Plot/Plat

(Grass-plat, Grass-plot)

Discussion

Plot, according to many lexicographers, was synonymous with plat. Noah Webster, for example, in 1828, used “plat” (“or small extent of ground”) to define “plot” and further indicated that the latter term held at least four distinct meanings. The first two definitions of the term—a small extent of ground or garden and an executed design of plant material—are well documented in textual and visual materials relating to the designed landscape in America. The third and fourth definitions, relating to survey plans, are less pertinent to landscape-design vocabulary and, therefore, appear less frequently in the material of our study. Even so, these latter references were still used occasionally, as indicated by Charles Willson Peale’s use of the term in 1810 to describe the plan that he had drawn of his property and by William H. Ranlett’s 1849 designation of a plan as “a protracted ground plot.”

In its first two definitions, plot referred to property divisions, which ranged in size from quarters of a garden to house lots or even larger portions of property. Used to describe a particular area of ground, the term “plot” relates closely to “plat” and, in general usage, the terms were nearly interchangeable. Timothy Dwight, in 1796, used “plat” to describe the combined lots of a New England town, while Ranlett, in 1849, used “plot” to describe the ideal layout of a village subdivided into lots [Fig. 1]. Plat, however, often had the added connotation of topographic flatness, a characteristic not necessarily associated with plot.

When used to indicate house lots, plots were typically rectangular in form, as indicated by William Strachey (1612) and Ranlett. But plots could take on a variety of forms in correspondence with their use as orchards, vineyards, pastures, gardens, walks, parks, or cornfields. James Silk Buckingham, for example, described in 1842 a triangular plot of land created by intersecting roads. In James E. Teschemacher’s 1835 report of a garden building, he describes a crescent-shaped plot, which he instructed should be kept closely mown and planted with ornamental trees.

Plots regarded as part of the cultivated, designed landscape could be planted with a variety of vegetation depending on their use. Grass was most commonly used, and a plot most frequently referred to a grassy space located near a house, particularly in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, when the practice of surrounding a house with lawn became more prevalent (see Lawn). The wide variety of terms to describe the expanse of turf either in front of or behind a house is exemplified by Mount Vernon, where the grassy area in front of the house was described variously as plot, plat, lawn, and bowling green (see Bowling green).

Ornamentation of grass plots changed during this same period. Early descriptions of grass plots suggest a broad turfed area, perhaps bordered by ornamental shrubs and trees. Flower beds do not appear in these descriptions and, in fact, in 1803 Elizabeth Drinker recounted removing flowers from the garden in order to convert the space into grass plots with trees. By the 1820s and 1830s, descriptions of grass plots make it clear that they contained flower beds, as well as ornamental trees and shrubs. Marking the boundaries of plots was often a concern and was accomplished through the use of both organic and inorganic materials. In 1629 early English settler John Smith described setting the limits of plots with rows of trees, a technique that provided shade and a wind-break, and thus sheltered the plots’ contents. The grass plot at the Charles Norris House in Philadelphia, as described in 1867, was bordered by “roses intermixed with currant bushes.” William Tennent’s 1764 prospect of Nassau Hall at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) depicts a grass plot, in front of the hall, demarcated by a fence [Fig. 2]. Bricks were used to enclose the plots at the State House in Philadelphia, according to William Dickinson Martin (1809). Such boundaries not only protected the space from destruction by animals, but also designated it as a special segment of the ground set apart for ornamental and utilitarian purposes.

Webster also used the term “grass-plat” to define an esplanade in a gardening context. Samuel Deane (1790) described plat as a topographically level partition of a garden. Thomas Green Fessenden (1828) and Joseph Breck (1851) continued this connotation of flatness and used the term to describe the ideal flat setting for a garden. William Cobbett (1819) equated the term with “quarter,” explaining that both terms referred to small subdivisions of a garden (see Quarter). He added that plat was the more universally understood appellation of the feature, whereas quarter was associated with specifically British usage. Plat could also refer to a portion of a map or plan that was subdivided for settlement, or to the actual subdivided lots indicated on the plan. In general, references to subdivisions (or sections of ground) constitute the most common usage of this term [Fig. 3] and are the focus of the most frequently cited examples discussed here.

The grass plat was an essential component of garden design from at least the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, and the form could vary in size and shape. At William Byrd III’s Westover on the James River, in 1783, Thomas Lee Shippen described a 300-foot-by-100-yard expanse between the house and the river as a plat, and C. M. Hovey, in 1841, referred to a circular plat 100 feet in diameter at James Dundas’s residence in Philadelphia. The plat of Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s estate in Nashville, was described as guitar shaped.

Situated adjacent to a residence, a grass plat, like a lawn or grass plot, functioned as a frame or setting [Fig. 4]. Perhaps because of this association with the residence, in particular, plat came to be regarded as analogous to yard (see Yard). An article in the Horticultural Register (1837), for example, castigated the American trend of clearing away all vegetation around the house, leaving an unornamented yard or, slightly better, “a handsome grass plat.” Walter Elder’s 1849 recommendation that a grass plat near a house could be used as a bleaching area for cloth recalls the utilitarian associations of yards.

