May 25, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



243 



The Mcirningside Plateau, New York. 



MUCH lias licen said of late about ATorningsidc I'aik in 

 tliis city and the various large buildiii.c;s which it is 

 proposed to erect in its ueishborhood. But comparatively 

 few persons, even in New York, understand what a j^reat 

 feature of New York these buildings and tlieir surroundiirgs 

 may eventually become. The site and character of Morning- 

 side Park itself are pretty well known. The tract where the 

 proposed buildings will stand is called Morningsidc Plateau, 

 and extends from Morningsitle Avi;nue at die east, where it 

 forms a high bluff overlooking the park, with a distant view of 

 Long Islanil and the Sound, to Riverside Drive, wliicli follows 

 the brow of lofty banks of the Hudson. This commanding 

 plateau extends north and south for nearly a mile and a half 

 and varies in elevation from no to about 145 feet above tide- 

 water level, antl the only liuildings which now stand upon it, 

 with the exception of scattered cottages — relics of the time 

 when the city was far away — are the Leak and Watts Orphan 

 Asylum, the old De Peyster house, once a noted country-seat, 

 and the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. The presence of this 

 last-named institution had, for more than a generation, de- 

 terred people from purchasing land in the neighborhood for 

 private residences, and it was owing to the exertions of local 

 property-owners, intent upon redeeming their possessions and 

 bringing them into a profitable market, that the rugged tract 

 along its eastern skirts was set apart for public use and trans- 

 formed into a pleasure-ground. 



Then, several years later, the ground owned by the Orphan 

 Asylum was purchased by the trustees of the proposed 

 Protestant Episcopal Cathedral, and at about the same time the 

 property-owners, determined to get rid of the Insane Asylum, 

 induced the Legislature to pass a bill opening One Hundred 

 and Sixteenth Street, through to the river. This action in- 

 duced the governors of the New York Hospital, which owns 

 the Insane Asylum, to decide upon its removal to land pur- 

 chased long ago at White Plains, and to offer its present site 

 at public sale in lots suitable for private building. But then 

 the trustees of Columbia College obtained an option on the en- 

 tire property, and a bill, which had been introduced into the 

 Legislature to provide for the cutting of another cross street 

 through the plateau, was defeated in order that the college 

 might have an undisturbed site of suitable extent. All indica- 

 tions point to the fact that work on the cathedral will shortly 

 be begun ; and there is likewise no doubt that Columbia Col- 

 lege will soon raise the money needful to purchase the land 

 now reserved for it and erect a fine group of buildings. 



The Cathedral Parkway will be a wide avenue crossing the 

 southern end of this plateau on the line of the northern 

 boundary of Central Park — that is, at One Hundred and Tenth 

 Street — and from this point for the distance of three city 

 blocks is the site of the future cathedral, while the new site for 

 St. Luke's Hospital adjoins it on the north. A little farther 

 north and west, between One Hundred and Sixteenth and One 

 Hundred and Twentieth Streets, is the proposed site for 

 Columbia College, and immediately north of this again, ex- 

 tending to the line of One Hundred and Twenty-second Street, 

 is the proposed site for the College for Training Teachers. 

 The space between the Boulevard and Riverside Drive is 

 narrow, and, as a rule, somewhat sloping ; so there will be a 

 magnificent view from all these structures that are to be, 

 while, if their architecture is what we may expect, they will 

 vastly increase the attraction of the eastward outlook from the 

 beautiful drive, forming, for a great part of its length, a back- 

 ground of stately buildings lifted above those on its immedi- 

 ate edge. Nothing, therefore, could be more fortunate for 

 the city than this agreement between several very wealthy 

 corporations to erect their buildings in this place ; and, of 

 course, the profit will not simply be the presence of these 

 buildings themselves. Once the Insane Asylum is removed, 

 the old prejudice against the plateau as a place of residence 

 will vanish, and the existence of the ecclesiastical and collegiate 

 groups will, indeed, bring it into the very highest esteem 

 for this purpose. The value of any land within the borders 

 of New York is and always will be too great for us to cherish 

 the hope that building-sites, even in this locality, will be laid 

 out on the generous scale which has been found practicable 

 in other cities, especially in the west, and which adds so 

 greatly to their dignity, beauty and individuality. 



