Three main problems are here presented which we have found very perplexing, and the best solution of which we do not yet feel confident that we have found. One problem is that of the appearance of the Museum building in relation to its surroundings and of those surroundings in relation to it. The second problem is that of the most effective use, for the purposes of the Garden, of the area immediately surrounding the Museum and lying between it and Conservatory Range No. 1 and westward to the railroad. The third is that of making a far better impression upon the great number of visitors who enter the Garden in this vicinity, both from the rapid transit lines and by automobile; and at the same time, while making such a strongly agreeable immediate impression, inducing them to disperse rapidly to various parts of the Garden instead of congesting near the entrances.
As to the first, our frank opinion is that the present conditions are esthetically very bad. Considered simply as a piece of architecture, apart from relation to surroundings and without allowance for any limiting conditions which may have necessitated the present design, the exterior of the Museum building could not, we believe, be regarded by any competent critic as an artistic success. The story above the main cornice is peculiarly unfortunate in its effect on the silhouette and general proportions of the building. And for a building situated, as this is, in a large open landscape, the high-shouldered effect thus produced is particularly unhappy. Looking forward to the time when extensive additions will be made to the north, it would seem worth while seriously to consider the total elimination or radical change of the present top story at that time. It may even be worth while to consider, in connection with the possibility of very extensive future additions, whether the present building could be entirely enclosed in and masked by such extensions, with a radical change of architectural character; as was done with the original ugly units of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The effect of the building is very much worse as seen from a westerly direction, where the ground falls away rapidly from the basement level of this high building-mass and where there are no supporting trees near it, than as seen from southerly and southeasterly directions, where the ground is more nearly level and there are numerous large trees to compose with it.
It was doubtless this rapid falling-away of the ground to the westward which dictated the narrowness of the formally symmetrical treatment of the axial approach to the building from the southwest. The strip of land occupied by this approach, with its four rows of fine tulip trees, is in considerable fill all along its northwestern edge and this fill drops off abruptly and rather skimpily to what appears to be the original natural surface of the ground just outside the outermost row of trees; whereas the façade of the building extends far beyond this line.
The result is to divide the landscape opposite the long façade of the building into three distinct parts, of three totally different characters, the combined relations of which to the building seem to us most unfortunate.
The formal treatment on the axis is too narrow to furnish in itself an adequate setting for the frontage of so wide a building, and yet is so massive that, instead of seeming a mere incident within a unified open space relating as a whole to the whole façade, it almost completely divides the open space. This effect is exaggerated by the marked lack of symmetry between the two resulting pieces of open space on opposite sides of the axis, both as to levels and as to the presence and absence of trees.
In relation to so big a building, emphatically symmetrical in design, the formal treatment on the axis seems to us, therefore, an unfortunate compromise between two alternative schemes either of which might be good.
In one of these possible schemes the building would face upon a broad park-like space of more or less undulating topography, not rigidly symmetrical about the axis of the building, but not so markedly unsymmetrical as to the grades in immediate contact with the walls of the building or its terraces as to produce a limping effect. In such a scheme, not predicated upon extending the perfect symmetry of the building far beyond its walls, the approach road, instead of being straight and axial for a distance of some 400 feet (or about half-way across the topographic unit in front of the building) and there breaking into asymmetry, would probably sweep up on curving lines from right and left to a formal forecourt in immediate contact with the building.
The other scheme would be to formalize the treatment of the land on which the building fronts to a width comparable with that of the façade itself, and would probably extend this formal treatment out along the axis of the building (although not necessarily at the same width throughout) to the opposite side of the topographical unit over which the eve sweeps as one looks out from the building; in other words, to the opposite side of the valley.
The first scheme could originally have been carried out successfully at less expense than the second. It probably could now be carried out at less expense, although only by the sacrifice of the well-grown tulip tree avenues and some other features of the present scheme. It would, however, require that a large area, certainly not less than 20 acres, near the Museum and between it and the Conservatory, should be kept permanently in a rather broad, open, park-like treatment, which would be suitable for the exhibition of a limited number of well-grown specimen trees but for hardly any other specifically botanical garden purposes.
We are inclined to believe that this area, so conveniently adjacent to the Museum, to the Conservatory and to transportation services, ought to be much more intensively used than would be possible under such a broad, simple, park-like treatment; that it should include, for example, provision for diversified exhibition gardens and kindred purposes.
Such intensive use for various appropriate botanical garden purposes might conceivably be worked out in a series of units almost wholly informal and naturalistic in character; but for many of them there would be much more assurance of securing results good of their kind and at the same time compact, efficient and easily maintained when visited by large numbers of people, if they were frankly artificial or formal in their arrangement. Such units, suitably designed and disposed, could be provided with backgrounds and enclosing and separating masses of trees, whether deciduous or coniferous or both, which would constitute part of the botanical collection of trees and would be quite as numerous as could be provided for in a rather open park-like treatment such as has hitherto been attempted in this region, if not more so.
