Basin
History
The term basin had at least two applications
in American landscape design vocabulary: as a part of a waterway and as a receptacle of water. As part of a waterway, the term referred to a protected area of a river or sea or a widening in a canal where boats, such as those in Charles Fraser’s painting of the basin on the Santee Canal in South Carolina [Fig. 1], were moored, repaired, loaded, and unloaded. While basins on navigable canals were rarely landscaped, they were occasionally incorporated into public landscape designs, such as those at Fairmount Waterworks in Philadelphia and at the national Mall in Washington,
D.C. A canal and basin were created expressly for a public garden in Charles Varlé’s plan for the town of Bath, which included a jet d’eau in the center of the rectangular basin [Fig. 2] (see Canal). In the second application of the term, “basin” described a receptacle of water issued from a spring (the garden of Charles Wistar in Philadelphia), a stream (Mr. V.’s residence in Hallowell, Maine, as described by Timothy Dwight), underground pipes (Charles Willson Peale’s estate, Belfield), or a fountain (W. H. Corcoran’s garden in Washington, D.C., as described by C. M. Hovey). Both meanings of the term appear to have been consistent throughout the period under study, and the frequency of associating basins with fountains likely increased with the introduction of pressurized water systems (see Fountain). Two treatises identified construction materials for basins. J. C. Loudon (1826) noted that large garden basins may be formed of clay-lined excavations or lined with pavement, tiles, or lead, and Jane Loudon (1845) recommended that “all geometrical or architectural basins of water ought to have margins of masonry.” It is difficult to determine whether most garden basins were built according to such treatise advice, but two examples specify other materials. In 1814, Charles Willson Peale described having his basin at Belfield “walled up with a proper mortar,” and in another letter mentioned a marble basin. Frances Trollope in 1830 described the stone basin at Fairmount Waterworks complete with a cup “for the service of the thirsty traveller.”
The visual and textual evidence for basins suggests that they were located in a variety of contexts in garden plans. Inscribed images of basins are relatively rare, but the drawing by an unknown artist for the layout of the Elias Hasket Derby Farm in Peabody, Mass. [Fig. 3], depicts a basin in the center of the plan for a kitchen garden. Although the Derby garden is curiously off-axis with the house, the basin is the central feature of the garden, and marks the intersection of the walks. Other unlabelled paintings and plans depict similar circular, centrally placed water receptacles, which are most likely to be interpreted as basins. For example, Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s plan of 1819 for the Place d’Armes (renamed Jackson Square) in New Orleans [Fig. 4], and the painting of Col. George Boyd’s seat in Portsmouth, N.H. [Fig. 5], both include central basins. In other instances, basins were placed in rockeries or in locations determined by water sources such as springs and streams.
As treatises suggested, basins of water not only cooled and animated the garden but, as William Forsyth (1802) noted, they also provided the practical functions of drainage and rain collection. Peale used basins as water collection points for his hydraulic system, and Robert Mills’s plan for the national Mall, Washington, D.C., called for water from fountains to be collected in basins and transported through underground pipes for irrigating the public garden. Landscape design on an urban scale often required the redirection and creation of alternative waterways. Drawings by Latrobe for the creation of a national university on the Mall [Fig. 6] and for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal [Fig. 7] indicated that basins were key elements in his designs.
-- Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
