Historic American Landscapes Survey

Kohl Mansion "The Oaks" - Burlingame

2012-01-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

Terrace on the south side of the mansion

For anyone who ever thought history was dull how is this for a headline: “How Two Beauties Are Spending “King Kohl’s” Hoodooed Millions - Plutocrat’s Suicide with his Widow Engaged to a Count and His Heart Mate Leasing A Mansion in Paris”? I found this story complete with provocative sketches while researching the Kohl Mansion in Burlingame for the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). It was published by the Port Arthur News on November 4, 1925.

Three weeks ago my partner, pups and I set off on another HALS adventure and discovered the Kohl Mansion also known as “The Oaks” because the 40-acre property is covered with many old live oak trees. It is a beautiful campus now occupied by the Sisters of Mercy High School.

The Kohl Mansion was built for Charles Frederick “Freddie” Kohl and his wife Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Godley. The 53-room Tudor- style brick structure was designed by architects George Howard and John White of Hillsborough and was planned to closely resemble Somerset House, the residence of the Duke of Surrey in England.

40' wide steps from the terrace onto the lawn

Frederick Kohl was born in 1863, the son of William H. Kohl who was a pioneer ship builder and co-founder of the Alaska Commercial Company. Kohl was one of the richest men in the San Francisco “Gold Belt”. In addition to the Burlingame estate Kohl owned property in downtown San Mateo that is now Central Park, the Kohl office building in downtown San Francisco and a “castle” at California’s Lake Tahoe.

He married Ms. Godley in 1904 and acquired the 40-acre Burlingame property in order to build a home where they could entertain and where Bessie, who had a beautiful contralto voice, could perform for their guests. In 1916 Bessie left Frederick for Europe and never returned. For a time Frederick lived at the St. Fransis Hotel in San Francisco. He began a relationship with Marion Louderback Lord and left her the bulk of his $5 million estate when died by suicide November 23, 1921. Mss Lord sold the property to The Sisters of Mercy who initially used the mansion as a convent then converted it to Mercy High School for girls in 1931, which is the current use of the property.

Concrete steps and walls made to look like stone as seen in a 1916 photo

In 1921 the Kohl Mansion was leased to United Artists and the movie “Little Lord Fauntleroy” was filmed in the house. In 1996, “Flubber” starring Robin Williams was filmed there.

The article in the Port Arthur News referred to the Kohl Mansion as “the greatest palace ever built in the West.” The grand terrace on the south side of the house extends the full width of the mansion and measures 215’ by 50 – 85’. A wall at the perimeter of the terrace is concrete with a concrete cap. It was built to emulate a massive stone wall. Weathering and the presence of lichen enhance the finish and increase the illusion that it is a stone wall.

South of the terrace a lawn extends beyond the width of the terrace and is 295’ wide and 87’ deep. The east edge of the lawn has a planting bed that includes three historic lemon trees and a border of new, white shrub roses. Mature evergreen live oaks / Quercus agrifolia and coniferous trees including Deodar cedar / Cedrus deodara and blue atlas cedar /Cedrus atlantica `glauca’ fill the space beyond the south edge of the lawn.

Much of the original sunken rose garden is present. It is set 5’ lower than the terrace and consists of brick paths set in a basket weave pattern, and small rose beds bordered with sheared boxwood hedges. Overall the rose garden measures 48’ by 54’ and is made up of 25 rose beds in a symmetrical pattern of round and rectangular beds. Two sets of brick steps with wing walls lead down into the rose garden from the south side. The surface between the rose garden and the terrace is pea gravel.

Sunken rose garden on the east side of the mansion

Foundation plantings all appear to be new with the exception of a few hybrid roses with gnarled trunks. A 1916 photograph of the mansion shows only low boxwood hedges at foundations. There are also two sculpted boxwood hedges in the shape of a script “E” and two boxwood plants trimmed into three-sided pyramids.

Overall the integrity of the garden is good. The Mercy High School campus occupies similar size acreage as the original Kohl property. Changes to the grounds necessitated by the change in use are obvious but generally have been handled appropriately. Where original historic fabric was too deteriorated to be retained replacements have been executed in a sensitive manner and in such a way that the viewer can easily understand what is original.

The Kohl Mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 No. 2750.

Decoratively trimmed boxwood near the front door

Sisters of Mercy History

The Sisters of Mercy was founded in 1831 by Catherine McAuley, a wealthy Irish heiress, who wanted to care for poor women and children in Ireland. The sisters arrived in San Francisco prior to 1855 and established St. Mary’s Hospital, retirement facilities and four schools in San Francisco and Oakland. They purchased the Kohl Mansion in 1924 and used it as the Motherhouse for the region. By 1952 they ran a high school in San Francisco and 25 elementary schools throughout California. In 1989 they became co-sponsors of Mercy Housing, Inc. Their mission is to provide quality, affordable, housing for the poor, to strengthen families, and to promote healthy communities.

People's Park, Berkeley

2011-11-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

A portion of a mural painted on the restroom in People's Park

Today was a nice fall day, so a HALS adventure was in order, but with other things to do I wanted to visit a nearby site. Deciding on some place in Berkeley I reviewed the list of possible places and was struck by a listing for People’s Park. Initially I wondered why someone had included it in a list of potential HALS sites in Alameda County. It is certainly not historic – the database noted a construction date of 1969. On the other hand it certainly qualifies as a cultural landscape, and since my hometown of Oakland has gained international recognition during the Occupy movement maybe this is a timely topic.

Footpath into the park and canopy trees at the perimeter

People’s Park is a lasting monument to the Free Speech movement that began in the late 60s and continued through much of the 70s while I was a student on the Berkeley campus. Walking around and through the park one sees many signs reminiscent of today’s protests. One also sees many elements comparable to any other community park – an expanse of lawn, a variety of trees and plants, a community garden, a stage, a restroom building, picnic tables, art and even a tot lot.

Though this is a park conceived and constructed by volunteers – some who considered themselves anarchists - its design is remarkably similar to other parks - conventional. It occupies about two-thirds of a city block, has paths that enter the park from each corner and side, and has signage, lighting, and trash containers. There are areas shaded by mature canopy trees and a large, open, grassy area in the center where a group had erected canopies for an event and a blow-up toy for kids. UC students were attending the event while street people relaxed in their low-profile but very obvious encampments.

Picnic table, event canopies & blow up toy in central lawn area

Is this a cultural landscape? I say yes. What is more American than protesting? Let us not forget that our nation began with the American Revolution. A column in Friday’s paper by Thomas D. Elias tells me that “the average income of the top 1 percent of Californians rose from $778,000 to $1.2 million per year, while the average income of people in the bottom 80 percent actually fell.” And a sign in People’s Park notes, “On Bloody Thursday, the day UC administrators had a fence put up around People’s Park, we took to the streets. 30,000 people marched. LET 1000 PARKS BLOOM!”

Community garden beds line one side of the park

Our public open spaces – both designed and vernacular – often provide the venue for public discourse. We landscape architects design these spaces to encourage quiet conversation between two friends or massive public gatherings to voice our angst. Frank Ogawa Plaza, named after a long serving City Council representative, and where Occupy Oakland is based includes a large amphitheater and stage and the Jack London Oak – the symbol of our city anchors the park. This great tree and plaza serve as the forecourt to City Hall, the center of our government.

Artistic commentary

Another park sign

Fairytale Town, William Land Park, Sacramento

2011-10-02T21:45:00.000-07:00

Farmer Brown's Barn

Today I participated in a re-enactment of the first suffrage march that took place in California. The march took place in downtown Oakland at Lakeside Park. The first suffrage march in California occurred on August 23, 1908. That parade of over 300 women re-energized the suffrage movement which led to the successful passage of the suffrage referendum in 1911. Today’s event was organized by the League of Women Voters. Oakland’s female Mayor, Jean Quan was joined by our female member of the US House of Representatives, Barbara Lee and three of Oakland’s female members of the City Council to welcome marchers and to lend their voices to the celebration.

The Three Little Pigs House

This civic event reminded me that it was another women’s organization – the Junior League that led the effort to plan and build the Fairytale Town theme park in William Land Park in Sacramento. Fairytale town like Oakland’s Fairyland and Roeding Park’s Storyland, is a special place for young children. Each of these fanciful places uses fairy tales as the models for child scaled sets. These themed play places are part of a post-World War II park movement. At Land Park the Junior League initiated plans for Fairytale Town in 1956. They hired Kenneth C. Rickey and Fred E. Brooks to design the sets.

3 fat pigs are part of the set

The original exhibits included the Three Little Pigs, Mary Had a Little Lamb, King Arthur’s Castle, Cinderella’s Carriage, Farmer Brown’s Barn and others. Fairytale Town opened in 1959. Other exhibits continued to be added. Today Fairytale town is well maintained and continues to be a beloved, special place for Sacramento’s children and others who visit.

Cinderell'as pumpkin is a very popular exhibit

Little Engine That Could

Mr. McGregor's Garden

Peter Rabbit

The Tortoise and where's the hare?

Land Park, Sacramento

2011-09-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

The Pond. Each water feature has a wide stone edge

Recently I was hired to survey Land Park in Sacramento as part of a larger study to assess the historic features of the park – a dream job. I spent two days in the field photographing and recording field notes about everything in the park, and then summarized my finding by category. I organized the material by feature type – circulation, vegetation, buildings and structures, small scale features, water features, etc.

Money to build a large community park was given to the City of Sacramento by William Land in 1919. City fathers spent some time debating where to build the park and finally agreed on 236 acres of land known as the Swanston-McDivit Tract. In 1922 landscape architect Frederick N. Evans prepared a master plan for the park. Evans’ plan reflected the design trend of the day and incorporated lots of recreation features – five baseball fields, many single and group picnic facilities, an outdoor stage and amphitheater, two lakes and a pond, a golf course, a zoo and two separate children’s play – Fairytale Town and Funderland.

One of many group picnic facilities

Land Park is remarkably similar to Roeding Park in Fresno which I wrote about a year ago in September 2010. There is an outdoor dance floor, called Village Green in the southeast corner of Land Park that is exactly like two found in Roeding Park – the size, construction and a raised stage are essentially identical to those built earlier in Fresno. The water features, abundance of picnic facilities and two children’s play areas are also much like those found in Roeding Park thus it seems probable that Evans may have visited Fresno and decided to emulate that successful park.

The amphitheater and stage with Italian cypress backdrop

Both parks are located in valley communities that experience hot summer temperatures, so both parks consist predominantly of lawn and gorgeous, mature trees. Both parks include a nice variety of large shade trees – combinations of evergreens, conifers and deciduous trees, but one thing that distinguishes Roeding Park is how the trees are massed with a single species – more impressive than isolated specimens or groups of mixed species. In both parks the nearly continuous canopy of shade provided by these trees is most welcome.

Looking down the fairway of Land Park golf course

Land Park includes a number of structures constructed by the WPA – Works Progress Administration as part of President Roosevelt’s plan to put people back to work after the depression. Crews built several stone structures including a gazebo, a gracefully curved pergola, several monuments and what is now a wonderful perennial garden lovingly maintained by park staff member Daisy.

There is so much in Land Park that I’ll need to write at least one more post to tell you more.

Flamingos in the zoo

Sank Park

2011-08-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

Two towaring Italian Cypress dwarf the cottage

While vacationing in northern California earlier this year we visited Oroville. My primary objective was to visit CaliforniaRegistered Historic Landmark No. 770 – Chinese Temple which was built in 1863 and used as a place of worship for 10,000 immigrants who came to California during the gold rush. I hoped to find a historic, traditional garden that would be suitable for submission to the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) annual challenge – the theme for 2011 is Landscapes of diversity. Sadly, nothing about the existing garden at the temple was historic. It was nice enough, but a recent addition. The only landscape feature that may have been authentic is an old fig tree across the street where the Chinese schoolhouse had been located.

Fortunately, there were other places to visit in Oroville including Sank Park which provides the setting for the Lott House. This modest Victorian Gothic-revival cottage was built in1856 by Charles Fayette Lott, an attorney and former state senator. He and his descendants occupied the property for over one hundred years and when the last child died the home and garden were donated to the City of Oroville.

Like other historic homes the property occupies an entire city block. Often one block is all that remains of what was originally a much larger parcel of land, but in this case it was originally one block, purchased for $200 – imagine that.

The arbor leads from the sidewalk to the front door

Scored concrete marks the entry

The block is surrounded by a low, white fence, and the main entry to the garden and home is off Montgomery Street. At the entry there is a nicely detailed accent in the sidewalk paving and a gate that leads to an elaborate wisteria covered arbor. Constructed of concrete and white timbers the arbor is so substantial that it nearly dwarfs the delicate house.

I particularly liked the carriage house – a utilitarian building. It is painted all white and is an understated piece of architecture. It was nicely tucked into the property and surrounded by massive shade trees. There was something simply appealing about it.

The carriage house shaded by trees

In one corner of the site there is a gazebo. As I walked in that direction, something about the gazebo did not feel authentic – the scale was not right for a private family. It felt more municipal, and sure enough when I got up to the structure there was a small plaque indicating that it was a recent addition – added after the family occupied the site. To me that was a distraction. It was nice enough but when I visit a historic home or garden I prefer to see genuine features – “the real deal”. I do appreciate that they included the plaque informing me that it was not associated with the Lott family.

Most of the park consists of lawn and gardens that are well tended. There were many indications of care being taken to preserve and maintain this site. Though we missed the Wisteria bloom, the azaleas were at their peak – lots of them. One wanders through the garden on brick or concrete paths and discovers details along the way – a bench, a pool, and an interesting assortment of inlaid tiles. Apparently, it was Jesse Sank, husband of Cornelia Lott, who built these for his bride. Follow this link to read the story of their romance.

Much of the front yard is planted with azaleas making Spring a good time to visit

Bidwell Park, Chico

2011-07-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Main entry flanked by stone columns and accented by flowering Dogwood

Bidwell Park is the third largest urban park in the United States. It is a long, narrow park that starts in downtown not far from the Bidwell Mansion and extends for over five miles into wilderness. It has 68 miles of walking and bicycle trails. The lower portion of the park is closest to downtown and is the most developed with several entry points from adjacent residential neighborhoods. The main entry is off South Park Drive west of Mangrove Avenue. This entry is flanked by a pair of simple, rough-hewn, granite columns, each topped with a stout, rectangular light.

Amenities in the lower portion of the park include picnic facilities, open lawn areas, a baseball field, horseshow pits, a themed children’s play area called “Caper Acres”, and by far my favorite feature - Sycamore swimming pool formed by the damming of Chico Creek. The water flows rapidly through the pool, which is about 600 feet in length and 95 feet wide, and then exits via a spillway at the east end. A footbridge crosses over the spillway. Native sycamore trees line one side of the pool.

Enticing Sycamore pool is fed by Big Chico Creek

The middle portion of the park consists of trails and a single, one-way drive that lie beneath a continuous canopy of trees. Summer temperatures in Chico are typically in the 100s so these trees and the swimming pool are essential amenities. Tree species are predominantly valley oak (Quercus lobata), and native sycamore (Platanus racemosa). The understory is mostly grasses, willow and spice bush (Calycanthus occidentalis). Big Chico Creek continues through the middle and upper portions of the park, and there are individual picnic facilities along the drive, each with a barbeque.

Paths throughout the park are shaded by mature trees

Facilities in the Upper portion of the park include an 18-hole golf course, a driving range, an observatory, a fishing pier, Horseshoe Lake, picnic facilities, and equestrian trails. Just east of Manzanita Avenue is the Hooker Oak Picnic Area – named for the Hooker Oak – the largest known valley oak until it fell in a 1977 storm. The entire park has a rustic, informal quality. There is very little irrigated, mown lawn. Instead the park brings the wilderness into downtown.

Annie Bidwell donated the land to the people of Chico in 1905 for a public park. She said at the time that the grant followed the desire of her late husband. In subsequent years she made additional donations to expand the park. This generous gift is the heart of Chico – a treasure enjoyed and appreciated by visitors and residents – particularly on hot summer days. If you plan a visit and go in summer I dare you to resist a plunge into Sycamore Pool.

Much of the park consists of a continuous canopy of trees with grasses below

Bidwell Mansion, Chico

2011-07-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

Mansion, oval planter and Southern Magnolia. Fan palm at right.

Visiting Chico one cannot avoid contact with the legacy of their most famous residents – John Bidwell and his wife Annie Ellicott Kennedy Bidwell. John Bidwell was part of the first wagon trains that arrived in California, he discovered gold in 1848, laid out the town of Chico, served in the House of Representatives, lobbied for California statehood, and ran for President of the United States in 1892. Annie Bidwell was the daughter of Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Superintendent of the U.S. Census and was an advocate for prohibition and the suffragette movement. Their legacy dominates the town of Chico – the two primary components are their home - the Bidwell Mansion and Bidwell Park.

What is incredible is how much of the property retains features as they were depicted in a circa 1877 sketch by Smith and Elliott. The most significant landscape feature is a large oval-shaped planting bed, as wide as the width of the house. The bed is surrounded by an oval drive that passes beneath the porte-cochere. A southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) 25 – 35 feet taller than the three story tower of the house is planted in the oval.

Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)

Other original trees that remain are a maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba), a spectacular – in size and form - tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), a South American monkey puzzle (Auracaria imbricata) and a Lawson cypress (Cupressus lawsoniana). These trees are growing within a broad expanse of lawn between the mansion and Esplanade – typical of Victorian era gardens, and were intended to demonstrate the owner’s wealth and taste.

A lushly planted area south of the mansion, along the Big Chico Creek, remains today though the trees are much larger than those in the Smith and Elliott sketch. Also the location of the main road – now called Esplanade appears to be in the same location as shown in the sketch.

In 1877 the area north of the mansion was planted in orchards and vineyards. Today, this area has been developed as housing and commercial areas.

