Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Andrew Jackson Downing. Mills's proposals for the Mall and for a national
museum were not adopted, but James Renwick's design for the Smithsonian
Institution evinced the same spirit of gothic revivalism, and Downing's sub-
sequent plan for the Mall displayed a similar gardenesque sensibility.
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Downing's 1851 plan for the Mall epitomized mid-nineteenth-century
perceptions of idealized urban nature. This was hardly surprising, as the
New York designer, nurseryman, and writer played a preeminent role in
articulating the reigning fashions in landscape design, rural architecture, and
public park development. Downing adapted English theories to elite and
middle-class American audiences, designing estate grounds along the
Hudson River, publishing influential topics on architecture and landscape
design, and editing
The Horticulturist,
a popular journal that set the pace in
such matters. Downing viewed the Mall commission as an ideal opportu-
nity to produce a national object lesson in the aesthetics and ideology of
the American public park. The biggest problem, Downing noted, was that
no such thing existed. Several older cities had transformed obsolete com-
mons and fortifications into public promenades, and a few were graced
with ornamented squares and garden-like cemeteries, but the rapid growth
of American cities had left urban populations without easy access to the
edifying influences of nature and attractive scenery. Downing and his asso-
ciates lobbied energetically for the establishment of bona fide parks in
major American cities.Transforming the Mall from an undeveloped morass
into a model public pleasure ground would provide an ideal opportunity to
demonstrate the social value and the design characteristics of a truly Amer-
ican approach to the long-cherished ideal of “rus in urb.”
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Downing outlined his vision in a brief essay submitted with the 1851
plan. First and foremost, he proposed to create America's first “national
Park.” Downing's vision of the ideal national park was not an enclosure of
pristine wilderness, which could be found in abundance throughout the
frontier regions at the time, but an explicitly designed landscape in the cen-
ter of the nation's capital. Second, by inventing a prototype for the Ameri-
can public park, he hoped that his scheme would serve as a model for
similar developments throughout the country. Third, he emphasized the
proposal's educational value as “a public museum of living trees and
shrubs,” where visitors to Washington could steep themselves in horticul-
tural knowledge. Downing declared that this combination of artistic, scien-
tific, and democratic principles “would serve, more than anything else that
could be devised, to embellish and give interest to the Capital.”
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