building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Landscape as a principle of urban planning
In the summer of 1850, before receiving the commission for the Mall project in
Washington, Andrew Jackson Downing travelled to England to study English
landscape design for himself. During a visit to London, Downing met Calvert Vaux
(1824‐1895), a young apprentice architect in the office of Lewis Nockalls
Cottingham (1787‐1847), a leading figure in the Gothic movement. At an exhibition
of watercolour landscapes, Downing was deeply struck by Vaux’s artistic talent and
was convinced he had found a man to help him put his landscape theories into
practice and apply them to architecture. Vaux followed Downing to the United
States, where they worked together for two years as partners and built several
Gothic style houses.
On Downing’s death in 1852, Vaux decided to continue his own professional career
in New York and complete some housing projects he had begun with his old
partner, to become a benchmark in the field of landscape design. The tragic end of
the father of the American landscape occurred when a steamboat went up in flames
and finally destroyed the romantic dreams personified by the work of the
protagonists of the first half of the century. It had become necessary to reconcile
the metropolis and nature. The picturesque impulses of landscape gardening had to
face up to the new needs of the expanding city.
Vaux and Olmsted were the interpreters of these new demands. After the death of
Downing and the commemoration of his genius, his lesson was revised and the
mythical elements around his person disappeared. The landscape was to take a
decisive step forwards to become a modern tool of urban planning and
fundamental premise for the development of the American city.
The opportunity to test the renewed aesthetic needs was provided by the
competition to design Central Park in New York [Figures 121‐127], an urban park for
which Downing himself had battled during his final years.
New York was the ideal city in which to experiment any relapses in town planning in
a large landscape project.
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