Lawson Cypress and a Fan Palm

John Bidwell was born in 1819 in New York State. In 1841, at the age of 22, he was one of the first pioneers to cross the Sierra Nevada in route to California. When he first arrived he served as the business manager for John Sutter and personally transported the first gold discovered in California to San Francisco to be assayed.

Shortly thereafter in 1848 Bidwell made his own gold discovery near the middle fork of the Feather River. He used his new found wealth to purchase the 26,000 acre Rancho del Arroyo Chico and began developing the agriculture of the region. At one point the Rancho was the most famous and highly diversified agricultural enterprise in California. In 1860 Bidwell laid out the town of Chico.

In 1865 he hired San Francisco architect Henry W. Cleveland to design his 10,000 square foot, 26-room Italian villa. In April of 1868 he convinced Annie Ellicott Kennedy to marry him and shortly thereafter they moved into the mansion.

Side porch, Magnolia in the background

The Bidwells remained in the mansion until their deaths in 1900 (John) and 1918 (Annie) at which time Annie Bidwell gave the mansion and grounds to the Presbyterian Church to serve as a school. Then in 1923 the site was acquired by the State College, and finally it was purchased by California State Parks and designated as a State Historic Park. The property is California Registered Historic Landmark No. 329, 1966, and HALS No. CA-63.

Looking at the Magnolia from the front porch

Bidwell Bowl Amphitheater, Chico

2011-06-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Bidwell Bowl is one of those secret surprises that is nice to discover when traveling or just playing tourist in your home town. I had a note that there was a WPA – that’s Works Progress Administration – era amphitheater on the Chico State University campus and set out to find it. I stopped several students in my pursuit and was pointed in several directions and finally resorted to the library to get clear directions. The theater is actually just west of the Physical Science Building and adjacent to Big Chico Creek. After chasing all across campus to find it, I discovered a lovely footbridge, modeled on the original that led to the amphitheater from the Bidwell Mansion garden I’d visited just the day before. Ah well, had I discovered the theater from the mansion I might have skipped seeing the campus.

The stage is on the opposite side of the river

Like so many of our state’s gifts from the WPA and the vision of President Franklin Roosevelt, the theater is understated. Made from local stone the gently arced amphitheater tucks nicely into the natural slope. What is particularly appealing is the fact that the stage is on the opposite side of the river, so while watching a performance one is also enjoying the natural beauty of the turbulent blue-green water as it flows past the stage.

The decorative railing matches the original built by the Bidwell family

The space is defined by stone walls on three sides. The walls are curved on top both in section and elevation. At the top row of seats a band of cement was added to provide a smooth surface to lean against. Lichen growing on the stone adds a touch of softness. The ground surface is concrete with steps moving up the slope. The seats are simple in design and made of wood.

Like many WPA projects a bronze marker provides the date of construction – a welcome touch for those of us interested in history. I wish all buildings and designed landscapes incorporated dates of construction and the name of the designer.

This simple bronze plaque gives the date of construction

Anderson Marsh State Historic Park

2011-06-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

Readers,

Please excuse my absence. I have been distracted and consumed by researching and writing a book on my family history to commemorate the marriage of my cousin's eldest daughter. The wedding was yesterday and now I can get back to my blog and writing about some of California's cultural landscapes.

In May we took a week-long trip making a loop through northern California from Point Arena in Mendocino County to Chico, Oroville and over Yuba Pass to Downieville - one of California's Gold Rush towns. We visited several historic sites that I will be writing about in the next few weeks. The first is Anderson Ranch State Historic Park (SHP) - a vernacular landscape - not designed but one that tells the story of how the Anderson family lived. The site provides a view of what life was like in the late 19th century. Vernacular is defined as "a style of architecture (or landscape architecture) exemplifying the commonest techniques, decorative features, and materials of a particular historical period, region or group of people."

Anderson Marsh SHP is an excellent example of a ranch home in a stunningly beautiful setting. One approaches the cluster of buildings from the south. The west edge is defined by two barns separated by a corral. To the east is another barn, and the north side of the grouping is formed by the ranch house. A white picket fence defines front, side and backyard areas around the house, and rail fences enclose the barns and larger yard. Feed bins, hay bins and various animal stalls add to the complex. One other large barn is at the northwest corner outside the primary complex and therre are the remains of another irregularly-shaped corral. These structures and barns were built in the 1800s from hand hewn redwood and provided shelter for the family and animals in an open, windy, hot location.

The barns, ranch house and fences are laid out around a central open space and the grouping forms a cohesive compound. Throughout the building cluster, broad spreading mature oaks and willow shade the area. Distant views across the fields toward the marsh and beyond to surrounding hills are available from most places on the site, except to the east where a wooden wall has been added to screen Highway 53 from view.

The park is 1065 acres and includes freshwater marsh wetlands, native grasslands, California oak woodland and riparian woodland. Today's marsh is approximately eight percent of what was once a vast marsh that fed Clear Lake - the largest lake whooly within the borders of California.

The site was first occupied by the southeastern Pomo Native Amereicans - one of te largest groups of indigenous peoples in California. The Pomo are known as some of the best basket-makers in the country, and the marsh tule provided ample supplies of raw material for basket making. The state park includes archaeological sites from these Pomo people, some are among the oldest found in California, dating at over 10,000 years old.

Settlement first occured in this part of California in the mid 1850s. Two Grigsby brothers from Tennessee first occupied this site and built the central two-story portion of the ranch house and two barns. Grigsby raised livestock and crops.

In 1870 John Melchesadick "Mels" Grigsby sold the property to the Clear Lake Waterworks Company, in part as a result of a disagreement about how the land was being managed. In 1866 a portion of Grigsby's land was flooded when the water company dammed Cache Creek and overflow from Clear Lake flooded the Grigsby property. This conflict over water continued between Lake and Yolo Counties for over 100 years - one of many water related conflicts that have defined California. After Grigsby left, the water company planted this area in veneyards and orchards.

In 1885 Scottish immigrant, John Still Anderson purchased a portion of the property - 1300 acres and started a dairy. He also grew hay and grain for the cattle. Anderson expanded the ranch house for his wife and family of six children by adding the two-story west wing. The second and third generations of Andersons ran a successful cattle ranching operation and ramained on the property until the 1960s. The California State Parks system acquired the land in 1982 and dedicated it as a park in 1983.

Anderson Ranch is a low key state park but well worth a stop if you would appreciate a glimpse into a piece of California's ranching history. The barn is open and there is an interesting display of farm equipment.

Storyland at Roeding Park, Fresno

2010-11-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about Roeding Park for my September 26th post. Today I want to focus on just one of the many features of this wonderful regional park – Storyland, which was a gift to the children of Fresno given by the Fresno Metropolitan Rotary in 1961. Storyland is now 49 years old and is a valuable contributor to our state’s cultural landscape. It would have been a strong contender in the national Theme Park Challenge initiated by the Northern California Chapter of the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) and sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Like Fairyland in Oakland, Storyland is a theme park for young children with exhibits based on familiar fairy tales. It is a richly stimulating environment with so many colorful and delightful elements that it can be overwhelming. Every detail is scaled to accommodate children – doorways are low, light standards short, benches and seats small, and pathways are narrow. Here adults have to stoop, bend down and crouch.

There are at least 25 fairytale exhibits including Little Boy Blue, The Old Woman In The Shoe, The Crooked Man who Walked a Crooked Mile, Mother Goose, The Wicked Witch at Candyland, Jack and Jill, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, Miss Muffett, Alice In Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty, and The 3 Little Pigs.

There are at least two areas that families can rent for birthday parties or other special events. My favorite is the castle tower party room designed with a Camelot and Knights theme. Access to the castle is via a wooden draw bridge over the castle moat – beware of the sea serpent lurking in the moat near the bridge. A narrow passage way leads into the Camelot room that has a circular table for the knights, painted stone interior, colorful hanging banners, and a tall, carved chair for the king or queen.

The theme of the other party space is Alice In Wonderland where the White Rabbit presides at the entry and the 3 of Hearts stands guard. A large clock face is painted on the pavement and party tables are set inside a walled garden.

But there is much more at Storyland to explore. The multi-masted Pirate ship with its giant wheel and elaborate riggings is unlike anything you could every find in any pre-manufactured play catalogue today. This realistically detailed structure includes carved ornamentation, cannons protruding from the sides, a coat of arms, a lantern for night sailing, slides, shoots and hiding cubbies, chains and robes, a sliding pole for quick escapes, and a carved dolphins masthead.

There is a child-size train that you board at the Storyland Train Station opposite the entry ticket booth, and then take a ride around Lake Washington where you’ll pass by a wrecked pirate ship and beneath the canopy of Roeding Park’s wonderful trees. There is a stage with seating for theater performances and puppet shows. There is even a small scale chapel with stain glass windows made with primary colors and miniature pews with inscriptions like, “The world rests on truth and peace”.

Even the boys and girls restrooms are custom designed and scaled to accommodate children. The Tudor-style buildings enclose a brightly painted setting featuring the baker and boy with a goose – help me readers identify which fairytale this depicts – send a comment.

Storyland is laid out with curvilinear paths, of varying materials, colors and textures that lead to each of the exhibits. A man made, shallow, concrete-lined creek meanders through the site and at several spots one passes over a bridge to cross the creek. Each bridge is unique – one is a simple wood structure but others include bridges with colorful candy cane railings or gingerbread men. The best is an intricate, painted metal dragon with scales and loops on top.

Small, themed tables and stools are found along the paths for picnics or snack stops. Of course each is unique. The one near the 3 bears looks like mushrooms and the table top is painted with daisies. There are two styles of brightly painted mushroom seats – one with a table, and many other small details tucked into every curve of the pathway.

Storyland is worth a visit to Fresno if you have small children and for older children there is Playland with amusement rides, a water play area and another train. Of course there are other reasons to visit Fresno but Roeding Park is a must see for all ages.

Robson-Harrington Park, San Anselmo

2010-11-14T18:24:00.000-08:00

One of the best parts of doing HALS work is visiting places you’ve never been to before – whether you are away from home on a trip for just taking a Sunday drive nearby. Robson Harrington Park in San Anselmo is just such a place – a great discovery practically in our backyard.

The front entry to Robson-Harrington Park is defined by a low stone wall with pillars at the corner and entry drive. A walk parallels the driveway and is made with terra-cotta pavers with a redwood grained motif. This material continues to the front porch where it is laid in a herringbone pattern. The front garden looks much like a traditional early 20th century garden with curving expanses of lawn, shrub beds and a variety of mature specimen trees, but once in the garden you discover a unique brick wall constructed with a combination of standard brick and irregular chunks of what look like molten brick or glass. These are combined in infinite variety changing height, width and detailing. The wall forms arches, lines steps and terraces, and defines a group barbeque area on the lower level of the sloping site. Along the way one discovers one-of-a-kind pieces of glazed terra-cotta medallions varying in size from 4" to 26" round and rectangular pieces. All are glazed in ivory and or blue. It is a fanciful and organic garden that invites exploration and discovery.

The property includes a large expanse of lawn surrounded by a small redwood grove and an assortment of other trees including an exceptional Cratagus cordata/Washington Thorn. Currently, the area adjacent to the house is used for community gardening in terraced beds.
The residence on this property was completed in 1906 and was built for Edwin Kleber Wood on a 2.68 acre parcel. Wood was the son of farmers who served in the civil war prior to starting a career in the timber industry. His lumber company grew to be one of the largest in Michigan. In 1885, he served in the Michigan legislature. At this time Wood expanded his lumber business to the west coast and moved first to San Francisco and then Oakland, California. His Marin lumber yard, which opened in 1905, was one of the largest in Marin County. In 1917 when Edwin Woods died the property was valued at $2 million.

In 1923, Wood's sons sold the property to Kernan and Geraldine Robson. Kernan was the son of Albert L. Robson and Frances Harrington. Kernan attended Wesleyan University, Harvard Divinity School and Oxford prior to becoming a Professor of English. Later he formed a real estate partnership.

The Robsons planted extensive orchards and a vineyard. They added the curving brick walls using bricks salvaged from property acquired by Kernan's real estate dealings. They built archways, fountains and elaborate niches throughout the property.

The property was deeded to the City of San Anselmo upon Geraldine's death in 1967.

Wassama Village

2010-11-04T00:27:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago we drove to Yosemite to enjoy some fall color and a relaxing weekend. On the way we stopped at Wassama State Historic Park and found a gently sloping site with topography that steps down to the south. It is an oak-grassland with a few tall Valley Oaks (Quercus lobata) and other trees. The park is surrounded by a split-rail fence and beyond the park boundary there are rural, private properties. The distant view of hills, clad in Oak woodland is likely much as it would have been during the time that Native Americans used this site, when the roundhouse was originally built.

The main feature of the park is a 40-foot diameter roundhouse, actually an octagon-shaped building, that is sited on a level area of open grassland, adjacent to two mature oaks that shade the structure and a picnic area. The roundhouse has pine board siding, and a new shingle roof with a smoke hole.

The original roundhouse was a semi-subterranean building constructed in the 1860s that was used for ceremonial purposes by the Southern Miwok tribe of Native Americans. The site was known as Wassama Village meaning Falling Leaves. This structure was burned in 1893 by the native people, in honor of their leader upon his death – in keeping with tradition.

The new roundhouse, built in 1903 is an above-ground structure that utilized the original center pole in the construction. This roundhouse was restored in 1978 when state parks purchased the property, and is the only remaining Miwok roundhouse in California. The roundhouse is still used by Native Americans for religious ceremonies, dancing, and for interpretive programs. According to a monument at the site “Southern Miwok dances, including the 1870 Ghost Dance are known to have been performed in the round house.”

According to the Madera County Genealogy website, the roundhouse built in 1903 “was constructed of poles cut and hauled from Captain Jim Rohan’s 80-acre allotment three miles to the north. Rohan and Johnny Jacobs hauled all the material and directed the building. Other Indians who worked on it included Chief Peter Westfall, his sons Johnny and Eff, Jim and Sam Johnson, Charles Rohan, Frank Tex, Johnny Gibbs and Ben Jacobs. There were many more but their names are forgotten.”

Near the high point of the park, on the north side, there is a small burial plot (approximately 100’ x 60’) defined by a split rail fence with two horizontal members. Access to the cemetery is through openings on the west and east sides – there are no gates. A very subtle, eight foot wide dirt path, marked with rocks, leads to the west opening. One large oak at the center, casts shadow over most of the cemetery. The ground surface is covered by non-irrigated grasses and is without formal paths. Most graves are unmarked while a few have simple wooden crosses, and fewer still have upright or flat stone monuments.

The third feature is a grinding stone. This low, broad stone has more than 30 mortars of varying depths. The layout of the mortars forms an oval shape within the oval shaped stone.

Wassama Roundhouse is California Historical Landmark No. 1001. It is located in a beautiful part of California’s foothills and is worth a visit.

Morcom Amphitheater of Roses, Oakland

2010-10-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes staying close to home is just right. Have you ever spent a weekend constantly working, trying to catch up on errands, house cleaning and shopping, and then ….. it’s Sunday afternoon and you know you need to do something fun before facing the workweek? I had a weekend like this in the middle of July and decided to visit the Morcom Amphitheater of Roses, which is so close to where we live that of course we take it for granted, driving by five days a week to and from the office, but never stopping to literally “smell the roses.”

The Morcom rose garden, named after Fred N. Morcom, Mayor of Oakland 1931-33, was built in the 1930s, during the depression, in a steeply sided canyon. Landscape architect Arthur Cobbledick took advantage of the sloping site. The site is terraced with formal gardens at each level. There are five entrances into the park from the surrounding residential neighborhood. We parked at the high side of the site and walked down, one of two long flights of stairs, to the first terrace of rose beds. Rose covered trellises terminate the stairway. The rose beds on the upper terrace are bi-laterally symmetrical and together form an oval. Each bed is planted with one or more rose varieties, each labeled.

A wide sloping path leads to the next terrace. Embedded in the walk are small bronze plaques placed there to honor reach recipient of Oakland’s Mother of the Year program. The centerpiece of the middle terrace is a formal, elongated oval reflecting pool. It is set in a lawn defined by an oval path. A Mediterranean-style pavilion with a terra-cotta tile roof and tall arches sits on the northeast side of the pool. This is the premier spot for weddings.

Opposite the pavilion Cobbledick took advantage of the widest portion of the site and laid out a ten-tier cascade, perpendicular to the main axis of the garden. Stepped paths lead up at either side of the cascade to another terrace of roses. After climbing these steps one is rewarded with a view looking down the rose-lined cascade to the reflecting pool at the bottom and its pavilion backdrop.

At this point I was more than satisfied – feeling renewed by our afternoon’s outing, but there was still more to explore. After walking back down the cascade towards the reflecting pool we continued downhill where parallel paths line a wide planting bed filled with tall shrub roses. On the right is another small maintenance building, designed in a similar style as the pavilion, and at the end of our walk we came to the main entrance to the garden, which is framed by roofed structures supported by eighteen foot tall sets of paired classic columns.

This cultural landscape is well used and loved by residents, and now after years of park staff cuts, residents have taken on the maintenance of the garden. A friends group meets regularly to deadhead and prune the 6000 roses, and they are doing a good job – despite the staff cuts Morcom was recently acknowledged as one of the ten best municipal rose gardens in the nation. Thank you volunteers.

Roeding Park, Fresno

2010-09-26T16:30:00.001-07:00

It has been a few weeks since my last post. I’ve been busy. I attended the annual conference for landscape architects in Washington DC early this month. Two days later I headed out to Fresno, to start a new HALS documentation job. I was asked to prepare a HALS short form for Roeding Park – a 156 acre regional park in the Central Valley. Roeding Park is both a park and an arboretum. The man who donated the land to the City of Fresno, Frederick Christian Roeding and his son, George Christian Roeding were important figures in the state’s rich agricultural history, and owned and operated Fancher Creek Nursery. FC Roeding provided most of the trees for the new park and was very engaged in the park’s design as a Fresno Park Commissioner. He worked with landscape architect, Johannes Reimers, in the early 1900s, and together they created a community park that continues to be cared for and well used by “Fresnans”.

