Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

In his early life he wished to be a horticulturist. Years afterward he found at the door of his New York studio an opportunity to practice his green thumb and at the same time to put his play-spot theories into practical development. In 1907 he was invited to join the board of directors and serve on the executive committee of the Metropolitan Parks Association which became the Parks and Playgrounds Association of the City of New York. His membership was one of his special interests for twenty years. He was appointed chairman of a subcommittee which later became an independent body looking after the affairs of Central Park.

Gutzon was highly pleased with his work as permanent chairman. Forty years had passed since the country’s two pioneer landscape artists had made one of the most famous parks in the world from some rocks and a swamp in the middle of Manhattan Island. They had brought in hundreds of tons of soil and thousands of rare trees and shrubs. They had laid out driveways for carriages and winding paths for pedestrians. They had provided lakes and playgrounds for children. In 1907 Samuel Parsons, the landscape architect under Mayor Green, was begging uselessly for better park equipment and a new watering system. The sculptor felt that he had been cast in the right role. An appropriation of $100,000 for improving the water system was passed that year.

The sculptor gathered the curses of the old school of artists when he joined the parks association to keep the Academy of Design from putting up a building in Bryant Park. He won a taxpayer’s suit against the city in 1911 to prevent the slovenly extension of Riverside Drive in the Washington Heights region. In 1918, in a similar action, he prevented the building of an unsightly pumping station in Morningside Park. And routine park business, outside of the courts, amused him continuously because it was so full of trouble.

In 1910 Mayor Hylan appointed Charles Stover, who had worked under the direction of the park association, his Commissioner of Parks. Stover promptly turned the park into a playground, principally by digging swimming pools and wading puddles wherever there was room for them. He came into direct opposition with Parsons the landscape architect. They quarreled. The commissioner held up the architect’s salary on the ground that he was absent from his office too much.

Gutzon entered the fight with a letter to the New York Sun, pointing out that the new commissioner had “not rotted enough manure to fertilize a ten-acre lot, nor mustered enough courage to contract for a single manure pit.” He reminded his readers that “Last year a $100,000 high pressure water system remained absolutely idle for the lack of a little hose, and $100,000 worth of property was allowed to go to ruin.” He arrayed himself against a movement to impeach Stover and put his own report on the needs of the park before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. With him on the committee was a fine array of talent—Jacob Schiff, Francis Lynder Stetson, William J. Gibson, George W. Perkins, Charles L. Burmeister and some others. They got a respectful hearing.

The sculptor submitted with his report sixty samples of Central Park soil that had been analyzed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The budget committee gave him hearty approval and allotted enough funds to save the park.

During the years Gutzon served on its board of directors, many important questions were discussed by the Parks Association, such as what to do with the old Arsenal building, what about additions to the Metropolitan Museum, what about monuments and statues, what about Riverside Park and the New York Central Railroad tracts. He deplored the usual attitude of the Association which in its zeal to “save the park” objected to almost every new proposal, regardless of merit. He took most of his indignation to the newspapers.

In 1922 he fought for the request of the National Sculpture Society to hold an open-air exhibition near the Metropolitan Museum, although he was not a member of the society. The Association opposed him. He declared in the New York Times:

The charm of Central Park lies in the development of its original, natural contours. The National Sculpture Society should be allowed an area of fifty to one hundred acres and there place their exhibit to suit the natural conditions, precisely as they would place it if it were permanently located. I feel certain if some such plan is inaugurated, it will be successful....

And he took an active part in the city’s big stir about the proposed development of Riverside Park in connection with the New York Central’s right of way along the Hudson River front. It was part of his plan that “The park from the Drive, with its river glimpses, should be the most tempting in Manhattan, and every walk into it should possess a separate individual interest.” And so in February 1917 he wrote to Mayor Mitchell.