Wiedorn in Kansas II

A previous post introduced William S. Wiedorn's work while employed as an assistant professor of landscape gardening at the Kansas State Agricultural College. During this period, he published "A Brief History of Gardening" and "Beautifying the Home Grounds of Kansas" for the state's horticultural society.

He began his historical essay with Sir Francis Bacon's On Gardens:

"Men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection."

His survey introduced ancient gardens and exalted the urban ones that had been discovered at Pompeii (Plate I, above). He equally favored the Islamic gardens of southern Spain and those of Louis XIV (Plate II, below).

For early American architecture, his essay highlighted "Spanish" gardens in the South, "High English" gardens in Virginia, "Catholic" ones in Maryland, "Quaker" and "German" in Pennsylvania, "Swedish" in New Jersey, "Dutch" in New York, "Puritan" in New England and "French" in Canada. He included his 1922 sketch of the Patio Royal in New Orleans (Plate III, below) to illustrate the southern garden, which he equated with violets, heliotropes, carnations, lobelia, iris, lilies, tulips, hyacinths, roses, oleanders, rose bay, myrtle and jasmine.

Reflecting on the modern American garden of his day, Wiedorn emphasized an increased formality in design and a growing attention to urban parks:

"The American is becoming more and more a city man, and his civic pride runs high. Evidences of this are seen in our new parks, cemeteries and garden cities. The American thinks and works in larger areas than flower gardens; he is more interested in open lawns, lakes, trees and shrubs. Flower gardening, unlike the European practice, is the last phase to be developed. The American excels in developing parks and is laying the foundations for the finest natural park scenery in the world. Our cemeteries are being treated as natural parks. Garden cities or land subdivisions, in which every house and garden is part of a large unit, are being built everywhere. Such divisions as Forest Hills (Queens), New York; the Country Club District, Kansas City; and Roland Park, Baltimore, have set standards which others are adopting."

Johns Hopkins doctoral candidate Paige Glotzer has been documenting Kansas City financial connections to Roland Park and the subdivision's influence on other real estate developments and federal housing policies. 

More on Wiedorn's Kansas planting recommendations later.

Images and quoted matter (unless otherwise indicated) from:  W.S. Wiedorn. “A Brief History of Gardening.” The Biennial Report of the Kansas State Horticultural Society XXXVII. Topeka: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1924, pp. 127-137. University Archives, Kansas State University Libraries.

Old Marrero Cemeteries

Continuing on yesterday's theme regarding placing and dating historic cemeteries in southeastern Louisiana. . .

Civil engineer (c.e.) James Webb platted the so-called Robinson Avenue Subdivision in early 1921. He based his map on two existing plans, one that c.e. H.L. Zander developed in 1915 (reproduced above as "Exhibit A"); and one that J.W.T. Stephens created in 1919. For surveyors, crediting earlier surveys is an important part of the process: the quality of a new plat depends on the accuracy of its sources.

Zander had attempted to establish the Arpent Tract between the Southern Pacific Railroad and the new Amesville Highway.(1) Identifying the cross-axial artery as "Robinson Lane," Zander referenced the former land holdings of the Robinsons and the Dennises. He also measured two historic cemeteries, one he referred to generically and the other he identified as the St. Joseph Cemetery.

Both cemeteries appear on the Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas of 1937, which I manipulated below. "A" is the St. Joseph Cemetery and "B" is the unnamed one.

St. Joseph Cemetery is still extant (333 Robinson Avenue) and has been expanded towards its originating worship space. Its historic neighbor is now a near-empty lot.



(1)This later became part of the Jefferson Highway, and today is referred to as Fourth Street.

Images above: Digitally enhanced detail of James Webb, c.e.. Robinson Avenue Subdivision. New Orleans: 5 May 1921. Blue line copy, from Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Box 119. Folder 30.

Digitally altered detail of Sanborn Fire Insurance Atlas. Volume 7 [true 11]. Sheet 1119. New York: 1937. As viewed via Digital Sanborn Maps Database, available at Tulane University Libraries.

Old Harvey Cemeteries

Subdivision surveys can help researchers locate historic cemetery sites. The Southeastern Architectural Archive's Guy Seghers Office Records has a considerable number of twentieth-century surveys that document graveyard locations.

The cemetery highlighted above -- in a 1922 Eustis & Bres survey -- was located towards the rear of the Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company's tract along the Harvey Canal in Jefferson Parish. This area was formerly known as the Destrehan Tract, and Joseph Rathborne began to operate a cypress lumber concern here as early as 1889.(1)

By 1940, the Rathborne Land Company was subdividing its massive holdings along the Intracoastal Waterway. The area where the old cemetery had been was redeveloped as a residential section of four- and five-room frame residences. Surveyor Guy Seghers platted the subdivision, noting an existing cemetery along what had been Julia F. Grefer's land (shown below).

This second graveyard is still intact, known as the Evening Star Cemetery [AKA Harvey's cemetery; Harvey cemetery]. Since Hurricane Katrina, it has expanded across Grefer Avenue, absorbing what had formerly been a series of 30' wide residential lots.

Knowing variant geographical names can facilitate the research process. Consulting  GNIS is one means of determining place name changes. For Louisiana, knowing the names of subsequent plantation owners is also beneficial. Marie Adrien Persac's Norman's Chart of the Lower Mississippi River (1858) is one means of determining familial connections, and the United States Mississippi River Commission's Preliminary Map of the Lower Mississippi River: From the Mouth of the Ohio River to the Head of the Passes (1885) is another.

(1)Advertisement. The Times-Picayune 5 July 1948.

