The Plan of sidney & Adams
After the first aristocratic occupants of the Schuylkill riverside estates had fled the city, the appropriation of Lemon Hill and Sedgley estate as public parks took place under the auspices of another later generation of the Philadelphia establishment (led by the Cope family) who sat on councils directing the first urban environmental movement in Philadelphia’s history. What were their motives and how did they go about appropriating the use of Lemon Hill and Sedgley estates in the first place? And what possible motives guided the construction of the plan for a centralized park system in 1858 which would not become formalized until a decade later into Fairmount Park? To what degree were their connections with Philadelphia’s rich aristocratic and botanical past? And what connections can possibly be made with Olmsted’s work which was highly influential among other urban parks on the eastern seaboard?
After the city’s acquisition of the Sedgley estate, the city had secured two areas as public spaces which could be used for public recreation and secured some hundred or so acres from further water pollution. But realizing that it needed more acreage for public use through a centralized commission which could facilitate the purchase of land on behalf of the city, the Committee on Public Property in 1858 decided to “weld the newly acquired upriver estates” comprising 130 acres into a single park[1]. The designation of the Fairmount Park Council to purchase new property on behalf of the city would come a decade later. In the meanwhile, the city set up a competition and invited topographical plans for uniting the 130 acres of land directly north of Fairmount hill. For the competition, a total of eight firms competed, and the winning firm was Sidney and Adams[2]. They were by far the most experienced of the group, as Sidney was an English cartographer with wide experience “shaping large romantic landscapes” and had much experience with “suburban clientele, working on the rural outskirts of Philadelphia” where the upper class establishment (including prior residents of Fairmount) were increasingly making their homes[3]. Palles, the previously favored designer during the competition who was not chosen, lent his name to many of publications of Sidney & Adams’ plan and was credited with the subsequent plan in a move which would lead historians to attribute the original plan to him. However, local historian Michael Lewis notes that this was simply not the case[4].
Other historians have also realized that Palles was also not the creator of the original plan for the 130 acres of Fairmount Park. Yet many have noted a similarity between Sidney & Adam plan to Olmsted’s basic approaches to urban parks and Olmsted’s actual submission of a plan a decade later to the Fairmount Park Commission. For instance, Michael Lewis notes how the “Grand Avenue and carriage drive, an open parade ground, and a terraced garden, which were to be interlaced by a network of serpentine paths” was much like “the philosophy of Olmsted’s work in New York”[5]. Likewise, David Schuyler also supports the notion that Sidney & Adams’ plan mirrors Olmsted’s in that they both provide “the greatest possible contrast to the artificiality of the city”[6]. In many cases, Lewis echoes Schuyler’s influential piece on Fairmount Park when Schuyler quotes Sidney’s intention of providing “a thick screen of deciduous trees on the outside boundaries of the park” in order to “shut out as much as possible the view from within the Park”[7]. However, does this merely qualify as supporting evidence for Olmsted’s influence on the design of Fairmount Park, although his plan was never considered in 1858 and rejected in 1868?
While Sidney & Adams’ plans ultimately did not fully come to fruition because of the Civil War, it still had a strong imprint on future plans for the park when Fairmount was reassessed after the war in 1868. It would be useful to compare Olmsted and Vaux’s letter and submission to the council with Sidney & Adams’ subsequent plan to see any differences or similarities which may have occurred between the two.
First, Schuyler notes that Sidney’s plan blocking the city by large deciduous trees presented a correlation with Olmsted’s work in Central Park. This may certainly be the case. But in Olmsted’s later letter and plan to the FPC, it is not so clear that he wants such a large division between the city proper and Fairmount. This may have been merely practical, for Olmsted realized the great expense that such a large park as Fairmount (in its present day ten times larger than Central Park) could be compared to Sidney’s 130 acre plan. Yet it is still worth noting that there were generally no such strong divisions between urban and natural landscape as Sidney had proposed with a wall of deciduous trees; one case would be Laurel Hill Cemetery, where he already recognizes its “pleasantly undulating, agreeably wooded” nature which should be “laid out for residences in the semi-rural way already spoken of as suitable for the district in the neighborhood of the Park on the other side of the river”[8].
