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Presenting Nature
MENU
Design Ethic Origins
(1916-1927)
Design Policy & Process
(1916-1927)
Western Field Office
(1927-1932)
Decade of Expansion
(1933-1942)
State Parks
(1933-1942)
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Presenting Nature:
The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942 |
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III. A POLICY AND PROCESS FOR DESIGN, 1916 TO 1927 (continued)
DANIEL HULL AS LANDSCAPE ENGINEER
The demand for advice on landscape matters became so great that on August 1, 1920, Mather hired Daniel Hull to assist Punchard. Hull became the senior landscape engineer in November 1920. Hull had studied at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1913 with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture with a specialty in horticulture. He then attended Harvard University, where he received a master's degree in landscape architecture in 1914, the first year that Harvard offered separate degrees for architecture and landscape architecture. Hull likely studied horticulture under Joseph Cullen Blair, a well-known horticulturalist who also laid out several local parks in the Urbana area. He may have studied with Wilhelm Miller who taught at Illinois from 1912 to 1916. At Harvard, Hull was exposed to the ideas of many leaders in the landscape architecture profession, including Henry Hubbard, James Sturgis Pray, John Nolen, and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. [73]
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| Cartoon of Daniel R. Hull, chief landscape engineer of the National Park service from 1920 to 1927. (National Park service Historic Photography Collection) |
Hull's contributions from 1920 to 1927, when he left the park service, were varied. He took a leading role in designing park communities and working with concessionaires to develop well-planned facilities. He designed park structures ranging from entrance stations to bridges. It was under Hull's direction that the landscape engineers assumed a leading role in the development of park roads and trails and developed a technique of stonemasonry that incorporated native materials and achieved an informal appearance that harmonized with nature. Under Hull's supervision, the national parks began to develop comprehensive plans to guide all future improvements throughout a park. Hull appears to have had fine drafting and architectural skills, which supplemented Punchard's strong philosophical outlook. Hull's office was first in Yosemite and then in Los Angeles, where he shared an office with Gilbert Stanley Underwood, whom he met at University of Illinois and who was building a reputation as a designer of concessionaires" facilities. Hull was the National Park Service's principal planner and designer until 1927, when the Landscape Division was moved to San Francisco to become part of the Western Field Office. Paul Kiessig was appointed Hull's assistant in February 1921. Kiessig, also a graduate of the University of Illinois, spent his time in Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Sequoia before leaving the service in early 1923. In November 1922, Hull hired Thomas Vint, who would take charge of the division in 1927. [74]
Although Hull studied at Harvard, he did not have Punchard's close associations with the East Coast landscape profession. No mention is made in the society's journal of his work or the service's progress in landscape architecture during the 1920s, and he did not even join the ASLA until 1923. Hull's ties were in the Midwest, where he had grown up, and California, where he spent most of his career. Vint also had a California background. He was trained as a landscape architect at the University of California, Berkeley. then the leading school of landscape architecture on the West Coast. Several others from Hull's graduating class at Harvard became involved in the landscape design of national and state parks. One classmate was Frank Culley. who had studied under Frank Waugh at Massachusetts Agricultural College before attending Harvard, later taught at Iowa State College, which had the first curriculum in landscape engineering to prepare students for design work in forests and parks, and was in private practice with former national forest landscape designer Arthur Carhart just before the Depression. Another was George Nason, who was hired by the National Park Service to supervise CCC work in Texas state parks. [75]
Hull aggressively worked at eliminating unsightly conditions and improving the scenic quality of the parks. Unlike Punchard, he wrote few reports, and those he did write were brief. There is little question, however, of the achievements of the landscape program during his tenure. Likely echoing Hull's own thoughts, assistant Paul Kiessig wrote in 1922, "It is not a landscape engineer's purpose to add anything to nature's achievement, but to restrain the human inclination to desecrate and destroy. and where human construction is necessary. to keep it as unobtrusive or inoffensive as possible." [76]
Much of Hull and Kiessig's effort went into drawing attention to practices that detracted from the scenic beauty of the parks, such as the cutting of swaths through forests to place telephone lines, the unsightly storage of equipment and vehicles by the government or the concessionaires, the intrusion of old structures into scenic views, the cutting of roads in straight lines, and the removal of native vegetation in the vicinity of new buildings.
