares of business, the fruitful fields of Long-Island, and the [[picturesque]] shores of New-Jersey, give beauty and interest to the [[prospect]]....
: <div id="Elegance"></div>"The [[conservatory]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]] present a front of one hundred and eighty feet. They are not only constructed with great architectural taste and elegance, but experience has also shown, they are well calculated for the preservation of the most tender exotics that require protection from the severity of our climate. The grounds are also arranged and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening. The whole is surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs judiciously chequered and mingled; and enclosed by a well constructed stone-[[wall]]. [Fig. 7] [[#Elegance_cite|[back up to history]]]
: "The interior is divided into various compartments, not only calculated for the instruction of the student in Botany, but subservient to agriculture, the arts, and to manufactures. A [[nursery]] is also begun, for the purpose of introducing into this country the choicest fruits of the table. Nor is the [[kitchen garden]] neglected in this establishment. An apartment is also devoted to experiments in the culture of those plants which may be advantageously introduced and naturalized to our soil and climate, that are at present annually imported from abroad....
: "The forest trees and shrubs which surround the establishment, first claim [the visitor’s] attention. Here are beautifully distributed and combined the oak, the plane, the elm, the sugar maple, the locust, the horse chesnut, the mountain ash, the basket willow, and various species of poplar. In front of these, a similarly varied collection of shrubs, natives and foreign, compose an amphitheatre, which, winding with the [[walk]]s, presents at every step something new and engaging. On the other side the eye reposes on the green [[lawn]] which is occasionally intercepted with groups of trees and shrubs happily adapted to its varied surface.
: "In extending his [[walk]]s to the garden, on each side, he [the visitor] is equally gratified and instructed by the numerous plants which are here associated in scientific order, for the information of the student in Botany or Medicine. Here the Turkey rhubarb, Carolina pink-root, the poppy and the foxglove, with many other plants of the Materia Medica are seen in cultivation....
: "As he proceeds he arrives at a [[nursery]] of the finest fruits, which the proprietor has been enabled to procure from various parts of the world, and from which the establishment will hereafter derive one of the principal means of its support.
: "The visitor next comes in view of a [[pond]] of water devoted to the varieties of nymphoea, pontederia and other aquatics which adorn its surface, while the adjacent grounds which are moist afford the proper and natural soil for a great variety of our most valuable native plants. The rhododendrons, magnolias, the kalmias, the willows, the stuartia; the candleberry myrtle; the cupressus disticha, and the sweet-smelling clethra alnifolia, here grow in rich luxuriance, and compose a beautiful picture in whatever direction they fall under his eye....
: "As he leaves this groupe, and passes to the higher situations of this delightfully varied surface, he finds a corresponding distribution of the numerous plants which compose this collection.
: "Here a rocky and elevated spot attracts his attention, by the varied species of pine, juniper, yew, and hemlock, with which it is covered. There a solitary oak breaks the surface of the [[lawn]]; here a group of poplars; there the more splendid foliage of the different species of magnolia, intermixed with the fringe tree, the thorny aralia, and the snow drop halesia, call his willing notice.
: "Entering the [[greenhouse|green-house]], his eye is saluted with a rich and varied collection: the silver protea, the lemon, the orange, the oleander, the citron, the shaddock, the myrtle, the jasmine and the numerous and infinitely varied family of geranium, press upon his view, while the perfumes emitted from the fragrant daphne, heliotropium, and the coronilla no less attract his notice than do the splendid petals of the camellia japonica, the amaryllis, the cistus, erica and purple magnolia.
: "In the [[hothouse|hot-house]] he finds himself translated to the heat of the tropics. Here he observes the golden pine, the sugar cane, the cinnamon, the ginger, the splendid strelitzia, and ixora coccinea intermixed with the bread fruit, the coffee tree, the plantain, the arrow root, the sago, the avigato pear, the mimosa yielding the gum arabic, and the fragrant farnesiana.
: "Here are also to be seen the succulent tribes of aloe, sedum, mesembryanthemum, the night blowing cereus, arid the cactus which feeds the cochineal, covered with its insects.
: "In front of the buildings are several beautiful [[clump]]s composed of the more delicate and valuable shrubs intermingled with a great variety of roses, kalmias and azaleas. Their [[border]]s are also successively enamelled with the crocus, the snow drop, the asphodel, the hyacinth, and the more splendid species of the iris.
: "Here also is ''viola tricolor''… saluting the senses with its beautiful assemblage of colours but yielding in fragrance to its rival ''viola odorata'' which…also adds zest to this delicious banquet.
: "Every tree, shrub, and herbaceous plant is labelled and designated by its botanic name for the instruction of the student.
: "[[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]] has also connected with this establishment, an extensive ''Herbarium'' which contains not only a great variety of plants collected by himself in Great Britain, and in this country, but is also enriched by many valuable specimens furnished by the late celebrated Danish professor Vahl; by Curtis, and Dickson, and by duplicates from the Hortus Siccus of Linnaeus, presented by Dr. Smith, the learned president of the Linnaean Society, and the present possessor of the rich collections of the celebrated Swede.
: "To this establishment [[David Hosack|Dr. H.]] has also added a well chosen ''Botanical Library'', consisting of the most celebrated works, both ancient and modern, which are necessary to illustrate that science, as well as its application to medicine, to agriculture and the arts to which it is subservient."

* [[Hosack, David|David Hosack]], August 9, 1810, letter to Daniel Hale, the New York Secretary of State (quoted in Robbins 1964: 83)<ref>Robbins 1964, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref>

: "A work is preparing in which the native plants are to be paited and engraved for publication taken from those now growing in Elgin Botanic Garden. Artists are engaged and at this moment are at work under my direction. They are employed with the understanding they could complete the work they are now preparing."

* Anonymous, July 1810, description of the Elgin Botanic Garden (1811: 116–117)<ref>Anonymous, "Elgin Botanic Garden, New York," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "Among the number of those distinguished friends of science in Europe, who have manifested an ardent desire for the extension of useful knowledge in these states, may be justly esteemed Monsieur [André] THOUIN, the celebrated professor of Botany and Agriculture, at the ''Jardin des Plantes'' of Paris....[[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], the proprietor of the Elgin Botanic Garden, has repeatedly been favoured by him with a great variety of seeds, from the rarest and most valuable plants of the continent; and he is happy to add, that they have always been received in such a state of preservation, as scarcely in a single instance to have frustrated the liberal intentions of the donor. Indeed, many of the most valuable plants in his collection are the products of the seeds presented him by Monsieur THOUIN.
: "To the Hon. SAMUEL L. MITCHELL [''sic''], M.D. Professor of Natural History…in the College of Physicians, the proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] is also indebted for many valuable additions made to his collection of living plants, as well as for many specimens added to his Herbarium, collected by the same gentleman, during his residence at Washington, (as Senator of the United States,) and in the Western parts of the state of New-York, when on his late tour to the falls of Niagara....
: "Important additions of the native plants of Georgia have also very recently been made to this institution by JOHN LECONTE, Esq. whose acquaintance with the various departments of natural history, gives us reason to regret that he has not yet made an offering to his country of the fruits of his researches."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], July 21, 1810, on grass planted at the Elgin Botanic Garden (October 1810: 216)<ref>Hosack, October 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "By pursuing the practice recommended by Lord Kames, of sowing from twenty to twenty-four pounds of clover seed to the acre, I have remarked that the grounds at the Elgin Botanic Garden are much more free from weeds than those of my neighbours, at the same time that the grass is much more delicate for feeding, less apt to be thrown down by the storm, and makes a less succulent hay, both more easily cured and better preserved than where it is more thinly spread, but of stronger growth."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], March 12, 1811, preface and addendum to ''Hortus Elginensis'' (''Hortus'' 1811: v–x, 66)<ref>David Hosack, ''Hortus Elginensis, or, A Catalogue of Plants, Indigenous and Exotic, Cultivated in the Elgin Botanic Garden, in the Vicinity of the City of New-York : Established in 1801''(New-York : Printed by T. & J. Swords, 1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FIEM4NZF view on Zotero].</ref>

: "The establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] in the United States, as a repository of the native plants of this country, and as subservient to the purposes of medicine, agriculture, and the arts, is doubtless an object of great importance. Impressed with the advantages to be derived from an institution of this nature, I have anxiously endeavoured ever since my appointment to the professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College, to accomplish its establishment. Disappointed, however, in my first applications to the legislature of this State, soliciting their assistance in so expensive and arduous an undertaking, I resolved to devote my own private funds to the prosecution of this object; trusting, that when the nature of the institution should be better, and more generally known, and its utility fully ascertained, it would receive the patronage and support of the public.
: <div id="variegated"></div>"Accordingly, in the year 1801, I purchased of the Corporation of the city of New-York, twenty acres of ground … distant from the city about three miles and an half. The [[view]] from the most elevated part, is variegated and extensive, and the soil itself of that diversified nature, as to be particularly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of vegetable productions. The greater part of the ground is at present in a state of promising cultivation, arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of vegetables, and planted agreeably to the most approved style of ornamental gardening. Since that time, an extensive conservatory, for the more hardy [[greenhouse|green house]] plants, and two spacious [[hothouse|hot houses]], for the preservation of those which require a greater degree of heat, the whole exhibiting a front of one hundred and eighty feet, have been erected, and which, experience has shown, are well calculated for the purpose for which they were designed. The whole establishment is surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, both native and exotic, and these again are enclosed by a stone [[wall]], two and an half feet in thickness, and seven feet in height. [[#variegated_cite|[back up to history]]]
: "As it has always been a primary object of attention to collect and cultivate in this establishment, the native plants of this country, especially such as are possessed of medicinal properties, or are otherwise useful, such gardeners as were practically acquainted with our indigenous productions, have been employed to procure them: how far this end has been attained, will be best seen by an examination of the Catalogue.
: "Although much has been done by the governments of Great-Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, and Germany, in the investigation of the vegetable productions of America: although much has been accomplished by the labours of [[Mark Catesby|[Mark] ''Catesby'']], [Pehr] ''Kalm'', [Friedrich Adam Julius von] ''Wangenheim'', [Johann David] ''Schoepf'', [Thomas] ''Walter'', and the ''Michaux'' [André and François André]; and by our countrymen [John] ''Clayton'', the ''Bartrams'' [[John Bartram|[John]] and [[William Bartram|William]]], [[Cadwallader Colden|[Cadwallader] ''Colden'']], [Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst] ''Muhlenberg'', [[Humphry Marshall|[Humphry] ''Marshall'']], [[Manasseh Cutler|[Manasseh] ''Cutler'']], and the learned Professor [Benjamin Smith] ''Barton'' of Pennsylvania, much yet remains to be done in this western part of the globe. The numerous articles of medicine which this country has already furnished; the variety of soils and climates which it comprehends, encourage the belief, that many more remain to be discovered, and that the Materia Medica may still be enriched by the addition of many indigenous plants, whose virtues yet remain undiscovered.
: "Another object of importance is, to afford to students of medicine, the means of acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of plants, and the principles of botanic arrangement; a science intimately connected with their profession, as it not only enables them to distinguish one plant from another, but frequently leads to an acquaintance with their medicinal virtues. For this purpose the grounds are divided into different compartments, calculated to exhibit the various plants according to their several properties: and these again are so arranged as to afford a practical illustration of the systems of botany at present most esteemed, viz. the sexual system of Linnaeus, and the natural orders of [Antoine Laurent de] ''Jussieu''.
: "Hitherto the [[botanic garden|botanical gardens]] of ''Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Leyden, Upsal, Goettengen'', &c. have instructed the American youth in this department of medical education; and it is in some degree owing to those establishments that the universities and colleges of those places have become so celebrated, and have been resorted to by students of medicine from all parts of the world.
: "Since the publication of the first edition of this catalogue, in 1806, this institution has been greatly improved…. It will also be perceived by a comparison of the present with the former edition, that very considerable additions have been made to the collection both of the foreign and indigenous plants contained in that establishment. Gratitude demands of me, on this occasion, an acknowledgment of the obligations I am under to many distinguished botanists, both abroad and at home, who have contributed to this institution. In this number are to be enumerated my much esteemed and respected friend and instructor, Dr. ''James Edward Smith'', the learned President of the Linnaean Society of London; the late Professor [Martin] ''Vahl'', and Mr. [Niels] ''Hoffman Bang'', of Copenhagen; Mons. [René Louiche] ''Desfontaines'' and [André] ''Thouin'', the celebrated Professors of Botany and Agriculture at the Medical Schools of Paris; Mr. [Richard Anthony] ''Salisbury'', Proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] at Brompton, near London; the late Dr. [Giovanni Valentino Mattia] ''Fabroni'', Director of the Royal Museum of Florence; Dr. [John] ''Bostock'', the learned President of the Botanic Institution of Liverpool; Dr. [John Coakley] ''Lettsom'', of London; Dr. ''Andrew Michaux'', Editor of the Flora Boreali Americana, and Author of the very valuable History of the Forest Trees of North-America, now publishing at Paris; my much esteemed friend Dr. ''Alire Raffineau Delile'', of the Institute of Egypt; Dr. ''Alexander Anderson'', Superintendant of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] at St. Vincents; and [Eduard Freiherr von Schack] ''Baron Be Schack'', of Martinique, From these gentlemen I have received many rare botanical works, and some of the most valuable plants in this collection.
: "Nor must I be unmindful of the obligations I am under to several gentlemen in this country, distinguished for their taste and talents in this department of science. The Hon. ''Robert R. Livingston'', our former Minister in France; Professor [Samuel Latham] ''Mitchill'', of this city; ''John Stevens'', Esq. of Hoboken; Mr. [[Bernard M'Mahon|''Bernard M'Mahon'']], of Philadelphia; Mr. ''Stephen Elliot'', of Beaufort, South-Carolina; Dr. ''Darlington'', and Mr. ''John Vaughan'', of Pennsylvania; ''John Le Conte'', Esq. of Georgia; Mr. ''William Prince'', of Long-Island; and Mr. ''Andrew Gentle'', seedsman, of this city; are also among the contributors to this institution. It is but justice to the merit of my nephew, Dr. ''Caspar Wistar Eddy'', a young but accurate botanist, to add, that he has largely augmented the collection of American plants, especially of those of the island of New-York; some of which, viz. two new species of ''Gerardia'', were first discovered by him in the vicinity of this city. From my other pupils now industriously prosecuting the study of botany and medicine, more especially Mr. ''John W. Francis'', and Mr. ''Isaac Roosevelt'', of this city, and Mr. ''Robert M. Barclay'', of Orange county, I also anticipate many fruits of their labours in this department of science.
: <div id="Pursh"></div> "It would be injustice to my late gardener, Mr. ''Frederick Pursh'', who with a knowledge of the science of botany unites a very extensive and accurate acquaintance with the plants of this country, not to notice the very numerous contributions he has made to the collection, of the native plants of the United States, during the period he had charge of this establishment. The institution is also at present, and has been for some months past, in a very flourishing condition, under the direction of Mr. [Michael] ''Dennison'', who has been very particularly recommended to me by Messrs. ''Lee'' and ''Kennedy'', of Hammersmith. The present state of the collection is an evidence of his attention and skill, and from which I expect great improvements in every part of the establishment. [[#Pursh_cite|[back up to history]]]
: <div id="American_Botany"></div>"I avail myself of this occasion to observe, that as soon as measures may be taken by the Regents of the University for the permanent preservation of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], it is my intention immediately to commence the publication of AMERICAN BOTANY, or a ''Flora of the United States''. In this work it is my design to give a description of the plant, noticing its essential characters, synonyms, and place of growth, with observations on the uses to which it is applied in medicine, agriculture, or the arts; to be illustrated by a coloured engraving, in the same manner in which the plants of Great-Britain have been published by Dr. ''J''[ohn]. ''E''[dward]. ''Smith'', in his English Botany. Considerable progress has already been made in obtaining materials for this publication: many of the drawings will be executed by Mr. ''James Inderwick'', a young gentleman of great genius and taste, and others by ''John Le Conte'', Esq. whose acquaintance with botany and natural history in general will enable him to execute this part of the work with great fidelity. In Mr. [Frederick] ''Pursh'', whose name has already been mentioned, I shall have a very industrious and skilful botanist to collect from different parts of the union such plants as have not yet been assembled at the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]].... [[#American_Botany _cite|[back up to history]]]
: "Since the foregoing Catalogue has been printed, I have received from that distinguished Botanist, M. [André] ''Thouin'', Professor of Agriculture and Botany at Paris, a third collection of seeds [from the Jardin des Plantes], amounting to 30 species, of such plants as are not contained in this collection. The unceasing exertions of that gentleman, for the promotion of science in this country, as well as his own, deserve a greater tribute of praise than I am able to bestow."

