Report on the New York Botanical Garden

by Olmsted Brothers

With this new through-traffic line and the complete improvement of Bronx Park East, the interior roads can be wholly or almost wholly relieved of the burden of through-traffic, and some of them could advantageously be eliminated. One road in particular seems to us unnecessary and undesirable under such conditions. This is the one which extends past the easterly corner of the Museum and across the Water Gardens. As long as it remains, it will offer a temptation to high-speed through-travel by automobiles and motor cycles between the Southern Boulevard Entrance and Bronx River Parkway. It will also interpose a very objectionable traffic-line between the Museum, with other features yet to be developed in its vicinity, and the entire area of the Garden to the east of it. Incidentally it constitutes a strongly marked line in the landscape composition, having a very awkward and unpleasant relation to the orientation of the large and dominating architectural mass of the Museum itself.

We are inclined to think that the steep road which now runs from the hollow below the Iris Garden up over the ridge and down to the junction of Southern Boulevard and Pelham Parkway, could advantageously be eliminated. To do so would certainly be advantageous to the great majority of people who visit the Garden on foot, and would remove one element of danger and complexity at the important traffic-junction where it now makes a five-corner intersection. It would also facilitate a more useful and more beautiful treatment of the Iris Garden unit through which the road now runs.

On the other hand, certain additional road construction is necessary to complete a satisfactory system of interior circulation for the Garden.

One such addition of unquestionable importance is a link across the river somewhere south of the Gorge, so as to avoid the necessity of going outside of the Garden enclosure into Pelham Parkway and back again into the enclosure in passing between the southeasterly and southwesterly parts of the land. In our opinion such a road and bridge, while ultimately necessary, are far less urgent than many other improvements. But it is extremely important to fix the precise location and grades of such a future road because of its intimate relation to the design of all the adjacent areas, within which improvements in maintenance, in planting, in the path system, etc., are needed. These should all be directed toward a well-studied landscape treatment into which this road will fit perfectly whenever it is built. In other words, the design of this road and bridge ought to be part of a design for the permanent treatment of the two landscape units to the north of it—namely the Hemlock Gorge unit and the suggested Landscape Garden unit—and of the picnic grove unit to the south of it; and no permanent improvements should be attempted in any of these areas until the plans for all have been worked out with a considerable degree of finality. Our present impression is that the best line for the road would be, very roughly, as indicated on Map A. This shows alternative lines for the easterly end of the road, choice between which can not be made without working out the details with much care. In any case the road ought not to be permitted to encroach upon the natural southern and southeastern limits of the topographic unit suggested for development as a Landscape Garden. And probably in any case an underpass should be provided for a foot-path connecting that unit with the picnic grove unit.

The proposal of a west-side parkway for through-traffic outlined at the beginning of this portion of the Report, together with the development of the vicinity of the Museum, discussed in the following section, Part V, necessitates a revision of the vehicular approach to the Museum and of the connection along its westerly side with the roads in the Fruticetum. As to the latter connection, it would be almost as undesirable to force vehicles, circulating within the Garden between the vicinity of the Fruticetum and the vicinity of the Museum and points further south, to go outside the Garden enclosure into the contemplated through-travel road and back again, as it is to force out into Pelham Parkway the vehicles that need to cross the Bronx River in the southerly part of the Garden. And for reasons already indicated we believe it would be far better to provide such an interior circuit west of the Museum and the Water Gardens, even at the expense of considerable local regrading and replanting, than to maintain permanently the present road in the heart of the Garden northeast of the Museum.

The location of the present east-and-west road south of the Museum through the center of the valley which lies between the Museum and the ridge northeast of Conservatory Range No. 1, and the concurrent splitting of this valley into two halves of contrasting treatment—the northeast half occupied on the Museum axis by a formal approach to the Museum which begins abruptly in the very middle of the valley unit, while the southwest half is treated as an open informal landscape—is to us very distressing and esthetically self-contradictory. Some permanent cross-connection for the interior circulation of vehicular traffic somewhere between the Museum and Conservatory Range No. 1 seems essential. The best place for it we are not yet sure of, because it is involved with three other very perplexing problems which will be discussed in the next section of the Report.

Briefly there seem to be four possible solutions: One would be to leave the cross-road substantially where it is but to unify the valley by applying the same kind of landscape treatment to both its halves; either by extending a generally formal treatment southwesterly across the valley from the Museum to the opposite ridge, this treatment being traversed by the cross-road; or by curtailing the formal treatment to the immediate vicinity of the Museum and leaving the entire heart of the valley treated informally but still traversed by the cross-road. A second would be to shift the cross-road much closer to the Museum and leave the entire heart of the valley open for treatment as a single unit, either informal or formal, but undivided by a road. A third would accomplish a similar result by shifting the cross-road much further from the Museum to a position fairly well up the slope on the southwesterly side of the valley. A fourth would be to remove the road entirely from the valley by resorting to the old road line just to the northeast of Conservatory Range No. 1.

Upon the whole, as well as we can judge without working out thoroughly the problems discussed in the next section of this Report, it would seem that number three or number two of the above alternatives would hold the best promise of first-rate ultimate results. These two are roughly indicated as alternatives on Map A.

Under the circumstances, clearly, no considerable permanent changes should be undertaken in the area between and surrounding the Museum and Conservatory Range No. 1 until a satisfactory general plan for this whole area has been worked out and agreed upon, unless they are such as would surely fit in with any one of the above mentioned alternatives.

Only one other additional road for interior circulation has occurred to us as at all desirable, and we are not yet entirely confident that it is worth while. The road now under construction from the Rose Garden to the Allerton Avenue Entrance is in part ugly and positively dangerous in alignment and grade. The most objectionable points are where it crosses the Lake Valley and near the undeveloped Arboretum Entrance. It is apparently possible to lay out a substitute for this section of the road on good lines and grades, by swinging off from this newly built road at a depression southwest of the Propagating Houses, crossing by an arch over the ravine east of the Lorillard Mansion and from there to the Rose Garden following approximately the old Lorillard approach road. In this position the road would overlook, without intruding upon, the Landscape Garden discussed in [Part III], [Section 4], and would make it possible to bypass or entirely to eliminate that section of the newly constructed road which now injures by its embankment the Lake Valley and which has the only steep and dangerous gradient and curve in the Garden road-system.