Hull continued the work of scenery preservation and restoration initiated by Punchard. He continually called for cleanup along roads and in developed areas. He sought ways to improve the appearance of necessary intrusions into the landscape. In 1921, he reinforced Punchard's advice that borrow pits be located out of sight and introduced the idea that cuts created along roads during construction be graded to form gently sloping banks, rather than abrupt ones, so that they might reseed themselves and thus blend into the natural landscape. Cautioning against easy solutions, he urged that utilities, such as telephone lines, electric service, and sprinkling tanks, be placed where they would be least noticeable. If it was necessary to place wires on poles, Hull recommended that the poles have brackets rather than cross arms to make them less conspicuous. He called for the removal of all abandoned or unnecessary structures by the government or the concessionaires. [77]
The landscape engineer's role in the parks remained varied. Kiessig somewhat sardonically recounted the list of the landscape engineer's many tasks:
Landscape problems are present at every turn of the road or trail; the need for new trails, vetoing of roads projected where scenically undesirable, diversion of traffic to save trees, location of new camp areas, rarely the opening of a vista, the screening of another view, proposing a lake for reflection purposes, preserving meadow vegetation from pack horses and cattle (and others), restraining the human garden maker (this is often embarrassing and difficult), replanning of traffic ways, location or relocation of service units, the shops, the employee dwelling groups, housing of horses and machinery, bridge location, concession sites, location of shelter cabins and comfort stations, advising or restricting tree cutting for scenic or safety purposes, protection of river banks, planning or replanning of villages and the general preservation of the original glory of forest and stream. The landscape engineer never rides without meeting new and interesting problems. [78]
In 1922, Mather praised their accomplishments as being "of the highest order and of inestimable value." The most important problems in his opinion were locating and harmonizing the design of buildings and villages in relationship to the surrounding natural environment. Vista thinning, locating trails and roads, screening objectionable views, placing utility wires underground, and improving the public campgrounds were other important tasks carried out by the landscape engineers. [79]
COOPERATION WITH PARK SUPERINTENDENTS
The role of the landscape engineer was intended as an advisory one, but getting superintendents and concessionaires to accept advice was not always easy. Before 1918, superintendents routinely made construction decisions and often designed park buildings themselves. Punchard began a process of conferring with park superintendents on site and conveying design ideas through rough sketches, finished drawings, and written reports. While major decisions were followed closely by Mather, the landscape engineer and the park superintendent worked out solutions for locating and designing most of the lesser buildings of the park, from ranger stations to utility areas. Consultation frequently involved the concessionaires.
In 1921, Mather, still finding it necessary to assert the authority of the landscape engineers, wrote,
No buildings are permitted to be erected in the parks without the approval as to design by the landscape engineering department with such occasional exceptions in emergency cases as may be directly approved by the director based on their preparation by satisfactory professional talent. It is in this aspect of park development that our landscape engineering department fulfills one of its most important duties. [80]
To encourage park superintendents to accept the advice of the landscape engineer, Mather praised the engineer's accomplishments each year. Still, Kiessig, and likely Hull as well, was of the opinion that one solution to the overwhelming problem of preserving and developing the parks was to appoint superintendents with landscape backgrounds, who could see that all work was carried out with sensitivity toward the landscape on a continual and regular basis. The landscape engineers felt that their role should be not only advisory but one in which they actually had some authority on landscape matters. [81]
By the end of 1923, the respective roles of the superintendent and landscape engineer were generally understood and appreciated. That year Mather praised the marked advances in landscape improvements, which he credited partly to the cooperation between park superintendent and landscape engineers. The same year Hull noted, "The whole-hearted interest in the protection of our park landscapes . . . developing from the superintendent down in our various parks has been splendid to observe and has made my work and relationship to the service really enjoyable." [82]
Horace Albright, the superintendent of Yellowstone, contributed heavily to this acceptance. At the superintendent's conference in November 1922, he enumerated the many improvements that had come from his collaboration with Punchard and Hull. These included the organization of new campgrounds and the expansion of old ones, improvements in the design of concessionaire's facilities, the construction of the West Thumb and Cody entrances, the construction of large community buildings at the Canyon and Old Faithful campgrounds, the clearing of vistas along park roads, the construction of new patrol cabins and other buildings, the construction of walkways across hot spring formations and along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and numerous improvements in developed areas.
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| Compatibility with existing architecture was as important as harmony of design with nature. At Yellowstone's Gardiner Entrance, the checking station (1921) designed by landscape engineer Daniel Hull is visible through the massive clinker stone arch designed by H. M. Chittenden in 1903. (National Park Service Historic Photography Collection) |
FROM DEVELOPMENT SCHEMES TO TOWN PLANS
Under Hull's direction, the landscape program became more and more involved with the problems of planning for villages. Grand Canyon and Yosemite received substantial attention in the early 1920s. Hull was called upon to design a variety of new park structures, including administration buildings, community halls, ranger stations, and lookouts. It was often difficult to achieve harmony with nature in areas that had been developed in a haphazard fashion or where traffic and demand for visitor use greatly surpassed the capacity of existing facilities.