* <div id="Indies"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], March 12, 1811, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden'' (1811: 7, 14–15)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref> [[#Indies_cite|back up to history]]

: "Persuaded of the advantages to be derived from the institution of a [[botanic garden]], which could be made the repository of the native vegetable production of the country, and be calculated to naturalize such foreign plants are distinguished by their utility either in medicine, agriculture, or the arts, as well as for the purpose of affording the medical student an opportunity of practical instruction in this science, I, immediately after my appointment as professor [of botany and materia medica] in the college, endeavoured to accomplish its establishment....
: "I still, however, did not abandon the hope of ultimately obtaining legislative aid, and therefore continued, as before, my exertions to increase the collection of plants which I had begun, and to extend the improvements for their preservation. Accordingly, in 1806, I obtained from various parts of Europe, as well as from the East and West-Indies, very important additions to my collection of plants, especially of those which are most valuable as articles of medicine. I also erected a second building for their preservation, and laid the foundation of a third, which was completed the following year. In the autumn of the same year, 1806, I published a ''Catalogue'' of the plants, both native and exotics, which had been already collected, amounting to nearly 2000 species....
: "I had now erected, on the most improved plan, for the preservation of such plants as require protection from the severity of our climate three large and well constructed houses, exhibiting a front of one hundred and eighty feet… The greater part of the ground was brought to a state of the highest cultivation, and divided into various compartments....
: "The whole establishment was enclosed by a stone [[wall]], two and an half feet in breadth, and seven and an half feet high… Add to all this… the additional costs for the continual increase in the number of plants, particularly of those imported from abroad, though in this respect I was liberally aided by the contributions of my friends, both in Europe and in the East and West-Indies…."

* <div id="Sketch"></div>Anonymous [[David Hosack|[David Hosack?]]], July 1811, "Sketch of the Elgin Botanic Garden in the Vicinity of New York," (1812: 1–4)<ref>Anonymous, "Sketch of the Elgin Botanic Garden in the Vicinity of New York," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5EBVS4DZ view on Zotero]. Much of the article paraphrases Hosack's ''Hortus Elginensis'' (1811), quoted above.</ref> [[#Sketch_cite|back up to history]]

: "This institution, the first of the kind established in the United States, is situated about three and a half miles from this city, on the middle road between Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge....
: "Immediately after the purchase, the proprietor, at a very considerable expense, had the grounds cleared and put in a state of cultivation, arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of vegetables, and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening....
: "By the distinguished liberality of several scientific gentlemen in this country, there were in cultivation at the commencement of 1805 nearly fifteen hundred species of American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics....
: "Recently the institution has been committed to the superintendence of the trustees of the college of physicians and surgeons of this city, to be by them kept in a state of preservation, and in a condition fit for all medical students as may resort thereto for the purpose of acquiring botanical science. It is confidently hoped, that as the improvements of this establishment for nearly ten years, while in the hands of a private individual, have far exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine, that its future progress will be proportionably great under its present governance."

* <div id="Correspondent"></div>Anonymous ["A Correspondent"], c. October 1811, description of botany classes held at the Elgin Botanic Garden (1812: 154, 158–159)<ref>Anonymous ["A Correspondent"], "Cultivation of Natural History in the University College of New-York," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZT2AMZDS view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Correspondent_cite|back up to history]]

: "After he had finished the geological and mineralogical parts of his course, which he elucidated from his own select and ample cabinet of fossils, Professor Mitchill entered upon the vegetable kingdom. He discoursed day after day upon the anatomy and physiology of seeds, plants, and flowers; and when he had proceeded far enough at the college in town, he adjourned to meet his audience at the [[botanic garden|botanical garden]] of Elgin, about three miles in the country.
: "There, in the presence of his numerous auditors, he demonstrated the component parts of the flower, and developed the principles of the Linnaean system....
: "During the discussion which took place on the history of the vegetable kingdom, Professor Mitchill made repeated visits, with his disciples, to the garden of Elgin, founded by [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], but now the property of the state. And, while he was occupied in the classification, description and discrimination of plants, it was observed, that the two promising young botanists, Dr. Caspar W. Eddy and Mr. James Inderwick, acted as his assistants; the former, in demonstrating the marks peculiar to the species, and the latter, in expounding the characters which distinguish the genus, in the presence of the numerous attendants whom the occasion had led to embark in this delightful study. The purchase of this valuable establishment is not less useful to natural science than honourable to public spirit. The college of physicians, who are curators in behalf of the regents, take every care that repairs are made to the [[conservatory]], [[hot house]] and [[fence]]s, and that the plants are well nursed and attended."

* Anonymous, 1811, commenting on Hosack's recent publications on the Elgin Botanic Garden (1811: 162–166)<ref>Anonymous, "Review of ''Hortus Elginensis'' and ''A Statement of Facts relative to the…Elgin Botanic Garden''," ''The Medical and Physical Journal'' 26 (July 1811): 162–166, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8BUV9NIM view on Zotero].</ref>

: "Though the collection in the Elgin Garden is not so large as in some older establishments in Europe, it is respectable both for number and quality. Of the indigenous plants of America we notice 1215 species: among these upwards of 200 are employed in medicine. Of plants possessing medicinal properties this seems a great number, but many of them possibly derive their title from popular opinion only; but even this title, as founded on a species of experience, is not to be slighted. Some of them have an established reputation: cinchona, ipecacuanha, jalapium, & c. are instances. It is curious fact in the history of Medical Botany, that when Europe remained in utter darkness on this subject, the Mexicans had appropriated a considerable space of ground, near the capital, to the sole purpose of rearing the indigenous medicinal plants....
: "No region of the earth seems more appropriate to the improvement of Botany, by the collecting and cultivating of plants, than that where the Elgin Garden is seated. Nearly midway between the northern and southern extremities of the vast American continent, and not more than 40 degrees to the north of the equator, it commands resources of incalculable extent; and the European Botanist will look to it for additions to his catalogue of the highest interest. The indigenous Botany of America possesses most important qualities, and to that, we trust, [[David Hosack|Prof. Hosack]], the projector, and indeed, the creator of this Garden, will particularly turn his attention. It can hardly be considered as an act of the imagination, so far does what has already been discovered countenance the most sanguine expectations, to conjecture, that in the unexplored wilderness of mountain, forest, and marsh, which composes so much of the western world, lie hidden plants of extraordinary forms and potent qualities.
: "From the scientific spirit and persevering industry of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], every thing may be augured. Already has he projected an AMERICAN BOTANY, or a ''Flora of the United States'', to be illustrated with coloured Plates, similar to those in the ''English Botany'' of our ingenious countryman, Dr. [James Edward] Smith. Considerable progress, we are informed, has already been made in obtaining materials for this work; but we regret that its completion depends on a contingency—the permanent preservation of the Elgin Botanic Garden. In the madness of political contention, in the apathy with which governments contemplate the advance of science, in the illiberal finesse and the low juggling of party, we may look for the occasional destruction or suspension of every rational project; but we hope these accidents will not frustrate the enlarged and enlightened intention of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], but rather induce him to extend his ''Flora'', and make the whole of the American continent his GARDEN."

* <div id="Eddy_lecture"></div>Anonymous, April 1812, "Dr. Eddy's Lectures on Botany" (1812: 2: 466–467)<ref>"Dr. Eddy's Lectures on Botany," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HVJCGAJP view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Eddy_lecture_cite|back up to history]]

: "Dr. C[aspar] W[istar] Eddy, of this city, has announced his intention of delivering a course of Lectures on Botany, to commence on the first Wednesday in May next.... During the whole course, the lecturer will avail himself of all the advantages calculated to render the instruction that may be given, a system of practical botany; and for this purpose, rpeated visits will be made to the state [[botanic garden]]....We shall only add, that a science in itself highly useful and agreeable, will possess additional claims to attetion, when unfolded in the able manner now proposed."

* Spafford, Horatio Gates, 1813, ''A Gazetteer of the State of New-York'' (1813: 45–46)<ref>Horatio Gates Spafford, ''A Gazetteer of the State of New-York: Carefully Written from Original and Authentic Materials, Arranged on a New Plan, in Three Parts'' (Albany: H.C. Southwick, 1813), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "[[botanic garden|'''BOTANIC GARDEN'''.]] The Elgin Botanic Garden, in the city of New-York, the first institution of the kind in the United States, is now the property of the state…. Among the distinguished friends and patrons of science in this state, a common sentiment had long prevailed, friendly to the establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]]. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to engage public aid for this purpose; and their having failed, while it detracts nothing from the reputation of the state, has ensured a better success to the institution, growing up under the zealous efforts of individual enterprize, which will ensure lasting fame to its principal founder.… In 1801, having failed in all attempts for public aid, the zeal and enterprize of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], determined him to attempt the establishment on his own account. Accordingly he purchased 20 acres of ground of the corporation of New-York…. The soil is diversified, and peculiarly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of plants. The whole was immediately enclosed by a stone [[wall]], and put in the best state for ornamental gardening; and a [[conservatory]] was erected for the preservation of the more hardy [[greenhouse|green-house]] plants. A primary object was to cultivate the native plants, possessing any valuable properties, found in this country; and in 1805, this establishment contained about 1500 valuable native plants, beside a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics. In 1806, it contained in successful cultivation, 150 different kinds of grasses, and important article to an agricultural people.… A portion of ground was set apart for agricultural experiments; and all the friends to experimental science and a diffusion of knowledge saw that the institution promised all that had been expected from it; and that the professor’s knowledge and genius were occupied on a congenial field....
: "The [[view]] from the most elevated part of Elgin ground, is extensive and variegated. The aspect of the ground, is a gentle slope to the E. and S. The whole is enclosed by a well constructed stone [[wall]], lined all round by a belt of forest trees and shrubs. The [[conservatory]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]] present a front of 180 feet. The various allotments of ground, are chosen with as much taste as good judgment for the varied culture;—and the rocky summit, the subsiding plain, and the little pool, have each their appropriate products. The herbarium, the [[kitchen garden]], the [[nursery]] of choice fruits from all quarters and climes, and the immense collection of botanical subjects elegantly arranged and labelled, display the industry, taste and skill of a master. A very extensive Botanical library belongs to the late proprietor, who is now a professor in the University, and delivers a summer course of lectures on Botany. .. The garden is now committed to the superintendence of the college of Physicians and Surgeons, without any charge to the state."

