569 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
HISTORY and GROWTH of LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE 
A Definition and a Brief Resume of Its Past and Present; Presented Before the Congress oj 
Technology, by Stephen Child, Landscape Architect and Consulting Engineer, of Boston 
I. — Landscape Architect or Landscape Gardener? 
There is at the present time much 
apparent misunderstanding of the terms 
Landscape Architecture and Landscape 
Gardening. It is not unusual to hear 
it stated that “this calling a man a land- 
scape architect instead of a landscape 
gardener” is merely a fad “filling one’s 
mind with images of quarries, stone cut- 
ters, creaking derricks, tapping trowels, 
and the like, instead of with pictures of 
free hand dealings with sunshine and 
shadow, trees, flowering shrubs and 
leaping fountains.” One well known 
writer has even gone so far as to state 
that “the men most deeply engaged in 
the art have not decided what to call 
it,” and that it is suspicioned “that the 
present fashion among the professional 
brethren of ealling themselves landscape 
architects is promoted by two accidental 
causes : first, the feeling that architec- 
ture sounds bigger than gardening and 
can demand a better fee, and second, 
the fact that the architectural style of 
landscape work is the present vogue 
among wealthy clients.” 
I am going to ask you to look at this 
a little more carefully with me and see 
what is true in this discussion. In the 
first place, the term is not a “recent 
fad.” Frederick Law Olmsted, the 
elder, called himself a landscape archi- 
tect away back in 1856, when he first 
entered upon the work of developing 
Central Park in New York City, and 
the fact that he did so, and continued 
to so designate himself during the 
whole of his career has had much to 
do with the general adoption of the 
term. But the fact that one man, even 
an eminent one, adopted this title is 
perhaps not entirely sufficient, although 
those of us who are familiar with Mr. 
Olmsted’s work and with his wonder- 
ful genius and mastery of the subject 
in all of its details may well feel as- 
sured that he did not adopt the title 
without most careful thought. Unfortu- 
nately he did not in his writings, so far 
as I am aware, really explain his rea- 
sons. He was so immersed in the great 
battle then going on, for public parks 
for large cities, in showing their value 
and necessity and in laying down the 
principles and executing the work of 
these great undertakings that he appar- 
ently had little time to explain fully 
why he assumed the title. We may, 
however, be perfectly assured that he 
had reasons, and most e.xcellent ones, 
and a little study of these may be in- 
teresting and profitable. 
In the process of the development of 
mankind there has been noticeable a 
constantly increasing tendency toward 
differentiation and specialization, each 
step in the process being a slow one, 
and, as a rule, taken at first by some 
man or group of men trained in some 
other line. In this way have come 
about many new forms or fields of 
work, each adapted more or less from 
others of a previous and perhaps lesser 
civilization. Each new profession, or 
branch from an older one, demanded 
and received a new cognomen. This 
process of differentiation has developed 
more or less clearly defined groups of 
men, as, for example, the professions 
of the ministry, medicine, law, civil en- 
gineering, architecture and so on. 
Fifty years ago, when Mr. Olmsted 
began his landscape work, there was 
beginning to be a demand in this coun- 
try for men to do a certain line of 
work that was intrinsically quite differ- 
ent from that previously carried on by 
either the architect, the engineer or 
the gardener, and yet work that em- 
bodied some of the principles hereto- 
fore utilized by all of these men. Here 
was this great tract of land, now known 
as Central Park, to be developed and 
made beautiful, for the purpose of pro- 
viding the crowded millions of the great 
city of the future with the opportunity 
“for a form of recreation to be ob- 
tained only through the influence of 
pleasing natural scenery upon the sen- 
sibilities of those quietly contemplating 
it.” This was a new problem for this 
country, and indeed for any country. 
for none of the great parks in Europe 
now utilized for this purpose were origi- 
nally created for anything of this sort. 
They are chiefly the result of develop- 
ing land that had originally been set 
aside as hunting forests by the great 
nobles or rulers of Europe. 
I think it will be generally conceded 
that New York was fortunate in its 
selection' of the master mind to work 
out this problem, and that Central Park 
has been most successfully designed and 
executed. Mr. Olmsted saw clearly the 
greatness of the task and the differenti- 
ation of this form of design from that 
of the architect or engineer and cer- 
tainly from the work of the gardener. 
He chose to call himself a landscape 
architect. Let us, therefore, look into 
the meaning of these words and see 
whether they are not well selected and 
worthy of our respect and of general 
adoption. 
That most delightful and interesting 
writer, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, says 
of landscape : “We use the word in 
two distinct senses, — a general and a 
particular. In the general sense the 
word, ‘landscape’ without the article, 
means the visible material world, — all 
that can be seen on the surface of the 
earth by a man who is himself upon 
the surface; and in the special sense ‘a 
landscape’ means a piece of the earth’s 
surface that can be seen at once, and 
it is always understood that this piece 
will have a certain artistic unity or sug- 
gestion of unity in itself” ; and further 
he adds, “although the word refers to 
the natural land, it does not exclude any 
human works that are upon the land.” 
The word is derived from two good 
Anglo-Saxon parts, “land” and the suf- 
fi.x “scape,” corresponding to “skip” or 
“ship,” as in the word “friendship,” 
meaning “the state or condition of 
being.” Landscape then means “the 
state or condition of being land.” When 
we come to add the word architecture, 
however, the connotation conveys to 
many jieople a wrong impression, but it 