We cannot expect, even in the neighborhood of the grounds 

 of the cathedral and of Columbia College, to find private 

 houses surrounded by lawns and gardens of any great extent. 

 But many recently erected buildings along Riverside Drive 

 prove that it is possible for the wealthy, even in New York, to' 

 build houses which do not actually touch each other, and even 



this much isolation gives the architect a great opportunity to 

 improve upon the average New York house and secure both 

 a greater degree of architectural dignity and a fuller ex[)ression 

 of what we may call domestic personality. All the architects 

 who have built along the drive have not used this opportunity 

 well. Sometimes an effect of rampant ostentation has been 

 secured instead of dignity and the home-like look which every 

 private house, however large and costly, ought to wear ; and 

 instead of an artistic design we see one which is no more than 

 artfully elaborate, or just as artfully and inappropriately rugged 

 and rude. But as the years go on we shall learn more and 

 more what true architectural elegance and true architectural 

 simplicity mean. And as it will be a good many years before 

 Morningside Plateau is covered with buildings, we need not 

 doubt that it will eventually be a district in which New Yorkers 

 can feel genuine pride. 



It is interesting to know that when, about the year 1S15, the 

 New York Hospital found its city luiilding too crowded for the 

 accommodation of its insane patients and accordingly fiur- 

 cliased the " Bloomingdale Farm," the price paid was $4,000, 

 although this farm was of greater extent than the property 

 now owned by the institution, and that two years ago, when a 

 hundred building-lots of ordinary size were cut off from this 

 and sold, some of them individually brought $4. 000 in spite of 

 the fact that they lay on still unopened streets. With the recent 

 promise of the advent of the cathedral and the college, values 

 have vastly increased again. Lots in the neighborhood of the 

 asylum property could now be sold at from"$i 5,000 to $20,000 

 each, and few owners are willing to sell at all. 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Viburnum cotinifolium. 



THIS is a handsome shrub of Cashmere and the north- 

 west Himalayas, where it is common at elevations 

 of from four to seven thousand feet above the sea-level, 

 and a near relative of the common Wayfaring-tree of 

 Europe, Viburnum Lantana, from which it only differs in 

 the dentation of the leaves and the larger limb of the 

 corolla. It is a vigorous plant with stout stems, which 

 attain a height of five to ten feet. The leaves are ovate or 

 elliptical, obtuse or subacute at the apex, rounded, trun- 

 cate or subcordate at the base, minutely crenulately ser- 

 rate, stellate-woolly on the under surface when young 

 like the young shoots, but ultimately nearly glabrous ex- 

 cept on the lower side of the nerves, reticulate-rugose, 

 dark green above, pale belovv', and about three inches long 

 by two inches broad. The flowers, which open here by 

 the end of May, are produced in dense thick-branched hir- 

 sute corymbs two or three inches across and generally ter- 

 minal. The calyx is narrowly obconic, glabrous, with a 

 short limb, the triangular lobes usually tipped with red. 

 The corolla is white tinged with pink, shortly campanulate, 

 the limb an eighth of an inch across when expanded, the 

 spreading lobes as long as the tube. The drupe is oblong, 

 compressed, a quarter of an inch long, bright red at first 

 but ultimately nearly black; the seeds two-grooved on the 

 back, and ventrally subconcave and three-grooved. 



Viburnum cotinifolium (see page 245) was raised in the 

 Arnold Arboretum, in 18S1, from seed sent from the Botanic 

 Garden of St. Petersburg and has proved hardy here willi 

 careful protection, although plants derived from other 

 sources have not been able to bear the winter climate 

 of eastern Massachusetts. 



The size and the color of the flowers make it a hand- 

 somer plant than V. Lantana, which is, however, more 

 vigorous and hardy here, and which will probably never 

 be supplanted for general cultivation in the northern states 

 by its Himalayan relative. C. S. S. 



New Orchids. 

 Dendrobium barbatulo-chlorops, Rolfe. — A natural hybrid 

 between Dendrobium barbatulum and D. chlorops, which 

 flowered in the collection of Major-General E. S. Berkeley, 

 of Southatnpton. It has the white flowers and general 

 shape of the former, with the crest and light green side 

 lobes of the lip of the latter. Both the species are natives 



