The Viele Map

"In connection with this brief account of the origin of the Central Park, it seems appropriate here to notice the topographical atlas of the city of New York, prepared under the direction of General Egbert L. Viele, exhibiting the elevations and depressions of the island and the old water-courses. This map was first exhibited and described in a paper read by Mr. Viele before the Sanitary Association of the city in 1859. He gave a rapid account of many small streams which formerly existed in the lower part of Manhattan Island, but which had been filled up as the city grew. Many of these streams had produced swampy places, and he declared that five of the little parks in the city—St. John's, Washington, Tomp- kins, Madison, and Gramercy—were located entirely or in part in swamps created by these streams. Some of the streams which ran through Central Park have been utilized or smothered."

I'm always interested in things just off the center....small towns outside of big ones, second-place entries, moons, also-rans. In the story of Central Park, the also-ran was Egbert Ludovicus Viele (1825-1902), whose entry in the design contest lost out to that of Olmsted and Vaux. Such a rosey-blowsy name sits uncomfortably on an old Civil War general who was close to Abraham Lincoln (read his remembrances of Lincoln here); an engineer who created the "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", now known simply as the Viele map. As in "I've got water on my site, get me a copy of the Viele map!" which according to the New York Times has been heard at the Central Library. From a patron wearing hip waders.

Viele's map is a beautiful document, highly detailed, fancifully colored, 'long as a Buick' according to one admirer, and still consulted in engineer's offices across Manhattan. According to a document by a colleague on deposit at the New York Public Library, Viele constructed the map from older pre-development maps and his own surveys and overlaid it with the city's current streets; gathering the watercourse information soon before it would have been lost forever under the new city fabric of bricks and mortar.

"In essence, the map shows Manhattan as the watery idyll it once was. On the map, Minetta Stream runs under Washington Square. Uptown, near First Avenue and 103rd Street, water pools and collects in a large pond. A creek zigzags under the intersection of Broadway and 25th Street." (Stephen Kurutz, NYT)

Viele made the map out of concern for proper sanitary practices, having seen so many die in the War for its want and believing, as most did at the time, that "nearly one half the deaths occurring on the earth are caused by fevers in different forms, and that the principal cause of fever is a humid miasmatic state of the atmosphere, produced by the presence of an excess of moisture in the ground from which poisonous exhalations continually arise, vitiating the purer air." He may have been wrong about the miasmas, but proper drainage did in fact eliminate stagnant breeding sites for the mosquitoes and bacteria that we now know caused many nineteenth century deaths.

Modern retellings of the complex and twisting route to the construction of Central Park invariably cast Olmsted in heroic halo, with Viele as mustachioed villian (he eventually sues, claiming that Olmsted and Vaux plagiarized some of his own ideas). But his map, delicate in pink and green with designations of Marsh and Meadow, humanizes him, and New York's structural engineers continue to bless his name.

Above images are from the David Rumsey map collection; there is also a version at the New York Public Library site. The map is accessible from Google Earth, "allowing anyone with free time on their hands to figure out whether or not their apartment is built over what used to be a fetid marsh", as seen at ecotone projects.

Garden History image of the week...Kingsnorth Gardens, Folkestone in miniature

From the Science and Society Photographic Archives, originally published in the Daily Herald in the 1950s:

‘Mr and Mrs Grace of Kingsnorth Gardens, Folkestone have made a model of Kingsnorth Gardens, one of Folkestone's main beauty spots, which is just opposite their house. They have faithfully reproduced the gardens in miniature - complete to the smallest detail, including tiny trees, curving paths, fences, gates, lawns and even tiny fountains which actually play.'

I actually think this is a lovely idea...Versailles, anyone?

Garden History image of the week...Victorian plant markers

From a sale of Victoriana (including some garden items) by Simon Chorley auctioneers. I must start saying that my plants were 'found in Highnam wood'.

Anne Roberts, Feir Mill Designs

A modern garden artist who worked in the tradition of Thomas Wright until her recent death was Canadian Anne Roberts, whose Toronto design studio Feir Mill created summerhouses, pavilions, temples, gazebos and distinctive architectural pieces from freshly gathered timbers in the 'rustic tradition' for a client list that included Woody Allen, Martha Stewart, and Steve Jobs.

Unlike Wright, who designed for woodland glade and rocky outcrop (and created them where they did not naturally exist), Anne's work settles comfortably into flat open spaces.

Ontario, like my own native Oklahoma, is prairie land.

Thomas Wright, Arbours and Grottos

I've just walked back from the library with my latest treasure.

One of the benefits of working for a university is the ability to get almost anything through interlibrary loan, and after a bit of effort, my wonderful librarians have obtained a copy of Thomas Wright's "Arbours and Grottos" for me. The facsimile, as only a few copies of the original are known to exist. If you have deep pockets, vol.1 "Arbours" is available at Ursus books for $7,500, which is also one of the only on-line sources for its images. Even the facsimile version has become expensive enough that many libraries won't loan it out. If you happen to see one at a boot-sale, snap it up.

Considered one of the first 'pattern-books' for garden landscapes, Wright's "Arbours and Grottos" shows constructs in an ornamental rustic style we now tend to associate with the Victorian period, though he wrote in 1755. And his own title for the work was much more grand; it was a 'Universal Architecture'.

Wright wasn't just being decorative. His utilization of rough wood elements was an embodiment of the Vitruvian principle that architecture is an imitation of nature--a return to the tree trunks from which stone columns were derived, an attempt at the re-integration of the built environment with its natural roots that architects still seek to achieve. Modern eco-architects like to think they're doing something new.

So do physicists, and Wright was both. Much like super-string theorists today, Wright wanted to develop an integrated and orderly theory of the universe. Unlike them, he expressed his ideas in landscapes with celestial references in addition to writing "Universal Vicissitudes of the Seasons" (1737), "Synopsis of the Universe, or the visible World Epitomized" (1742), and "An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe" (1750) in which he posited the first theory of the Milky Way.

Wright continues to be far better known as an astronomer and mathematician than as a designer, and his landscapes survive only in remnants: at Halswell House in Somerset, ruined grottos are extant (and being preserved), but a Druid House similar to those in the 'Arbours' volume lasted through the centuries only to be felled for its wood in the 1950s.

Wright's design for a garden barge, intended so that Frederick Prince of Wales could travel the Thames in floating sylvan style, was alas never built.

(bigger image available at the Columbia Library Special Collections site)

The first shall be last and the last shall be first,

and the winner of the Garden Bench giveaway is one Long Haul Trucker, who sent in a comment a mere 2.5 hours before the contest ended! That's randominity for you...congratulations LHT, and I'll be in touch.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and most especially those of you who 'delurked'. The pleasure of the contest for me was seeing who more of my readers are. I wish I could give you all a garden bench and a quiet garden history chat upon it.

'til then,
your gardenhistorygirl