The park has much to offer. There is a tremendous variety of mature trees – exceptional specimens and small groves. These provide essential shade and stunning settings for picnicking. The picnicking facilities are almost endless – there are three group picnic areas with rustic-style shelters, large enough to house 7 twenty-foot long picnic tables at each. There are other group picnic areas without structures but shaded by trees. These are called The Eucalyptus Grove, Pine Grove and Cedar Grove picnic areas. There are also picnic areas for small groups, and isolated tables for a single family or couple.

The park has two dance floors with stages and lighting, there are 8 horseshoe pits, two tot lots with climbing structures, and a tennis complex with 14 tennis courts and one handball court. My favorite part of the park is the lily ponds. Just inside the main entry off Belmont Avenue Reimers designed five ponds, each has a curvilinear edge and all are shaded by a variety of canopy trees. Simple wooden bridges link one pond to the next. There is no formal path, so one feels invited to meander or sit, enjoying the cool shade and watching children fish from the edge.

The pond furthest from the entry, and near one corner of the park, has an ornate basin set on a pedestal, in the middle of the pond. A jet of water shoots up about 15 feet in the air above the basin. This too is lighted and is visible to people in cars driving by at night.

Lake Washington was constructed in another portion of the park. This is a single, large body of water with three jets and the remnants of what was once an island – before Highway 99 was built and cut off a portion of the lake and island. The lake is surrounded by lawn and trees and there is a monument to President George Washington, that was installed to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth. At the time the monument was dedicated, Fresno school children raised funds for, and helped plant more than 600 trees of over 300 types, in the park.

In 1955, the local Rotary gave funds to build Playland – an amusement park with rides, a miniature train, merry-go-round, and boat rides. Then in 1962, Storyland was added for young children. This fairytale themed area is very similar to Oakland’s “Fairyland” – see my January 24, 2010 blog post.

A zoo was added to the park in the 1920s and over the years has expanded several times. Currently, there are plans to expand the zoo again. It is clear that they need more space to accommodate their program, but I question the loss of park / arboretum space, which today is being used and obviously much enjoyed by many groups and families. Where will all the picnickers go? The family bar-b-ques, the casual strollers, the youthful fishing fans, the dog park users? Hum.

Tor House & Garden, Carmel

2010-08-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

The main event of my three day visit to Monterey with my mother in June was to visit the Tor House on the Carmel peninsula. To prepare for our trip I had reviewed the list of potential HALS sites our chapter members had assembled, and the brief description of the Tor site sounded intriguing. When my mother confirmed that she had never been there, which is unusual because she takes lots of trips to visit places throughout the state, that became our premier destination.

One thing to know about the California coastline is that it is frequently inundated with fog. When I called to make our reservations they reminded me to dress warmly. Well, I think we must have picked the best day of the year to visit Tor House because it was absolutely spectacular. The view from the top of Hawk Tower was stunning.

A little history: The property was owned and built by Robinson Jeffers who lived on the property with his wife Una. According to Wikipedia, “Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.” After they married in 1913 the Jeffers had planned to move to England but the outbreak of WWI prevented them from doing so. A friend suggested they spend time in Carmel where they rented a small, wooden cottage in town in 1914. They took long walks out to the beach and found themselves attracted to the small knoll with the tor stones and expansive view of the ocean and Point Lobos beyond.

They purchased the property and hired M.J. Murphy contractor to build their home. Jeffers hired himself out as a laborer to the mason, which is how he learned the trade. They moved in to Tor House in 1919 when their twin sons Garth and Donnan were three years old.

Originally the property encompassed 16 lots on Carmel Point. A stone wall defines a courtyard space that also connects the Tor House, Hawk Tower, the dining room, and the rumpus room/office. The original wall, built by Robinson Jeffers, was about 30” high on all sides with columns at the gates. Jeffers placed Native American stone mortars on top of these columns and at the corner of the wall on the ocean side. The wall height on the ocean side was raised to approximately 6 feet, by one of the Jeffers twin sons, in order to provide more privacy. Brick paths between the buildings and a colorful, perennial garden have been added. Jeffers built a stone path between the Tor House and Hawk Tower that remains.

The stone used and the style of construction is the same as what was used to construct the buildings and structures in the compound. It is a rough Santa Lucia granite. It is clear where the son raised the height of the wall on the ocean side of the compound because he used smaller stones – there is a distinct change in texture in the wall here. There is one simple wooden picket gate in the wall that leads to a path on the ocean side of Tor House. This was known as the “sea gate” and the other gate, on the opposite side of the courtyard was the “moor gate”.

Just inside the gate, in the garden at the southwest corner of the compound there is a stone pedestal set on a stone foundation, with a sundial on it. This was Robinson Jeffers first solo effort of masonry construction.

The entire complex of buildings and garden is strongly tied to the landscape. Robinson and Una Jeffers chose to build their home at this site because it was located on a small knoll with a circle of stones known as a Tor. They instructed their contractor to anchor their new home to one of the Tor stones and they designed the home with a window that looks out towards the ocean with the tor stone in the foreground. Another element of the landscape is a stone bench, made from a single slab of granite that is integrated into the Tor stone and house.

In addition to his passion for poetry and masonry Robinson Jeffers planted some 2000 trees on and around his property – Monterey Cypress and Eucalyptus globules. Some of these remain today lining Ocean Avenue, and in the neighborhood that has developed. Other plantings on the property appear to be modern additions though there has been an attempt to maintain the character of the original landscape on the downhill parcel where wildflowers and oat grass grow. The oat grass is a remnant of the feed given to the pony that pulled the stone up from the beach. Una Jeffers recorded 45 species of wildflowers found at the site. There is also a yew tree (Taxus baccata) within the courtyard that could date to the Jeffers.

The docent who led our two-hour tour had been a long time volunteer at the site. He knew a tremendous amount about the Jeffers, the site, their home and all of the many treasures on display – many gifts from artistic friends and colleagues. Tor House was definitely the highlight of a wonderful mini-vacation and HALS adventure.

Carmel Mission

2010-08-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

While on our weekend trip to Monterey we did not plan to visit the Carmel Mission, also known as Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo, because my mother and I had both been there before, but when we found ourselves with a few minutes to spare, we decided to visit the mission gardens. Oops, big mistake – what we didn’t know was that the plaza gardens had undergone extensive renovation since either of us had been there, and they were bursting with flowering vines, shrubs and perennials that all seemed to be at their peak.

One starts the tour at a small gift shop attached to what is now a museum. Exiting a modest wooden door a large plaza is revealed that lies between of the museum and perimeter wall. The Basilica with its tower provides the backdrop. This stone structure was built in 1793 replacing an adobe chapel, which had been built to replace the original wooden church, built in 1771. The current church tower is of Moorish design and has nine bells in the tower.

While many of the plantings appear to be new, several old specimens remain including a pair of Taxus trees that dwarf the entrance to the museum, an old pepper tree, and a wonderful cork oak with deeply furrowed bark. Planting beds are lined with large cobbles and a raised portion of the garden is defined by a plastered wall with Moorish detailing and an integral wood bench. The layout of the garden spaces appeared true to the period but time did not permit verification of this. What was clearly not historic was the exposed aggregate paving with brick bands in the plaza – these seem to be a misguided 1970s era “improvement”.

Moving through a broad, stucco garden wall one enters the mission cemetery where several of the padres and over 200 Native Americans and Spaniards are buried. Plots are lined with abalone shells and stones, have simple wooden crosses and compacted earth paths. Some have bronze or granite headstones.

Given the time we had to spend at the mission these gardens would have sufficed – and their beauty and detailing would have satiated us, but following the tour path we entered first into an intimate, shady garden with benches, a fountain, glazed tile friezes and religious-themed sculpture. This quiet space opened onto a massive plaza more than four times larger than the museum/Basilica plaza.

The main plaza, like the first, had a traditional mission character consisting of a large expanse of open area surrounded by perimeter planting beds and one, large pentagon-shaped stucco, brick and deep-blue tile pool. The weathered brick of the fountain gargoyle conveyed its age. This space was so large and richly planted it was instantly apparent that we definitely did not have enough time to really enjoy the mission gardens, much less have a moment to look at the mission structures or visit the museum. We rushed off to make our 1:00 tour reservation, which I strongly recommend one avoid. The Carmel Mission deserves a half day visit easily.

La Mirada and The Castro Adobe

2010-07-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

The ideal HALS site is one that has changed very little since its period of significance. Period of significance means the time period during which the garden gained importance as a historic site. Typically it is the period when the original owner occupied the site. For example the period of significance for the San Francisco Presidio are the years when the military occupied the site.

Casa Amesti in Monterey is a perfect example of a garden that has not changed substantially since its original design, because when owner Francis Elkins died the property was donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. My firm, PGAdesign was asked to restore this garden a few years ago, and when we started we found that the current garden was essentially the same as the garden depicted in photographs from the 1930s – it had deteriorated but the original design and most of the original plantings remained.

Realistically though all gardens change and they change quickly because plants grow and as they grow they transform the landscape profoundly. Other things change as well – wooden fences and gates deteriorate, stone walls crumble, and sometimes modifications occur when a new owner simply wants their garden to look different or to accommodate a new use. The Monterey Art Museum at La Mirada is such an example. The original Castro Adobe has been restored and over time several buildings have been added. At this point it is impossible to tell, just by looking at the complex, what is historic and what has been added, and certainly some additions are now old enough in their own right to qualify as “historic”. 50 years is the general rule for HALS, which I find a bit disconcerting considering I passed that milestone some while ago.

The garden at La Mirada is enclosed by a chalk rock stone wall that is an extension off the back of the Antonio Mario Castro Adobe. The stones are rough and irregularly-shaped, nearly white in color except where they are covered by lichens. The height of the wall varies from about 30” to 7’ where it has buttresses. There are two wooden gates into the garden – one a simple board fence with a round, bronze knocker, and the other more elaborate and set in a classical stone peaked arch, which is in poor condition. I presume these gates are replacements for the originals.

Garden beds occur on three levels and are edged with brick set on end and half buried. Beds are separated by brick paths about 4’ wide in a basket weave pattern. One bed is terraced with a chalk rock stone wall about 20” high, and is in poor condition which leads me to believe it is original. The beds are bordered with hens and chick succulents and planted almost exclusively with roses.

The Antonio Mario Castro Adobe was built in the early 1800s. It is one of three buildings that appear on an 1849 map of Monterey. Castro was a soldier in California from 1780 to 1809. The home remained in the Castro family for a few generations until 1919. For a time the John C. Fremont family rented two rooms in the adobe from Modesto Castro, until Fremont was elected to the U.S. Senate and they moved to Washington.

Gouverneu Morris purchased the adobe in 1920. He restored the adobe, added other buildings and built the wall around the garden for privacy. So, the garden wall is nearly 90 years old and clearly meets the 50 year criteria for HALS.

Thomas Albert Work, Sr. purchased the property in 1936. He made his fortune in land and real estate. Work planted the cypress, pine and other trees surrounding the property. Work’s wife, Maude Porter created the rose garden before her death in 1949. The rose garden was rehabilitated in 1989 when many new roses were added and some of the original roses were retained. One Cecile Brunner rose with a mass of knotty root stock was labeled 1881/1894.

Thomas and Maude’s son Frank Work inherited the property and maintained the garden until he deeded it to the museum in 1983.

So, this is a garden has had several owners since the early 1800s and it has changed substantially. There are clues to what is old and what has been added, but the lines are blurred and only extensive research would tell us more.

Forest Theater, Carmel

2010-07-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 1968 after graduating from high school I auditioned for the cast at Woodminster – an outdoor amphitheater in the Oakland hills. I was in two musicals – The Most Happy Fella and The King and I where I played one of the king’s many wives. It was a lot of fun, so when I read about the Forest Theater in Carmel I was keen to go see it as part of my HALS adventure.

The Forest Theater was built in 1910 and is the oldest outdoor theater west of the Rockies. It was started by actor/director Herbert Heron with poet Mary Austin. The land for the theater was given rent free by Carmel’s founder Frank Devendorf – the same person who gave the land for Devendorf Park that I wrote about of week. Plays, pageants, musicals, Shakespeare and outdoor films have been performed at the theater. There is a long-standing tradition of featuring original works of California authors including the work of Robinson Jeffers, Mary Austin, and Barbara Newberry who wrote The Toad and Junipero Serra, a historical pageant focusing on the life of Father Junipero Serra.

The privately owned theater was deeded to the city of Carmel in 1939 so it would be eligible for federal support when it became a WPA project. The theater closed during World War II in response to mandatory blackouts, but reopened after the war. Since then interest in the theater has waxed and waned but renewed community interest has kept it going for 100 years. According to Wikipedia, “in 2005, Pacific Repertory Theater presented the theater’s highest attended production, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, to a combined audience of over 10,000 ticket holders.”

The site of the 60-seat theater is a naturally occurring bowl-shaped area in an oak woodland, in a residential neighborhood of Carmel. Oaks were removed to construct the bleacher seating but the grove remains at the back and sides. Most of the understory has been cleared. The view back of stage is through Monterey pines and beyond to the Monterey Bay. The character of the site and planting is left a bit wild and natural.

The perimeter of the theater is defined by a four-five foot high grape-stake fence. There are two gates into the theater; one wide enough for vehicles and one pedestrian gateway that has a beam overhead with “Forest Theater” carved into it.

Materials are limited to wood and rough stone. The wood is either painted “state parks brown” or left unpainted. The bleacher seating is divided into two sections with concrete paths at either side and in the middle. There are 11 rows of seating, then a stone retaining wall about 30” high, and 6 additional rows of seating. Seats have backs and the space between rows is compacted earth.

Near the stage there are semi-circular stone fireplaces built at either side of the bleachers that provide warmth to those sitting near enough and ambiance for the rest of the audience.
The stage is wood and there are storage areas for props at either side. Additional storage, dressing rooms, and an indoor theater are below the main stage. There is also a wood deck (about 40’ x 80’) with a built in bench on the downhill side of the theater.

The form and layout of the theater all appear to be original as does the stone work and arrangement of the seating. In 1939 Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews undertook a major reconstruction. They built new benches, laid a concrete foundation for the stage, and replaced a barbed-wire fence with the grape-stake fence.

To stage left there is a square of stones and an upright carved boulder: “Here lies Pal the friend of all who knew and loved him. Carmel’s dog, born Aug 1929, died Dec. 1943.”

Devendorf Park

2010-06-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

The urban plaza is one of the oldest city planning concepts. Plaza is defined as a public square that is usually centrally located, found especially in towns of the American Southwest of Spanish heritage. Similar is the “Piazza” – an open square or public place in a city or town, especially in Italy. These urban spaces are typically one square block located at the town center, and built as a place for the community to gather for civic functions and celebrations. My Dec. 6, 2009 post on Arcata Plaza features a very traditional plaza that has served as the heart of that community for over one hundred and fifty years.

A couple weeks ago I attended my granddaughter’s graduation from high school in Sonoma. Sonoma has one of the best plazas in the Bay Area. It’s one square block surrounded by thriving retail shops and restaurants. This is where the 4th of July festivities take place, art shows and family picnics. It’s a vibrant and dynamic urban space.

Devendorf Park is Carmel’s central gathering place. The land was given to the city by J. Frank Devendorf known as the Father of Carmel-By-the-Sea. He along with developer Frank Powers founded the town in 1900. Fund raising to build the park was started in 1929 by Mattie Hopper. The park occupies the block at Ocean and Junipero Avenues. The best part of the park is how it invites you in. There are entry points at each corner and a generously wide set of steps into the park from Ocean Avenue.

Second best are all the places to sit. At either side of the steps are twenty foot long stone benches, facing the street, that invite you to linger and people watch. There are stone benches at two of the four corner entries, another parallel to 6th Street, and both stone and modern wood benches within the park. Some stone benches have stone seats and others heavy wood timbers.

The center is an expanse of lawn with a narrow, curving path that connects diagonally across the open space. This path can be seen in a circa 1940 photograph but at that time it was a serpentine line of stepping stones. There are a number of war memorials - each a bronze plaque set in a granite stone – simple, dignified monuments that honor their community’s heroes.

In the original design stone was used to build the walls and for the paved areas. To make the park more accessible some of the paving stones have been lifted and re-set. In other places the original stone has been replace with concrete or exposed aggregate – less desirable but certainly better than introducing a totally different material like brick.

There is a simple, oval-shaped pond – also seen in the 1940 picture postcard. Today, a cast pedestal fountain has been added. And, drinking fountains – features often omitted from today’s parks, to avoid clogging problems. At Devendorf hand-crafted stone fountains – each unique, are located at three of the four corner entries.

This well-maintained urban oasis is shaded by several massive live oaks. Flowering perennials accent the entry at the corner of Ocean and Junipero, and there are several very old camellia japonica along the Ocean Avenue edge. That edge is defined by large, rounded cobbles set on edge and mortared in place to form a curb 12 inches high.

The entire time we spent here the park was being enjoyed by others. A family played a game on the lawn, another family sat on a group of benches, single men sat on the edge – one reading the other relaxing. Businessmen walked rapidly through the park and others walked around leisurely. This space offers a respite from the rigors of shops and galleries – a lasting gift from Frank Devendorf.

Casa Soberanes, Monterey County

2010-06-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

Friday I started a new HALS adventure. My mother turned 90 last Christmas and my gift to her was a weekend trip together. She enjoys reading this blog – in fact she is probably my most faithful reader – and asked that I take her to see some of the HALS sites I write and talk about. I decided to make a trip to Monterey County because it’s just a one and a half hour drive, and because there are so many historic gardens there I knew we’d find plenty to do.

