Report on the New York Botanical Garden

by Olmsted Brothers

There is, however, one part of any plan for this vicinity about which more needs to be said, and about which something even might be done in the way of execution without dangerously complicating the main problem of how to treat the valley between the Museum and the Conservatory ridge. We refer to the reception and initial distribution of the throngs of visitors who enter from the terminal of the Elevated Railway.

It is important, as has already been pointed out, to induce the rapid dispersal of visitors, and it might be held that a more intensive development in the vicinity of the Museum and Conservatory would necessarily defeat this purpose and lead to congestion.

There are, however, two sides to this question. A large proportion of the visitors, especially of those on foot delivered by the rapid transit lines, have no definite objective when they enter the Garden. Also most of them are lazy about walking far; and, if confronted, upon entering, by a relatively uninviting prospect with few objects of much attractiveness immediately beyond them, are extremely apt to settle down or to “mill around” near the entrance without going much further. The mere fact of the existence of interesting things half a mile away, which they can not see and do not know about, is very little inducement to their dispersal. We believe that a better theory even for the mere purpose of dispersing the public and inducing them in large numbers to penetrate into the interior of the Botanical Garden, and certainly a better means of making them promptly interested and satisfied, is to provide from the very start a series of markedly attractive prospects, leading on from one to another in several different directions, so as to “toll” them along; making what they see at each step offer a direct inducement to go further; drawing some to the right and some to the left and some straight ahead; but, no matter which course they choose, leading them onward step by step and making continued movement psychologically inviting.

We think that no one who studies the conditions on the ground can deny that those who arrive by the Elevated Railway at the western corner of the Garden (the route of approach which is apparently used by the largest numbers and is likely to remain so) upon arriving at the end of the causeway near the men’s toilet house are confronted with a very uninviting prospect. They debouch abruptly on a disagreeable and dangerous grade crossing of two automobile roads. Some of them are deflected at once into the not unattractive little cul-de-sac between the railroad and these roads. Those who cross the roads find themselves crossing a broad path nearly at right angles to their course and in neither direction showing anything that is very inviting or likely to draw them aside. Ahead of them rises an uncomfortably steep path in rather poor condition and again not presenting any immediately inviting prospect, although beyond the top of the rise the Conservatory looms above the foliage in a way that suggests something interesting in that direction.

If in the absence of other immediate attraction and of a knowledge of just how to reach more distant points of interest, they pursue this mild invitation to a slightly toilsome ascent, they reach the west corner of the Conservatory terraces in a rather unimpressive way and find their way around either to the main entrance court on the southwest side of the Conservatory or to the flower garden on its northeast side, whence they can drift along pleasantly enough through part of the Pinetum to the Herbaceous Grounds and so to the east or southeast, entirely by-passing the vicinity of the Museum.

To reach the latter from this important entrance the normal route is to turn abruptly to the left after crossing the two roadways and descend on a distinctly uninviting path, shut off from the main body of the Garden area by a hillside rather uninterestingly planted. This hill must be passed by a walk of a sixth of a mile, parallel with and looking toward the automobile roads and the railroad, before entering the main cross-valley between the Conservatory ridge and the Museum. This valley is entered at an elevation which does not present an attractive or inspiring view of such landscape quality as the valley has and does not lead the eye and invite the steps to the very delightful region east of it. The Museum looms into view in one of its less attractive aspects, but to those who are more interested in outdoor than in in-door matters a walk of fully a third of a mile intervenes before they begin to find themselves in surroundings which have the quality so much to be desired, upon entering the Garden, that of giving immediate delight while stimulating to press onward.

This is negative criticism. To take the constructive side, without pretending to submit a final solution, let us imagine how a solution might be approached from the point of view, let us say, of a stage manager bent upon getting certain fairly definite pleasurable reactions from large numbers of people and ready to spend money freely to get his “effects.”

Starting from the station of the Elevated they would be led, as now, through a belt of trees rising from the low land on either side of the causeway which they must traverse to reach solid ground. This is the one admirable feature of the present approach—a sort of sylvan screen, in passing which to brush off, as it were, the impressions of the utterly urban commonplaceness of the railway mechanism. The sylvan character could well be more complete, more overarched and umbrageous; it could well extend somewhat further along the route; and instead of adhering to the boundary of the property the causeway might well strike at once diagonally into it, so that the surroundings on both sides would be permanently controllable. It would almost certainly be made to rise on a gentle gradient so as to pass across the two automobile roads, above grade, probably by an arched bridge of sufficient width to carry a narrow plantation of shrubbery on either side, after the manner of the bridges which carry roads and paths across the transverse traffic-roads of Central Park, arriving at grade upon the flatter portion of the hillside west of the Conservatory, where the main lead would debouch from the shut-in sylvan vestibule upon an open sunny space, rich with color of flowers and well-kept, smooth, green turf; strongly enclosed on the northwesterly side, toward the railroad and the city and the direction of bleak winds, by a dense enframement of tall-growing full-foliaged trees. The present enframement of the space on the southeast is fairly good, with its inviting glimpse of the Conservatory dome and its suggestion of specifically horticultural interest. This unit of first impression, about a hundred yards in length from southwest to northeast, would occupy the space where the word “Pinetum” first occurs upon the Guide Map, but where in fact are ill-kept, impoverished slopes of grass, bordered by weak and dwindling firs, of species which have proved not to thrive in such a locality. In character of design this unit might be anything rich and vigorous and gay and inviting, but perhaps a rather sophisticated naturalistic treatment might be best, a foretaste in petto of the prevailing characteristics of the Botanical Garden as a whole, as an antechamber to the principal elements of formal design adjacent to the Conservatory and the Museum, through which or past which lies access to the main body of the grounds.

Before entering this unit of first impression, but just within sight of it, would branch easily to the right a path of direct approach to the main entrance court on the southwest side of the Conservatory, so treated as to give a glimpse suggestive of the kind of interest to be found by following that course. Passing through the unit of first impression one would cross the main path or paths of the flower garden which lies northeast of the Conservatory at a grade and in a way which would give glimpses of that garden, inviting some to turn aside, while the main lead would continue northeasterly at easy grades through successive minor units of informal character but individual, distinctive interest, all backed up by heavy tree plantations on the northwesterly side, to a point on the hillside pleasantly overlooking the valley southeast of the Museum. Here the choice would be open of proceeding, on the one hand, directly toward the Museum, from a point on its axis at a distance of rather more than two hundred yards from the building, or, on the other hand, through the valley to the plainly visible and very pleasant and inviting region south of the Museum, through which to reach the Herbaceous Grounds, the Economic Garden, the Hemlock Grove, the Water Gardens, and all that lies beyond them.

Because of its grades, because of the sense of at once getting into the heart of things, and because of leading on insensibly from one point of attraction to others beyond it, such an entrance scheme would be incalculably more effective than the present one, and as already indicated could be made to fit in with almost any final treatment of the main cross-valley near the Museum.