On the theory of more intensive use, therefore, the second and more ambitious scheme involving a considerable amount of formally planned development as distinguished from a mainly naturalistic landscape, would seem to be the better.
With either kind of general scheme, although more readily perhaps in one characterized by the more extensive use of formal elements in the plan, it would be feasible to provide in this vicinity for the proposed Garden House and a representative Formal Garden of the most exquisite sort, as previously discussed in Part III, Section 4.
In our preliminary report we ventured to suggest one possible site for such a Garden House and for the Garden in connection with it, but we are by no means satisfied that these would be the best locations, nor can the best locations be determined without developing a complete plan for the entire area in question.
Whether a mainly informal scheme or a more largely formal scheme is adopted, a permanently satisfactory result in this part of the Botanical Garden can in our opinion be attained only by radical, extensive and costly changes. Plans for either kind of scheme, sufficiently well worked out to be dependable and to be clearly explanatory of the results to which they would lead—such plans, in other words, as the Managers should have before them at the time of reaching a definite decision in a matter of such importance and involving commitment to such large expenditures—can be prepared only with much study and labor. Every part would be so interlocked with other parts that it would be unsafe to stop short of working out all the parts in considerable detail, continually revising and adjusting until a satisfactory and harmonious whole is quite certainly assured.
We have made numerous diagrammatic and partial studies in hopes of being able to illustrate and clarify our general statements above, but those which show enough features to be really explanatory go further and appear to commit us to more definite conclusions than is safe without much more thorough and detailed planning than we have felt to be justified at present.
If it is thought that there would be a reasonable prospect of carrying out such a radical plan of improvement in the vicinity of the Museum as we have outlined above, we should be interested to work it out in definite form so that at least the pros and cons could be thoroughly canvassed and clearly understood. To do so is so much of an undertaking that we hesitate to embark upon it and to ask the donors of our services to pay for it, without knowing whether the Managers would be inclined to consider such a proposition favorably.
There is, however, one part of any plan for this vicinity about which more needs to be said, and about which something even might be done in the way of execution without dangerously complicating the main problem of how to treat the valley between the Museum and the Conservatory ridge. We refer to the reception and initial distribution of the throngs of visitors who enter from the terminal of the Elevated Railway.
It is important, as has already been pointed out, to induce the rapid dispersal of visitors, and it might be held that a more intensive development in the vicinity of the Museum and Conservatory would necessarily defeat this purpose and lead to congestion.
There are, however, two sides to this question. A large proportion of the visitors, especially of those on foot delivered by the rapid transit lines, have no definite objective when they enter the Garden. Also most of them are lazy about walking far; and, if confronted, upon entering, by a relatively uninviting prospect with few objects of much attractiveness immediately beyond them, are extremely apt to settle down or to “mill around” near the entrance without going much further. The mere fact of the existence of interesting things half a mile away, which they can not see and do not know about, is very little inducement to their dispersal. We believe that a better theory even for the mere purpose of dispersing the public and inducing them in large numbers to penetrate into the interior of the Botanical Garden, and certainly a better means of making them promptly interested and satisfied, is to provide from the very start a series of markedly attractive prospects, leading on from one to another in several different directions, so as to “toll” them along; making what they see at each step offer a direct inducement to go further; drawing some to the right and some to the left and some straight ahead; but, no matter which course they choose, leading them onward step by step and making continued movement psychologically inviting.
We think that no one who studies the conditions on the ground can deny that those who arrive by the Elevated Railway at the western corner of the Garden (the route of approach which is apparently used by the largest numbers and is likely to remain so) upon arriving at the end of the causeway near the men’s toilet house are confronted with a very uninviting prospect. They debouch abruptly on a disagreeable and dangerous grade crossing of two automobile roads. Some of them are deflected at once into the not unattractive little cul-de-sac between the railroad and these roads. Those who cross the roads find themselves crossing a broad path nearly at right angles to their course and in neither direction showing anything that is very inviting or likely to draw them aside. Ahead of them rises an uncomfortably steep path in rather poor condition and again not presenting any immediately inviting prospect, although beyond the top of the rise the Conservatory looms above the foliage in a way that suggests something interesting in that direction.
If in the absence of other immediate attraction and of a knowledge of just how to reach more distant points of interest, they pursue this mild invitation to a slightly toilsome ascent, they reach the west corner of the Conservatory terraces in a rather unimpressive way and find their way around either to the main entrance court on the southwest side of the Conservatory or to the flower garden on its northeast side, whence they can drift along pleasantly enough through part of the Pinetum to the Herbaceous Grounds and so to the east or southeast, entirely by-passing the vicinity of the Museum.