Unlike Central Park, which was a created urban landscape, Olmsted did not plan large scale renovations for Fairmount Park, which had largely been preserved in a semi-pastoral existence from its aristocratic roots. Theo White, in his historical piece on Fairmount Park, points out the extent to which Olmsted emphasizes the use of “broad meadow-like surfaces” on Georges Hill (formerly another 18th century botanical garden) to exhibit “shadowy and uncertain limits”[9]. However, this proposal was not carried out earlier by Sidney, who aimed for a setting which was littered with gardens and immaculate shrubbery. The freedom and liberality with which Olmsted attributed the wide meadows he envisioned for Fairmount Park directly contrasted with Sidney’s notion of a highly managed Fairmount “garden” which was a product of his training with romantic landscapes. This would have directly conflicted with Olmsted’s entire natural philosophy, which contrasted the work of cultural “art” inherent in European and Romantic landscaping with his development of a uniquely American park identity.
After the city’s acquisition of the Sedgley estate, the city had secured two areas as public spaces which could be used for public recreation and secured some hundred or so acres from further water pollution. But realizing that it needed more acreage for public use through a centralized commission which could facilitate the purchase of land on behalf of the city, the Committee on Public Property in 1858 decided to “weld the newly acquired upriver estates” comprising 130 acres into a single park[1]. The designation of the Fairmount Park Council to purchase new property on behalf of the city would come a decade later. In the meanwhile, the city set up a competition and invited topographical plans for uniting the 130 acres of land directly north of Fairmount hill. For the competition, a total of eight firms competed, and the winning firm was Sidney and Adams[2]. They were by far the most experienced of the group, as Sidney was an English cartographer with wide experience “shaping large romantic landscapes” and had much experience with “suburban clientele, working on the rural outskirts of Philadelphia” where the upper class establishment (including prior residents of Fairmount) were increasingly making their homes[3]. Palles, the previously favored designer during the competition who was not chosen, lent his name to many of publications of Sidney & Adams’ plan and was credited with the subsequent plan in a move which would lead historians to attribute the original plan to him. However, local historian Michael Lewis notes that this was simply not the case[4].
Other historians have also realized that Palles was also not the creator of the original plan for the 130 acres of Fairmount Park. Yet many have noted a similarity between Sidney & Adam plan to Olmsted’s basic approaches to urban parks and Olmsted’s actual submission of a plan a decade later to the Fairmount Park Commission. For instance, Michael Lewis notes how the “Grand Avenue and carriage drive, an open parade ground, and a terraced garden, which were to be interlaced by a network of serpentine paths” was much like “the philosophy of Olmsted’s work in New York”[5]. Likewise, David Schuyler also supports the notion that Sidney & Adams’ plan mirrors Olmsted’s in that they both provide “the greatest possible contrast to the artificiality of the city”[6]. In many cases, Lewis echoes Schuyler’s influential piece on Fairmount Park when Schuyler quotes Sidney’s intention of providing “a thick screen of deciduous trees on the outside boundaries of the park” in order to “shut out as much as possible the view from within the Park”[7]. However, does this merely qualify as supporting evidence for Olmsted’s influence on the design of Fairmount Park, although his plan was never considered in 1858 and rejected in 1868?
While Sidney & Adams’ plans ultimately did not fully come to fruition because of the Civil War, it still had a strong imprint on future plans for the park when Fairmount was reassessed after the war in 1868. It would be useful to compare Olmsted and Vaux’s letter and submission to the council with Sidney & Adams’ subsequent plan to see any differences or similarities which may have occurred between the two.
First, Schuyler notes that Sidney’s plan blocking the city by large deciduous trees presented a correlation with Olmsted’s work in Central Park. This may certainly be the case. But in Olmsted’s later letter and plan to the FPC, it is not so clear that he wants such a large division between the city proper and Fairmount. This may have been merely practical, for Olmsted realized the great expense that such a large park as Fairmount (in its present day ten times larger than Central Park) could be compared to Sidney’s 130 acre plan. Yet it is still worth noting that there were generally no such strong divisions between urban and natural landscape as Sidney had proposed with a wall of deciduous trees; one case would be Laurel Hill Cemetery, where he already recognizes its “pleasantly undulating, agreeably wooded” nature which should be “laid out for residences in the semi-rural way already spoken of as suitable for the district in the neighborhood of the Park on the other side of the river”[8].