Images above: Digitally enhanced detail of Eustis & Bres. LA Cypress Lumber Co. Tract. Survey. 1922. Box 120. Folder 45.

Digitally enhanced detail of Guy J. Seghers. Industrial Subdivision of Property of Joseph Rathborne Land Company, Inc. Harvey, Louisiana. 10 October 1940 with annotated corrections to February 1944. Box 120. Folder 29.

Both Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Rising Waters

20 June 2010. An unidentified photographer recently took these images of the Devils Lake, North Dakota area. During the 1930s & 1940s (when my grandmother was a child), Devils Lake was a barren salt flat. Since 1993, the water level has risen some 25 feet, more than doubling the lake's parameters, as can discerned from a succession of Landsat images. Geologists have projected that this pattern will continue for a century, and federal, state, and local leaders are attempting to develop a series of solutions for the affected communities (1). The smoke one sees in the center image is a property being burnt by its owners; the submerged trees reflect placement of other rural properties prior to inundation. The Spirit Lake Casino, owned by the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux bands and shown in the bottom photograph, once boasted a shoreline location; now it has become an island.

(1)F. Larry Leistritz et al. "Regional Impacts of Water Management Alternatives: The Case of Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA." The Journal of Environmental Management 66 (2002): 465-473.

Images: Top: Old U.S. Highway 281; Center: Eagle Bend; Bottom: Spirit Lake Casino.

Use and Re-Use

Under the direction of Spencer Fullerton Baird, the U.S. Fish Commission raised trout in Washington, D.C. area ponds. Fish commission employees trapped the fish in streams, and transported them by rail, then by horse-drawn carts from rural locations to the D.C. metropolitan area in milk canisters. The land that once housed fish ponds is now visited by some 25 million people annually, and its future use is currently being reconsidered by the National Park Service. Read the Draft National Mall Plan and Environmental Impact Statement here.

Image above: United States Fish Commission Ponds, undated. National Archives and Records Administration. As viewed 13 May 2010 at http://andershalverson.com/content/usfc-interior

New CLUI Exhibition

The Center for Land Use Interpretation has inaugurated a new exhibition, Urban Crude: The Oil Fields of the Los Angeles Basin.

The fabric of Los Angeles, a continuous cloth of development, draped on the surface of the land, is shallow, but its roots, thousands of meandering straws of oil, dig deep into the soil. Like tree roots, these veins extract the living essence of the ground, fueling this city of the car. Like historical roots, these oil fields are the progenerative substrate, the resource pool, where the economy of Los Angeles originated, driving the development and culture of the city. Today, it continues. Los Angeles is the most urban oil field, where the industry operates in cracks, corners, and edges, hidden behind fences, and camouflaged into architecture, pulling oil out from under our feet.

Open 12 noon to 5pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment. Admission is free.

At Large in the Library: Birdfoot

A new arrival to the Tulane School of Architecture Library and the Special Collections Division's Louisiana Collections is the Center for Land Use Interpretation's exhibition catalog, Birdfoot: Where America's River Dissolves into the Sea (Los Angeles, first edition, 2008). GB1227.M6 B57

The small-format book, published by CLUI with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, documents the fragile alluvium southeast of New Orleans. Read more about this 35-mile stretch of the Mississippi in the Center for Land Use Interpretation's Spring 2008/Volume 31 Newsletter here.

Above: Exhibit postcard, Birdfoot: Where America's River Dissolves into the Sea. Los Angeles: CLUI 2008.

Opening Soon: In-Situ

The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design has announced a new exhibition opening in April.  Titled In-Situ: Architecture and Landscape, the show presents a series of projects from MOMA's collections that center on relationships between the built environment and its natural surroundings, projects such as parks, homes, cemeteries and urban developments.  To read more, click here.

In a similar vein, the National Building Museum recently opened an exhibition focused on architectural projects dotted along Norway's Public Roads Administration's Tourist Routes.  In conjunction with Detour: Architecture and Design along 18 National Tourist Routes in Norway, the National Building Museum screened the 2003 film, Schultze Gets the Blues, largely set in Louisiana Bayou country. Watch the trailer here.

On the west coast, the Museum of Contemporary Art launched Dan Graham: Beyond which includes his Homes for America (1966-1967), developed from Kodak Instamatic photographs Graham took while traveling by train through New Jersey suburban tract housing developments.  Science fiction writer and contributor to MOCA's related exhibition catalog Mark Van Schlegell will be speaking at MOCA on March 8th at 3 pm.  He was recently asked in an interview, "Why is so much contemporary science fiction inherently about Los Angeles?"  Read his answer here.

CLUI & MJT

As I head out to Los Angeles tomorrow, I will make a plug for two of my favorite places, both located in Culver City:

The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)

9331 Venice Blvd.

Culver City, CA  90232

310.839.5722 tele/310.839.6678 fax

CLUI is  a research organization involved in exploring, examining and understanding land and landscape issues (http://clui.org/)

New titles coming to the TSA LIBRARY Related to CLui programs:

Up River:  Man-Made Sites of Interest on the Hudson from the Battery to Troy, edited by Sarah Simons.  2008.

Birdfoot:  Where America's River Dissolves into the Sea.  2007.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT)

9341 Venice Blvd.

Culver City, CA  90232

310.836.6131 tele

The Museum of Jurassic Technology is an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the lower Jurassic (http://www.mjt.org/main2.html). Want to read more about the museum?  Pick up a copy of Lawrence Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology. 1996.  Available from amazon and Powells, to name a couple of sources.

TITLES in tulane university LIBRARies RELATED TO the museum:

Inhaling the Spore: A Journey through the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  DVD, 2004. Music Library.