building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Olmsted was particularly impressed by the use of large, grassy surfaces surrounded
by thick vegetation. The purpose of such a choice of project design was to increase
the scenic effect of the appearance of a vast open space intended as a playground,
which could only be reached by passing through a little wood. Olmsted also
commented extremely positively on other projects, believing that “probably there is
no object of art that Americans of cultivated taste generally more long to see in
Europe, than an English park” 217 . Nevertheless, despite Olmsted’s report, there was
no lack of experiments in landscape gardening in America. In just a few decades,
attention moved from rural parks to the interpretation of rural cemeteries, that is to
say cemeteries which were conceived as proper public spaces, which could be used
thanks to specifically designed pathways through the park. Although Olmsted
showed no enthusiasm for rural cemeteries and did not mention the phenomenon
in his comparisons to enhance the English experiments, contemporary historians of
the garden agreed that the movement to promote rural cemeteries 218 was of
extreme interest in America. Norman T. Foster, in particular, believed the rural
cemetery to be directly connected to the development of landscape gardening in
urban parks: “It should not be overlooked that a completely American invention,
the , may possibly have influenced public interest in park‐like
scenery” 219 . The first of such cemeteries was Mount Auburn, Cambridge,
Massachusetts (1831) [Figure 100], designed by Henry Alexander Scammel
Dearborn (1783‐1851) with Jacob Bigelow (1787‐1879) and Alexander Wadsworth
(1790‐1851). The role of Bigelow 220 was, however, decisive as regards the planning
in 1825. As he was a doctor, he believed it necessary to get rid of the traditional
practice of burial next to urban churches. He was supported in his theory by
217 Ibid., p. 133
218 See BENDER, Thomas, “The "Rural" Cemetery Movement: Urban Travail and the Appeal of
Nature”, Published in The New England Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), pp. 196‐211
219 NEWTON, Norman T., Design on the Land. The Development of Landscape Architecture,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 268; as regards
the history of the cemetery in 19th century in Europe, see the article by CURL, James Stevens, “The
Architecture and Planning of the Nineteenth‐Century Cemetery”, Garden History, Vol. 3, No. 3
(Summer, 1975), pp. 13‐41
220 Jacob Bigelow (1787‐1879) is the author of the one of first American medical‐botanical book:
American medical botany, being a collection of the native medicinal plants of the United States,
containing their botanical history and chemical analysis, and properties and uses in medicine, diet
and the arts, with coloured engravings, Boston, Cummings and Hillard, 1817
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