Our first stop was Casa Soberanes – a small site at the busy corner of Pacific and Del Monte. The garden and adobe house are set above the surrounding sidewalks and across the front and one side of the property there is a stonewall varying in height from 30” to 5’ high. The stone is “chalk rock” which is light in color – white and buffy. There are square, stone pillars at the corners and entry gates. The gate is wood, made of heavy timbers with ornamental iron hinges and it is painted a vibrant blue, in contrast to the pale stone.

The garden has a simple, axial layout with a single central path about 4’ wide. The path leads straight to the center of the house, which is set perpendicular to the path. The path starts as brick with some tile inlays and then changes to stone. I wonder if the brick is original or was added when the brick sidewalk was installed. As you walk up towards the house the garden is terraced at either side stepping up the grade.

All this sounds rather ordinary, but this garden is hardly that. It is filled with a delightful assortment of things to discover. Garden beds are lined with an eclectic combination of collected objects – bricks set on edge, large rounded cobbles also set on edge, irregularly-shaped stones, abalone shells – set on edge, and bottles and jars that have been partially buried leaving the bottoms sitting about 4 inches above grade. They look like beer bottles and are mostly brown and green.

There is an equally eclectic combination of plants – old boxwood hedges line some of the paths while lavender, rosemary, daylilies, hebe, geranium, gazania, roses and many other species fill the beds. Ezequiel Soberanes owned the home and his son was a gardener at the Carmel Mission. It seems likely that Ezequiel brought home cuttings from work and grew them at home. What appears to be the oldest plant in this fanciful garden is an old craggy pepper tree (Schinus molle). Pepper trees are not known for being long-lived but this one has a three-foot diameter, hollowed out trunk that looks quite ancient.

All of this would have been plenty to satisfy us so we were delighted to discover another garden space at the back of the house. The back garden is about 40’ x 40’ with trees and shrubs planted around the perimeter and compacted earth in the center of the space. Within that there are five circular planting beds each lined with either stones, cobbles, or bottles similar to those in the front garden. Even though we were close to the street the walled garden was quiet and felt protected.

Both gardens had wooden benches, a few garden ornaments and did I mention the twelve-foot long whalebone used to edge the bed beneath the pepper tree?

Bourn Cottage & Garden

2010-06-06T16:42:00.000-07:00

This is the third and final post in a series about the California Preservation Foundation conference in Grass Valley and Nevada City that took place May 12 – 15. The finale of the conference for me was the last stop on a tour of Historic Foothill Estates – the Bourn Cottage and Garden, built in 1878-79. The cottage which some might call a mansion was designed by San Francisco architect Willis Polk for the Bourn family and is now part of an 800 acre State Park that includes the Empire Mine.

The Empire Mine was one of the oldest, largest and richest mines in California. It was in operation for 107 years and produced $960 million worth of gold, making William Bourn one of the wealthiest men of his time. Bay Area natives may be familiar with that name and associate it with “Filoli”, another of the Bourn family estates located in San Mateo County. Or their country home “Madrono” in St. Helena in the Napa Valley. Bourn was also associated with the Imperial Silver Mine of Virginia City and Hidden Treasure mine in Nevada according to Charles C. Steinfeld in his book, “The Bourn Dynasty”. Left: Me standing at a mine building entry stairs with bouldar capped rail.

Grass Valley is in the foothills – a part of California that gets pretty hot in summer and fall, so walking from the gravel parking lot, through the massive stone walls, and then seeing the expansive view of a lush lawn surrounded by tall coniferous trees, pink dogwood, beds of flowering plants including 8” diameter white peonies, pink and yellow Exbury azaleas, pink bleeding heart, and a bounty of salmon color climbing roses truly gave the impression of an oasis. Fortunately, we were able to wander along the brick pathways without the constant noise of the mine stamp machine in the background, that apparently ran 24 hours a day 365 days of the year, while the mine was in operation.

At the front of the cottage there are a symmetrical pair of low, circular pools and each has a gentle umbrella-shaped fountain that moistens and cools the air and injects a soft sound as droplets fall into the pool. These are set in a level lawn that is surrounded by a stone and ornamental iron wall. Steps lead down from the level of the lawn through brick terraces to a dark, rectangular pool planted with yellow flag iris. From there, a narrow cascade steps down brick steps to a long, rectangular reflecting pool set perpendicular to the cascade. The steps are lined with trimmed star jasmine and four, very tall Italian cypress anchor the corners of a lawn above the lower pool.

From the house and upper lawn the cascade and lower pool are not seen at all. It is not until you start down the steps that you discover this part of this formal garden – a common gesture to reveal and surprise and thus enhance one’s experience. Well, it worked for me.

One of the other features of the garden is a brick, stone and metal trellis structure that steps down a slope and is covered in small, lightly-fragrant, salmon-colored roses. There are terraced beds of roses and perennials to the sides as one walks under the roses. It is know that Agnus Bourn, wife of William Bourn Jr., enjoyed gardening and worked with Miss Isabella Worn, a gardener and floral decorator. Docents at the Bourn cottage suggested that Miss Worn likely helped design of the cottage garden.

Aaron Augustus Sargent Garden, Nevada City

2010-05-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of last week’s post about the California Preservation Foundation conference in Grass Valley and Nevada City. The historic downtowns of both Grass Valley and Nevada City have been nicely rehabilitated to accommodate current business enterprises and to provide an appealing destination for visitors. Most of the businesses and many of the homes in and around the downtowns have been restored – including the gardens.

Between education sessions of the conference I wandered around downtown Nevada City taking in some of the shops and admiring the homes. One of the properties that piqued my interest was the Aaron Augustus Sargent Home and garden. The home is currently unoccupied and the garden, though showing signs of short-term neglect, was intriguing. It occupies a corner lot and is defined across the front by am ornately-detailed wrought iron fence and gate covered in Cecil Brunner small, pale pink roses. The fence is set in a stout, rectangular concrete curb.

At about the corner of the house the fence changes to a 2x2 wood picket fence also set in a stout concrete curb, but here the curb is rounded on top. As you turn the corner, the side property line fence is an old-fashioned twisted wire fence similar if not identical to one that was in my grandparent’s yard.

It is a large, gently sloping lot with several specimen trees and an eclectic assortment of garden paths that were intriguing because they seemed to lead to nothing or end abruptly with the suggestion of something that use to be there.

The trees included a very large Redwood near the sidewalk, a large, multi-trunk Deodar cedar, and a Umbrella Pine (Sciadopitys verticillata), which my friend Janet Gracyk identified for me. I was vaguely familiar with the plant but know that I’d never seen one that large in a private garden. Sunset’s Western Garden Book says it grows to 120 feet in Japan where it is native, but only to 25-40 in western gardens. This is not really a pine but it does have 3” to 6” long needles that are thick and glossy – quite unusual. Each corner of the house was marked by a very old and sculptured Red Laceleaf Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum `Dissectum Atropurpurea’).

So, who was Aaron Augustus Sargent? Fortunately, there was a bronze plaque embedded in a boulder that told me everything I needed to know. He came to Grass Valley during the Gold Rush as a journeyman printer and went on to become the editor and owner of the first local newspaper – The Nevada Journal. He passed the bar and served an Attorney General from 1855 – 1857. He was the first citizen elected to the House of Representatives in 1861, and later the first to be elected to the US Senate in 1873. During his tenure he authored the bill that created the first Continental Railroad, and was an advocate for women’s suffrage.

After exploring the garden I headed off to the Pioneer Cemetery where I encountered Mr. Sargent again buried at the top of the knoll. Though much of the cemetery was shaded, Sargent’s tomb was dramatically illuminated by the afternoon sun – clearly I was meant to notice this monument. Here I learned that Sargent was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on September 28, 1827 and died in San Francisco in 1887 where he was buried until all who were buried in San Francisco were disinterred for reburial in Colma, at which time Mr. Sargent made his way back to Grass Valley, thanks to the Native Sons of the Golden West.

Pioneer Cemetery Nevada City

2010-05-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended the 35^th annual California Preservation Foundation (CPF) conference in Nevada City and Grass Valley – the gold country. According to the conference brochure, “Nevada City once had a larger population than San Francisco and was considered as the first capitol of California at statehood.” In 1985, preservationist succeeded in having the entire downtown listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

I think it may have been the best conference I’ve ever attended – due in large part to the venue, and also the consistently high caliber of speakers. Like many conferences the schedule was intense – the moment I walked into the Miners Foundry on Tuesday evening I felt drawn into a vortex of intense preservation that I didn’t escape until Saturday as I headed home.

I did carve out a few hours of unscheduled time between education sessions, when I checked out a few of Nevada City’s shops, had lunch, and took a self-guided tour of town enjoying a wonderful collection of well-maintained historic homes and gardens. Just beyond downtown I was drawn to the Pioneer Cemetery, established in 1851, on West Broad Street. It is a small cemetery located adjacent to a newer, more modern burial ground. The Pioneer cemetery is located on a knoll surrounded by mature Ponderosa Pines with an understory of grasses, some wildflowers and a few hardy shrubs and ground covers.

Many of the graves were marked with small, simple wood markers. Some had marble headstones while many had no marker at all. The graves that most interested me were those that were surrounded by ornamental iron fences set in granite curbs. The fences varied from very simple, light-weight hoops (Alphonse and Keller), to richly detailed pressed metal (CF Taylor and Burnett).

The Meredith monument had solid cast-iron corner posts and the fence was made from ¾” thick cast iron. The gate had heavy-duty hinges and latches that have not failed after 150 seasons of snow and summer heat. The marble obelisk was engraved, “Brave, gifted, generous and faithful closed a life of usefulness and purity by a death of honor”.

Top Photo: Grave of William Alphonse; 2nd Photo: MW Burnett; Third Photo: CF Taylor 18440 - 1922; Fourth Photo: Frederick, Rosa and Nicolas Keller; Photo Below: Henry Meredith.

Berkeley City Club

2010-05-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

In February, the Northern California Chapter of HALS agreed to document the gardens at the Berkeley Club. I sent out an email inviting volunteers to help with measuring the site and collecting the existing conditions information, and was delighted when several new volunteers responded, including Kris Zhang and Daniella Sawaya - architecture students from UC Berkeley, Sarka Volejnikova a landscape designer, Marilyn Novell who is a member of the club and finishing her master’s thesis as an architectural historian, Celia McCarthy, a cultural resource planner, and Bob Towar who works with PGAdesign.

We all met in the East Court of the club this morning, where I gave a brief overview of HALS and showed examples of other sets of HALS drawings that have been completed by our HALS group and PGA. Sarka had previously prepared base plans for today’s efforts, using a digital copy of the original building plan designed by architect, Julia Morgan in 1929.

After a tour of the garden, led by Gary the club’s dedicated gardener, we divided into three teams of two and set about measuring the different garden spaces. Marilyn and Daniella took charge of the planting at the front of the building while Bob and Kris did the East Court. Both of these groups completed measuring and sketching all of the hardscape features – sidewalk, street trees, courtyard paving, planting beds, fountains, pots, etc. and then they sketched in the plants. Gary and I assisted with plant identification and between the two of us were able to correctly indentify nearly every plant.

Sarka, Celia and Daniella tackled all the rest including the West Court, west loggia, the yard in the northwest corner of the property, plus all of the garden spaces on the north side of the building. They completed recording the hardscape features and will draft those up before going back to add the plantings in these areas. I took digital photos, answered questions, took a few measurements along the east façade, and helped with plant identification.

Everyone worked hard, had fun and together we accomplished a great deal. Next steps are to draft all of today’s field notes and finish the plant placement and identification. I plan to do some sketches of the garden and want to work on the plant list – Gary provided a very helpful list of plants by area. Sarka, Daniella and Kris have all volunteered to help with the drafting.

As we work on the drawings anther team of volunteers, led by Gretchen Hilyard, will be doing the historic research and writing the narrative. Members of the Landmark Heritage Foundation have already provided us with lots of historic photographs, articles about the garden, and other information that will be invaluable. I’ll share more about all this as we make progress.

Top: Sarka and Celia

Next: Daniella and Marilyn

Next: Kris drawing at the table with Bob taking measurements in the garden

Next: Planting detail

Below: Relief in the West court

Frank Raines Park, Stanislaus County

2010-04-25T21:05:00.000-07:00

Today we did one of my favorite day trips to Mines Road in Livermore and Del Puerto Canyon Road where Alameda, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and Stanislaus Counties converge. We go there almost every spring for birding, and to see the wildflowers. It is a good place to see Western Bluebirds, Lewis’ Woodpeckers, Phainopepla, Western Kingbird, and if you are lucky, which we were today, Black-headed Grossbeak and Wood Duck. We missed Roadrunner though. I expected the wildflowers to be spectacular given our very wet winter, but while the wildflowers were good – I’ve seen better in this area in previous years.

Every time we do this day trip I am struck by how remote this place seems, knowing we are less than an hour from home. The birds, the profusion of wildflowers, the rocks, the terrain are so profoundly different from where we live it is like being in another state. After driving for miles, taking in a new scene with every turn in the narrow road, you come to Frank Raines Park, and though I know it’s there – it has been for the 26 years we’ve been doing this trip, I am always a bit surprised to see it, because it appears in the middle of nowhere.

To make my point, a site on Google identifies the nine closest towns, they are: Ashrama, Westley, Patterson, Solyo, Grayson, Jet, Ohm, Vernalis, Crows Landing, and Stomar. Other than Patterson, have you ever heard of any of these towns?

Frank Raines Park is 2000 acres. It is best known as an off road vehicle park – not exactly my kind of place, but I am glad these sort of parks exist, because it provides a place for those who enjoy the sport to do their thing, without destroying sensitive habitat outside the lands set aside for off road biking. The part of the park we always stop at is a traditional county park with picnic facilities, bar-b-ques, a restroom and baseball field.

The park was dedicated in 1953 and what I like about it is all the stone work. There is a stone wall with monumental columns along Del Puerto Canyon Road, at either side of the entrance to the park. Within the park there are stone walls that define the picnic and parking areas. There is a round, raised stone planter built around an Oak tree, and a curved stone wall with built-in seat walls on both sides. All this stone work reminds me of the stone work done by the CCC during the depression, but according to a Stanislaus County website, it was built by county personnel.

So, who was Frank Raines? Now, this is the great thing about writing a blog. I have visited this park literally dozens of times, and to be honest I never really thought about Frank Raines before, but it’s the weekend and I try to post to my blog every weekend. That means I need to come up with a topic, and this weekend Frank’s my man.

Thanks to Google, I now know that Frank Raines was born in Vallejo, California in 1876. He first arrived in Stanislaus County in 1895 and was a man of many trades – a farmer, a fireman, a telegraph operator, a first baseman and short stop baseball player, and a publisher. He published the only newspaper ever published in Grayosn, the Try-Weekly, oh, and he also raised turkeys. But Frank’s real claim to fame is that he served on the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors for 36 years – from 1916 to 1953 – the same year the park was dedicated.

The other bit of history about this park is that in includes a historic marker for the Patterson and Western Railroad. The inscription on the granite monument reads in part as follows: “The narrow gauge railroad winding some 25 miles from Patterson through Del Puerto Canyon operated from September 20, 1916 to August 14, 1920. During World War I, the railroad brought the much needed minerals of magnesite, manganese chrome and quicksilver down the rugged canyon to the processing plant. The railroad served dozens of mines. There was a 3000 foot tramway up to a mine high up on the side of the canyon.” Erected 2001 by Estanislao Chapter, E Clampus Vitus.

This is an interesting day trip through rugged cattle ranchland, that offers glimpses of a different lifestyle and a different time. It’s a beautiful drive and a favorite of cyclists and motorcyclists on cool spring days.

Doyle Drive HALS

2010-04-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

I started this blog in October 2009, and now realize I have posted very little about the Doyle Drive HALS project my firm has been working on since November 2008. I believe it’s the largest HALS project currently underway in the United States and as such has been a thrill to be part of. Doyle presented us with several unique challenges and has been tremendously satisfying to work on. In my career the projects I have most enjoyed are those that have been large and complex - given that criteria Doyle Drive is the ultimate challenge and has been immensely satisfying.

Background
The Presidio was designated as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 1962 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) are in the process of replacing Doyle Drive that traverses the Presidio of San Francisco and connects to the Golden Gate bridge in order to improve the seismic, structural and traffic safety of the roadway. As part of the environmental review the Finding of Effect document acknowledged that the project will impact cultural resources.

Historic Documentation
ICF International was retained to complete HABS (Historic American Building Surveys), HAER (Historic American Engineering Record) and HALS documentation as part of the mitigation for the impacts on the cultural resources. The HALS team is being directed by Dana McGowan, Archaeologist with ICF. ICF is doing the historic research and will prepare the historic narrative component of the HALS documents. Brian Grogan has been engaged to complete the HALS photography and PGAdesign is doing the measured drawings. Landscape Historian, Meg Scantleberry is the point of contact for Caltrans and is working closely with the ICF team.

The Project
Doyle Drive is 1.2 miles in length. Portions of the roadway are at grade and much of the highway is on an elevated structure constructed in 1936. The cultural resources that will be potentially impacted by the replacement project include buildings, roadways, stone walls and curbs, concrete batteries, views and historic forests all associated with the Presidio’s 169 year military history. The period of significance is from 1776 to 1945. The project is divided into six planning districts that correlate with districts defined in the National Register nomination.

Methodology
When we started the project we sought samples of similar work to use as a model, but because the HALS program is so new we found little that was relevant. The project schedule was urgent so we set about creating a methodology that seemed logical and well suited to the task. Our previous work doing cultural landscape inventories (CLI) and reports (CLR) and contributions to historic structures reports (HSR) provided some guide. Our experience with HALS of three of the four California sites was also tremendously helpful, but those sites were all very different and thus not directly applicable to Doyle Drive. Our work on Piedmont Way in Berkeley, California is a surface road – a X block curvilinear parkway conceived by Olmsted. This was our most relevant HALS experience.

Normally the first task in for any cultural landscape documentation effort would be familiarization with the site’s history and a methodical review of existing documentation and historic records and photographs, but because of the immediate urgency of this construction project PGA was forced to start the existing conditions field work without the benefit of such preparation.

