432 Landscape Gardening 



When he was about sixteen years old, and his school days 

 ended, he had the good fortune to form a warm personal 

 friendship with Baron von Liderer, then the Austrian consul- 

 general in America, who had a summer home here in New- 

 burgh. This acquaintance led to others, and introduced 

 the rapidly developing boy to the company of refined and 

 talented men and women who were to be, aside from this 

 ever-blessed landscape, his principal source of education. 



During these years of early manhood he worked hard in 

 the nursery, but harder still upon his studies, scientific, 

 literary and artistic. He was already forming those high 

 ambitions and noble dreams which made him the first of 

 our American landscape gardeners, - - for us the discoverer 

 of a new art and the founder of a new profession. His first 

 work - - and said by competent witnesses to be his greatest 

 - was the building of his own house and the development 

 of his own grounds. According to all accounts this must 

 have been most consummately done. He then began to 

 develop the general practice of the landscape gardener in 

 much the same form as it is now followed by leading men 

 in the profession. His work was largely on private places in 

 the neighborhood of New York and Newport, his most 

 famous public project having been the grounds in Washing- 

 ton about the Capitol, the White House and the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. In the summer of 1850, while on a 

 most inspiring visit to England, he found a young architect 

 by the name of Calvert Vaux, - - a name afterward famous 

 in America - - whom he brought home with him to be his 

 partner in this professional practice. 



For us to-day it is impossible to forget that he was one of 

 the first and ablest advocates of the public park, - - in insti- 

 tution then almost unknown and unheard of in America. 

 He aided powerfully with tongue and pen in the strenuous 

 fight to establish Central Park, New York, an institution 

 which has had an incalculable influence in shaping American 

 park plans and policies ever since. 



Parallel with his development as a landscape gardener 

 ran his equally notable development as a man of letters. 