One of the pressing problems that concerned Mather was Yosemite Village. As early as 1916, he called for the building of a new village, since the old village was subject to flooding. A new site was selected away from the river and under a canopy of trees so that the village was less conspicuous from popular viewpoints on the rim. The federal Commission of Fine Arts, following Chairman Charles Moore's visit in 1918, continued to be interested in the future of Yosemite Village. The new village was planned with the assistance of the commission and the services of Myron Hunt, a prominent Los Angeles architect who had been an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright and Jens Jensen in Chicago earlier in his career. The issue of planning for Yosemite Valley was foremost in the minds of park officials when the superintendents" conference was held at the park in November 1922. Hull attended, as did commission landscape architect James Greenleaf. [83]
Hull worked closely with Hunt, and by the end of 1923, a definite plan was finally approved for the future development of Yosemite Valley. This allowed many long-delayed projects to proceed, "thus helping to relieve the congested situation which has developed." In 1923, with money appropriated for a new administration building and approval for a new post office building, construction got under way. The new village made possible the elimination of many dilapidated structures and improved the valley "from the standpoint of practical operation and landscape effect." The plan called for the careful selection of building sites, the park service's approval of all designs, and adherence to an architectural theme that harmonized construction with the natural surroundings. Buildings for the park's administration and concessionary services were to be located around a central plaza that provided parking. Hull described the plan:
This plan places the unit on the opposite side of the valley from the present village and offers every advantage to the establishment of the various general stores, studios, and shops in satisfactory relation to the administration building and the post office. All buildings erected will, of course, be built in accordance with plans approved by the service and no opportunity will be lost to have the structures harmonize with their natural surroundings. [84]
In 1924, with the construction of a new administration building, plans for the new village center began to take shape. The administration building was the design of Myron Hunt and introduced a modest Craftsman structure with a lower story and foundation of concrete faced with boulders, an upper story of shingled walls, and a broad sloping roof supported on exposed log purlins. This building established the particular mode of harmonious "rustic" design to which later buildings in the village would conform. The construction of a post office and museum followed within two years. The three government buildings and the Rangers" Club of 1921 created a nucleus for a civic center to replace the old village.
The Grand Canyon was made a national park in 1919. Here the landscape engineer was presented with the challenge of fitting new government facilities into the scheme already established by the Santa Fe Railroad and the Fred Harvey Company. Punchard met with the Fred Harvey Company's architect, Mary Colter, in 1919. At the Grand Canyon's South Rim, park service buildings had to be coordinated with the large number of prominent buildings already built by the concessionaire. A village character clearly existed and a distinctive architectural character representing a variety of styles prevailed. Prominent buildings included the stone Lookout House on the edge of the rim, the pueblo style Hopi House, the El Tovar Hotel with its Swiss- and Norwegian-inspired design and details, a train station of massive log construction, and a number of utility buildings including stables and a power plant. A preliminary plan for an administration or civic group was prepared and a general scheme for the canyon's development worked out. In 1921, Hull designed the park administration building, using a combination of stone and log, establishing a style that would harmonize park service construction on the South Rim with the natural setting and with the concessionaire's buildings. [85]
In 1923, Hull spent two weeks at Grand Canyon, collaborating with Colter. He drew up several development schemes fitting together the needs of the National Park Service and the existing development. Hull sought a solution that would preserve the "wonderful landscape beauty but provide adequately for the large number of visitors there." In 1924, Hull and Vint, the Santa Fe Railway engineers, and Fred Harvey officials worked out a comprehensive plan for future development on the South Rim. Myron Hunt also provided advice and assistance. Mather optimistically reported, "Many complicated problems were worked out to the satisfaction of all interests concerned and structures no longer will be located hit or miss, but with assurance that they will fit in the development scheme for all time to come as far as contingencies can be foreseen. For the first time all parties concerned can build for permanence." The plan called for a new administration building and new superintendent's residence. By the end of 1926, the new village plaza was taking form with a new road leading into it. The new auto camp was praised as one of finest in United States, with a community room, delicatessen, comfort station, and other amenities. [86]
Punchard had spent substantial time in Sequoia and General Grant national parks studying the problems of crowding in the Giant Forest. A summer home for the superintendent and an administration building were built at the Giant Forest, and in 1923, an administrative and industrial headquarters was begun at Ash Mountain to serve the Alder Creek district. By 1926, a new village was taking form at the edge of the Giant Forest and the old facilities were being removed. [87]
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Last Modified: Mon, Oct 31, 2002 10:00:00 pm PDT
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