*Pursh, Frederick, 1814, describing Elgin Botanic Garden, New York, N.Y. (2: xiv)<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero.]</ref>

: "While I was engaged in arranging my materials for this publication, I was called upon to take the management of the [Elgin] Botanic Garden at New York, which had been originally established by the arduous zeal and exertions of Dr. [[David Hosack]], Professor of Botany, &c. as his private property, but has lately been bought by the Government of the State of New York for the public service. As this employment opened a further prospect to me of increasing my knowledge of the plants of that country, I willingly dropped the idea of my intended publication for that time, and in 1807 [''sic''; 1809] took charge of that establishment.
: "Here I again endeavoured to pay the utmost attention to the collection of American plants, as the establishment was principally intended for that purpose. In this I was supported by my numerous botanical connections and friends, among whom I must particularly mention John Le Conte, Esq. of Georgia, whose unremitting exertions added considerably to the collection, particularly of plants from the Southern States.
: "The additions to my former stock of materials for a Flora were now considerable, and in conjunction with Dr. [[David Hosack|D. Hosack]] I had engaged to publish a periodical work, with coloured plates, all taken from living plants, and if possible from native specimens, on a plan similar to that of Curtis's Botanical Magazine; for which a great number of drawings were actually prepared. But…in 1810, took a voyage to the West Indies,… from which I returned in the autumn of 1811.
: "On my return to New York, I found things in a situation very unfavourable to the publication of scientific works, the public mind being then in agitation about a war in Great Britain. I therefore determined to take all my materials to England, where I conceived I should not only have the advantage of consulting the most celebrated collections and libraries, but also meet with that encouragement and support so necessary to works of science, and so generally bestowed upon them there."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], February 18, 1818, letter to [[David Hosack]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris) (1944: 578)<ref>Thomas Jefferson, ''The Garden Book'', ed. Edwin M. Betts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "I received some time ago from M. Thouin, Director of the [[botanic garden|Botanical]] or King's garden at Paris, a box containing an assortment of seeds, Non-American.... I have therefore this day sent the box to Richmond...to be forwarded to you for the use of the [[botanic garden|Botanical Garden]] of N. York.... I am happy in this disposition of it to fulfill the good intentions of the donor, and to make it useful to your institution."

* Eyrien Frères & Cie., April 2, 1821, letter from Havre to [[Thomas Jefferson]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref> [http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1955 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "We have the honor of informing you that we have put on The American ship Cad[mus]...Capn. Wethlet [''sic''; Whitlock], a small Box of seeds, which is sent to you by the Managing Directors of the King's Garden in Paris....
: "We have sent this letter as well as some other ones for several people in the United States, to the address of [[David Hosack|Mister Hosack]], Director of the Botanical Garden of the State of New york.
: "Corresponding in this day for the Administrators of the King’s Museum and Garden, we are taking the liberty of offering you our Services, for your relationship with this administration, or for anything else that could be of interest to you in France."

* Eyrien Frères & Cie., April 2, 1821, letter from Havre to James Madison concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris) (Madison, 2013: 2: 292–293)<ref>James Madison, ''The Papers of James Madison'', ed. David B. Mattern et al., Retirement Series (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 2: 292–293, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8ADSTGUB view on Zotero]</ref>

: "The administrators of the King’s Garden at Paris have forwarded to us a package of seeds for you. We added it with some other packages for the same shipment and sent it all on board the American ship Cadmus, Capt. Whitlock, addressed to Mr. [[David Hosack|Hosack]], director of the Botanical Garden of the State of New York, from whom you will please request it."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], June 25, 1821, letter to Jonathan Thompson concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-2138 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "I am thankful to you for your notice of the 14th respecting a box of seeds—this comes from the king’s garden at Paris. they send me a box annually, depending on my applying it for the public benefit. I have generally had them delivered for a public garden at Philadelphia or to [[David Hosack|Dr Hosack]] for the Botanical garden of N. York. I am inclined to believe that he now recieves such an one from the same place. if he does not, be so good as to deliver it to him. but if of no use to him let it come to Richmond to the care of Capt Bernard Peyton, my correspondent there, and your note of any expence attending it will be immediately replaced either by him or myself."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], July 12, 1821, letter to [[David Hosack]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-2173 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "I recieved a letter lately from mr Thompson, Collector of New York, informing me of a box of seeds from the king's gardens at Paris addressed to me. I rather suppose you recieve one annually from the same place for your botanical garden, but was not certain. I desired him therefore to present it to you if acceptable for your garden."

* Spafford, Horatio Gates, 1824 ''Gazetteer of the State of New York'' (1824: 605)<ref>Horatio Gates Spafford, ''Gazetteer of the State of New York'' (Albany: B.D. Packard, 1824), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WW7MHEFG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "[[botanic garden|''Botanic Garden'']].—This is a very respectable establishment, situated on New-York Island, in the 9th Ward of the City, 4 miles N. of the City Hall. It was purchased by the State, in 1810, and is an appendage of the Colleges in New-York. It comprises 20 acres of ground, and embraces a great variety of indigenous, naturalized, and exotic vegetables. The situation is commanding, on the rising ground, which embraces a good variety of soil, aspect, and position, and Elgin [[Grove]] has as many visitants as the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]]s, chasing pleasure, or catching knowledge."

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:1136.jpg|John Trumbull, ''Dr. Hosack's Green houses'', Elgin Botanic Garden, June 1806.

Image:2051.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after Louis Simond, ''View of the botanic garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York'', c. 1810.

Image:2060.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after James Inderwick, "The Canada Thistle," in David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): facing p. 212.

Image:1986.jpg|Anonymous, ''Elgin Botanic Garden'', c. 1810.

Image:0049.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after Hugh Reinagle, "View of the Botanic Garden of the State of New York," in David Hosack, ''Hortus Elginensis'' (1811), frontispiece.

Image:0050.jpg|Hugh Reinagle, ''Elgin Garden on Fifth Avenue'', c. 1812.

Image:2052.jpg|Charles Heath after Thomas Sully (head copied from portrait of 1815) and John Trumbull (body and background after portrait painted ca. 1806–1815 for Dr. John C. Lettsom, England), ''David Hosack, M.D., F.R.S.'', c. 1816.

Image:2061.jpg|John Eatton Le Conte, "Viola," in ''Observations on the genera Viola. Utricularia and Gratiola'', c. 1824.]

</gallery>

==Other Resources==
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2009180531.html Library of Congress Authority File]

==Notes==

<references/>

[[Category: Sites]]

Elgin Botanic Garden

2017-09-19T18:31:52Z

T-omalley: /* Images */

The '''Elgin Botanic Garden''', established in 1801 in New York City by Dr. [[David Hosack]] (1769–1835), was a systematic arrangement of plants for scientific and pedagogical purposes. It served as a garden for teaching botany and materia medica at both the medical school of Columbia College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. It was located in the area that is now midtown Manhattan.
==Overview==

'''Alternate Names''': Botanic Garden of the State of New York <br/>
'''Site Dates''': 1801–1811 <br/>
'''Site Owner(s)''': [[David Hosack]] (1769–1835); The State of New York; The College of Physicians and Surgeons; Columbia College <br/>
'''Associated People''': Andrew Gentle (gardener); Frederick Pursh (1774–1820, gardener); Michael Dennison (seedsman) <br/>
'''Location''': New York, NY<br/>
[https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7587402,-73.9797679,18z View on Google maps]

==History==
[[File:0050.jpg|thumb|Fig. 1, Hugh Reinagle, ''Elgin Garden on Fifth Avenue'', c. 1812.]]
While serving as professor of botany at Columbia College, Samuel Latham Mitchill proposed the development of a [[botanic garden]] in New York City to be administered either by the College or by New York's Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures. As Mitchill explained in a report to the Society in 1794, a garden comprised of indigenous and imported plants <span id="Mitchill_cite"></span>would be "one of the genteelest and most beautiful of public improvements," while also providing essential aid in the teaching of botany and the conducting of agricultural experiments ([[#Mitchill|view text]]).<ref>Significantly, when David Hosack later quoted Mitchill, he altered his words to emphasize the garden's practicality, changing Mitchill's phrase "genteelest and most beautiful" to "most useful and most important"; see David Hosack, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden: And the Subsequent Disposal of the Same to the State of New-York'' (New York: C.S. Van Winkle, 1811), 6, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> Mitchill's proposal reflects his medical education at the University of Edinburgh, where [[botanic garden]]s served as essential adjuncts to courses in botany and materia medica.<ref>Christine Chapman Robbins, ''David Hosack: Citizen of New York'' (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1964), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B51 view on Zotero].</ref> Although nothing came of his plan, the idea was revived by his successor, [[David Hosack]], another Edinburgh-educated physician, who was appointed professor of botany at Columbia in May 1795, and professor of materia medica two years later. In November 1797 [[David Hosack|Hosack]] informed the trustees of Columbia College that even his "large and very extensive collection of coloured [botanical] engravings" fell short of the pedagogic utility that a [[botanic garden]] would provide. <span id="1797_cite"></span>He therefore requested that "the professorship of botany and materia medica be endowed with a certain annual salary to defray the necessary expenses of a small garden, in which the professor may cultivate, under his immediate notice, such plants as furnish the most valuable medicines, and are most necessary for medical instruction" ([[#1797|view text]]). Despite agreeing with [[David Hosack|Hosack]] in principle, the trustees provided no funds. He next directed his request to the state legislature, but his letter of February 1800 requesting an annual stipend of £300 met with equally disappointing results.<ref>Hosack 1811, 7–10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:1136.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 2, John Trumbull, ''Dr. Hosack's Green houses'', Elgin Botanic Garden, June 1806.]]
Finally, in 1801, [[David Hosack|Hosack]] resolved to take the matter into his own hands, personally financing the purchase of twenty acres of land in the countryside to the north of the city, between what is now 47th and 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues (an area that now includes Rockefeller Center) [Fig. 1].<ref>Hosack 1811, 10, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> Columbia College was then located four miles to the south in lower Manhattan, a distance that limited the garden's practicality from the outset. In other respects, however, the situation was ideal. <span id="variegated_cite"></span>Hosack noted that "the view from the most elevated part, is variegated and extensive, and the soil itself of that diversified nature, as to be particularly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of vegetable productions" ([[#variegated|view text]]). He named the garden "Elgin" after his father's birthplace in Scotland. Soon after purchasing the property, he wrote to "friends in Europe and in the East and West Indies [asking] for their plants."<ref>David Hosack, letter of July 25, 1803, to Dr. Thomas Parke, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Boston Public Library, quoted in Robbins 1964, 65, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Parke_cite"></span>In July 1803, while his collection was "yet small," he made a similar request of the Philadelphia physician Thomas Parke, asking for his help in obtaining duplicate specimens of "rare and valuable plants" owned by their mutual friend [[William Hamilton]], as well as medicinal plants and a catalog from the [[Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery]] ([[#Parke|view text]]). Dr. Parke had already provided [[David Hosack|Hosack]] with plans of the elaborate [[greenhouse]] with flanking [[hothouse]]s that [[William Hamilton|Hamilton]] built ten years earlier at [[The Woodlands]].<ref>Timothy Preston Long, "The Woodlands: A 'Matchless Place'" (unpublished Master of Science thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JQS7HETZ view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Elegance_cite"></span>[[David Hosack|Hosack]] adopted roughly the same design and dimensions for the Elgin [[greenhouse]] complex, which he described as "constructed with great architectural taste and elegance" ([[#Elegance|view text]]). After completing the central block in 1803, [[David Hosack|Hosack]] added the [[hothouse]]s in 1806 and 1807. The artist John Trumbull documented the buildings in a drawing made in June 1806 [Fig. 2], probably as a study for the background of his portrait of [[David Hosack|Hosack]], presently known only through a related engraving [Fig. 3].
[[File:2052.jpg|thumb|right|Fig. 3, Charles Heath after Thomas Sully and John Trumbull, ''David Hosack, M.D., F.R.S.'', c. 1816.]]