Grass plats were not always attached to houses. Large stretches of turf, perhaps edged with walks or roads, were also incorporated into public gardens and designed landscapes, as in the representation of Gray’s Garden and Fairmount Waterworks in Philadelphia [Fig. 5]. Grass plats could also be decorated with flowers, statues, or seats and they could be bounded by vegetation, walks, or fences. Plat borders might be less obviously marked, for example, if the landscape gardener or designer utilized a ha-ha (or sunk fence), as recommended by Teschemacher in 1835. Because of the variety of ornamentation that could be accommodated by the plat, the feature bridged different styles of garden design that flourished during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

-- Anne L. Helmreich

Texts

Usage

• Strachey, William, 1612, describing Native American settlements in Virginia (quoted in Wright and Freund 1967: 79)

“About their howses, they haue [sic] commonly square plotts of cleered grownd, which serve them for gardeins, some 100. some 200. foote square, wherein they sowe their Tobacco, pumpeons, and a fruit like vnto a musk-million; but lesse and worse, which they call Macocks.”

• Smith, John, 1629, describing the Charles River in Massachusetts (quoted in Miller and Johnson 1963: 2:399)

“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 plots, 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.”

• Records of Plymouth Colony, 2 August 1653, describing Plymouth, Mass. (quoted in Lockwood 1931: 1:22)

“John Cooke Senior of Plymouth doth acknowledge that for 3 pounds he hath—sold—Thomas Lettice an house and garden plot on which the said house standeth, being scituate in Plymouth . . . next the house and garden plott in which Thomas Lettice now liveth; To have and to hold the said house and garden plott next adjoining unto the garden place or meerstead on which the said Thomas Lettice now liveth.”

• Pinckney, Eliza Lucas, 1743, describing Crowfield, plantation of William Middleton, vicinity of Charleston, S.C. (1972: 61)

“From the back door is a spacious walk a thousand foot long; each side of which nearest the house is a grass plat ennamiled in a Serpenting manner with flowers.”

• Fithian, Philip Vickers, 31 December 1773, describing Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, Va. (1943: 58)

“Assoon [sic] as the Bell rang & I had dismissed the Children I took a walk in the Garden; When I had gone round two or three Platts Mrs Carter entered and walked towards me.”

• Carroll, Charles (of Annapolis), 1775, describing Carroll Garden, Annapolis, Md. (Maryland Historical Society, A. E. Carroll Papers)

“Examine the Gardiner strictly as to. . . . Whether he is an expert at levelling, making grass plots & Bowling Greens, Slopes, & turfing them well, &c.”

• Shippen, Thomas Lee, 30 December 1783, describing Westover, seat of William Byrd III, on the James River, Va. (1952: n.p.)

“Imagine then a room of 20 feet square . . . and commanding a view of a prettily falling grass plat variegated with pedestals of many different kinds, about 300 by 100 yards in extent an extensive prospect of James River and of all the Country and some Gentleman’s seats on the other side.”

• Washington, George, 1785, describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (Jackson and Twohig, eds., 1978: 4:92, 97)

“[18 February] Also [planted] four Lime or Linden Trees, sent me by Govr. Clinton of New York. . . . These were planted in the Serpentine Roads to the door—the 3d. trees on each side next the Walls & the second trees on each side next the grass plat. . . .

“[3 March] . . . Likewise took up the clump of Lilacs that stood at the Corner of the South Grass plat & transplanted them to the clusters in the Shrubberies & standards at the south Garden gate.”

• Cutler, Rev. Manasseh, 14 July 1787, describing Gray’s Tavern, Philadelphia, Pa. (1987: 1:274–75)

“Nothing appears from the house, or in passing the street, that would attract the attention of the most inquisitive traveler, unless it be a flight of steps cut out of the solid rock at the east end of the house, by which you ascend to a beautiful grass plat, shaded with a number of large trees, in the rear of the house. . . . We returned [from our walk] to the grass plat, from which we ascended several glaces by a serpentine gravel walk, and came to the Green-house.”

• Constantia [pseud.], 24 June 1790, “Description of Gray’s Gardens, Pennsylvania” (Massachusetts Magazine 3: 414)

“Upon the grass plats, loose seats are thrown up and down, and tall trees of an umbrageous foliage form an ample shade.”

• Bartram, William, 1791, describing Indian town in Georgia (1928: 169)

“They plant but little here about the town; only a small garden plot at each habitation.”

• Dwight, Timothy, 1796, describing Boston, Mass. (1821: 1:493–94)

“There are several pretty streets in Boston. Among them, Franklin Place. . . . The middle of the street is a grass plat, surrounded by trees, and guarded by posts and chains. The name is derived from a monument of Dr. Franklin, who was a native of this town.”

• Dwight, Timothy, 1796, describing Hallowell, Maine (1821: 2:218)

“Hallowell is a very pretty town, built on an irregular, or rather steep, descent. This slope, though interrupted, is handsome, and furnishes more good building spots, than if it had been an uniform declivity, and at the same time equally steep. Then all the grounds would have descended too rapidly. Now they furnish a succession of level surfaces for gardens, house-plats, and court yards; and are thus very convenient, as well as sometimes very handsome.”

• Dwight, Timothy, 1796, describing New England (1821: 2:335)

“New England villages . . . are built in the following manner. . . .

“The town-plat is originally distributed into lots, containing from two to ten acres.”

• Brooks, Joshua, 1799, describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (quoted in Riley 1989: 18)

“At the back of the house is a covered staircase to the kitchen or cellar. Here many male and female negroes were at work digging and carrying away the ground to make a level grass plot with a gravel walk around it, at one end of which is an ice house.”