Our first task was to decide on what scale the field recording should be done at, what sheet size our final documents should be, and to lay out sheets to cover the irregular but generally linear site. Ultimately 82 sheets were needed to depict the site.

PGA plotted sheets for the area first scheduled for tree removal and got to work. Had time allowed we would have developed our methodology, field tested it, made refinements and retested until our recording techniques were well developed. Without the luxury of time we started our field observations and recording and refined the process each day. This approach resulted in some inconsistencies in recording methods which ideally would have been avoided.

We plotted two sheets for each area; one to record softscape features, i.e. plants, non-paved surfaces, and topography and the other for hardscape features. While in the field we worked in teams of two; one person drew what they saw on the plan sheet while the other made notes on the field inventory form we had created for the project. These teams of two proved an efficient working group and also helped with decisions on what and how to record features. They also provided a degree of safety that was reassuring while working in overgrown areas hidden from view.

The softscape team had existing surveys for tree locations and species identification. We field verified this information making corrections as needed. Shrub and ground cover masses were sketched on the plan while species were identified and listed on the inventory forms. Initially, we recorded a list of species for each sheet, assigned numbers and noted the plant numbers on the plan sheets. After a few days in the field we were able to prepare a plant list of the species we had found in the field. We then assigned each species a two-character acronym for the shrubs, perennials, ground cover and vines, and we used a four-character designation for trees. Cotoneaster lacteus became CL while Pinus radiate/Monterey Pine was PR/MP.

The hardscape team went through a similar process starting with field sketches and written descriptions of features such as curbs, stone walls, rails, lights, etc. Many of these features were occurring repeatedly, so to reduce the time needed to record duplicate descriptions the team developed a system of abbreviated codes and organized them by feature type. This not only reduced field recording time it also improved consistency for how things were being recorded.

These improvements in recording efficiency enabled the observers more time to capture more detail and to do more than just see the site at a micro level of detail. I now had time to look at the whole site and record impressions of what I was seeing. I made notes on what stood out in this piece of the Doyle Drive puzzle trying to capture the character of the site. Later, the pieces of the puzzle would need to be assembled in order to read the whole landscape

Field Photography
To augment the official, large format, black and white photography I used a digital camera to record the existing conditions. I took several types of photographs: 1) detail shots such as manhole covers and concrete stamps which provided data such as dates, contractor and manufacturer’s names, individual plants, signs, rail details, etc; 2) images of individual features like buildings, specimen trees and historic stone walls, 3) overviews of large areas, 4) multiple shots of panoramic views, 5) distant views from particular vantage points, and 6) shots that show topographic changes in the landscape.

Each field day I took 150 – 275 images. At the end of the day I named each image or group of images with a name intended to help the viewer understand what they were seeing and where it occurred.

Collecting the existing conditions data, with our four person crew, took the bulk of two months. Doing the work in winter provided the added challenge of needing to dodge rain and drizzle since we were unable to record field notes if the paper was damp. Rain days actually proved to be good because we used that time to organize material collected and to prepare for the next field day. More on Doyle in a future post.

The Pig Palace - Jack London State Historic Park

2010-04-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

My business partner, Cathy Garrett is actively working on a cultural landscape report for Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County. Yesterday, I visited the park to take photographs and measurements of some of the features in the study area. The 1400 acre park occupies land once owed by author Jack London, and is where he and his wife Charmian lived between 1911 and 1916. Its association with London is what makes it a historic site, and it is also a good example of a farm of that period. He named the property “Beauty Ranch”.

There is a lot to see in the park and ten miles of trails traversing oak woodland and mixed evergreen forest – almost too much to see during a single visit. I’ve been to the park four times in the past two years and I’m beginning to feel like I know the core of the park. I have not explored any of the back country trails beyond London Lake.

The Londons lived in the cottage and Jack had an addition built onto the cottage where he wrote. There is a nice perennial garden associated with the cottage; unfortunately, the park service did not restore the garden that is featured in historic photographs – it is a modern garden unlike the one that existing while the London’s lived there. The park also includes the House of Happy Walls, built by London’s widow and where she lived until her death in 1955. It now houses a London museum. You can walk down to the ruins of the Wolf House, which was built to be their permanent home but it burned to the ground, leaving only the stone walls and fireplaces, the night before they were to move in.

There are several barns and stone buildings associated with various aspects of the winery, and other structures used in the farming operations. A pair of 40-foot, cement-block silos stand between a vineyard in the foreground and an oak woodland background, providing a prominent and picturesque landmark.

My favorite part of the park though is the Pig Palace. Who would have guessed, an astoundingly prolific writer and an adventurer, would have had time to devote to farming, or interest. If you visit the site you will learn that Jack London practiced “scientific agriculture”. He was applying all kinds of innovative techniques to improve farming methods. The museum and interpretive signs, posted throughout the park, provide a wealth of information on this and other topics. Did you know that London developed a spineless cactus?

The Pig Palace, so named by locals who scoffed at London’s methods, is a beautiful structure sited on a knoll and shaded by overhanging branches of oaks. Yesterday, the light shone through the new leaves of the oaks, creating a stunningly beautiful effect. The Palace is laid out in a circle for efficiency. At the center is the two-story feed tower. Feed is loaded in the upper portion and pours into buckets when the farmer opens a shoot. The ground floor has troughs and a tub for bathing the pigs. Sanitation was an important part of London’s method and enabled him to avoid the cholera that was killing his neighbor’s animals.

Surrounding the feeding tower are individual suits for pigs. Each has an iron gate and a two-part stone enclosure. The inner portion is open air and has a built-in concrete food trough and a separate water bowl. Galvanized water lines and hose bibs, mounted on the stone walls, are there to fill the water bowl and to clean the enclosures. An opening leads into the second part of the enclosure, which has a roof to provided shelter from cold or heat. From that space each enclosure has a private, fenced-in exercise yard. London’s objectives with this unique design were two-fold: to provide a facility that would function efficiently for the farmer and to develop an improved breed of pigs for the market.

If you visit the park and take the walk to London Lake be sure to take the short trail to the Pig Palace. Oh, and one more tip – don’t bring a picnic lunch from home – instead stop at the Glen Ellen Village Market, just before you take the road up to the park. They have the greatest deli that makes wonderful sandwiches and the chocolate mousse cake is perfection.

Garin Regional Park

2010-03-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

It’s the weekend, when I usually write my posts, but I just wasn’t in the mood to visit a historic landscape. Instead Dianne and I headed to Garin Regional Park for a hike and some bird watching. Garin Park is contiguous with Dry Creek Park and together they offer 3082 acres of open space in Hayward and Union City. It was a perfect time to visit the park because it was cool and sunny, a few wildflowers were out, and the trees were just leafing out, so it was easy to see the birds. There was a lot of bird activity – calls, drumming and flitting about, so we easily saw a Black-headed Grossbeak, Nuttall’s Woodpecker, Western Bluebird, Warbling Vireo, Yellow-rumped Warblers, and the flashiest Red-winged Blackbirds with blazing epilates. We also saw a Red-throated Loon on Jordon Pond, which was unusual for this time of year.

We took a leisurely hike soaking in beautiful scenes – green coated hills, tight candles on the Buckeye, bright California Poppy, darting lizards, a quiet pond, families picnicking - walking under massive oak limbs, down narrow paths lined with fresh poison oak, and over the narrowest wooden bridge I’ve ever seen.

Everything was vibrant and I was taking lots of photos, and thinking, “I wish there was something historic here so I’d have a reason to write about this special place on my HALS blog.” After our hike we headed to the visitors’ center, housed in an old red barn, but found it closed with a note saying, “Out to lunch, back shortly.” Something about the note made me suspicious. We waited till nearly 2:00, but when I inquired at the entry booth, I learned that the visitor’s center does not open until Memorial Day weekend.

Fortunately, an interpretive sign provided me with just want I was hoping for – a historic hook, and not just an ordinary history about the ranching culture in the Hayward area. Turns out this site was once known as Ukrania. Here is the text from the sign.

“A long the ridge behind this panel lies a 52-acre parcel of historical significance. This farmstead known as “Ukrania” was the home of Ukrainian patriot, writer, and publisher Father Agapius Honcharenko. He and his wife Albina lived here for 43 years during their exile from Ukraine. Born in Kiev in 1832, Honcharenko attended Kiev Theological Seminary and entered a monastery at 21. He was appalled by the Church’s suppression of peasants while the monks lived in luxury. This led him to dedicate his work to the overthrow of the feudal system in the Russian Empire. His writings and activities earned him his revolutionary reputation among government officials. Among freedom fighters and patriots, he was respected around the world. Honcharenko faced many hardships including arrest warrants and death threats, forcing his escape to New York. In 1867, while being stalked by Czarist police, he moved to San Francisco. Finally in 1873, he was tracked to the west. Honcharenko sought sanctuary on the remote farm they purchased in the Hayward hills. For decades, they quietly tended their orchards, while Honcharenko remained a champion of the under classes. He died in 1916, a year after Albina’s death.”

The site is State Historic Landmark No. 1025. Honcharenko and Albina are buried at the site.

East Bay Regional Parks acquired the property in 1965. Today little remains of the original farmstead except the barn, some remnant stone walls that appear to have lined the original drive to the barn, and a two acre orchard with 160 varieties of heritage apples. So, for history lovers, bird watchers, hikers or wild flower seekers – this is a great spot.

Shibata Garden and Mt. Eden Nursery Company

2010-03-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was a beautiful day in the Bay Area so we decided to take another HALS day trip. I pulled out my list of historic sites for Alameda County and decided to visit the Shibata Garden in Hayward. Since I’m working on the Sakai and Oishi Nurseries, I thought it would be interesting to see how the Shibata Garden compared.

We used our TomTom navigation system to find the site and when we arrived were puzzled to find a relatively new business park – no trace of a historic nursery or garden, but we weren’t going to give up yet. We drove into the business park and found a sign for the Shibata Garden. Driving to the back corner of the parking lot, wedged between the business park and freeway off ramp, we found the garden. I parked the car in the shade, for the benefit of our two yellow labs, and headed for an elaborately detailed, traditional Japanese wooden gate into the garden.

Once inside the gate the architecture of the big box business park buildings was screened by evergreen and coniferous trees – mostly Redwoods/Sequoia sempervirens, Casurina, Magnolia and a variety of pines. The path here is pea gravel, there are several large, sculptural boulders (4-6’ in dimension), and the first of several stone pagodas found in the garden, each about 4 feet in height.

Offset by a jog is a curved wooden bridge that rises up as it traverses a curvilinear shaped pond that is lined with stones of varying sizes. The bridge railing is wood with simple detailing and a 2x6 cap, painted red. At the far end of the, bridge there is a concrete and stone patio that widens out to about 10’ x 12’. One section of the pond edge is defined by wood logs set on end – these jut in and out to form a strong serpentine line.

From the bridge walking left, on a three foot wide concrete and stone path, leads to an elaborately detailed entrance to the residence. There is lawn at either side of the path, a sculpted pine, and a low, busy palm to the right of the door. There is a large Sycamore tree at the corner of the house and beyond that a small brick and glass greenhouse with a U-shaped workbench inside.

At the rear of the house there is a small nicely detailed structure (about 10’ x 15’) made of concrete block, glass block and wood. One can see Japanese joints in the roof structure. The building is used to store tools and garden supplies. A line of Casurina trees provides screening inside the fence and an impressive line of timber bamboo is behind the house.

As you walk around the back of the residence there is a dense planting of a smaller, much more closely spaced bamboo at the side of the house that creates a dense, visual screen. At the front of the residence there is a brick patio with a stone fireplace and wood shade structure approximately 16’ x 32’. A brick path, 3 feet wide, leads to a door to the house and two wide steps lead back to the pond. The brick patio, fireplace and shade structure appear to have been constructed in the 1950s.

Between the brick patio and the pond there is a stone path consisting of flat stones – 8” – 12” in diameter, three across forming a path 30” wide. The path curves to the right and terminates with a boulder at the residence. To the left, the path transitions to flat, flagstones set in dirt and the edge of the path is defined by pieces of 3”x6” wood members set on end 5” high. The wood pieces are offset from each other to form a zigzag pattern. As you walk around this path, that encircles the pond, the wood members on the left side change to a rock wall 12” to 20” high.

At the far end of the pond, furthest from the house a grouping of large boulders are set on end and are set back from the edge of the pond. This appears to have been the source of water for the pond. Originally there was very likely a small waterfall here. A line of rounded boulders, along the path route, are placed so one can step over the water that would have flowed from the falls to the pond. This spot is the focal point of the primary view from the residence and is accented by the waterfall, a mature Japanese Maple to the left and a Cherry Tree in the background. The pond with its reflecting surface and floating water lilies are in the foreground.

HISTORY
Zenjuro (or Jinjiro) Shibata started Mt. Eden Nursery Company in Hayward. Originally, they grew vegetables and had fields of flowers. The first greenhouse was constructed in 1918 and was used to grow carnations, but in the mid 1930s they switched to roses as their primary crop. According to the California Florida Plant Company website, “During the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war, friends and neighbors ran the business. The Zapatini Family took care of the Mt. Eden Nursery, and returned it to the Shibatas as prosperous as ever, a shining example of generosity during a dark time. After the war's end, Mt. Eden came under the leadership of the oldest son, Yoshimi, supported by his three younger brothers. In 1957, Mr. Shibata founded the California Florida Plant Company and under his leadership the company grew to become the premier supplier of carnations in the world. Yoshima Shibata was a floral industry leader for nearly 70 years. He is the former president of the Wholesale Florist and Florist Supply Association and served on the boards of directors of the Sumitomo Bank of California and the California State Chamber of Commerce, as well as Roses, Inc., the national trade association of rose growers.”

During World War II the Shibata family was interned at Tule Lake. After the war they went to Chicago, Illinois and then returned to their home at Mt. Eden. At one point the nursery included 34 greenhouses, a boiler house, and a packing house in addition to the residence. The Online Archive of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, has a black and white photograph of Jinjiro and Yoshima Shibata inside one of their greenhouses, taken in June of 1945.
The garden is now owned and maintained by the Business park and is open to the public. It is a good example of a traditional Japanese garden and well worth a visit.

Sakai and Oishi Nurseries - Part 3

2010-03-13T03:30:00.000-08:00

This is the third post in a series; you should read the first post before this chapter. Since 2004 several studies have been completed for the Sakai and Oishi Nurseries. They have focused primarily on the history of the site, the significance of the cut-flower industry in the Bay Area, and the buildings and structures on the two sites. What has not been studied in detail are the various systems that were needed to operate the nurseries – these will be illuminated as part of the HALS work that PGAdesign and Denise Bradley are currently completing.

In part two, I wrote about the pedestrian circulation systems and how they differed on the two sites. I’ve mentioned the other systems. Part 3 is about those systems.

Water Sources and Distribution
Both nurseries have several wells on site, which were the primary source of water. In later years Oishi nursery had a connection to the city main. Pumps drew water up into wooden storage tanks – both on grade and elevated. Water was drawn out of the tanks to supply water lines for irrigating or was routed to the boiler room where it was heated to produce steam.

Water lines fed a manifold of galvanized pipe at the center of each greenhouse that branched at each flower bed and was connected to a plastic pipe and drip or soaker type lines spaced about 8 inches apart in each raised planter. These were used to water the flowers, initially manually and later the operation was automated

Fertilizer was mixed in large steel or plastic tanks and was injected into the water lines when needed. Manually controlled valves would release or shut off the fertilized water as needed.

Water Collection
Irrigation water was collected and channeled into concrete swales or curbed trenches that run outside and parallel to each greenhouse. These trenches, typically 19” wide, are found throughout both nurseries. There are small, wooden bridges where pathways cross these trenches. The water collection system of swales and curbed trenches includes collection pits of varying sizes, typically 36” by 24” and 30” deep. Some of these pits still have pipes running into or over them. These pits collected water or silt.

Steam Distribution
Steam was used to heat the greenhouses and to provide optimal humidity for the flowers.
Steam from the boiler room was pumped into insulated pipes that was routed to each greenhouse. Many of these pipes run overhead, about 10 feet in the air, and were supported on 4 x 4 posts spaced about 15 feet apart. The steam was released inside each greenhouse and the condensate was collected and returned to the boiler for re-use in smaller diameter pipes, also insulated.

Pesticide System
A separate and parallel set of small diameter pipes was used to distribute water that included pesticides or herbicides. These pipes extended to the center of each greenhouse, and from there one of the nursery workers would attach a special hose to a valve and apply the pesticides with a spray nozzle.

Air Circulation and Greenhouse Cooling System
Maintaining optimal temperatures and humidity inside the greenhouses was critical. The components of this system include roof and side windows, large diameter fans, and swamp coolers. Each greenhouse has both roof and side windows with manually operated wheels and pulleys used to open or close the windows. In later years some of these were automated.

Large fans, housed in 5’ by 5’ square box structures were built into the sides or ends of the greenhouses. These would draw air into and out of the greenhouse. To cool the greenhouses large mats were attached to the end or sides of the greenhouse. An overhead PVC pipe with 1/8” diameter holes drilled every 5” was mounted above the mats. Water fed into these pipes then dripped onto the mats to wet them. As the fans drew in air through the dampened mats it cooled the air inside the greenhouse.

In part one I mentioned that at one spot on the Oishi site we counted 9 parallel pipes. Tom Oishi, who met us on our first day on site, was able to identify what six were for: fresh irrigation water from the tanks, out-going steam, returning steam, pesticides, city water, and water that fed the pipe for wetting the mats. I’ll let you know if we figure out what the last 3 were for.