<span id="Sketch_cite"></span>[[David Hosack|Hosack]] reportedly had "in cultivation at the commencement of 1805, nearly fifteen hundred American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics" ([[#Sketch|view text]]). <span id="Indies_cite"></span>The following year, when he published the first catalog of the garden, the number of plants had grown to nearly 2,000 species, with the "the greater part of [the twenty acres]... now in cultivation" ([[#Indies|view text]]). <span id="Jefferson_cite"></span> While continuing to collect plants with the aid of well-connected friends such as [[Thomas Jefferson]] ([[#Jefferson|view text]]), Hosack turned his attention to laying out the grounds, ensuring that they were not only "arranged and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening," but also according to scientific taxonomies and the conditions of climate and terrain best suited to each plant.<ref>David Hosack, ''Description of the Elgin Garden, The Property of David Hosack, M.D.'' (New York: The author, 1810), 1–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero].</ref> By 1810 when he published his ''Description of the Elgin Garden'', [[David Hosack|Hosack]] had carried out the plan outlined in his 1806 ''Catalogue'' of encircling the garden with a "belt of forest trees and shrubs, native and exotic." This "judiciously chequered and mingled" collection was comprised of "the oak, the plane, the elm, the sugar maple, the locust, the horse chesnut, the mountain ash, the basket willow, and various species of poplar." In front of these trees a "similarly varied collection" of native and foreign shrubs was laid out in the form of an amphitheatre, "which, winding with the [[walk]]s, presents at every step something new and engaging." On the opposite side of the garden, "the eye reposes on the green [[lawn]] which is occasionally intercepted with groups of trees and shrubs happily adapted to its varied surface." [[Walk]]s on either side of the garden led to compartments of plants laid out according to their scientific order, and beyond them lay a nursery of fruit trees, a [[pond]] "devoted to the varieties of nymphoea, pontederia and other aquatics," and native plants, such as rhododendron, magnolias, and willows, which favored the moist ground adjacent to the [[pond]]. At higher elevations, rocky outcroppings were planted with "varied species of pine, juniper, yew, and hemlock." In the vicinity of the [[greenhouse]] and [[hothouse]]s were shrubs arranged in [[clump]]s and [[border]]s containing flowering plants. <span id="Description_cite"></span>Throughout the garden, every tree, shrub, and plant bore a label with its botanic name "for the instruction of the student." The entire garden was enclosed by a stone [[wall]], seven feet high and two and-a-half feet thick ([[#Description|view text]]).<ref>Hosack 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero]; cf. David Hosack, ''A Catalogue of Plants Contained in the Botanic Garden at Elgin: In the Vicinity of New York, Established in 1801'' (New York: T. & J. Swords, 1806), 4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFGHH3VJ view on Zotero].</ref>

[[File:2060.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 4, William Satchwell Leney after James Inderwick, "The Canada Thistle," in David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): facing p. 212.]]
Following his appointment in 1808 as professor of natural history at New York's College of Physicians and Surgeons, Samuel Latham Mitchill conducted open-air classes at the Elgin Botanic Garden. An unidentified student who made multiple visits to the garden in 1810 reported that Mitchell was assisted by "two promising young botanists": James Inderwick (c. 1788–1815), a Columbia graduate who had stayed on to take anatomy and chemistry classes at the medical school in 1808–1809, and [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] nephew, Caspar Wistar Eddy (1790-1828), who in 1807, while still a medical student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, had created an herbarium and published a catalog, ''Plantae Plandomenses'', documenting plants indigenous to Mitchill's 230-acre Long Island estate.<ref>Caspar Wistar Eddy, "Plantae Plandomenses, or a Catalogue of the Plants Growing Spontaneously in the Neighbourhood of Plandome, the Country Residence of Samuel L. Mitchill," ''The Medical Repository'' 5, no. 2 (Aug–Oct. 1807): 123–131, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/3QEBP63M view on Zotero]; ''Catalogue of the Alumni, Officers and Fellows of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York'' (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1859), 22, 27, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FK359GQN view on Zotero]; ''Catalogue of Columbia College, in the City of New-York; Embracing the Names of Its Trustees, Officers, and Graduates'' (New York: Columbia College, 1844), 37, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MJAWNGN9 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Correspondent_cite"></span>According to the student, Eddy was responsible for "demonstrating the marks peculiar to the species," while Inderwick "expound[ed] the characters which distinguish the genus" ([[#Correspondent|view text]]). <span id="Eddy_lecture_cite"></span>After receiving his M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1811, Eddy himself began conducting lectures on botany at the Elgin Botanic Garden in May 1812 ([[#Eddy_lecture|view text]]).
[[File:2061.jpg|thumb|Fig. 5, John Eatton Le Conte, "Viola," in ''Observations on the genera Viola. Utricularia and Gratiola'', c. 1824.]]

<span id="American_Botany_cite"></span>Inderwick was involved in [[David Hosack|Hosack]]'s plan to scientifically document the plants at Elgin in "AMERICAN BOTANY, or a 'Flora of the United States,'" a publication [[David Hosack|Hosack]] intended to publish, he announced in 1811, as soon as he had secured the garden's permanent maintenance ([[#American_Botany|view text]]). Modeled on John Edward Smith's monumental ''English Botany'' (36 vols., 1790–1814), [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] flora was to include drawings by Inderwick, whom he had already employed to illustrate articles published in the ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'', the journal that he and the New York physician John Wakefield Francis (1789–1861) edited jointly from 1810 to 1814.<ref>Francis noted that his article was illustrated by "the ingenious Mr. Inderwick, a student of medicine of this city," and Hosack wrote, "To my friend, Mr. Inderwick, I am indebted for the very beautiful drawing from which this engraving has been made." See John W. Francis, "Case of Enteritis, Accompanied with a Preter-natural Formation of the Ileum," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (July 1810): 39; see also 41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/M2PEX3DF view on Zotero], and David Hosack, "Observations on Croup: Communicated in a Letter to Alire R. Delile, M.D. Physician in Paris," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (July 1811): 43; see also 40, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H2P2PHVF view on Zotero]. Other drawings by Inderwick were published in David Hosack, "Case of Aneurism of the Femoral Artery: Communicated in a Letter to John Abernethy," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 3 (July 1812): 48, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/X558G67M view on Zotero], and John W. Francis, ''Cases of Morbid Anatomy: Read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New-York, on the Eighth of June, 1815'' (New York: Van Winkle and Wiley, 1815), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/P8VK9XAT view on Zotero].</ref> Although most of Inderwick's drawings for the journal represented anatomical subjects, his illustration of the Canada Thistle (''Cnicus Arvensis'') [Fig. 4] for an article [[David Hosack|Hosack]] published in October 1810 indicates the kind of images he might have produced for [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] ''American Botany,'' had that project ever advanced beyond the planning stage.<ref>The drawing accompanied a letter to Samuel Latham Mitchill in which Hosack wrote, "The following description of the plant by Mr. Curtis [in the ''Flora Londinensis''] so perfectly corresponds with that with which our country is infested, that with the aid of the annexed drawing of the plant, made by my friend Mr. J. Inderwick, from the specimen you sent me, it will readily be recognised by the farmer into whose fields it may intrude itself." See David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis.... Communicated in a letter to the Hon. S. L. Mitchill, M.D.," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): 211–212, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero]. Inderwick was house surgeon at the New York Hospital for one year from February 1812 until February 1813. Stephen Decatur appointed him acting surgeon of the ''Argus'' on May 8, 1813. He died when his ship was lost at sea in 1815. See James Inderwick, ''Cruise of the U.S. Brig Argus in 1813: Journal of Surgeon James Inderwick'', ed. Victor H. Palsits (New York: New York Public Library, 1917), 3–4, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/F4K563GR view on Zotero]; William S. Dudley, ''The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History'', 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1992), 2: 219–222, 275–276, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WFEDBVFC view on Zotero].</ref> According to [[David Hosack|Hosack]], additional drawings for ''American Botany'' would be provided by another Columbia graduate, John Eatton Le Conte (1784–1860), who was probably then working on the catalog of plants indigenous to New York City that he would publish (with a dedication to [[David Hosack|Hosack]]) in the ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' in October 1811.<ref>John Eatton Le Conte, "Catalogue Plantarum Quas Sponte Crescentes in Insula Noveboraco, Observavit Johannes Le Conte, Eq.: Sub Forma Epistolae Ad D. Hosack, M.D. Missae," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1811): 134–41, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/6CWDCT9M view on Zotero]. See also John Eatton Le Conte, "Observations on the Febrile Diseases of Savannah; in a Letter to Dr. Hosack, from John Le Conte, Esq., Woodmanston, December 18, 1809," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 4 (1814): 388–90, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/AUZ3BNPD view on Zotero].</ref> Le Conte collected many plants for the garden while visiting his family's plantation, Woodmanston, in Georgia, and he went on to a distinguished natural history career, producing botanical illustrations that justify [[David Hosack|Hosack's]] early endorsement [Fig. 5].<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), 1: xiv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero]. For Le Conte's drawings, see: Viola Brainerd Baird "The Violet Water-Colors of Major John Eatton LeConte," ''The American Midland Naturalist'', 20 (1938), 245–47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HF8KNX8V view on Zotero]; Calhoun, John V., "John Abbot's 'Lost' Drawings for John E. Le Conte in the American Philosophical Society Library," ''Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society'', 60 (2006): 211–17, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5AFNFICJ view on Zotero].</ref>

The laboring figures represented in an oil painting of about 1810 hint at the numerous farmers and gardeners [[David Hosack|Hosack]] employed over many years to cultivate, plant, and maintain the Elgin garden.<ref>For an overview of expenses recorded in Hosack's memorandum book of 1803–1809, see Robbins 1964, 64, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> [Fig. 6] The Scottish nursery- and seedsman [[Andrew Gentle]] claimed to have "commenced operations for Dr. Hosack, in New-York, by laying out his grounds" in 1805, and he remained at the garden for the next few years.<ref>Andrew Gentle, ''Every Man His Own Gardener; Or, a Plain Treatise on the Cultivation of Every Requisite Vegetable in the Kitchen Garden, Alphabetically Arranged. With Directions for the Green & Hothouse, Vineyard, Nursery, &c. Being the Result of Thirty-Five Years’ Practical Experience in This Climate. Intended Principally for the Inexperienced Horticulturist'' (New York: The author, 1841), iii–iv, [https://www.zotero.org/groups//items/itemKey/X7253QTQ view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="MMahon_cite"></span>In 1809, on the recommendation of [[Bernard M'Mahon]] ([[#MMahon|view text]]), [[David Hosack|Hosack]] hired as gardener the German botanist Frederick Pursh, who had previously visited "the houses of the Botanick garden at New York" on October 3, 1807 while passing through the city on his way to Philadelphia.<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Journal of a Botanical Excursion in the Northeastern Parts of the States of Pennsylvania and New York: During the Year 1807'' (Philadelphia: Brinckloe & Marot, 1869), 87, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HSKRK5R7 view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Pursh_cite"></span>According to [[David Hosack|Hosack]], Pursh made "very numerous contributions... during the period he had charge" of the garden, but by the close of 1810 he had been replaced by Michael Dennison, an English seedsman recommended by Lee and Kennedy, a well-known firm of nurserymen in Hammersmith, London ([[#Pursh|view text]]). Although [[David Hosack|Hosack]] expected Pursh to continue his association with Elgin in the capacity of "a very industrious and skilful botanist to collect from different parts of the union such plants as have not yet been assembled at the [[Botanic Garden]]," Pursh left America for England toward the end of 1811.
[[File:1986.jpg|thumb|left|Fig. 6, Anonymous, ''Elgin Botanic Garden'', c. 1810.]]

The high cost of maintaining the Elgin Botanic Garden soon swamped [[David Hosack]]'s financial resources. He had expected public support to be forthcoming once the garden's utility had been demonstrated, but his efforts to secure loans from the New York state legislature in 1805 and 1806 came to nothing, <span id="Lewis_cite"></span>despite the governor's support ([[#Lewis|view text]]).<ref>Hosack 1811, 12, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> <span id="Stokes_cite"></span> Moreover, the market in fruits, vegetables, medicinal herbs, and hothouse plants—operated at the garden by [[Andrew Gentle]] ([[#Stokes|view text]])—failed to raise sufficient funds to offset the high cost of labor. In 1808 [[David Hosack|Hosack]] concluded that selling the garden was the only means of preserving it. Following considerable delay, the New York state legislature agreed to the purchase on January 3, 1811, with the provision that responsibility for the garden's management would be delegated to the College of Physicians and Surgeons.<ref>Robbins 1964, 79–84, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> The College lacked funds to maintain the garden, however, and it soon fell into disrepair. On a visit in August 1813 Hosack, who continued to collect seeds and plant materials for the garden, was distressed to find that the [[greenhouse]] plants had not been set outdoors during the summer, that many of them were missing, that the [[shrubbery]] in front of the [[greenhouse]] was choked with sunflowers, and that vegetation had overtaken the [[walk]]s.<ref> Hosack's report to the Trustees of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, August 30, 1813, quoted in Robbins 1964, 96, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero]. For Hosack's continued involvement in the garden, see, for example, David Hosack, "Report on Botany and Vegetable Physiology," ''The American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review'' 1 (May 1817): 47, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/MWBS8AMP view on Zotero].</ref>

