View/Vista

History

Travelers’ accounts of their journeys through the early American colonies contain many descriptions of extensive views and fine prospects. The frequent repetition of these and the related terms vista, “eminence,” and by the mid-nineteenth century, “panorama,” suggests the importance of views and view-making in the perception, design, and representation of American landscapes. The significance of composing a view in the landscape is echoed in the visual record of American gardens. Among the most common images of gardens are those framing the façade of the house and those taking a view from the house out toward the landscape.

As A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville noted in 1712, one aspect of a “good situation, is, the View and Prospect of a fine Country,” and American property owners often sited their houses with this advice in mind. Planters situated their houses along well-traveled rivers and overlooking harbors, both capturing water views and creating highly visible architectural statements of their status and wealth [Figs. 1 and 2]. As at Monte Video [Fig. 3], houses were often sited on eminences to benefit from the natural topography. Gardens built around such houses took full advantage of their natural settings, and treatise writers such as A. J. Downing (1850) admonished gardeners to “study the character of the place” so as not to “shut out and obstruct the beauty of prospect which nature has placed before your eyes.” The frequent use of the words “command” and “commanding” by visitors recording their impressions indicates the assertion of ownership and control that was so clearly an aspect of the visual presentation of these estates. Water, topographic relief, a variety of rock formations, and vegetal and geological diversity were all prized components of views. Distance was also a measure of merit, not only contributing to the beauty of the scene, but also claiming the breadth of “command” over the countryside.

The term “vista,” while less commonly used than the related terms “prospect” and “view,” was similar in its designation of views created within the garden or looking out of the garden into the surrounding landscape. The term “vista” also carried the more particular connotation, as Thomas Sheridan noted in 1789 and Noah Webster in 1850, of the sight lines that created a view, whether made by an avenue, a meadow, or a space between trees. A vista within the garden was generally terminated by a focal point, such as the Chinese temple at Judge William Peters’s Belmont Mansion, near Philadelphia. Even more common are descriptions of vistas from the garden to the world beyond. John Parke Custis (1717), Hannah Callender (1762), George Washington (1785), and Thomas Jefferson (1804) all used the term to describe framed views created by land cleared of trees (see Prospect).

Views were carefully planned and manipulated by a variety of techniques. The architecture of the dwelling often included exterior viewing platforms such as porches, piazzas, porticos, and verandas [Fig. 4]. Views of the house often were choreographed by carefully designed approaches, which allowed a visitor to catch glimpses of the house as he or she arrived and departed. As an 1837 article in the Horticultural Register noted, the view should be “so divided into different scenes or compartments” by various types of vegetation. Garden buildings or seats, such as those seen at Montgomery Place [Fig. 5], and those placed under a cluster of trees in Charles Fraser’s painting of Rice Hope [Fig. 6], punctuated the landscape with invitations to pause and to admire the vista. Distant views were framed by plantings or by pruned trees, as at the Woodlands and at Springland [Fig. 7]. Their composition was also influenced by elevated mounts, such as those flanking the front gates of Mount Vernon; or by openings in hedges, trees, and walls [Fig. 8].

Another element of view-making was the use of barriers (such as walls, fences, and hedges) to screen less picturesque elements of a plantation. This technique was reported in 1790 in a description of the Elias Hasket Derby Farm in Peabody, Mass. John Trumbull’s 1792 plan for Yale College included instructions for a similar barrier that would provide a screen for the nose as well as the eyes. Inscribed on the plan is the directive that “The Temples of Cloacina [or priveys] (which it is too much the custom of New England to place conspicuously), I would wish to have concealed as much as possible, by planting a variety of Shrubs, such as Laburnums, Lilacs, Roses, Snowballs, Laurels, &c.”

In urban settings, where lot size and the proximity of buildings limited sightlines into the distance, gardens often reflected treatises’ instructions to enhance views with smaller property. Such structures as temples or summerhouses were placed in gardens to serve as both focal points and viewing platforms see Belvedere). These effects could also be achieved without building; in 1758 Theophilus Hardenbrook advertised designs for “Niche’s eyetraps trompe l’oeil, to represent a building, terminating a walk, or to hide some disagreeable object” in the New York Gazette. Treatises also suggested enhancing small gardens by laying out walks or terraces with converging (rather than parallel) sides to create the impression of greater depth. Similarly, such features as alleys or avenues with dimensions that appeared to converge created the illusion of distance from the viewer.

Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe has commented that in England the importance of the creation of views and prospects “became apparent when the enclosed medieval walled garden gradually expanded into walled gardens of more than one compartment—preparing the way for a unity of design in the 17th c.” In England the importance of views into the countryside increased as a principle of garden design and as an aspect of changing land use and property-holding practices. For historians of American gardens, understanding the visual organization of space is equally important not only because it was a fundamental principle of imported garden design, but also because it was a key factor in the design of gardens in America’s unique political, economic, and social setting. Abigail Adams’s poetic rendering of the view from Richmond Hill, N.Y., in 1789 evokes not only a romantic view of nature but also a vision of American estates as villas, linking the new nation to a past era of republican ideals. In 1824, Benjamin Silliman described Monte Video in Connecticut as poised between a wilderness of “rocks and forest” and a “vast sheet of cultivation, filled with inhabitants.” His evocative description expresses the landscape’s capacity to inspire both a sense of quiet contemplation and a connection to the industry and “frolicks” of village life.

Understanding the visual logic of American gardens has been particularly important in deciphering gardens as social commentary. For example, the reconstruction of specific viewing platforms, focal points, and openings in the visual barriers of a garden (walls, fences, rows of trees) provides valuable information about the ways in which people were intended to circulate in a garden. At Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, for instance, the stairs and viewing pavilions created an explicit route through the grounds with carefully orchestrated views that are apparent in myriad illustrations and descriptions of the site. In another example, the triangular terraced garden built by Charles Carroll of Carrollton in Annapolis during the 1770s created very different visual effects depending upon where the viewer stood. A passerby on Spa Creek saw terraces that elevated and accentuated an impressive Georgian brick house. A visitor permitted to stroll to the top terrace was treated to a sweeping view of the creek and countryside beyond, an effect enhanced by the foreshortening of the terraces and falls, the placement of pavilions at the ends of the sea wall, and the spreading angle of the brick wall marking the garden’s hypotenuse. Only those permitted into the house, with its privileged views overlooking the terraces, gained the vantage point to appreciate the garden geometry with its 3-4-5 proportions and parterre planting patterns.

The organization of vision may also provide information regarding the social hierarchy that is encoded in gardens. For instance, Dell Upton has argued that the terraced gardens of such plantations as John Tayloe II’s Mount Airy in Richmond County inscribed the status of Virginia’s whites and blacks into the topography. The landscape design of gates, ramps, terraces, and walks created a series of physical and social hurdles that each individual had to navigate differently, depending on his or her social standing in colonial society.

-- Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

Texts

Usages

• Custis, John Parke, April 1717, describing Gov. Alexander Spotswood’s improvements to the gardens of the Governor’s Palace, Williamsburg, Va. (quoted in Martin 1991: 38)

“I happened to be at the Governors, and he was pleased to ask my consent, to cut down some trees that grew on my Land to make an opening, I think he called it a visto, and told me would cut nothing but what was only fitt [sic] for the fire. . . . As to the clearing his visto, he cut down all before him such a wideness as he thought fitt [sic].”

• Anonymous, 22 May 1749, describing the dwelling house of Alexander Garden, Charleston, S.C. (South Carolina Gazette)

“From the house Ashley and Cooper rivers are seen, and all around are visto’s and pleasant prospects.”

• Ball, Joseph, 8 September 1758, describing property in Virginia (Library of Congress, Joseph Ball Letterbook)

“I have a Strang Hankering after a bit of Land upon Linhaven Creek. I would have it on the West or South side where it is Saved already. I want no more than fifty Acres. It must be bounding upon the Creek side; nigh a good Spring: and where I may have a full View of the Sea.”

• Callender, Hannah, 1762, describing Belmont Mansion, estate of Judge William Peters, near Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Vaux 1888: 455)

“From the windows a vista is terminated by an obelisk. . . . We left the garden for a wood cut into vistas. In the midst is a Chinese temple for a summer house. One avenue gives a fine prospect of the city. . . . Another avenue looks to the obelisk.”

• Eddis, William, 1 October 1769, describing the Governor’s House, Annapolis, Md. (1792: 17)

“The garden is not extensive, but it is disposed to the utmost advantage; the centre walk is terminated by a small green mount, close to which the Severn approaches; this elevation commands an extensive view of the bay, and the adjacent county. . . . there are but few mansions in the most rich and cultivated parts of England, which are adorned with such splendid and romantic scenery.”

• Jefferson, Thomas, 1771, describing Monticello, plantation of Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville, Va. (1944: 26)

“open a vista to the millpond, river, road, etc. qu, if a view to the neighboring town would have a good effect?”

• Anonymous, 28 January 1771, describing the Vauxhall Garden, New York, N.Y. (New York Gazette)

“The Commodious house and large gardens, in the out-ward of this city, known by the name of VAUX-HALL; the situation extremely pleasant, having a very extensive view both up and down the North-River.”

• Anburey, Thomas, 2 September 1781, describing the Moravian community in Bethlehem, Pa. ([1789] 1969: 2:513)

“The house of the single men is upon the same principle as that of the women; upon the roof of which is a Belvidere, from whence you have not only a most delightful prospect, but a distinct view of the whole settlement.”