Left: Cooling mats at Oishi Nursery

Right: Raised beds with soaker type irrigation at Sakai Nursery

Sakai and Oishi Nurseries - Part 2

2010-03-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

This week, between rainstorms, I finished the bulk of my field work at the Sakai and Oishi Nurseries in Richmond. In total it took most of four days to walk and record the landscape features on the 6.44 acre Sakai site and the 5.94 acre Oishi property. Each day I took 100+ field photos, printed color contact sheets, and labeled them. I’ve started transferring my field sketches onto clean base sheets, and conferring with James Stockham who is helping with the project. James will transfer the field notes onto the electronic site survey.

While in the field I mostly photographed buildings, paths, trenches, pumps, pipes, sheds, plants, etc. – things that it was obvious what they were. I also took pictures of features that I don’t know what they are or what their purpose is – this is part of the puzzle to be solved. For example, on the Oishi property there are several shed structures measuring about 4’ x 8’ with sloped roofs. They are located throughout the nursery and no doubt had a specific purpose, but I don’t yet know what that was. There are an assortment of carts and wooden containers - how were they used in the operation of the nursery?

There are many similarities between the two operations. They both have complex systems of pipes and trenches to move fresh, recycled and waste water, plus fertilizers, pesticides and steam. They both have wells with pumps, tanks, and boiler houses, and each property includes modest homes that housed the families – two on the Oishi site and four at Sakai. Plants around these homes are mostly typical for the era and locale. Both include species found in traditional Japanese gardens – camellias, Japanese maple, fern pine, and they also include an assortment of other common plants, like geraniums, calla lilies, magnolia and fruit trees – cherry, plum and citrus. An assortment of boulders found near three of the Sakai homes hint at Japanese-style rock gardens, but little is left to decipher.

There are also differences found on the two nurseries – some attributable to differences in what was being grown. The Sakais specialized in roses and the Oishis grew carnations, so the planting beds inside their greenhouses have different construction styles. The pedestrian circulation system around and between the greenhouses is different. At Sakai there are narrow concrete walks that run between parallel greenhouses and 21” wide paths that tee off at each door. The longer greenhouses have 2 sets of doors that subdivide each greenhouse into thirds. These doors and paths are aligned to allow one to walk through one to the next. On the Oishi property I noted only one such concrete path between greenhouses. Another difference is that at Sakai I found remnants of raised planters outside and between the greenhouses suggesting that they were maximizing efforts to utilize growing space wherever possible.

Now that most of the field work is complete, I am reading more of the previous research. The “Historic Architecture Evaluation” prepared in 2004 by Donna Graves, Historian, and Ward Hill and Woodruff Minor, Architectural Historians explains that, “The Sakai and Oishi properties are the only extant cut-flower nurseries begun by Japanese Americans before World War II in the entire Bay Area and are also the last remaining of Richmond’s community of Japanese American flower growers.” The report goes on to say, “The properties are rare surviving Bay Area nurseries, a once prominent industry in the Bay Area.” Their conclusion is that both nurseries appear to be eligible for the National and California Registers of Historic Properties.

Sakai and Oishi Nurseries

2010-02-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

I started a new HALS project this week. My firm, PGAdesign was hired to prepare the HALS drawings for the Sakai and Oishi nurseries in Richmond, which are two of three remaining wholesale flower nurseries. Years ago there were several nurseries in this area owned by different Japanese families. Most were closed and demolished when Interstate 80 cut through this neighborhood.

These nurseries ceased operation a few years ago and since that time the buildings and structures have been vandalized and deteriorated from lack of use and maintenance, but the site is still an important cultural resource with a story to tell about a somewhat unique community of businesses and families.

PGA is working with a team of professionals that includes architectural and landscape historians to complete the HALS documentation. The HALS photography was done a few years ago by Brian Grogan – the same photographer we worked with at the Presidio on Doyle Drive. A separate group of architects is measuring and recording several of the buildings and structures that will be saved on site or moved to new locations. The remaining buildings will be demolished to make way for new housing.

Starting a project like this is much like doing a jig saw puzzle. You dump the pieces on the table, turn them over, and sort them by color, culling out the edge pieces. I had reviewed the background material before my first site visit, so I knew what I was looking at, but on day one, the site appears like a lot of loose pieces that one has to quickly sort and assemble.

My first task is to record what is existing in the landscape. The land survey depicts the property lines, locations of the buildings, greenhouses and other major structures. It also shows some of the paving, spot elevations and shrub masses. I look to see what does not appear on the survey, measure it and sketch it onto my plan. Sounds easy. Well, imagine that most of this site is covered in knee-high grass under which are open trenches, holes, thousands of broken panes of glass from the vandalized greenhouses, and pipes of various sizes and materials running everywhere – sometimes 10 feet overhead, sometimes buried, and often just on the surface – there for you to trip over. Walkways that need to be measured are buried under soil, some of the plants that need to be identified have no leaves, and in places the vegetation mass is so dense it is impenetrable. If you can imagine all that you begin to get the puzzle metaphor.

While in the field I measure and sketch, and I also take field photographs that help me confirm what I saw once I am back in the office. Sometimes I see things in the photographs that I had not really noticed in the field. I also use a digital recorder to describe details – this saves time because it is faster for me to record lengthy notes than to write them out. One recorded note explained, “there is a large diameter, red, rubber hose between greenhouses 12 and 13. It has heavy-duty, industrial-grade nozzles. We need to find out what this hose was used for.” I also photographed the hose placing my pencil in the image for scale.

This kind of detail is essential because one of our charges from the National Park Service is to explain not just what the nursery looked like, but how it functioned. This site is all about systems – circulation, watering, heating and cooling, fertilizing, spraying, and it is also where the Sakai and Oishi families lived. The system of pipes that traverse this site is a complex maze. In one location I counted 9 pipes – galvanized and PVC, some insulated, some not – all running in parallel, each with a different function – a three dimensional puzzle. I’ll tell you more about that, and more about the process in subsequent posts.

Boyd Memorial Park

2010-02-13T16:41:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, February 7th, 2010 was a beautiful day in the Bay Area – cool and clear with poofy white clouds, and since I had worked on Saturday we deserved a special day off. We decided on a HALS adventure in Marin county so headed out with our dog Stella. Driving over the San Rafael Bridge Mount Tamalpias and the surrounding Marin hills appeared lushly green, and the San Francisco Bay was calm. A perfect day.

Our first stop was a non-distinguished but well-designed neighborhood park on Lucas Valley Road by Theodore Osmundson, but not suitable for HALS. Next was a development of Eichler Homes, also on Lucas Valley Road, where the landscape architect had been Robert Royston. This development retained integrity, but did not inspire me, so we headed for Boyd Memorial Park in downtown San Rafael, near the reconstructed Mission San Rafael. Original construction 1817.

Boyd memorial park was created as a memorial to Seth and John Boyd, sons of John F. Boyd and his wife, Louise. Louise was the granddaughter of Ira Cook who settled in the City of San Rafael in 1874. Cook owned property along Mission Avenue that is now occupied by “Falkirk” the original family home. The property included the Cook-Boyd home now used by the Elks Club, and Boyd Memorial Park, which includes the Boyd Gate House.

Ira Cook commissioned the Boyd Gate house construction in 1879 to house family guests. Since 1959, the City of San Rafael has used the house for the Marin History Museum. The gothic revival style guesthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Dan and Seth Cook who were successful gold miners at the Bodie Mine in California developed the gardens for these properties. Dan and Seth hired a “noted landscape architect from Boston to design the gardens” according to Judith M. Taylor, in her book “Tangible Memories Californians and their Gardens 1800-1850”. The name of the landscape architect is unknown.

The most prominent features of Boyd Memorial Park are several mature trees including several exotic species, and a beautifully detailed wall and ornamental iron fence with four richly detailed gates. The core of the wall consists of a combination of stone cobbles and brick pieces that are faced with concrete. It has a carved, granite cap and an ornately detailed, ornamental ironwork fence.

There are two gates on Mission Avenue. The west gate is about 5 feet wide and has granite gateposts and a double ornamental iron gate. The left gatepost is etched with “Boyd Memorial Park dedicated April 24, 1905”. A concrete path and two sets of concrete stairs lead uphill into the park. There is a tennis court east of this path parallel to Mission Avenue.

Further east on Mission Avenue is a second gate, marked by two very large Yew trees/Taxus baccata that form dense spheres of dark foliage. A concrete path, with narrow, 3” wide concrete curbs, leads toward the east side of the Boyd Gate House. There is a stout granite corner post at the corner of Mission Avenue and B Street.

The third gate is a low ornamental iron two-part gate directly in front of the front door of the house, now occupied by the Marin History Museum. A carved post topped with a planted urn is integrated into the wall just east of the front door.

Further east on Mission there is a fourth gate. This two-part ornamental iron gate is at a driveway that leads behind the gatehouse and up into the park and other portions of the Cook-Boyd property. This gate is flanked by two, tall, ornately carved gateposts. To the east of the gate the stonewall is engraved with the name of the park and dedication date. The driveway is currently used for picnicking.

The park consists of terraced planting beds that rise up a steep slope. Rock-lined paths meander through the park; some follow the route of a rock-lined channel. The serpentine channel is bridged in a few locations and leads to the Old Mission Spring. This spring was likely the source of water for nearby Mission San Rafael, established in 1817.

Much of the under story plantings are no longer extant but the park has many large specimen trees including Araucaria excelsa, deodar cedar, camphor, incense cedar and a variegated thuya. New plantings have been added to the park. There is a wooden flagpole on a circular concrete base in the southeast corner of the park.

North and west of the house there is a granite monument surrounded by triangular concrete paths and three southern magnolia trees. There is a drinking fountain on the backside of the monument. The dedication says: “This park is the gift of Louise Arner Boyd and John F. Boyd, dedicated to Seth Cook Boyd and John Franklin Boyd Jr. April 24, 1905.”

Dry Creek Garden

2010-02-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about the garden at the Alameda residence of architect Henry H. Meyers. The Meyers family also owned property in the Alvarado – Niles district, now a part of Union City. Henry designed a craftsman-style cottage at the site for the family’s use. There is a secluded swimming pool and a garden designed by one of his three daughters, Jeannette. The family used this oasis as their personal summer retreat and also made it available to a number of philanthropic groups who held events at the garden for many years.

When Jeannette died in 1993, the garden became overgrown from lack of regular maintenance. Fortunately, the property was acquired by the East Bay Regional Park (EBRP) District and they, along with a dedicated group of volunteer gardeners have been maintaining and restoring the gardens since. Dry Creek – so named because of the frequently dry creek that traverses the property – is now part of Garin Park, part of the EPRP system. The site recently was opened to the general public on a limited schedule.

In 2008, my firm PGAdesign was hired to prepare a long-term garden restoration and maintenance plan. EBRP had obtained a set of historic family photographs, from the City of Alameda, when the city acquired the family residence. Many of these photographs depicted the garden at Dry Creek.

This image of the Beagle in the garden is one of the photographs aquired by EBRP. In it one can identify different colors of Alyssum - an easily grown annual. Provided by EBRP.

PGA was asked to study these photographs to identify the species of plants shown in the photos, and to prepare a plan for restoring the plantings at Dry Creek, based on the photographs. Sounds easy …. but it wasn’t. Many of the photos had been provided to us reversed making it difficult to figure out what portion of the garden was depicted in a particular photo, until we realized what was amiss. Many of the photos were taken from a distance and were not clear – making plant identification challenging.

Fortunately, there were several photos and by studying the group we were able to piece together the puzzle of most of what had been planted by Jeanette, and from that prepare a planting plan showing what should be planted in each bed to be historically accurate.

EBRP also wanted recommendations on how to reduce water use and maintenance at the garden. In consultation with their staff we defined a hierarchy of garden zones. Areas close to the cottage and along the main entry path would be more intensively planted while areas further from these areas would be planted with larger shrubs, more broadly spaced needing less irrigation and less maintenance.

The process of studying the group of historic photos was much like the “History Detective” – a challenge and great fun. In time, by implementing the recommendations from our report Dry Creek garden will not only be restored to reflect the original design, it will use less water and other resources, and will require less maintenance.

Above, by Mother, Lottie Pattillo and I visited the garden in 2008 for an opening event.

The garden at Dry Creek is a hidden secret for you to discover. It is also available for special events.

The Meyers had several garden ornaments including this bird bath surrounded by stone paving and a boxwood hedge. In the background is one of the well-crafted woooden bridges that crosses the creek

Alviso Adobe Community Park

2010-01-30T16:41:00.000-08:00

“As history plays out on the land, it leaves its mark. Sometimes the land remains relatively unchanged from generation to generation, but more often, changes accumulate in layers. In areas of extensive human activity the landscape often appears as a patchwork, with elements of older layers “poking through” newer layers, and surviving side-by-side with the elements of the newer layers. A useful analogy is that of the palimpsest, from a Greek word meaning “scraped or rubbed again.” A palimpsest is a writing material such as parchment from which writing has been partly or completely erased to make room for another text. Older writing can often be discerned under the newer writing. Landscape change occurs in a similar way with elements of past landscapes visible amidst more recent additions.” Quote from “Guidelines for Documenting and Evaluating Historic Military Landscapes: An Integrated Landscape Approach”, by Suzanne Loechl, Samuel Batzli and Susan Enscore.

The Francisco Alviso Adobe site in Pleasanton, California is a palimpsest with three eras of history. If you visit the park today you will see a Native American rock feature - similar to a grinding stone - that was used in ceremonies by the native people. You can tour the now restored Alviso Adobe, from the early Californio period – when California was still owned by Mexico. From 1898 to 1917 the Kroeger family, tenant farmers, lived in the adobe.

All photos used in this post were provided by the City of Pleasanton. This photo shows the Kroeger family in front of the adobe.

The park includes a reconstructed milking barn from the Meadowlark Dairy era. Meadowlark started in 1919, and was known for producing the highest quality milk available until it was closed in 1966. The barn and all the associated dairy buildings were demolished in 1968.

In 1995, my firm, PGAdesign was invited to work with the residents of Pleasanton to develop a master plan for the 7-acre Alviso Adobe Community Park. During community meetings discussion focused on which historic period to feature. Fortunately, the decision was to include them all. The extant adobe – built in 1854 was an obvious choice, and the addition of the milking barn created a new community space for events and performances. This is an excellent example of how history is not always simple and neat. Typically, history is multi-layered with interwoven relationships, and while interpreting these sites is challenging the result is more dynamic.

PGA retained Dan Quan to design the interpretive exhibits. Dan collaborated with Pleasanton staff and residents – some of whom had worked in the dairy, and their stories bring life to the exhibits.

Alviso Adobe Community Park is a perfect day trip for Bay Area residents. Plan a picnic in the park followed by a hike on Pleasanton Ridge. But, this is not a HALS site. One of the criteria for HALS is that the landscape features must have historic integrity. The California Register of Historical Resources defines integrity as "the authenticity of an historical resource's physical identity evidenced by the survival of characteristics that existed during the resource's period of significance." Other than several large native oak trees, little of the historic landscape remains from the Alviso era, and archaeologists were unable to find any significant features from the Meadowlark Dairy era. This site may not qualify for HALS documentation, but the adobe is a State Landmark No. 510 - that, the interpretive exhibits, and beautiful site make this park well worth visiting.

Children's Fairyland

2010-01-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

While doing HALS research is a serious and important endeavor, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fun. Hopefully, you’ve figured that out if you’ve read any of my postings. There are few sites more fun than Children’s Fairyland in Oakland’s Lakeside Park. Fairyland was the first storybook theme park in the United States, and one of the main inspirations for the development of Walt Disney’s Disneyland amusement park.

Children’s Fairyland is the first amusement theme park created to cater to families with young children. The park’s ten acres include small rides, play sets, and animals. It is home to the Open Storybook Puppet Theater, one of the oldest continuously operating puppet theaters in the United States.

Fairyland was researched by Jennifer Liw of PGAdesign and when her submission was presented to the Northern California chapter of HALS, the group was so enthused they got the idea to issue a challenge to the rest of the nation to submit HALS inventory forms for theme parks in their state. Submissions will be displayed at this year’s American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) annual conference in Washington DC. Anyone can participate. For more information visit the group’s website at: www://HALSca.org

While visiting the Detroit Children’s Zoo, Arthur E. Navlet, founder of Navlet’s Garden Centers saw a group of nursery rhyme themed buildings, and was inspired to create large sets for children in Lakeside Park. He presented the idea to the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club and William Penn Mott, Jr., then the director of Oakland’s Parks Department, and later director of the National Park Service. Navlet and the Breakfast Club raised $50,000 to create the park. They hired William Russell Everett, a fantasy architect to design the sets. Initially, Everett presented 17 original models with straight-sided buildings of gingerbread and candy, which he later gladly destroyed, after learning the buildings were too reserved. He created new sets featuring buildings with no straight sides decorated with bright and unusual colors and textures.

The park opened on September 2, 1950. The park’s entrance, the shoe from The Old Woman in the Shoe nursery rhyme, was sized for children; adults needed to bend over to get through. The original sets of the park included Pinocchio’s Castle, Thumbelina, Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Merry Miller, The Three Little Pigs, and Willie the Whale, in addition to the Old Woman and the Shoe.

Over the years, the park has added features including The Open Storybook Puppet Theater in 1956 and the Fairyland Talking Storybooks with Magic Keys. Today Aladdin’s Genie overlooks the park entrance along with The Woman In The Shoe. The ticket booth is guarded by fairies floating in a domed ceiling. Once inside The Man on a Flying Carpet flies overhead, Mother glides on her goose in the top of a live oak tree, while the tail of a brightly painted dragon coils around the base of the oak. A giant toadstool offers shade opposite a drinks stand housed inside Cinderella's pumpkin. Willie The Whale still invites guests into his belly as does the White Rabbit to venture down the hole from Alice In Wonderland.