The garden's condition continued to decline following the transfer of ownership to Columbia College in 1814. Two years later, Hosack complained to one of the College's trustees that the gardener, Michael Dennison, was "removing everything valuable from the collection."<ref>David Hosack to Clement C. Moore, October 16, 1816, quoted in Robbins 1964, 98; see also 97 for Dennison's letter of the previous month, informing the College of Physicians and Surgeons of repairs and horticultural care required at the garden, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> From early 1817 to 1823 [[Andrew Gentle]] returned to Elgin, granted a year-to-year lease free of charge in exchange for maintaining the [[greenhouse]] and grounds. In May 1819 the [[greenhouse]] plants along with "ornamental trees" and shrubs were transferred to the New York Hospital. Despite several attempts by [[David Hosack|Hosack]] to transfer care of the garden to an institution that could provide more attentive oversight, Columbia preferred to retain control, renting the property to a variety of tenants, including the seedsman David Barnett from 1825 to 1835.<ref>Addison Brown, ''The Elgin Botanic Garden, Its Later History and Relation to Columbia College'' (Lancaster, Pa.: The New Era Printing Company, 1908), 15–19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero]; Robbins 1964, 97–98, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref> The rapid growth of New York City meant that by the late 1850s the garden was situated well within the urban hub, rather than on its outskirts. The value of the property had risen accordingly, from several thousand dollars to tens of millions. Columbia ultimately divided the land into numerous lots, which it sold or leased at high prices, generating the financial capital that allowed the college to expand into a world-class university.<ref>Brown 1908, 19, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero].</ref>

--''Robyn Asleson''

==Texts==

* <div id="Mitchill"></div>Mitchill, Samuel Latham, 1794, report to the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures in the State of New York (1792: xxxix–xlv)<ref>"Introduction," ''Transactions of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, Instituted in the State of New York'' 1 (1794), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WSF4MDPU view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Mitchill_cite|back up to history]]

: "The establishment of a Garden is nearly connected with the Professorship of Botany under the College, and the Lectures on that branch must be always very lame and defective without one…. A [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] is not only one of the genteelest and most beautiful [Hosack changed to: most useful and most important] of public improvements; but it also comprises within a small compass the History of the Vegetable Species of our own Country; and by the introduction of Exotics, makes us acquainted with the plants of the most distant parts of the earth. Likewise, by facilitating experiments upon plants at this time, when a true Theory of Nutrition and Manures is such an interesting desideratum, a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] may be considered as one of the means of affording substantial help to the labours of the Agricultural Society, and be conducive to the improvement of modern husbandry. When these things are duly considered, it can scarcely be doubted, that a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], under the direction of the Society, or of the College, with a view to further the agricultural interest, will be set on foot and supported by legislative provision; to the end that young minds be early imbued with proper ideas on this important subject."

*<div id="1797"></div> [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], November 1797, memorial presented to the President and Members of the Board of Trustees of Columbia College (''Statement'', 1811: 7–8)<ref name="Hosack_Statement">Hosack 1811, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/H4VR8FK5 view on Zotero].</ref> [[#1797_cite|back up to history]]

: "It has been to me a source of great regret that the want of a [[botanic garden|''Botanical Garden'']], and an extensive Botanical Library, have prevented that advancement in the interests of the institution which might reasonably have been expected....

: "To this end, I have purchased for the use of my pupils such of the most esteemed authors as are most essential in teaching the principles of Botany; and at a considerable expense I have been enabled to procure a large and very extensive collection of coloured engravings; but the difficulty of teaching any branch of natural philosophy, and of philosophy, and of rendering it interesting to the pupil, without a view and examination of the objects of which it treats, will readily be perceived: it will also occur to you that books, or engravings, however valuable and necessary, are of themselves insufficient for the purposes of regular instruction in medicine.

: "The obvious and only effectual remedy would be the establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanical Garden]]: this would invite a spirit of inquiry. The indigenous plants of our country would be investigated, and ultimately would promise important benefits, both to agriculture and medicine…. I beg leave to suggest…that the professorship of botany and material medica be endowed with a certain annual salary, sufficient to defray the necessary expenses of a small garden, in which the professor may cultivate, under his immediate notice, such plants as furnish the most valuable medicines, and are most necessary for medical instruction."

* Michaux, François André, 1802, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains'' (1802: 14)<ref>François André Michaux, ''Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains in the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessea, and back to Charleston, by the Upper Carolines… Undertaken, in the Year 1802'', 2nd edn (London: B. Crosby & Co. and J.F. Hughes, 1805), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/69576KK5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "During my stay at New York I frequently had an opportunity of seeing [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], who was held in the highest reputation as a professor of botany. He was at that time employed in establishing a [[botanic garden|botanical garden]], where he intended giving a regular course of lectures. This garden is a few miles from the town: the spot of ground is well adapted, especially for plants that require a peculiar aspect of situation."

* <div id="Parke"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], July 25, 1803, letter to Dr. Thomas Parke, regarding the [[greenhouse]]s at Elgin and [[The Woodlands]] (Long 1991: 144)<ref>Ms. letter in Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, Boston Public Library, quoted in Timothy Preston Long, "The Woodlands: A 'Matchless Place'" (unpublished Master of Science thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/JQS7HETZ view on Zotero] and Robbins 1964, 65, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref>[[#Parke_cite|back up to history]]

: "I duly received the plans of [[William Hamilton|Mr. Hamiltons]] [[greenhouse|green]] and [[hothouse|hot houses]]. My [[greenhouse]] [exclusive of the hothouses] is now finishing—it will not differ very individually from [[William Hamilton|Mr. Hamiltons]]. It is 62 feet long 23 deep—and 20 high in the clear.... I shall heat it by flues, they will run under the stays so they will not be seen—my [[walk]]s will be spacious... [[hothouse|hot houses]] are for next summer's operation. My collection of plants is yet small. I have written to my friends in Europe and in the East and West Indies for their plants. I will also collect the native productions of North and South America. What medical plants can [[William Bartram|Mr. Bartram]] supply—request him to send me a catalogue.... I hope [[William Hamilton]] will have duplicates of rare and valuable plants—I will supply him anything I possess."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], autumn 1806, preface to ''A Catalogue of Plants Contained in the Botanic Garden at Elgin'' (1806: 3–7)<ref>Hosack 1806, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZFGHH3VJ view on Zotero].</ref>

: "The establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] in the United States, as a repository of native plants, and as subservient to medicine, agriculture, and the arts, is doubtless an object of great importance....
: "In the year 1801 I purchased, of the Corporation of the city of New-York, twenty acres of ground; the greater part of which is now in cultivation. Since that time, a [[Conservatory]], for the more hardy [[greenhouse|green-house]] plants, has been built; in addition to which, two [[hothouse|Hot-Houses]] are now erecting for the preservation of those plants which require a greater degree of heat.
: "The grounds will be arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of plants, and the whole enclosed by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, native and exotic.
: "A primary object of attention in this establishment will be to collect and cultivate the native plants of this country, especially such as possess medicinal properties, or are otherwise useful....
: "The numerous articles of medicine which this country has already furnished; the variety of soils and climates which it comprehends, encourage the belief that more remain to be discovered, and that the Materia Medica may still be enriched by the addition of many indigenous plants, whose virtues are yet unnoticed or unknown.
: "It is also my intention to introduce, from different parts of the world, such plants as are most useful in agriculture, in medicine, and the arts, and to ascertain which of them are capable of being naturalized to our soil and climate. There is no doubt that our agriculture may be much improved by the introduction of many foreign grasses and other plants cultivated as food for cattle; and many valuable additions may be made to our tables, by the importation of the best fruits and vegetables of foreign countries.
: "Another object of importance is, to afford to students of medicine the means of acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of plants, and the principles of botanic arrangement.... For this purpose the grounds will be divided into different compartments, calculated to exhibit the various plants according to their several properties; and these again will be arranged so as to afford a practical illustration of the systems of botany at present most esteemed, the sexual system of ''Linnaeus'', and the natural orders of ''Jussieu''.
: "I must acknowledge the obligations I am under to many gentlemen who have already befriended this establishment, especially to my most esteemed instructor and friend Dr. James Edward Smith, the President of the Linnaean Society of London; to Professor [Martin] Vahl, and Mr. [Niels] Hoffman Bang, of Copenhagen; to Professor [René Louiche] Desfontaines and [André] Thouin, of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] of Paris; to Mr. Alderman [George] Hibbert, and Dr. [John Coakley] Lettsom of London; Mr. [Richard Anthony] Salisbury, proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] of Brompton; Dr. [Giovanni Valentino Mattia] Fabroni, Director of the Royal Museum at Florence; and Mr. ''Andrew Michaux'', author of the ''Flora Boreali Americana'', &c. &c. From these gentlemen I have received many valuable plants, seeds, and botanical works, accompanied with the most polite offers of their further contributions to this institution.
: "Nor must I be unmindful of the obligations I am under to several gentlemen in this country, distinguished for their taste and talents in this department of science.
: "From John Stevens, Esq. of Hoboken, I have received many of the most valuable exotics in my collection. To Baron [Alexis] de Carandeffez I am indebted for a large collection of seeds of tropical plants.
: "Our late Minister in France, the Hon. Robert R. Livingston, has also largely contributed to my collection during his residence in Europe....
: "Those plants to which the asterisk * is prefixed, are prefixed, are natives of the neighbourhood of the city of New-York, and have been collected by my nephew and pupil, Caspar Wistar Eddy."

* <div id="Lewis"></div>Lewis, Morgan, governor of New York, January 28, 1806 (Hosack 1811: 12)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref> [[#Lewis_cite|back up to history]]

: "Application was made to the legislature at their last session, by a gentleman of the city of New-York, for aid in the support of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], which he had recently established. At the request of some of the members, I, in the course of last summer, paid it two visits, and am so satisfied with the plan and arrangement, that I cannot but believe, if not permitted to languish, it will be productive of great general utility. The objects of the proprietor are, a collection of the indigenous, and the introduction of exotic plants, shrubs &c. and by an intercourse with similar establishments, which are arising in the eastern and southern states, to insure the useful and ornamental products of southern to northern, and of northern to southern climes. In the article of grasses, I was pleased to see a collection of one hundred and fifty different kinds. A portion of ground is allotted to agricultural experiments, which cannot but be beneficial to an agricultural people. When it is considered that this branch of natural history embraces all the individuals of the vegetable which afford subsistence to the animal world, compose a large portion of the medicines used in the practice of physic, and mam of the ingredients essential to the useful arts, its utility and importance is not to be questioned. But in a country young as ours, the experimental sciences cannot be expected to arrive at any degree of excellence without the patronage and bounty of government; for individual fortune is not adequate to the task."

* <div id="Jefferson"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], September 10, 1806, letter to [[Thomas Jefferson]]<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-4259 Founders Online, National Archives]</ref> [[#Jefferson_cite|back up to history]]

: "Knowing your attachment to science and the interest you feel on the progress of it in the united states, I take the liberty of enclosing to you a Catalogue of plants [in the Elgin Botanic Garden] which I have been enabled to collect as the beginning of a [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]]—
: "you will readily perceive that my intention in this little publication is merely to announce the nature of the Institution and to facilitate my correspondence with Botanists as they will hereby know what plants will be accepteble to me and what they may expect in return—in two or three years when my collection may be more extensive I propose to publish it in a different shape arranging the plants under different heads viz Medicinal—Poisonous—those useful in the arts—in agriculture &c with notes relative to their use and culture accompanied with engravings of such as may be either entirely new or are not well figured in books—
: "I feel much interested in the result of the enquiries instituted by you relative to the Missouri—Black River &c. In Natural History much is also to be expected from exploring the territory in the course of Red River—that latitude is always rich in vegetable productions—if it should be contemplated to explore that or any other part of our country, there is now a gentleman in this state who might be induced to undertake it and whose talents abundantly qualify him for an employment of this sort, the person I refer to is Mr [André] Michaux the editor of the Flora Boreali America—he being at present in New York I take the liberty of mentioning his name to you—under your auspices Sir establishments of this nature may be encouraged:—it has occurred to me that much also might be done in exploring the native productions of the united states if the Government were to appropriate to every [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]] a small sum—for the express purpose of employing a suitable person to investigate the vegetable productions growing in its neighbourhood—an annual appropriation of this sort allotted to the [[botanic garden|Botanic garden]]s of Boston—New York—Virginia and South Carolina would in a short time be productive of great good—
: "Another object which will claim much of my attention will be to naturalize as far as possible to our climates the productions of the southern states and of the tropics—I believe much may be done upon this subject—four years since I planted some cotton seed, late in the spring—it grows to the usual size to which it attains in the southern states and ripened its seed before October—Those seeds were planted and succeeded equally well the second year—John Stevens Esq of Hoboken New Jersey has also succeeded in the same experiment and at this time has a considerable quantity of cotton ripening its seed, the growth from seeds raised by him the last year, it is also to be remarked that this summer has been unusually cool—I conceive it therefore not improbable that Virginia and Maryland if not Pennsylvania and New york—might cultivate this plant to advantage—the short staple doubtless would succeed—
: "If...the gentlemen who are at present on their travels to the Missouri, discover any new or useful plants I should be very happy in obtaining a small quantity of the seeds they may procure."

* <div id="Stokes"></div>[[Andrew Gentle|Gentle, Andrew]], June 4, 1807, Notice concerning the Elgin Botanic Garden, published in the ''New York Commercial Advertiser'' (Stokes 1926: 5: 1460–1461)<ref>Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, ''The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909'', 6 vols (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1926), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/VBTRZVAB view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Stokes_cite|back up to history]]

: "As it was the original design in forming this establishment to render it not only useful as a source of instruction to the students of medicine but beneficial to the public by the cultivation of those plants useful in diseases, by the introduction of foreign grasses, and by the cultivation of the best vegetables for the table; our citizens are now informed that they can be supplied with medicinal Herbs and Plants, and a large assortment of [[greenhouse|green]] and [[Hot House]] Plants etc."

