building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

and did not come up to the expectations of the construction development they
envisaged. Subsequently, the borders of the area were extended from the 59th
street to the 106th, to include the area of the Croton Reservoir, an artificial water
basin, the final part in the Croton System, a major work of hydraulic engineering to
exploit the waters of the River Croton. It was only in 1859 that the area planned for
in the project took on the current shape, which goes from the 59th street as far as
110th street, and in 1863 the city administration bought the remaining portions of
land between the 106th street and the 110th [Figures 121‐122].
As Lewis Mumford said, the cultural movement in favour of public parks gained the
support of the general public in the 1860s and the numerous works by Frederick
Law Olmsted gave the cause the decisive push, despite the fact that during the
period following the Civil War there were heated discussions about less exploitation
of natural resources. 257
Olmsted was the person who revised the passionate demands for romantic nature,
expressed by the Conservation Movement and by the Park Movement, and gave
them a statute of method, which aimed to redress the incongruencies and
rebalance the deficiencies of industrial development.
It was Lewis Mumford, who highlighted the precise, cultural role played by the
landscapes architects in the fight against blackguardly development, begun by a
system of territorial government based on the grid. Olmsted, for example, proved
with projects such as Riverside [Figure 54] that alternative solutions were possible
and popular prejudice in favour of monotony dictated by the anonymous repetition
of rectangular lots could be broken.
Up until 1857, the year of the competition to design Central Park, Olmsted had
shown interest in agriculture and had taken care of a farm committed to
experimental cultivation techniques. He had written numerous observations of the
landscape in a series of journeys through Europe and in the southern regions of the
United State as a newspaper correspondent.
257 MUMFORD, Lewis, The Brown Decades, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1931, pp.35‐36
(Italian translation edited by Francesco Dal Co, Architettura e cultura in America, dalla guerra civile
all’ ultima frontiera, Venice, Marsilio, 1977, pp.73‐74)
156