There are 3 separate stages for live performances and guests can reserve a party area with a Cinderella theme that includes a slide built into her slipper. The Three Men in the Tub have not sunk at the Merry Miller, and Alice and her Seven dwarfs still greet visitors. Miss Muffet is still frightened by a spider. River Rat's house is tucked under a tree and even the boys and girls restrooms are decorated with fanciful entries. Children climb up to an elevated pagoda where they view over the tree tops to the park and city beyond, and they can also climb the mast of a pirate’s ship laden with trunks of treasure. The Crocked Man's House is still standing lopsided as ever. A fanciful train - The Jolly Trolly, a merry-go-round, and snack counters have been added. The park includes a small petting zoo near a little red schoolhouse. Children’s Fairyland continues as a popular family attraction drawing visitors to more than 50 exhibits.

To visit Fairyland you must be accompanied by a child, so get your kids, grandkids or family friends and be prepared to be enchanted in this fanciful cultural landscape.

China Camp State Park

2010-01-16T19:17:00.000-08:00

Of all the sites I’ve visited since I got hooked on HALS one of the most intriguing is China Camp in San Rafael. One of my three nephews from Australia, Shaun Robinson, was visiting and we needed something to do, so I suggested a visit to China Camp. My Mom had told me about it years before. She said, “You’ll love it.” Of course, she was right.

China Camp is located on Point San Pedro in Marin County on the San Francisco Bay. It is a 1512-acre State Park. During the California gold rush Chinese immigrants came to California from Canton on the delta of the Pearl River where their families had been shrimp fisherman. After the gold rush some of these men became laborers at the McNear family brick plant in San Rafael in 1868. From there they started shrimp fishing and ultimately created a community.

The workers developed special bag nets and emptied their catch onto junks and sampans – traditional flat bottomed fishing boats. They sold the shrimp to local restaurants for food and flavoring and made the tails and exoskeletons into chicken feed.

During the 1880s nearly 500 people lived at China Camp. Several buildings and structures remain today including the 1895 general store originally owned by Quan Hung Quock and now operated by his grandson Frank Quan. The shrimp drying shed, a 305 foot pier, a shrimp drying platform, two floating houses, a shrimp grinding shed and several residences also remain.

Ultimately the Chinese were driven out by a combination of discriminatory legislation that forbade traditional Chinese fishing techniques, limited the fishing season, prohibited the export of dried shrimp and restricted the size of the catch, and deterioration of the bay waters.

China Camp has a good, but not great interpretive display. Some of the exhibits are exposed to the elements, in the open air buildings, and have some deterioration, but the content is well-presented and interesting.

China Camp is part of a larger state park with open space and hiking trails. It is right on the water and a wonderful place for a day trip or picnicking. Its scenic landscape attracts artists. The day we visited a group of painters were there, which added to the ambiance.

Ferndale

2010-01-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

Another place we visited during our Spring HALS vacation in 2009 was the town of Ferndale. The town of Ferndale is State Registered Landmark No. 883. Dozens of ornate homes and commercial properties line Main Street, mostly built in the 1890s. Mark Williams, in his book “Northern California Off The Beaten Path” describes Ferndale as, “the best preserved Victorian town in California.” Ferndale is located on the “Lost Coast” in an area of dairy ranches, and it is a fascinating place to visit.

I decided to check out one property in particular known as Fern Dale or Shaw House. It was the home of Seth Lewis Shaw, who founded the town of Ferndale in Humboldt County. His Gothic-style Victorian Home is the oldest structure in Ferndale, which was named after this property. The eighteen room home with its gables, balconies and bay windows was fashioned after the House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. Construction was completed in 1866. Shaw called his home “Fern Dale” because many huge ferns grew along the creek (Francis Creek), that ran through his property.

The home was owned by the descendents of Shaw until 1967, and is now a bed and breakfast, so when you visit Ferndale, you can plan to stay there.

The most prominent feature of the garden is a white picket fence along Main Street. The fence consists of 6” wide horizontal boards at the base up to 18” high. These boards are routed in a way to make them look like stone blocks. A top the horizontal portion of the fence are 2x2 wood pickets, with four sided angled points. Every other picket is 3” shorter than the higher pickets. The entire fence is painted white.

This fence appears in the drawing of the property at the top of this post. The drawing is dated 1900. For a modest fee, I was given a digital copy of this photo at the Ferndale Museum, and was able to see and read about the property. I am finding that just about every small town has their own museum with good local exhibits and staff, or more likely volunteers, who are eager to answer questions. This is one more way that doing HALS research is enriching my vacation experience.

From the entry gate, a 4 foot wide concrete path leads directly towards the main gable of the front of the house. The path Ys, with one half leading to the front porch and the other to the garages. A triangular planting bed is formed by the Y. This alignment of walk and planting bed is clearly visible in a 1900 drawing.

The front garden is planted in lawn, and within the lawn many round and curvilinear planting beds are cut out. Most of these beds include a specimen tree with understory ferns, perennials and shrubs. There is also a linear planting bed inside and paralleling the front fence along the sidewalk. Plantings here include: Anemone, Lavender, Dicentra, Dahlia, Amaryllis, Sword Fern, Camellia, Buddleia, Rose, and Lilac – all species appropriate to a garden of the period.

To the left of the front gate is an exceptional Buckeye Tree (Aesculus californica) with a gnarly trunk 4 feet in diameter. The tree is low branching, with a well-balanced canopy that extends over the sidewalk and to the middle of the street. Other trees on the property that appear to be original are: Redwood, Walnut, Big Leaf Maple, Birch, Crataegus, Monterey Cypress, Holly, and one apple tree.

The garden has several mature, old fashioned shrubs some of which may be original. These include: old roses, a Viburnum, and a large rambling Fuchsia. There are also several trees, shrubs and perennials that are recent additions.

The property was designated as a state historic landmark on February 13, 1982, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 13, 1984, and is well worth a visit.

Meyers House

2010-01-03T19:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s a new year, and what better way to start the New Year than visiting a historic garden for HALS. Last year we drove to Fremont, California on January 1st and visited five historic sites. This year we are a bit slack – it’s already January 3rd and we only went to one local site, but it was a dandy.

I’ve known about the Meyers House for awhile and wanted to visit it for some time. Today, my last day of the Christmas – New Year holiday was the day. My firm, PGAdesign worked on the Meyer family summer home in Union City, but I’d never seen the family home. For the summer home we helped the East Bay Regional Park District, that now owns the property, to identify the species of plants originally planted by the Meyers family by studying historic photos, and we created a plan for the restoration and maintenance of the garden. More about the summer home later.

Today was a lovely day to visit the family home in Alameda – a light sweater day in California – sorry, friends (Loren and Jorge) in Minneapolis where it was minus 9 degrees. The garden was far more than I’d imagined. The house, a colonial revival is rather ordinary, but the garden is wonderful. The most striking feature is that it is apparent that the garden was all designed as a coherent composition, and fortunately, the garden’s integrity is very much intact.

Integrity, hum, there’s another one of those words. Integrity means the ability to convey the design features that reflect the period of significance, or are the features that make this garden important still present? At the Meyers House those features are present and in good condition. A richly detailed arbor and gate separates the front, public garden from the private garden. It is painted white and highly detailed. These details are repeated in a smaller fence and arched gate that defines the opposite side of the garden, in the property line fence, and they can be seen in the garage. The entire property is one cohesive design and as such very pleasing.

Henry H. Meyers, a local architect designed and had his family home built in 1897. He and his family – a wife and four daughters, lived at the property from 1897 to 1993. A plaque in the front of the home, now owned by the City of Alameda, notes that Meyers designed the portals to the Posey Tube – an underwater tunnel that connects the City of Alameda to Oakland – one of 4 connections this island city has to the rest of the Bay Area. Interestingly, my paternal grandfather helped build the Posey Tube – he was part of the crew who poured the concrete. In this photo, my grandfather is 6th from the right.

Meyers also designed the Alameda Veterans Building and Methodist and Presbyterian Churches. One of his four daughters also became an architect.

So, Happy New Year – I hope you’ll enjoy many visits to your local historic sites.

Arcata Plaza

2009-12-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

I started taking Spanish last summer – not because I am planning a trip to Mexico, but because I thought it would be good for the “little gray cells”, as Poirot would say. I’m not sure that it is working, but I am enjoying the class and other students. Learning a new language, or at least new vocabulary, is actually something we all do whenever we pursue a new job or hobby. Knitting, car mechanics, and bird watching – they all have their own language. Doing HALS work requires learning the language of the National Park Service (NPS), who has established the methodology for documenting cultural landscapes. It is important that everyone involved in this work use the same terms and definitions – so there is consistency throughout the country when we write about our national heritage properties.

Integrity is one of words that has special meaning. It is defined as, “the ability of a property to convey its significance.” To be listed on the National Register of Historic Places a site must have significance and it must retain integrity. The National Register criteria recognizes seven aspects or qualities of integrity, which are: location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. When evaluating a site’s integrity one considers each of these qualities and makes a judgment about whether or not it retains integrity.

Integrity is an issue I thought about when we visited Arcata Plaza during our May 2009 HALS vacation. While many of the features of Arcata Plaza have been altered, I feel it retains sufficient integrity to qualify as a historic site. Note: the top photo by A.W. Ericson was part of a display in the Hotel Arcata.

Historic Features That Remain:
The plaza occupies one full city block and is surrounded by commercial and retail businesses housed in buildings of two and three stories. These businesses include small specialty shops; not chain stores. Diagonal parking surrounds the plaza on all four sides. The plaza continues to function as the hub of a thriving retail district.

The plaza retains most of its original formal layout – walks enter the center of the plaza from each corner. There are also mid-block walks on each street leading to the center of the plaza. There is a historic fountain, dated 1912, at the mid-block entrance on H Street. At the center of the plaza there is a circular paved plaza with a full size bronze statue of President William McKinley mounted on a pedestal at the center. Much of the plaza is planted in lawn. There are two remaining Canary Island Date Palms that match a pair visible in historic photos.

The plaza has undergone several renovations. Non-historic improvements include:
The circular walk that had been added by 1914 has been removed. Raised concrete planters have been added at the corner entry points and surrounding the central plaza. A raised planter now surrounds the bronze sculpture and a portion of the base has been buried. The paving for the corner and midblock walks has been replaced with exposed aggregate paving, and on some corners concrete pads with benches have been appended to the walk. New period-style light posts and period-style benches and other site furniture have been added.

Plaza History
Arcata Plaza was laid out by the Union Company in 1850, along with the surrounding blocks of commercial buildings. The plaza was known as the Commons. It became a parade ground, where a citizen’s military company drilled. The plaza was also used for grazing cows until 1901. The Plaza was the only place in town where bars and liquor stores could be located and accordingly women were not allowed until 1870.

Through the years, the Plaza served as the nucleus of community events. It was used as a ball park, a gathering place for town and national celebrations, the scene of huge 4th of July bonfires, of bicycle races, parades, Easter egg hunts, concerts, theatrical performances, fairs and an annual salmon bake.

By 1855, a railroad brought supplies to the southwest corner of the plaza to construct the businesses located around the plaza, and to support mining camps in the vicinity. An 1897 photograph shows the plaza with a similar configuration – mostly lawn, the diagonal paths, and wood plank sidewalk on all four sides.

In 1895 Arcata resident Charles Murdock though the plaza should be improved. He wrote, “The Plaza should be a thing of beauty and a center of life and interest. No building should rest upon it, but green sword, and well kept walks, a fountain, shrubs, and trees should be so attractive that it would be the pride of every citizen.” This led to the establishment of the Plaza Improvement Committee. A center bandstand was completed in 1901. In 1906, it was removed and the statue of McKinley was installed. By 1903 roses, boxwood hedges and the palms and other trees were planted. Murdock suggested the pattern of radiating sidewalks, which were completed in 1910.

A HALS Adventure Vacation

2009-11-29T21:45:00.000-08:00

Last May I planned a “HALS Adventure Vacation” and selected several possible sites to visit along a looped route that would take us north to Arcata/Trinidad, then east to Redding, and further east to Yuba Pass where we stayed at Bassetts – a favorite place for birding – another interest of ours. Along the way we visited eleven historic sites. I wrote up HALS forms for four and have one yet to finish for the Point Cabrillo Light Station.

Our first stop was Fort Ross, featured in my banner and October 11, 2009 post. The most interesting site though was the 700 acre Mendocino Woodlands State Park located in the Jackson State Forest about 8 miles east of Highway One. The site is long, narrow and steeply sloped. See map of camp 1 above.

The first building encountered is the dining/recreation room. The kitchen has a high, beam ceiling with a skylight, and off that central space there are two dining areas each with its own stone fireplace. From the kitchen, double doors lead out onto stone steps and an outdoor eating area. This building and all of the others at the camp were built in the 1930s by the WPA and CCC, which were created by President Roosevelt during the depression. All are constructed of old growth redwood milled from the site. Even the tables and bench seats in the dining hall were constructed by the CCC crews.

Below the dining building is an amphitheater constructed in a traditional semi-circle, with Redwood stumps that mark the corners of the “stage”, and the Redwood forest as a “back drop”. The theater benches are in two groups divided by timber steps. Each bench is made of Redwood logs topped with a rounded slab of Redwood. There is a 3’ diameter fire ring at the center of the amphitheater.
Camping is in individual cabins that are identical throughout. Each has a small (3’ x 4’) stone porch, space for 4 cots, a small closet, a small porch, and a stone fireplace. Cabins are spaced about 30-40 feet apart, and at different levels, with footpaths connecting them. Between the paths understory plantings of fern, grasses, blue-eyed grass, Douglas Iris, Vaccinium, and Gaultheria provide a lush understory.

The camp was one of 46 similar camps built around the country that included Camp David – the president’s retreat. “It was conceived to provide a setting that would introduce the public to the wonders of nature” according to the Mendocino Woodlands Camp Association website history. This is the only one of the original camps that has been maintained and continuously used for its original purpose. It was given to the people of California with the mandate that it be used for group camping and environmental education. A non-profit group was organized in 1949 to manage the park, and in 1976 Mendocino Woodlands became a State Park. National Historic Landmark status was granted in 1997.

Visiting these historic sites with the intent of doing a HALS inventory form really enhanced the trip for me. I made a greater effort to really see, explore and understand what I was seeing and what was important about it. Rather than just give a cursory look at exhibits I studied them carefully leaving with a deeper understanding and appreciation for our California history.

Alameda Naval Air Station - A WWII Landscape

2009-11-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

One year ago PGA was invited to prepare the HALS drawings for Doyle Drive at the Presidio in San Francisco, and since then I’ve been possessed with the project. Doyle is the single largest contract PGA has had in 30 years. It is a large, complex project that required an innovative approach to observing, recording and depicting the landscape. As we are coming close to completing our work I’ve begun to fret that Doyle would prove to be the peak of my career and nothing else would measure up.

Then about a month ago PGA got a call from JRP Historical Consulting inviting us to assist them with a Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) for Alameda Naval Air Station (NAS). And, with one phone call, I fell in love with a new project. Somehow, I feel like I am two-timing Doyle. How could I be “dating” NAS when I am still “engaged” with Doyle? But who would not admire those sentry-like Italian Cypress guarding the entry to Building 17? How could I not flirt with the amusing Hollywood Junipers that flank the old Post office door? And, who would not swoon at the sight of those big, strong Rusty Leaf Figs by the Bachelors Officers Quarters?

Alameda NAS is a collection of landscape types. The Administrative Core is formal with bilateral symmetry and a strong axial alignment. The entry sequence includes 3 large panels of lawn creating a mall similar to the Washington Mall. All of the buildings, roads, sidewalks, paths and much of the planting are laid out in an orthogonal pattern. NAS was the last military base to be designed as part of the whole base design system where the architect, planner and landscape architect worked collaboratively to plan and layout an efficient and functional base. These buildings were built as permanent structures and reflect the architectural style of their time – a hybrid of Art Deco and Moderne design.

The residential area is sub-divided into 4 housing types that reflect the status of different grades of military personnel. Curving streets, expanses of lawn, and an abundance of trees convey a park-like setting. The remainder of the base has a utilitarian landscape designed to facilitate its primary purpose to prepare and maintain aircraft during World War II. Spaces are massive – sometimes the size of multiple football fields laid side by side – without obstructions. Buildings and doors are monumental in scale, designed to allow an airplane to roll in the front door.

A Cultural Landscape Report is not HALS. It is another type of documentation for a historically significant landscape – in this case a site associated with our involvement with WWII, and subsequent military operations, including the Cold War. While our work at NAS is not HALS it is an important historic landscape and certainly is worthy of recordation under the HALS program.

Currently, what I am doing is recording the existing conditions for this 1750 acre site. I am mapping the locations of trees and vegetation (lawn and foundation shrubs). I am taking notes about other landscape improvements by feature type – circulation, hardscape features, buildings and structures, views and vistas, monuments, and spatial organization. And, I am photographing the features. With the existing conditions information, PGA will prepare a series of diagrams that illustrate the major components of the site, as it exists today: vegetation, circulation, and land use. PGA will contribute to the assessment and analysis; we will identify character defining features, and write Treatment Recommendations for the future use of the base. All of this is one part of an elaborate base closure process, and the transition of what this site will be in the future.

If you’ve never visited Alameda NAS I recommend it. It is a stunning landscape steeped in history. You’ll find extraordinary views of San Francisco and the Port of Oakland. You can visit the USS Hornet and the base museum. It is a great place to see a large variety of mature tree species, great architecture, and would be a perfect place to teach someone to drive, because it is flat and there are very few cars out there.

This post is dedicated to the World's Best Dog, Beauregard who died today at 17 - that is 119 in dog years. Beau was a mixed-bread dog we got from Hopalong Rescue. He was a perfect dog, who visited most of the historic sites with us. He will be missed.

HALS Documentation - What's involved? Part 2

2009-11-15T19:41:00.001-08:00

The Northern California Chapter of HALS has completed documentation for three historic sites – the Kaiser Roof Garden (top photo, taken by Tom Fox) in downtown Oakland, Piedmont Way (2nd Photo) in Berkeley, and the Mary Burdell Victorian Garden at Olompali State Historic Park, in Marin County. To see the documentation for these sites visit the HALS Chapter website. Go to “Landscapes”, click on Alameda or Marin County, and then look for the site by City.