* [[Samuel Bard|Bard, Samuel]], November 14, 1809, address delivered to the Medical Society of Dutchess County (Hosack 1811: 30)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "Convinced as I am of the great and general importance of correct medical instruction, and anxious that our schools should be fostered by necessary patronage, I cannot but regret the failure of the proposal made last year in our legislature, for the purchase of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack's]] [[botanic garden]]. It would be too tedious at present to point out how much medicine may be benefitted, how greatly the arts may be enriched, and hor many of the comforts, the pleasures, and even the necessaries of life may be improved by such an institution....
: "By the purchase of the [[botanic garden]], a national ornament and most useful establishment, already brought to a great degree of perfection, will be preserved: by which our medicine, our agriculture and our arts, the elegancies, and the conveniences of life will necessarily be improved."

* <div id="MMachonlecture"></div>[[Bernard M'Mahon|M'Mahon, Bernard]] to [[Thomas Jefferson]], December 24, 1809 (Jefferson, 2005: 2: 89–91)<ref name="Jefferson_2005">Thomas Jefferson, ''The Papers of Thomas Jefferson'', ed. J. Jefferson Looney, Retirement Series, 4 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 2: 89–91, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/XWVFP69T view on Zotero].</ref> [[#MMahon_cite|back up to history]]

: "On Governor Lewis’s departure from here, for the seat of his Government, he requested me to employ Mr Frederick Pursh, on his return from a collecting excurtion he was then about to undertake for Doctor Barton, to describe and make drawings of such of his collection as would appear to be new plants, and that himself would return to Philadelphia in the month of May following. About the first of the ensuing Novr Mr Pursh returned, took up his abode with me, began the work, progressed as far as he could without further explanation, in some cases, from Mr Lewis, and was detained by me, in expectation of Mr Lewis's arriv[al] at my expence, without the least expectation of any future remuneration, from that time till April last; when n[ot] having received any reply to several letters I had wri[tten] from time to time, to Govr Lewis on the subject, nor being able to obtain any in[dication?] when he probably might be expected here; I thought it a folly to keep Pursh longer idle, and recommended him as Gardener to [[David Hosack|Doctor Hosack]] of New York, with whom he has since lived.
: "The original specimens are all in my hands, but Mr Pursh, had taken his drawings and descriptions with him, and will, no doubt, on the delivery of them expect a reasonable compensation for his trouble."

* Newton, Joseph, Arthur Smith, John F. West, Timothy B. Crane, January 16, 1810, Estimate of the Buildings at the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 45)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "We, the subscribers, builders, and residents of the city of New-York, at the request of doctor [[David Hosack]], have valued the improvements on his land, near the four mile stone, called the [[botanic garden]], to wit: the hot [[bed]] frames, the [[conservatory]] or [[greenhouse|green house]], and its appendages, the dwelling house, the [[hot house]]s and their back buildings, the lodges, the gates and the [[fence]]s around the land, including the wells, at the sum of twenty-nine thousand three hundred dollars."

* [[Andrew Gentle|Gentle, Andrew]], January 22, 1810, Valuation of plants in the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 53–54)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "The sum of ''fourteen thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and fifty-nine cents'', is, I believe, to the best of my judgment, the value of your indigenous and exotic plants, tools, & c. at Elgin."

* Hastings, John, Frederick Pursh, and John Brown, January 24, 1810, Valuation of the plants in the Elgin Botanic Garden (Hosack 1811: 53)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref>

: "We, the subscribers, in committee assembled, for the valuation of the plants, trees, and shrubs, including garden tools and utensils, necessary for the cultivation of the same, as appertaining to the [[greenhouse|green house]], [[hothouse|hot houses]], and grounds of the [[botanic garden]], at Elgin, after a very particular inventory and examination of the improvements, are unanimously agreed, that, to the best of our knowledge and ability, we consider them to be worth the sum of ''twelve thousand six hundred and thirty-five dollars and seventy-four and half cents''.
::: "John Hastings, Nursery-man, Brooklyn, L.I.
::: "Frederick Pursh, Botanist.
::: "John Brown, Nursery-man."

[[File:2051.jpg|thumb|Fig. 7, William Satchwell Leney after Louis Simond, ''View of the botanic garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York'', ca. 1810.]]
* <div id="Description"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], 1810, ''Description of the Elgin Garden'' (1810: 1–4)<ref>Hosack 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8HF2852Z view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Description_cite|back up to history]]

: "The [[view]] from the most elevated part of Elgin-ground, is variegated and extensive. The East and North Rivers, with their vast amount of navigation, are plain in sight. Beyond these great thoroughfares of business, the fruitful fields of Long-Island, and the [[picturesque]] shores of New-Jersey, give beauty and interest to the [[prospect]]....
: <div id="Elegance"></div>"The [[conservatory]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]] present a front of one hundred and eighty feet. They are not only constructed with great architectural taste and elegance, but experience has also shown, they are well calculated for the preservation of the most tender exotics that require protection from the severity of our climate. The grounds are also arranged and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening. The whole is surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs judiciously chequered and mingled; and enclosed by a well constructed stone-[[wall]]. [Fig. 7] [[#Elegance_cite|[back up to history]]]
: "The interior is divided into various compartments, not only calculated for the instruction of the student in Botany, but subservient to agriculture, the arts, and to manufactures. A [[nursery]] is also begun, for the purpose of introducing into this country the choicest fruits of the table. Nor is the [[kitchen garden]] neglected in this establishment. An apartment is also devoted to experiments in the culture of those plants which may be advantageously introduced and naturalized to our soil and climate, that are at present annually imported from abroad....
: "The forest trees and shrubs which surround the establishment, first claim [the visitor’s] attention. Here are beautifully distributed and combined the oak, the plane, the elm, the sugar maple, the locust, the horse chesnut, the mountain ash, the basket willow, and various species of poplar. In front of these, a similarly varied collection of shrubs, natives and foreign, compose an amphitheatre, which, winding with the [[walk]]s, presents at every step something new and engaging. On the other side the eye reposes on the green [[lawn]] which is occasionally intercepted with groups of trees and shrubs happily adapted to its varied surface.
: "In extending his [[walk]]s to the garden, on each side, he [the visitor] is equally gratified and instructed by the numerous plants which are here associated in scientific order, for the information of the student in Botany or Medicine. Here the Turkey rhubarb, Carolina pink-root, the poppy and the foxglove, with many other plants of the Materia Medica are seen in cultivation....
: "As he proceeds he arrives at a [[nursery]] of the finest fruits, which the proprietor has been enabled to procure from various parts of the world, and from which the establishment will hereafter derive one of the principal means of its support.
: "The visitor next comes in view of a [[pond]] of water devoted to the varieties of nymphoea, pontederia and other aquatics which adorn its surface, while the adjacent grounds which are moist afford the proper and natural soil for a great variety of our most valuable native plants. The rhododendrons, magnolias, the kalmias, the willows, the stuartia; the candleberry myrtle; the cupressus disticha, and the sweet-smelling clethra alnifolia, here grow in rich luxuriance, and compose a beautiful picture in whatever direction they fall under his eye....
: "As he leaves this groupe, and passes to the higher situations of this delightfully varied surface, he finds a corresponding distribution of the numerous plants which compose this collection.
: "Here a rocky and elevated spot attracts his attention, by the varied species of pine, juniper, yew, and hemlock, with which it is covered. There a solitary oak breaks the surface of the [[lawn]]; here a group of poplars; there the more splendid foliage of the different species of magnolia, intermixed with the fringe tree, the thorny aralia, and the snow drop halesia, call his willing notice.
: "Entering the [[greenhouse|green-house]], his eye is saluted with a rich and varied collection: the silver protea, the lemon, the orange, the oleander, the citron, the shaddock, the myrtle, the jasmine and the numerous and infinitely varied family of geranium, press upon his view, while the perfumes emitted from the fragrant daphne, heliotropium, and the coronilla no less attract his notice than do the splendid petals of the camellia japonica, the amaryllis, the cistus, erica and purple magnolia.
: "In the [[hothouse|hot-house]] he finds himself translated to the heat of the tropics. Here he observes the golden pine, the sugar cane, the cinnamon, the ginger, the splendid strelitzia, and ixora coccinea intermixed with the bread fruit, the coffee tree, the plantain, the arrow root, the sago, the avigato pear, the mimosa yielding the gum arabic, and the fragrant farnesiana.
: "Here are also to be seen the succulent tribes of aloe, sedum, mesembryanthemum, the night blowing cereus, arid the cactus which feeds the cochineal, covered with its insects.
: "In front of the buildings are several beautiful [[clump]]s composed of the more delicate and valuable shrubs intermingled with a great variety of roses, kalmias and azaleas. Their [[border]]s are also successively enamelled with the crocus, the snow drop, the asphodel, the hyacinth, and the more splendid species of the iris.
: "Here also is ''viola tricolor''… saluting the senses with its beautiful assemblage of colours but yielding in fragrance to its rival ''viola odorata'' which…also adds zest to this delicious banquet.
: "Every tree, shrub, and herbaceous plant is labelled and designated by its botanic name for the instruction of the student.
: "[[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]] has also connected with this establishment, an extensive ''Herbarium'' which contains not only a great variety of plants collected by himself in Great Britain, and in this country, but is also enriched by many valuable specimens furnished by the late celebrated Danish professor Vahl; by Curtis, and Dickson, and by duplicates from the Hortus Siccus of Linnaeus, presented by Dr. Smith, the learned president of the Linnaean Society, and the present possessor of the rich collections of the celebrated Swede.
: "To this establishment [[David Hosack|Dr. H.]] has also added a well chosen ''Botanical Library'', consisting of the most celebrated works, both ancient and modern, which are necessary to illustrate that science, as well as its application to medicine, to agriculture and the arts to which it is subservient."

* [[Hosack, David|David Hosack]], August 9, 1810, letter to Daniel Hale, the New York Secretary of State (quoted in Robbins 1964: 83)<ref>Robbins 1964, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/CQCQ247B view on Zotero].</ref>

: "A work is preparing in which the native plants are to be paited and engraved for publication taken from those now growing in Elgin Botanic Garden. Artists are engaged and at this moment are at work under my direction. They are employed with the understanding they could complete the work they are now preparing."

* Anonymous, July 1810, description of the Elgin Botanic Garden (1811: 116–117)<ref>Anonymous, "Elgin Botanic Garden, New York," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "Among the number of those distinguished friends of science in Europe, who have manifested an ardent desire for the extension of useful knowledge in these states, may be justly esteemed Monsieur [André] THOUIN, the celebrated professor of Botany and Agriculture, at the ''Jardin des Plantes'' of Paris....[[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], the proprietor of the Elgin Botanic Garden, has repeatedly been favoured by him with a great variety of seeds, from the rarest and most valuable plants of the continent; and he is happy to add, that they have always been received in such a state of preservation, as scarcely in a single instance to have frustrated the liberal intentions of the donor. Indeed, many of the most valuable plants in his collection are the products of the seeds presented him by Monsieur THOUIN.
: "To the Hon. SAMUEL L. MITCHELL [''sic''], M.D. Professor of Natural History…in the College of Physicians, the proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] is also indebted for many valuable additions made to his collection of living plants, as well as for many specimens added to his Herbarium, collected by the same gentleman, during his residence at Washington, (as Senator of the United States,) and in the Western parts of the state of New-York, when on his late tour to the falls of Niagara....
: "Important additions of the native plants of Georgia have also very recently been made to this institution by JOHN LECONTE, Esq. whose acquaintance with the various departments of natural history, gives us reason to regret that he has not yet made an offering to his country of the fruits of his researches."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], July 21, 1810, on grass planted at the Elgin Botanic Garden (October 1810: 216)<ref>Hosack, October 1810, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HQ7HQ2WG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "By pursuing the practice recommended by Lord Kames, of sowing from twenty to twenty-four pounds of clover seed to the acre, I have remarked that the grounds at the Elgin Botanic Garden are much more free from weeds than those of my neighbours, at the same time that the grass is much more delicate for feeding, less apt to be thrown down by the storm, and makes a less succulent hay, both more easily cured and better preserved than where it is more thinly spread, but of stronger growth."

