The Big Reveal
Brooklyn, New York
In the 1860’s Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, giving it a commanding centerpiece. Carefully screened from New York City’s outside disturbances through the use of gentle hillocks and dense forest plantings, the vast openness of this centerpiece, the “Long Meadow,” affords city dwellers a sense of liberation and restoration that was specifically intended to renew their spirits. After all, late 19th-century urban life was filthy, smoky, loud, and odorous in a way that modern New Yorkers simply cannot imagine.
images: Sam Valentine and Matthew X. Kiernan
Today, Long Meadow is still just as amazing of a space, and according to the Prospect Park Alliance, its gently undulating grass surface may be the longest unbroken meadow in any American city park. To those playing frisbee or soccer, flying kites, or enjoying a relaxed picnic, the subtly curved alignment – a strategic landscape feature called a “dog leg” – implies to the viewer that the meadow is even longer than its actual one-mile length. Even more impressive though, is how Olmsted, Vaux and Company choreographed the approach and arrival to this liberating landscape.
image: from “Design for Prospect Park,” Olmsted Vaux & Co. 1866-1867 (color added by author)
The primary paths of access to the open meadow are guarded by unique, ornamental archways.
images: Ranjit Bhatnagar and Sam Valentine
These arches are quite functional, as they are actually overpass bridges that bear their own park paths. To a traveler along one of the gently meandering paths that leads to the Long Meadow, however, these architectural interventions provide a dynamic sensory effect. With their handsome stonework, the arches initially attract the eye of an approaching visitor. As one gets closer, they then frame the view of the meadow. Upon entering one of them, they tightly enclose the viewer and shroud him or her in a cool darkness. Then, finally, they reveal the grandeur and vastness of Long Meadow in one dramatic moment. This is a sequential experience that is magnified by the contrast between the sunlit open space and the cave-like tunnel from which one has just emerged.
images: Sam Valentine
You may find yourself interested in Olmsted and Vaux’s orchestration of arrival onto Long Meadow, but hold doubts that this effect can be transferred to a property that is significantly smaller than Prospect Park’s 585 acres. You should know, then, that Olmsted created a similar dramatic arrival experience, albeit scaled down, at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. His property was only a little more than an acre, but on one section of his landscape, Olmsted choreographed the arrival to the largest open space on his property – his front lawn.
While walking along a narrow, short path that winds through a rock garden, visitors to what is now Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site can find themselves suddenly expelled from an intricate environment of craggy boulders and shady mountain laurels onto the relatively spacious vista of a residentially scaled meadow.