The National Park Service donated the services of Brian Grogan, who photographed all three sites using a large format camera and black and white film, which complies with HALS Guidelines for Photography. The written narrative for Piedmont Way was researched and written by HALS member Michael Crowe and funded by a donation from the SWIG Company. Member, Carol Roland did the history for the Mary Burdell Garden and found it to be eligible for the National Register. Her work was funded by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Marlea Graham is doing the history of the Kaiser Roof Garden.

Several members of the PGA staff contributed to the HALS drawings for these 3 sites but it was Cate Bainton who pulled everything together. The documentation of the Burdell Garden will ultimately lead to the garden’s restoration, which is another reason for doing HALS. Part of the research involved studying historic photos, and then conducting field investigations to locate remnants of paths and other features. Archaeologists from Sonoma State confirmed the locations of paths.

HALS Documentation - What's involved?

2009-11-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) documentation has three components – a written history, drawings and photography. The part that I am most familiar with is the drawings. My firm, PGAdesign has completed HALS drawings for three sites, and is actively engaged in preparing drawings for Doyle Drive at the Presidio in San Francisco. The photos in this posting are from Doyle Drive.

HALS Guidelines for each component describe how to prepare the documentation. The Guidelines for drawings, lists several different types of drawings that can be used to illustrate a particular landscape. The difficulty is that the guidelines were written to be used for all types of landscapes – from a small, formal residential garden to the White House grounds. The challenge is to select what drawings will best convey what a landscape looks like.

In the case of Doyle Drive, which is a large (1.2 mile long) and complex landscape, we are preparing several different types of drawings. The vegetation plans show trees and shrubs. Unique graphic symbols are used for different species of trees. Shrubs are categorized by size – low, medium and high. Species are listed in a plant list.

Our “Built Environment Plans” show “hardscape” features, i.e. Walls, paving, stairs, ramps, fences, etc. Another set of drawings illustrate views. The external views diagram shows what can be viewed outside the site – like the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the East Bay Hills. Three internal views diagrams highlight what can be see within the site, including the national cemetery, the historic stables buildings, and the batteries. A battery is where the artillery was mounted to defend the presidio.

The existence of the bluff, that overlooks the bay, is one of the strategic reasons why the presidio is located where it is. This bluff provided an elevated vantage point to see enemy ships. It also divides the presidio topographically. Crissy Field is just slightly above high tide while most of the presidio is elevated above the bluff. Today, the presidio is no longer a military facility. It is a national park and recreation area, so the new design for Doyle Drive includes re-grading, to better connect the upper and lower portions of the site. Portions of the bluff will be cut down by this grading and an important feature will no longer exist. Capturing the bluff and recording it, is important to understanding this site. Our section drawings, being completed by Janet Grayck, illustrate the topography of the landscape. These drawings show the bluff and the relationship between the upper and lower portions of the site.

Ultimately, these drawings along with the written narrative and HALS photographs will reside at the Library of Congress accessible to future researchers, and to the public online. Our drawings will show what the landscape around Doyle Drive was like in 2009, before it was changed. In this way, a piece of our national heritage is being preserved, which is one answer to the question, “What is the purpose of HALS?”

Trees of Mountain View Cemetery - A Self-Guided Tour

2009-11-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

It’s Fall and the Dawn Redwood at Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery is just starting to turn to deep yellow. The Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is one of three types of Redwoods found at Mountain View cemetery and the only one that is deciduous (loses its leaves). This pre-historic species is native to China and is one of a very few deciduous conifers. Learn about how the Dawn Redwood was discovered in an article on the Arnold Arboretum website.

Download Trees of Mountain View Cemetery – A Self-Guided Tour and go see the fall color soon. As of Friday November 5th the Dawn Redwood was just hinting at changing color as were the Copper Beech in front of the main mausoleum and the Japanese Maples in the sunken garden. The Red Maple and Ash are already past their prime, but the Gingko, Sweetgum, Poplar, Tulip Tree and Dogwood are all at their peak.

Mountain View Cemetery is one of Oakland’s most important historic landscapes because it was designed by Frederic Law Olmsted, the person known as “The Father of Landscape Architecture”. Olmsted is best known as the designer of New York’s Central Park. Mountain View is significant because it was one of the earliest detached cemeteries in the United States and as such set a new standard for burial places.

If you prefer a guided tour make a note to join me on Saturday April 24th, 2010 at 10:00 AM. Spring is also a wonderful time to see Mountain View’s trees.

Top Photo: Dawn Redwood

Middle: Sweet Gum along main allee

Bottom: Tulip Tree

Olmsted's Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland CA

2009-10-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

Four years after the California Cemetery Act was passed in 1859, the original trustees of Mountain View Cemetery met and organized a non-profit association. The trustees sought out Frederic Law Olmsted who was known for his work in New York’s Central Park and who was in California at the time. (Olmsted came to California to manage the 44,000 acre Mariposa Gold Mine.)

The cemetery was consecrated May 25, 1865 and quickly became the premier place to be buried, attracting the elite of California - including such notables as: Charles Crocker one of the Big 4 who built the transcontinental railroad and later founded Crocker Bank; Henry Durant, founder of what became the University of California; Ina Coolbrith, California’s first poet laureate; James Folger who created Folgers Coffee Company; Domingo Ghirardelli, the chocolate king; three generations of the Pardee family that included two Mayors of Oakland and one California Governor; famed architects Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan, the first woman to graduate from the Ecole de Beaux Arts; Col. John Coffee “Jack” Hays, the most famous Texas Ranger; landscape painter, Thomas Hill; author Frank Norris; sculptor, Douglas Tilden; industrialist, Henry J. Kaiser whose shipyards played a key role in the Allied forces victory in WWII and whose medical foundation provides quality health care to this day; Warren and Steven Bechtel, who founded and built the largest engineering firm in the world; Elizabeth Short, aka “The Black Dahlia”; and numerous other state governors and legislators.

Mountain View cemetery occupies 226 acres of land in the Oakland hills. Olmsted planned curving paths and roads that climb up the slopes at either side of a formal allee. The main allee starts at the level entry and extends one half mile up along a gentle slope. As described in a narrative Olmsted wrote, he envisioned a place for all persons to be buried, "a place of our common grief, our common hopes and our common faith; a place wherein we may see and feel our sympathy one with another ... where all elements of society would be provided for ... so that the community of the dead would be an object lesson for the community of the living".

Olmsted intended native grasses, lots of shrubs and five species of trees - Italian Cypress, Cedar of Lebanon, Stone Pine, Monterey Cypress, and Evergreen Oak (Quercus agrifolia). Today 80+ species of trees are found throughout the cemetery. The upper terraces offer spectacular views of the bay and the City of San Francisco. It is here that the elite of California chose as their final resting place, which became known as Millionaire's Row.

See the sidebar on this blog for information about free, docent-led walking tours.

The Sun House – A HALS Adventure

2009-10-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

On October 16, 2009 I visited the Sun House in Ukiah which is in Mendocino County off Highway 101. Ukiah is the county seat and has a nicely-scaled historic downtown. We drove from the coast over Mountain View Road enjoying the fall color – vibrant red poison oak and intensely yellow Big Leaf Maples – through Boonville to Highway 253. When we arrived in Ukiah it was well past lunchtime so I inquired of the first person we passed, “where should we have lunch?” Without hesitation she suggested Schat’s Bakery which was just around the corner at 113 W. Perkins Avenue – across from the courthouse.

What luck – they not only offered an assortment of appealing pastries which we bought two of, but great sandwiches. I ordered a half sandwich and ceasar salad and the sandwich was so large I could not eat it all – much more food than one usually gets with a whole sandwich and it was delicious. Sated we headed off to the Sun House and Grace Hudson Museum that I’d learned about from the Northern California HALS database of potential HALS sites.

The Sun House, so named because John and Grace Hudson incorporated a Hopi Indian sun sign over the front door of their new home.

Grace Hudson was an uncommonly successful and recognized artist of her time. She gained national recognition for her paintings and received an honor award at the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She was a prolific artist working primarily in oils creating over 600 paintings of local Pomo Indians.

My purpose was to study the landscape associated with the house. What I found was that much of the original garden that had been designed and installed by the Hudsons was still present.

The Sun House is located on a 4 acre parcel. In addition to the single-family craftsman-style home the property includes the original garage, Hudson-Carpenter Park, the Grace Hudson Museum and a shaded parking lot. A timber fence defines the front property line along Main Street. Brick columns mark a simple wooden gate with a hand-hewn iron latch and a straight, brick path aligns with the heavy timber front door. To the left of the front door there is a 25 foot totem acquired by John Hudson from Northwest Native Americans. To the right of the front door is a stone bench and further right is a mature Pistache Tree – one of six originally planted by the Hudsons.

The front garden is mostly lawn with a bronze sundial mounted on a brick pedestal and a curved brick path leading to the ornament. A mosaic and metal birdbath depicted in historic photos was not visible at the time of my visit having been temporarily removed for repairs. The front garden currently has fewer shrubs than depicted in historic photos that also show vines covering much of the front of the house.

The south property line is defined by a drive that accesses the parking lot that serves the Grace Hudson Museum. Between this drive and the Sun House is a garden that includes features installed shortly after the house was built including a rectangular brick patio surrounded by four rough-hewn stone benches and a raised brick planter that originally was an 8 foot square fish pond.

The south garden is lushly planted under the shade of mature Sycamore and Poplar trees. The understory plants appear to be relatively new additions. Towards the rear of the property there are two other garden structures designed and built by the Hudsons. A heavy-timbered trellis consisting of six 8x8 redwood posts support 6x6 beams that are topped by eight 4x6 crossbeams. A knarled Wisteria remains on this now deteriorated structure. The area under the trellis is paved with brick and there is another stone bench and a stone millstone.

The second structure on the southeast side of the house is a wishing well. A spring was known to be here as early as 1817, long before the Hudson’s purchased the property. Grace Hudson had a rusticated stone wishing well with a filigreed ornamented bucket holder built as a present for her husband.

A driveway runs perpendicular to Main Street on the north side of the property and passes under a heavy-timbered and simply-designed porte corchere to a small, one-car garage. Integrated into the timbers of the porte corchere is one of three bells collected by the Hudsons. The largest had been the Ukiah Fire Bell; the smallest was the bell from Redwood School and the third came from the Methodist Church.

Several mature camellia trees are planted along the foundation on the north side of the house and appear to be original. The park to the north of the house includes several mature trees that also appear to be original including a very large oak. Several large Redwoods were added later. Authors Lanson and Tetzlaff in their book “Grace Hudson Artist of the Pomo Indians – A Biography” include a reference to a rose garden as “an early addition” to the grounds but no rose garden remains as of 2009.

The House is a craftsman-style redwood structure designed by the Hudsons and their architect George L. Wilcox. Construction started in 1911 and took six months complete. The house is California Historical Landmark No. 926 and the property is on the National Register of Historic Places. The City of Ukiah acquired the property in 1975 after the deaths of Mark and Melissa Carpenter. Mark Carpenter was Grace Hudson’s nephew.

If you visit the Sun House be sure to allow time to see the garden, the interior of the house and the museum including the permanent and changing exhibits – oh, and be sure to eat at Schats.

Fort Ross State Historic Park

2009-10-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

So, I have started a blog. I didn’t really mean to, but yesterday I attended a talk at the California Genealogical Society just to learn about blogs. The speaker was Thomas MacEntee who writes GeneaBloggers – a site for genealogists. Part 2 of his talk demonstrated how to create a blog using Blogger, a free application. Thomas made it look so easy and so fun that I could not resist. I visited his site, found the link to Blogger, clicked on it and then froze when it asked, “What is the name of your Blog?” Did I really want to do this? It’s a big commitment. I used to hate to write – what’s gotten into me?

I typed in a name, and then it asked me to assign a URL. Oh my gawd, they are serious – am I? Well, if you are reading this you know the answer. It took only a few minutes and really was fun. I wrote my first post last night and ever since my mind has been whirling with ideas of what more to write about. I thought I should start at the beginning and explain the basics: What is HALS? Why was it created? What is its purpose? But all that sounds too dull and what I really want to tell you about is some of the fascinating historic landscapes I’ve visited in the past few months. So I decided to start with Fort Ross.

I took the photo of Fort Ross that appears on my blog banner in spring of 2009 while my partner, two dogs and I were on a weeklong vacation in Northern California. This state historic park recently made headlines when Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak visited on August 27, 2009 in response to Governor Schwarzenegger’s threat to close many of our state parks. Kislyak urged the governor to consider how important the site was to the people of Russia. According to a September 18th article in the Independent Coast Observer by Lisa Walters, “Ambassador Kislyak said he would lobby Russian business interests that might be willing to help with the needed funds.”

Fort Ross History
Fort Ross is a 3386-acre park that preserves North America’s southernmost Russian settlement originally founded in 1812 by the Russian-American Company. Today the site includes the restored Rotchev House and 5 other reconstructed buildings including the Northwest and Southeast Blockhouses, the Kuskov House, a chapel and Officers Quarters. The original fort is enclosed by a stockade built of Redwood with wood spikes on top.

The park property includes the Call Ranch House, remnants of a Russian Orchard and cemetery, a visitor center with interpretive displays, picnic and parking. Archaeological excavations have been undertaken to insure that the placement, orientation and size of features is historically accurate. The fort is set on a point of land between Fort Ross Cove and Sandy Cove on California’s northern coastline. It has a broad view of the Pacific Ocean and of forested hills to the northeast. Because the Call family valued the site the property today it is almost the same as it had been when the Russians left it in 1841.

Prior to the Russian settlement Native Americans used this site known as Metini for centuries. The Kashaya Pomo people seasonally moved their village from the ridges where they lived in winter, to their summer home along the seashore where they hunted, gathered food and harvested seafood.

Russians began exploring in North America as early as 1742. In 1784 they built the first permanent Russian settlement on Kodiak Island, Alaska. This organization became the Russian-American Company in 1799. In 1809 the Russian-American Company sent Ivan Kuskov to locate a California site to serve as a trading base. Kuskov chose Metini which had plentiful water, good soil, forage and pasture and a supply of redwoods. The site was relatively inaccessible which gave the settlers a defensive advantage. The settlement was never threatened by outside attack. Kuskov returned in 1812 to build houses and a stockade. The colony was dedicated on August 13, 1812 as “Fortress Ross” to honor its connection with Imperial Russia – or “Rossiia”. Kuskov was an avid gardener, growing cabbage and beets for pickling. He produced enough to ship the excess to Sitka, Alaska. At its peak the Fort Ross settlement included 300 men, women and children and thousands of livestock.

Outside the stockade a village grew to the southwest that had 50 buildings, Native Americans continued to live nearby and worked at the fort. Ross was a successfully functioning multicultural settlement for at least 30 years; residents included Russians, Native Alaskans, Californians and Creoles. Activities included agriculture, ranching, hunting sea mammals, blacksmithing, tanning, brick making, logging and shipbuilding. The decline of the marine mammal population contributed to the departure of the Russians.

One of the first horticultural efforts was the Russian experiments with fruit trees. Peach trees were brought from San Francisco and planted in 1814. Grapes from Peru were planted in 1817. A Russian orchard located on the hillside included apples, peaches, grapes, quince, cherries and several types of pear. An 1841 inventory listed 216 fruit trees. This orchard is still maintained. Agriculture at the site peaked in the 1830s but was never very successful do to the severe climate and gophers.

In 1841 the property was sold to John Sutter who was based in the Sacramento Valley. Sutter had Otto Benitz manage the Ross property (1841-67). Benitz sold to James Dixon and Lord Fairfax who ran a lumber company (1867- 1873) when Fort Ross was sold to George W. Call (1873 – 1979).

In 1903 the California Historical Landmarks Committee acquired the Fort Ross property within the stockade from the Call family. The state acquired the property in 1906 and has implemented the restoration and reconstruction work.

The Rotchev House is a designated National Historic Landmark
The Chapel has been recorded by HABS (Historic American Building Survey)
The entire property is State Historic Landmark No. 5

Sources for this article include the following:
Fort Ross State Historic Park brochure, California State Parks, www.parks.ca.gov

"Fort Ross" published by Fort Ross Interpretive Associates, General Editors: Lyn Kalani, Lynn Rudy and John Sperry. E-mail: fria@mcn.org, 1998

Historic Spots in California, by Mildred Brooke Hoover, Hero Eugene Rensch and Ethel Grace Rensch, third edition revised by William N. Abeloe, 1966.

Next time you drive up Highway 1 make a point of stopping at Fort Ross. It is a unique part of our state park system with an excellent visitor center.

Historic American Landscapes Survey - What Is It?

2009-10-10T18:38:00.001-07:00

The Historic American Landscapes Survey is a new federal program created in 2000 to document historic landscapes. It is modeled on HABS which stands for Historic American Building Survey. HABS was created in 1933 during the depression and was one of President Roosevelt's many programs created to put Americans back to work. Unemployed architects were tasked with creating records of important historic buildings as a means of "preserving" them for future generations.

In 1969 HAER was created. HAER is an acronym for Historic American Engineering Record and it used to document engineered structures like the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The Bay Bridge was damaged during the Loma Prieta earthquake and a new bridge is being built to replace the span between Oakland and Treasure Island. HAER documents will provide a permanent record of the original bridge.

One of the largest HALS projects currently underway in the United States is the documentation for Doyle Drive. Doyle Drive traverses the Presidio in San Francisco and connects the Marina District with the toll booth. This highway, constructed in 1937, is ranked 2 on a scale of 1 - 100 which means that it is seismically one of the least safe highways in the United States. Plans are underway to replace Doyle Drive. Part of this replacement project is to record the existing historic features.

The Presidio is within a National Park and as such it deserves a high level of documentation. Currently HABS, HAER and HALS documention is underway. My firm, PGAdesign Landscape Architects, is working with Jones & Stokes to complete the drawings portion of the HALS documentation. I'll tell you more about this facinating project in future postings