* [[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], March 12, 1811, preface and addendum to ''Hortus Elginensis'' (''Hortus'' 1811: v–x, 66)<ref>David Hosack, ''Hortus Elginensis, or, A Catalogue of Plants, Indigenous and Exotic, Cultivated in the Elgin Botanic Garden, in the Vicinity of the City of New-York : Established in 1801''(New-York : Printed by T. & J. Swords, 1811), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/FIEM4NZF view on Zotero].</ref>

: "The establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] in the United States, as a repository of the native plants of this country, and as subservient to the purposes of medicine, agriculture, and the arts, is doubtless an object of great importance. Impressed with the advantages to be derived from an institution of this nature, I have anxiously endeavoured ever since my appointment to the professorship of Botany and Materia Medica in Columbia College, to accomplish its establishment. Disappointed, however, in my first applications to the legislature of this State, soliciting their assistance in so expensive and arduous an undertaking, I resolved to devote my own private funds to the prosecution of this object; trusting, that when the nature of the institution should be better, and more generally known, and its utility fully ascertained, it would receive the patronage and support of the public.
: <div id="variegated"></div>"Accordingly, in the year 1801, I purchased of the Corporation of the city of New-York, twenty acres of ground … distant from the city about three miles and an half. The [[view]] from the most elevated part, is variegated and extensive, and the soil itself of that diversified nature, as to be particularly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of vegetable productions. The greater part of the ground is at present in a state of promising cultivation, arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of vegetables, and planted agreeably to the most approved style of ornamental gardening. Since that time, an extensive conservatory, for the more hardy [[greenhouse|green house]] plants, and two spacious [[hothouse|hot houses]], for the preservation of those which require a greater degree of heat, the whole exhibiting a front of one hundred and eighty feet, have been erected, and which, experience has shown, are well calculated for the purpose for which they were designed. The whole establishment is surrounded by a belt of forest trees and shrubs, both native and exotic, and these again are enclosed by a stone [[wall]], two and an half feet in thickness, and seven feet in height. [[#variegated_cite|[back up to history]]]
: "As it has always been a primary object of attention to collect and cultivate in this establishment, the native plants of this country, especially such as are possessed of medicinal properties, or are otherwise useful, such gardeners as were practically acquainted with our indigenous productions, have been employed to procure them: how far this end has been attained, will be best seen by an examination of the Catalogue.
: "Although much has been done by the governments of Great-Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, and Germany, in the investigation of the vegetable productions of America: although much has been accomplished by the labours of [[Mark Catesby|[Mark] ''Catesby'']], [Pehr] ''Kalm'', [Friedrich Adam Julius von] ''Wangenheim'', [Johann David] ''Schoepf'', [Thomas] ''Walter'', and the ''Michaux'' [André and François André]; and by our countrymen [John] ''Clayton'', the ''Bartrams'' [[John Bartram|[John]] and [[William Bartram|William]]], [[Cadwallader Colden|[Cadwallader] ''Colden'']], [Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst] ''Muhlenberg'', [[Humphry Marshall|[Humphry] ''Marshall'']], [[Manasseh Cutler|[Manasseh] ''Cutler'']], and the learned Professor [Benjamin Smith] ''Barton'' of Pennsylvania, much yet remains to be done in this western part of the globe. The numerous articles of medicine which this country has already furnished; the variety of soils and climates which it comprehends, encourage the belief, that many more remain to be discovered, and that the Materia Medica may still be enriched by the addition of many indigenous plants, whose virtues yet remain undiscovered.
: "Another object of importance is, to afford to students of medicine, the means of acquiring a knowledge of the natural history of plants, and the principles of botanic arrangement; a science intimately connected with their profession, as it not only enables them to distinguish one plant from another, but frequently leads to an acquaintance with their medicinal virtues. For this purpose the grounds are divided into different compartments, calculated to exhibit the various plants according to their several properties: and these again are so arranged as to afford a practical illustration of the systems of botany at present most esteemed, viz. the sexual system of Linnaeus, and the natural orders of [Antoine Laurent de] ''Jussieu''.
: "Hitherto the [[botanic garden|botanical gardens]] of ''Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Leyden, Upsal, Goettengen'', &c. have instructed the American youth in this department of medical education; and it is in some degree owing to those establishments that the universities and colleges of those places have become so celebrated, and have been resorted to by students of medicine from all parts of the world.
: "Since the publication of the first edition of this catalogue, in 1806, this institution has been greatly improved…. It will also be perceived by a comparison of the present with the former edition, that very considerable additions have been made to the collection both of the foreign and indigenous plants contained in that establishment. Gratitude demands of me, on this occasion, an acknowledgment of the obligations I am under to many distinguished botanists, both abroad and at home, who have contributed to this institution. In this number are to be enumerated my much esteemed and respected friend and instructor, Dr. ''James Edward Smith'', the learned President of the Linnaean Society of London; the late Professor [Martin] ''Vahl'', and Mr. [Niels] ''Hoffman Bang'', of Copenhagen; Mons. [René Louiche] ''Desfontaines'' and [André] ''Thouin'', the celebrated Professors of Botany and Agriculture at the Medical Schools of Paris; Mr. [Richard Anthony] ''Salisbury'', Proprietor of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] at Brompton, near London; the late Dr. [Giovanni Valentino Mattia] ''Fabroni'', Director of the Royal Museum of Florence; Dr. [John] ''Bostock'', the learned President of the Botanic Institution of Liverpool; Dr. [John Coakley] ''Lettsom'', of London; Dr. ''Andrew Michaux'', Editor of the Flora Boreali Americana, and Author of the very valuable History of the Forest Trees of North-America, now publishing at Paris; my much esteemed friend Dr. ''Alire Raffineau Delile'', of the Institute of Egypt; Dr. ''Alexander Anderson'', Superintendant of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]] at St. Vincents; and [Eduard Freiherr von Schack] ''Baron Be Schack'', of Martinique, From these gentlemen I have received many rare botanical works, and some of the most valuable plants in this collection.
: "Nor must I be unmindful of the obligations I am under to several gentlemen in this country, distinguished for their taste and talents in this department of science. The Hon. ''Robert R. Livingston'', our former Minister in France; Professor [Samuel Latham] ''Mitchill'', of this city; ''John Stevens'', Esq. of Hoboken; Mr. [[Bernard M'Mahon|''Bernard M'Mahon'']], of Philadelphia; Mr. ''Stephen Elliot'', of Beaufort, South-Carolina; Dr. ''Darlington'', and Mr. ''John Vaughan'', of Pennsylvania; ''John Le Conte'', Esq. of Georgia; Mr. ''William Prince'', of Long-Island; and Mr. ''Andrew Gentle'', seedsman, of this city; are also among the contributors to this institution. It is but justice to the merit of my nephew, Dr. ''Caspar Wistar Eddy'', a young but accurate botanist, to add, that he has largely augmented the collection of American plants, especially of those of the island of New-York; some of which, viz. two new species of ''Gerardia'', were first discovered by him in the vicinity of this city. From my other pupils now industriously prosecuting the study of botany and medicine, more especially Mr. ''John W. Francis'', and Mr. ''Isaac Roosevelt'', of this city, and Mr. ''Robert M. Barclay'', of Orange county, I also anticipate many fruits of their labours in this department of science.
: <div id="Pursh"></div> "It would be injustice to my late gardener, Mr. ''Frederick Pursh'', who with a knowledge of the science of botany unites a very extensive and accurate acquaintance with the plants of this country, not to notice the very numerous contributions he has made to the collection, of the native plants of the United States, during the period he had charge of this establishment. The institution is also at present, and has been for some months past, in a very flourishing condition, under the direction of Mr. [Michael] ''Dennison'', who has been very particularly recommended to me by Messrs. ''Lee'' and ''Kennedy'', of Hammersmith. The present state of the collection is an evidence of his attention and skill, and from which I expect great improvements in every part of the establishment. [[#Pursh_cite|[back up to history]]]
: <div id="American_Botany"></div>"I avail myself of this occasion to observe, that as soon as measures may be taken by the Regents of the University for the permanent preservation of the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]], it is my intention immediately to commence the publication of AMERICAN BOTANY, or a ''Flora of the United States''. In this work it is my design to give a description of the plant, noticing its essential characters, synonyms, and place of growth, with observations on the uses to which it is applied in medicine, agriculture, or the arts; to be illustrated by a coloured engraving, in the same manner in which the plants of Great-Britain have been published by Dr. ''J''[ohn]. ''E''[dward]. ''Smith'', in his English Botany. Considerable progress has already been made in obtaining materials for this publication: many of the drawings will be executed by Mr. ''James Inderwick'', a young gentleman of great genius and taste, and others by ''John Le Conte'', Esq. whose acquaintance with botany and natural history in general will enable him to execute this part of the work with great fidelity. In Mr. [Frederick] ''Pursh'', whose name has already been mentioned, I shall have a very industrious and skilful botanist to collect from different parts of the union such plants as have not yet been assembled at the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]].... [[#American_Botany _cite|[back up to history]]]
: "Since the foregoing Catalogue has been printed, I have received from that distinguished Botanist, M. [André] ''Thouin'', Professor of Agriculture and Botany at Paris, a third collection of seeds [from the Jardin des Plantes], amounting to 30 species, of such plants as are not contained in this collection. The unceasing exertions of that gentleman, for the promotion of science in this country, as well as his own, deserve a greater tribute of praise than I am able to bestow."

* <div id="Indies"></div>[[David Hosack|Hosack, David]], March 12, 1811, ''A Statement of Facts Relative to the Establishment and Progress of the Elgin Botanic Garden'' (1811: 7, 14–15)<ref name="Hosack_Statement"></ref> [[#Indies_cite|back up to history]]

: "Persuaded of the advantages to be derived from the institution of a [[botanic garden]], which could be made the repository of the native vegetable production of the country, and be calculated to naturalize such foreign plants are distinguished by their utility either in medicine, agriculture, or the arts, as well as for the purpose of affording the medical student an opportunity of practical instruction in this science, I, immediately after my appointment as professor [of botany and materia medica] in the college, endeavoured to accomplish its establishment....
: "I still, however, did not abandon the hope of ultimately obtaining legislative aid, and therefore continued, as before, my exertions to increase the collection of plants which I had begun, and to extend the improvements for their preservation. Accordingly, in 1806, I obtained from various parts of Europe, as well as from the East and West-Indies, very important additions to my collection of plants, especially of those which are most valuable as articles of medicine. I also erected a second building for their preservation, and laid the foundation of a third, which was completed the following year. In the autumn of the same year, 1806, I published a ''Catalogue'' of the plants, both native and exotics, which had been already collected, amounting to nearly 2000 species....
: "I had now erected, on the most improved plan, for the preservation of such plants as require protection from the severity of our climate three large and well constructed houses, exhibiting a front of one hundred and eighty feet… The greater part of the ground was brought to a state of the highest cultivation, and divided into various compartments....
: "The whole establishment was enclosed by a stone [[wall]], two and an half feet in breadth, and seven and an half feet high… Add to all this… the additional costs for the continual increase in the number of plants, particularly of those imported from abroad, though in this respect I was liberally aided by the contributions of my friends, both in Europe and in the East and West-Indies…."

* <div id="Sketch"></div>Anonymous [[David Hosack|[David Hosack?]]], July 1811, "Sketch of the Elgin Botanic Garden in the Vicinity of New York," (1812: 1–4)<ref>Anonymous, "Sketch of the Elgin Botanic Garden in the Vicinity of New York," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/5EBVS4DZ view on Zotero]. Much of the article paraphrases Hosack's ''Hortus Elginensis'' (1811), quoted above.</ref> [[#Sketch_cite|back up to history]]

: "This institution, the first of the kind established in the United States, is situated about three and a half miles from this city, on the middle road between Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge....
: "Immediately after the purchase, the proprietor, at a very considerable expense, had the grounds cleared and put in a state of cultivation, arranged in a manner the best adapted to the different kinds of vegetables, and planted agreeably to the most approved stile of ornamental gardening....
: "By the distinguished liberality of several scientific gentlemen in this country, there were in cultivation at the commencement of 1805 nearly fifteen hundred species of American plants, besides a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics....
: "Recently the institution has been committed to the superintendence of the trustees of the college of physicians and surgeons of this city, to be by them kept in a state of preservation, and in a condition fit for all medical students as may resort thereto for the purpose of acquiring botanical science. It is confidently hoped, that as the improvements of this establishment for nearly ten years, while in the hands of a private individual, have far exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine, that its future progress will be proportionably great under its present governance."

* <div id="Correspondent"></div>Anonymous ["A Correspondent"], c. October 1811, description of botany classes held at the Elgin Botanic Garden (1812: 154, 158–159)<ref>Anonymous ["A Correspondent"], "Cultivation of Natural History in the University College of New-York," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/ZT2AMZDS view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Correspondent_cite|back up to history]]

: "After he had finished the geological and mineralogical parts of his course, which he elucidated from his own select and ample cabinet of fossils, Professor Mitchill entered upon the vegetable kingdom. He discoursed day after day upon the anatomy and physiology of seeds, plants, and flowers; and when he had proceeded far enough at the college in town, he adjourned to meet his audience at the [[botanic garden|botanical garden]] of Elgin, about three miles in the country.
: "There, in the presence of his numerous auditors, he demonstrated the component parts of the flower, and developed the principles of the Linnaean system....
: "During the discussion which took place on the history of the vegetable kingdom, Professor Mitchill made repeated visits, with his disciples, to the garden of Elgin, founded by [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], but now the property of the state. And, while he was occupied in the classification, description and discrimination of plants, it was observed, that the two promising young botanists, Dr. Caspar W. Eddy and Mr. James Inderwick, acted as his assistants; the former, in demonstrating the marks peculiar to the species, and the latter, in expounding the characters which distinguish the genus, in the presence of the numerous attendants whom the occasion had led to embark in this delightful study. The purchase of this valuable establishment is not less useful to natural science than honourable to public spirit. The college of physicians, who are curators in behalf of the regents, take every care that repairs are made to the [[conservatory]], [[hot house]] and [[fence]]s, and that the plants are well nursed and attended."