Unlike Central Park, which was a created urban landscape, Olmsted did not plan large scale renovations for Fairmount Park, which had largely been preserved in a semi-pastoral existence from its aristocratic roots. Theo White, in his historical piece on Fairmount Park, points out the extent to which Olmsted emphasizes the use of “broad meadow-like surfaces” on Georges Hill (formerly another 18th century botanical garden) to exhibit “shadowy and uncertain limits”[9]. However, this proposal was not carried out earlier by Sidney, who aimed for a setting which was littered with gardens and immaculate shrubbery. The freedom and liberality with which Olmsted attributed the wide meadows he envisioned for Fairmount Park directly contrasted with Sidney’s notion of a highly managed Fairmount “garden” which was a product of his training with romantic landscapes. This would have directly conflicted with Olmsted’s entire natural philosophy, which contrasted the work of cultural “art” inherent in European and Romantic landscaping with his development of a uniquely American park identity.
On yet another level, Sidney’s plans integrated a parade ground to be held for festivals and events. It is clear here that no possible parallel could be held with Olmsted’s vision of free-ranging meadows and interspersed trees for Fairmount. For Olmsted, the park was to provide every diversion from the “crowding and conflicting currents of life which are habitually associated with the confined range of streets and contracted enclosures of the town”[10]. The strong sentiment of distinguishing elements of wilderness from their integration with urban life strongly contrasted with European parks (which widely integrated parade grounds) and Sidney’s plans.
In many ways, Sidney’s plans evoked the old sensibilities of the aristocratic elites. His extensive reincorporation of public gardens into the park itself was ultimately unfeasible and would be quite expensive to maintain on today’s scale of Fairmount Park’s 9000 acres. Yet the set of interlacing walkways and artificial rock steps Sidney planned for the original 130 acres (many of which survive today near the art museum) resemble the works he produced on a smaller scale for suburban elites. He attempted to bring back some specter of the large managed gardens and woods of the 18th century aristocratic elite that had disintegrated or burned down (of which a few survived). The deciduous trees which Sidney had initially planned to line the boundaries of Lemon Hill and Sedgley can be seen as guarding Fairmount’s aristocratic past and resurrecting it in the spirit of 19th century Romanticism, a vision which was never fully carried out.
[1] Pg 285 Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[2] Pg 286 Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[3] Pg 287Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[4] Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[5] Pg 288 Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[6] Pg 103-104 “Evolution of the Urban Park” in The New Urban Landscape by David Schuyler
[7] Pg 104 “Evolution of the Urban Park” in The New Urban Landscape
[8] Pg 240 in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted volume VI 1865-1874 compiled by Johns Hopkins
[9] The passage white mentions comes from pg 233 in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted volume VI 1865-1874
[10] Pg 233 The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted volume VI 1865-1874
In many ways, Sidney’s plans evoked the old sensibilities of the aristocratic elites. His extensive reincorporation of public gardens into the park itself was ultimately unfeasible and would be quite expensive to maintain on today’s scale of Fairmount Park’s 9000 acres. Yet the set of interlacing walkways and artificial rock steps Sidney planned for the original 130 acres (many of which survive today near the art museum) resemble the works he produced on a smaller scale for suburban elites. He attempted to bring back some specter of the large managed gardens and woods of the 18th century aristocratic elite that had disintegrated or burned down (of which a few survived). The deciduous trees which Sidney had initially planned to line the boundaries of Lemon Hill and Sedgley can be seen as guarding Fairmount’s aristocratic past and resurrecting it in the spirit of 19th century Romanticism, a vision which was never fully carried out.
[1] Pg 285 Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[2] Pg 286 Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[3] Pg 287Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[4] Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[5] Pg 288 Michael Lewis “The First Design of Fairmount Park” in Vol. 130, No. 3 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
[6] Pg 103-104 “Evolution of the Urban Park” in The New Urban Landscape by David Schuyler
[7] Pg 104 “Evolution of the Urban Park” in The New Urban Landscape
[8] Pg 240 in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted volume VI 1865-1874 compiled by Johns Hopkins
[9] The passage white mentions comes from pg 233 in The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted volume VI 1865-1874
[10] Pg 233 The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted volume VI 1865-1874