To reach the latter from this important entrance the normal route is to turn abruptly to the left after crossing the two roadways and descend on a distinctly uninviting path, shut off from the main body of the Garden area by a hillside rather uninterestingly planted. This hill must be passed by a walk of a sixth of a mile, parallel with and looking toward the automobile roads and the railroad, before entering the main cross-valley between the Conservatory ridge and the Museum. This valley is entered at an elevation which does not present an attractive or inspiring view of such landscape quality as the valley has and does not lead the eye and invite the steps to the very delightful region east of it. The Museum looms into view in one of its less attractive aspects, but to those who are more interested in outdoor than in in-door matters a walk of fully a third of a mile intervenes before they begin to find themselves in surroundings which have the quality so much to be desired, upon entering the Garden, that of giving immediate delight while stimulating to press onward.
This is negative criticism. To take the constructive side, without pretending to submit a final solution, let us imagine how a solution might be approached from the point of view, let us say, of a stage manager bent upon getting certain fairly definite pleasurable reactions from large numbers of people and ready to spend money freely to get his “effects.”
Starting from the station of the Elevated they would be led, as now, through a belt of trees rising from the low land on either side of the causeway which they must traverse to reach solid ground. This is the one admirable feature of the present approach—a sort of sylvan screen, in passing which to brush off, as it were, the impressions of the utterly urban commonplaceness of the railway mechanism. The sylvan character could well be more complete, more overarched and umbrageous; it could well extend somewhat further along the route; and instead of adhering to the boundary of the property the causeway might well strike at once diagonally into it, so that the surroundings on both sides would be permanently controllable. It would almost certainly be made to rise on a gentle gradient so as to pass across the two automobile roads, above grade, probably by an arched bridge of sufficient width to carry a narrow plantation of shrubbery on either side, after the manner of the bridges which carry roads and paths across the transverse traffic-roads of Central Park, arriving at grade upon the flatter portion of the hillside west of the Conservatory, where the main lead would debouch from the shut-in sylvan vestibule upon an open sunny space, rich with color of flowers and well-kept, smooth, green turf; strongly enclosed on the northwesterly side, toward the railroad and the city and the direction of bleak winds, by a dense enframement of tall-growing full-foliaged trees. The present enframement of the space on the southeast is fairly good, with its inviting glimpse of the Conservatory dome and its suggestion of specifically horticultural interest. This unit of first impression, about a hundred yards in length from southwest to northeast, would occupy the space where the word “Pinetum” first occurs upon the Guide Map, but where in fact are ill-kept, impoverished slopes of grass, bordered by weak and dwindling firs, of species which have proved not to thrive in such a locality. In character of design this unit might be anything rich and vigorous and gay and inviting, but perhaps a rather sophisticated naturalistic treatment might be best, a foretaste in petto of the prevailing characteristics of the Botanical Garden as a whole, as an antechamber to the principal elements of formal design adjacent to the Conservatory and the Museum, through which or past which lies access to the main body of the grounds.
Before entering this unit of first impression, but just within sight of it, would branch easily to the right a path of direct approach to the main entrance court on the southwest side of the Conservatory, so treated as to give a glimpse suggestive of the kind of interest to be found by following that course. Passing through the unit of first impression one would cross the main path or paths of the flower garden which lies northeast of the Conservatory at a grade and in a way which would give glimpses of that garden, inviting some to turn aside, while the main lead would continue northeasterly at easy grades through successive minor units of informal character but individual, distinctive interest, all backed up by heavy tree plantations on the northwesterly side, to a point on the hillside pleasantly overlooking the valley southeast of the Museum. Here the choice would be open of proceeding, on the one hand, directly toward the Museum, from a point on its axis at a distance of rather more than two hundred yards from the building, or, on the other hand, through the valley to the plainly visible and very pleasant and inviting region south of the Museum, through which to reach the Herbaceous Grounds, the Economic Garden, the Hemlock Grove, the Water Gardens, and all that lies beyond them.
Because of its grades, because of the sense of at once getting into the heart of things, and because of leading on insensibly from one point of attraction to others beyond it, such an entrance scheme would be incalculably more effective than the present one, and as already indicated could be made to fit in with almost any final treatment of the main cross-valley near the Museum.
If actually put into execution before the latter was finally planned, it would involve some path-building and other minor changes in the valley which would have to be regarded as temporary and subject to modification. For that reason and because they are otherwise so closely related to the vicinity of the Museum we did not include this group of entrance improvements with the others listed in Part III. But if the Managers, in view of the urgency of other matters and the large cost of any radical improvement in the vicinity of the Museum, should see fit to postpone decision as to the latter for a long time it might be worth while to consider the improvement of this entrance independently thereof.