* Anonymous, 1811, commenting on Hosack's recent publications on the Elgin Botanic Garden (1811: 162–166)<ref>Anonymous, "Review of ''Hortus Elginensis'' and ''A Statement of Facts relative to the…Elgin Botanic Garden''," ''The Medical and Physical Journal'' 26 (July 1811): 162–166, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8BUV9NIM view on Zotero].</ref>

: "Though the collection in the Elgin Garden is not so large as in some older establishments in Europe, it is respectable both for number and quality. Of the indigenous plants of America we notice 1215 species: among these upwards of 200 are employed in medicine. Of plants possessing medicinal properties this seems a great number, but many of them possibly derive their title from popular opinion only; but even this title, as founded on a species of experience, is not to be slighted. Some of them have an established reputation: cinchona, ipecacuanha, jalapium, & c. are instances. It is curious fact in the history of Medical Botany, that when Europe remained in utter darkness on this subject, the Mexicans had appropriated a considerable space of ground, near the capital, to the sole purpose of rearing the indigenous medicinal plants....
: "No region of the earth seems more appropriate to the improvement of Botany, by the collecting and cultivating of plants, than that where the Elgin Garden is seated. Nearly midway between the northern and southern extremities of the vast American continent, and not more than 40 degrees to the north of the equator, it commands resources of incalculable extent; and the European Botanist will look to it for additions to his catalogue of the highest interest. The indigenous Botany of America possesses most important qualities, and to that, we trust, [[David Hosack|Prof. Hosack]], the projector, and indeed, the creator of this Garden, will particularly turn his attention. It can hardly be considered as an act of the imagination, so far does what has already been discovered countenance the most sanguine expectations, to conjecture, that in the unexplored wilderness of mountain, forest, and marsh, which composes so much of the western world, lie hidden plants of extraordinary forms and potent qualities.
: "From the scientific spirit and persevering industry of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], every thing may be augured. Already has he projected an AMERICAN BOTANY, or a ''Flora of the United States'', to be illustrated with coloured Plates, similar to those in the ''English Botany'' of our ingenious countryman, Dr. [James Edward] Smith. Considerable progress, we are informed, has already been made in obtaining materials for this work; but we regret that its completion depends on a contingency—the permanent preservation of the Elgin Botanic Garden. In the madness of political contention, in the apathy with which governments contemplate the advance of science, in the illiberal finesse and the low juggling of party, we may look for the occasional destruction or suspension of every rational project; but we hope these accidents will not frustrate the enlarged and enlightened intention of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], but rather induce him to extend his ''Flora'', and make the whole of the American continent his GARDEN."

* <div id="Eddy_lecture"></div>Anonymous, April 1812, "Dr. Eddy's Lectures on Botany" (1812: 2: 466–467)<ref>"Dr. Eddy's Lectures on Botany," ''American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 2 (1812), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/HVJCGAJP view on Zotero].</ref> [[#Eddy_lecture_cite|back up to history]]

: "Dr. C[aspar] W[istar] Eddy, of this city, has announced his intention of delivering a course of Lectures on Botany, to commence on the first Wednesday in May next.... During the whole course, the lecturer will avail himself of all the advantages calculated to render the instruction that may be given, a system of practical botany; and for this purpose, rpeated visits will be made to the state [[botanic garden]]....We shall only add, that a science in itself highly useful and agreeable, will possess additional claims to attetion, when unfolded in the able manner now proposed."

* Spafford, Horatio Gates, 1813, ''A Gazetteer of the State of New-York'' (1813: 45–46)<ref>Horatio Gates Spafford, ''A Gazetteer of the State of New-York: Carefully Written from Original and Authentic Materials, Arranged on a New Plan, in Three Parts'' (Albany: H.C. Southwick, 1813), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/UDZZ2SS2 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "[[botanic garden|'''BOTANIC GARDEN'''.]] The Elgin Botanic Garden, in the city of New-York, the first institution of the kind in the United States, is now the property of the state…. Among the distinguished friends and patrons of science in this state, a common sentiment had long prevailed, friendly to the establishment of a [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]]. Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to engage public aid for this purpose; and their having failed, while it detracts nothing from the reputation of the state, has ensured a better success to the institution, growing up under the zealous efforts of individual enterprize, which will ensure lasting fame to its principal founder.… In 1801, having failed in all attempts for public aid, the zeal and enterprize of [[David Hosack|Dr. Hosack]], determined him to attempt the establishment on his own account. Accordingly he purchased 20 acres of ground of the corporation of New-York…. The soil is diversified, and peculiarly well adapted to the cultivation of a great variety of plants. The whole was immediately enclosed by a stone [[wall]], and put in the best state for ornamental gardening; and a [[conservatory]] was erected for the preservation of the more hardy [[greenhouse|green-house]] plants. A primary object was to cultivate the native plants, possessing any valuable properties, found in this country; and in 1805, this establishment contained about 1500 valuable native plants, beside a considerable number of rare and valuable exotics. In 1806, it contained in successful cultivation, 150 different kinds of grasses, and important article to an agricultural people.… A portion of ground was set apart for agricultural experiments; and all the friends to experimental science and a diffusion of knowledge saw that the institution promised all that had been expected from it; and that the professor’s knowledge and genius were occupied on a congenial field....
: "The [[view]] from the most elevated part of Elgin ground, is extensive and variegated. The aspect of the ground, is a gentle slope to the E. and S. The whole is enclosed by a well constructed stone [[wall]], lined all round by a belt of forest trees and shrubs. The [[conservatory]] and [[hothouse|hot-houses]] present a front of 180 feet. The various allotments of ground, are chosen with as much taste as good judgment for the varied culture;—and the rocky summit, the subsiding plain, and the little pool, have each their appropriate products. The herbarium, the [[kitchen garden]], the [[nursery]] of choice fruits from all quarters and climes, and the immense collection of botanical subjects elegantly arranged and labelled, display the industry, taste and skill of a master. A very extensive Botanical library belongs to the late proprietor, who is now a professor in the University, and delivers a summer course of lectures on Botany. .. The garden is now committed to the superintendence of the college of Physicians and Surgeons, without any charge to the state."

*Pursh, Frederick, 1814, describing Elgin Botanic Garden, New York, N.Y. (2: xiv)<ref>Frederick Pursh, ''Flora Americae Septentrionalis; Or, a Systematic Arrangement and Description of the Plants of North America'', 2 vols. (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1814), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/KVNMM4KM view on Zotero.]</ref>

: "While I was engaged in arranging my materials for this publication, I was called upon to take the management of the [Elgin] Botanic Garden at New York, which had been originally established by the arduous zeal and exertions of Dr. [[David Hosack]], Professor of Botany, &c. as his private property, but has lately been bought by the Government of the State of New York for the public service. As this employment opened a further prospect to me of increasing my knowledge of the plants of that country, I willingly dropped the idea of my intended publication for that time, and in 1807 [''sic''; 1809] took charge of that establishment.
: "Here I again endeavoured to pay the utmost attention to the collection of American plants, as the establishment was principally intended for that purpose. In this I was supported by my numerous botanical connections and friends, among whom I must particularly mention John Le Conte, Esq. of Georgia, whose unremitting exertions added considerably to the collection, particularly of plants from the Southern States.
: "The additions to my former stock of materials for a Flora were now considerable, and in conjunction with Dr. [[David Hosack|D. Hosack]] I had engaged to publish a periodical work, with coloured plates, all taken from living plants, and if possible from native specimens, on a plan similar to that of Curtis's Botanical Magazine; for which a great number of drawings were actually prepared. But…in 1810, took a voyage to the West Indies,… from which I returned in the autumn of 1811.
: "On my return to New York, I found things in a situation very unfavourable to the publication of scientific works, the public mind being then in agitation about a war in Great Britain. I therefore determined to take all my materials to England, where I conceived I should not only have the advantage of consulting the most celebrated collections and libraries, but also meet with that encouragement and support so necessary to works of science, and so generally bestowed upon them there."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], February 18, 1818, letter to [[David Hosack]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris) (1944: 578)<ref>Thomas Jefferson, ''The Garden Book'', ed. Edwin M. Betts (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1944), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8ZA5VRP5 view on Zotero].</ref>

: "I received some time ago from M. Thouin, Director of the [[botanic garden|Botanical]] or King's garden at Paris, a box containing an assortment of seeds, Non-American.... I have therefore this day sent the box to Richmond...to be forwarded to you for the use of the [[botanic garden|Botanical Garden]] of N. York.... I am happy in this disposition of it to fulfill the good intentions of the donor, and to make it useful to your institution."

* Eyrien Frères & Cie., April 2, 1821, letter from Havre to [[Thomas Jefferson]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref> [http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1955 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "We have the honor of informing you that we have put on The American ship Cad[mus]...Capn. Wethlet [''sic''; Whitlock], a small Box of seeds, which is sent to you by the Managing Directors of the King's Garden in Paris....
: "We have sent this letter as well as some other ones for several people in the United States, to the address of [[David Hosack|Mister Hosack]], Director of the Botanical Garden of the State of New york.
: "Corresponding in this day for the Administrators of the King’s Museum and Garden, we are taking the liberty of offering you our Services, for your relationship with this administration, or for anything else that could be of interest to you in France."

* Eyrien Frères & Cie., April 2, 1821, letter from Havre to James Madison concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris) (Madison, 2013: 2: 292–293)<ref>James Madison, ''The Papers of James Madison'', ed. David B. Mattern et al., Retirement Series (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 2: 292–293, [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/8ADSTGUB view on Zotero]</ref>

: "The administrators of the King’s Garden at Paris have forwarded to us a package of seeds for you. We added it with some other packages for the same shipment and sent it all on board the American ship Cadmus, Capt. Whitlock, addressed to Mr. [[David Hosack|Hosack]], director of the Botanical Garden of the State of New York, from whom you will please request it."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], June 25, 1821, letter to Jonathan Thompson concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-2138 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "I am thankful to you for your notice of the 14th respecting a box of seeds—this comes from the king’s garden at Paris. they send me a box annually, depending on my applying it for the public benefit. I have generally had them delivered for a public garden at Philadelphia or to [[David Hosack|Dr Hosack]] for the Botanical garden of N. York. I am inclined to believe that he now recieves such an one from the same place. if he does not, be so good as to deliver it to him. but if of no use to him let it come to Richmond to the care of Capt Bernard Peyton, my correspondent there, and your note of any expence attending it will be immediately replaced either by him or myself."

* [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson, Thomas]], July 12, 1821, letter to [[David Hosack]] concerning seeds from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris)<ref>[http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-2173 Founders Online, National Archives].</ref>

: "I recieved a letter lately from mr Thompson, Collector of New York, informing me of a box of seeds from the king's gardens at Paris addressed to me. I rather suppose you recieve one annually from the same place for your botanical garden, but was not certain. I desired him therefore to present it to you if acceptable for your garden."

* Spafford, Horatio Gates, 1824 ''Gazetteer of the State of New York'' (1824: 605)<ref>Horatio Gates Spafford, ''Gazetteer of the State of New York'' (Albany: B.D. Packard, 1824), [https://www.zotero.org/groups/54737/items/itemKey/WW7MHEFG view on Zotero].</ref>

: "[[botanic garden|''Botanic Garden'']].—This is a very respectable establishment, situated on New-York Island, in the 9th Ward of the City, 4 miles N. of the City Hall. It was purchased by the State, in 1810, and is an appendage of the Colleges in New-York. It comprises 20 acres of ground, and embraces a great variety of indigenous, naturalized, and exotic vegetables. The situation is commanding, on the rising ground, which embraces a good variety of soil, aspect, and position, and Elgin [[Grove]] has as many visitants as the [[botanic garden|Botanic Garden]]s, chasing pleasure, or catching knowledge."

==Images==
<span id="roundabout_img"></span>
<gallery widths="170px" heights="170px" perrow="7">

Image:1136.jpg|John Trumbull, ''Dr. Hosack's Green houses'', Elgin Botanic Garden, June 1806.

Image:2051.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after Louis Simond, ''View of the botanic garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York'', c. 1810.

Image:2060.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after James Inderwick, "The Canada Thistle," in David Hosack, "Botanical description of the Canada Thistle or Cnicus Arvensis," ''The American Medical and Philosophical Register'' 1 (October 1810): facing p. 212.

Image:1986.jpg|Anonymous, ''Elgin Botanic Garden'', c. 1810.

Image:0049.jpg|William Satchwell Leney after Hugh Reinagle, "View of the Botanic Garden of the State of New York," in David Hosack, ''Hortus Elginensis'' (1811), frontispiece.

Image:0050.jpg|Hugh Reinagle, ''Elgin Garden on Fifth Avenue'', c. 1812.

Image:2052.jpg|Charles Heath after Thomas Sully (head copied from portrait of 1815) and John Trumbull (body and background after portrait painted ca. 1806–1815 for Dr. John C. Lettsom, England), ''David Hosack, M.D., F.R.S.'', c. 1816.

Image:2061.jpg|John Eatton Le Conte, "Viola," in ''Observations on the genera Viola. Utricularia and Gratiola'', c. 1824.]]

</gallery>

==Other Resources==
[http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2009180531.html Library of Congress Authority File]

==Notes==

<references/>

[[Category: Sites]]