Report on the New York Botanical Garden

by Olmsted Brothers

The other scheme would be to formalize the treatment of the land on which the building fronts to a width comparable with that of the façade itself, and would probably extend this formal treatment out along the axis of the building (although not necessarily at the same width throughout) to the opposite side of the topographical unit over which the eve sweeps as one looks out from the building; in other words, to the opposite side of the valley.

The first scheme could originally have been carried out successfully at less expense than the second. It probably could now be carried out at less expense, although only by the sacrifice of the well-grown tulip tree avenues and some other features of the present scheme. It would, however, require that a large area, certainly not less than 20 acres, near the Museum and between it and the Conservatory, should be kept permanently in a rather broad, open, park-like treatment, which would be suitable for the exhibition of a limited number of well-grown specimen trees but for hardly any other specifically botanical garden purposes.

We are inclined to believe that this area, so conveniently adjacent to the Museum, to the Conservatory and to transportation services, ought to be much more intensively used than would be possible under such a broad, simple, park-like treatment; that it should include, for example, provision for diversified exhibition gardens and kindred purposes.

Such intensive use for various appropriate botanical garden purposes might conceivably be worked out in a series of units almost wholly informal and naturalistic in character; but for many of them there would be much more assurance of securing results good of their kind and at the same time compact, efficient and easily maintained when visited by large numbers of people, if they were frankly artificial or formal in their arrangement. Such units, suitably designed and disposed, could be provided with backgrounds and enclosing and separating masses of trees, whether deciduous or coniferous or both, which would constitute part of the botanical collection of trees and would be quite as numerous as could be provided for in a rather open park-like treatment such as has hitherto been attempted in this region, if not more so.

On the theory of more intensive use, therefore, the second and more ambitious scheme involving a considerable amount of formally planned development as distinguished from a mainly naturalistic landscape, would seem to be the better.

With either kind of general scheme, although more readily perhaps in one characterized by the more extensive use of formal elements in the plan, it would be feasible to provide in this vicinity for the proposed Garden House and a representative Formal Garden of the most exquisite sort, as previously discussed in [Part III], [Section 4].

In our preliminary report we ventured to suggest one possible site for such a Garden House and for the Garden in connection with it, but we are by no means satisfied that these would be the best locations, nor can the best locations be determined without developing a complete plan for the entire area in question.

Whether a mainly informal scheme or a more largely formal scheme is adopted, a permanently satisfactory result in this part of the Botanical Garden can in our opinion be attained only by radical, extensive and costly changes. Plans for either kind of scheme, sufficiently well worked out to be dependable and to be clearly explanatory of the results to which they would lead—such plans, in other words, as the Managers should have before them at the time of reaching a definite decision in a matter of such importance and involving commitment to such large expenditures—can be prepared only with much study and labor. Every part would be so interlocked with other parts that it would be unsafe to stop short of working out all the parts in considerable detail, continually revising and adjusting until a satisfactory and harmonious whole is quite certainly assured.

We have made numerous diagrammatic and partial studies in hopes of being able to illustrate and clarify our general statements above, but those which show enough features to be really explanatory go further and appear to commit us to more definite conclusions than is safe without much more thorough and detailed planning than we have felt to be justified at present.

If it is thought that there would be a reasonable prospect of carrying out such a radical plan of improvement in the vicinity of the Museum as we have outlined above, we should be interested to work it out in definite form so that at least the pros and cons could be thoroughly canvassed and clearly understood. To do so is so much of an undertaking that we hesitate to embark upon it and to ask the donors of our services to pay for it, without knowing whether the Managers would be inclined to consider such a proposition favorably.