82 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY 



had to be immediately mounted on heavy white paper with flour paste, or else the drawing 

 was copied by a needle-point transfer that was often far from accurate. 



Specifications and planting lists were all copied in long hand, and students often 

 got very tired of the work necessary to make four or five copies of a long list. The first 

 tracing-cloth was glazed on both sides, and far more troublesome to use than the present 

 dull-back cloth. 



Before leaving the early work entirely I must not forget to mention Gramercy Park 

 in New York City. This park is owned by the holders of the property fronting on it, 

 and is not open to the public. It is a good example of the increased valuation and per- 

 manent improvement to the neighborhood a park effects. Llewellyn Park, at Orange, 

 New Jersey, was one of the earliest residential parks I know of, and it has held its own 

 up to the present time. 



In the 70's Jacob Weidenman published an illustrated work in color and did some 

 work, mostly private grounds. This brings us down to times that are familiar to many 

 of us, and I cannot but think that we certainly have comparatively little to learn from the 

 ancients in our art, much less, in fact, than the architect and sculptor; but, at the same 

 time, we must not ignore the admirable permanence of their work. The history of land- 

 scape architecture is more in front of us than behind us, and we must make history our- 

 selves by our genius and work, and write it large and bold. 



In 1880 there was a great desire in New York to have an exhibition in 1883, and if 

 the promoters had not tried to grab Central Park it would have been successful. For- 

 tunately, the defenders of the park were backed up by public opinion and it was saved. 

 It was also proposed, at another time, to take part of Central Park for a military parade- 

 ground, and the advocates of a Speedway were very nearly successful in breaking in. 

 This plan, the Port Morris plan for the 1883 exhibition in New York City, by Vaux & 

 Radford, my father's firm (and on which I did some work myself), laid great stress on 

 the water-front, and used the same arguments successfully employed later on for the 

 coming exhibition at Norfolk. 



One of my father's sayings was, "Always remember to have a general dimension 

 and a working line," and his favorite expression when attacked by apparently insur- 

 mountable obstacles was, "Well, we have got to whip the devil around this stump." He 

 would then take off his spectacles, sharpen his pencil, and make a new attack on the 

 problem. A favorite recreation of his was sketching from nature, and he frequently timed 

 his vacation so as to be in the woods and mountains in the autumn with his artist friends, 

 and enjoyed planting his umbrella and camp-stool in some commanding position where 

 he could "daub" along all day in a faithful and painstaking effort to reproduce on canvas, 

 with unfamiliar brush, the rugged mountain slope or moss-covered rock, the dark pool 

 reflecting overhanging trees, or the intricate interlacing of the foliage of some old monarch 

 of the forest standing alone like a sentinel of nature on guard. Nature will reward a study 

 of her forms, and time so spent by the learner will be well invested. 



The work of the landscape architect is not only making plans for land already secured, 

 but often includes advice as to the selection of the property at the very beginning. 



Prospect Park, Brooklyn, is a case in point. The land first selected lay on both sides 

 of Flatbush Avenue (and the Avenue was opened and graded at the time). The land- 

 scape architects, Olmsted and Vaux, advised buying additional land to the south, where 

 it could be bought at reasonable rates, and selling the land on the north side later 



