奥姆斯特德的一个Lecture，The Unplanned Growth of Cities，对于了解现代园林早期观念的形成有一定帮助。
The pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who helped design Central Park in New York City, described his vision of the role of parks in urban development in a speech given in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1870. He understood that the physical and mental well-being of a city’s population translated directly into its economic health. Olmsted also saw parks as emblems of social democracy where all classes of city dwellers could mingle in a rejuvenating environment. Olmsted eventually became discouraged by the lack of public support for his projects and spent his later efforts designing private parks for wealthy clients.
Olmsted “The Unplanned Growth of Cities”
What accommodations for recreation can we provide which shall be so agreeable and so accessible to the great body of citizens, and which, while giving decided gratification, shall also cause those who resort to them for pleasure to subject themselves, for the time being, to conditions strongly counteractive to the special enervating conditions of the town? In the study of this question, all forms of recreation may, in the first place, be conveniently arranged under two general heads.… Games chiefly of mental skill, as chess, or athletic sports, as baseball, are examples of means of recreation of the first class, which may be termed exertive recreation; music and the fine arts generally of the second or receptive division.…
There is an instinctive inclination to this social, neighborly, unexertive form of recreation among all of us. In one way or another it is sure to be constantly operating upon those millions on millions of men and women who are to pass their lives within a few miles of where we now stand. To what extent it shall operate so as to develop health and virtue will, on many occasions, be simply a question of opportunity and inducement. And this question is one for the determination of which for a thousand years we here today are largely responsible.…
For this purpose neither of the forms of ground we have heretofore considered are at all suitable. We want a ground to which people may easily go after their day’s work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets—where they shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them. We want the greatest possible contrast with the streets and the shops and the rooms of the town which will be consistent with convenience and the preservation of good order and neatness. We want, especially, the greatest possible contrast with the restraining and confining conditions of the town, those conditions which compel us to walk circumspectly, watchfully, jealously, which compel us to look closely upon others without sympathy. Practically, what we most want is a simple, broad, open space of clean greensward, with sufficient play of surface and a sufficient number of trees about it to supply a variety of light and shade. This we want as a central feature. We want depth of wood enough about it not only for comfort in hot weather but to completely shut out the city from our landscapes.
The word "park," in town nomenclature, should, I think, be reserved for grounds of the character and purpose thus described.
Not only as being the most valuable of all possible forms of public places but regarded simply as a large space which will seriously interrupt crosstown communication wherever it occurs, the question of the site and bounds of the park requires to be determined with much more deliberation and art than is often secured for any problem of distant and extended municipal interests.… The park should, as far as possible, complement the town.
Openness is the one thing you cannot get in buildings. Picturesqueness you can get. Let your buildings be as picturesque as your artists can make them. This is the beauty of a town. Consequently, the beauty of the park should be the other. It should be the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures, and the still waters. What we want to gain is tranquillity and rest to the mind. Mountains suggest effort. But besides this objection there are others of what I may indicate as the housekeeping class. It is impossible to give the public range over a large extent of ground of a highly picturesque character, unless under very exceptional circumstances, and sufficiently guard against the occurrence of opportunities and temptations to shabbiness, disorder, indecorum, and indecency that will be subversive of every good purpose the park should be designed to fulfill.…
A park, fairly well managed near a large town, will surely become a new center of that town. With the determination of location, size, and boundaries should therefore be associated the duty of arranging new trunk routes of communication between it and the distant parts of the town existing and forecasted.
These may be either narrow informal elongations of the park, varying say from 200 to 500 feet in width and radiating irregularly from it, or if, unfortunately, the town is already laid out in the unhappy way that New York and Brooklyn, San Francisco and Chicago are, and, I am glad to say, Boston is not, on a plan made long years ago by a man who never saw a spring carriage and who had a conscientious dread of the Graces, then we must probably adopt formal parkways. They should be so planned and constructed as never to be noisy and seldom crowded, and so also that the straightforward movement of pleasure carriages need never be obstructed, unless at absolutely necessary crossings, by slow-going, heavy vehicles used for commercial purposes.
If possible, also, they should be branched or reticulated with other ways of a similar class, so that no part of the town should finally be many minutes’ walk from some one of them; and they should be made interesting by a process of planting and decoration, so that in necessarily passing through them, whether in going to or from the park, or to and from business, some substantial recreative advantage may be incidentally gained. It is a common error to regard a park as something to be produced complete in itself, as a picture to be painted on canvas. It should rather be planned as one to be done in fresco, with constant consideration of exterior objects, some of them quite at a distance and even existing as yet only in the imagination of the painter.…
The New York legislature of 1851 passed a bill providing for a park on the east side of the island. Afterward, the same legislature, precipitately and quite as an afterthought, passed the act under which the city took title to the site of the greater part of the present Central Park.… The question of the relative value of what is called offhand common sense, and of special, deliberate, businesslike study, must be settled in the case of the Central Park, by a comparison of benefit with cost. During the last four years, over 30 million visits have been made to the park by actual count, and many have passed uncounted. From 50,000 to 80,000 persons on foot, 30,000 in carriages, and 4,000 to 5,000 on horseback have often entered it in a day.
Among the frequent visitors, I have found all those who, a few years ago, believed it impossible that there should ever be a park in this republican country—and especially in New York of all places in this country—which would be a suitable place of resort for "gentlemen." They, their wives and daughters, frequent the park more than they do the opera or the church. There are many men of wealth who resort to the park habituall
y and regularly, as much so as businessmen to their places of business. Of course, there is a reason for it, and a reason based upon their experience.
As to the effect on public health, there is no question that it is already great. The testimony of the older physicians of the city will be found unanimous on this point. Says one: "Where I formerly ordered patients of a certain class to give up their business altogether and go out of town, I now often advise simply moderation and prescribe a ride in the park before going to their offices, and again a drive with their families before dinner. By simply adopting this course as a habit, men who have been breaking down frequently recover tone rapidly and are able to retain an active and controlling influence in an important business, from which they would have otherwise been forced to retire. I direct schoolgirls, under certain circumstances, to be taken wholly, or in part, from their studies and sent to spend several hours a day rambling on foot in the park."
The lives of women and children too poor to be sent to the country can now be saved in thousands of instances by making them go to the park. During a hot day in July last, I counted at one time in the park eighteen separate groups, consisting of mothers with their children, most of whom were under school age, taking picnic dinners which they had brought from home with them. The practice is increasing under medical advice, especially when summer complaint is rife.
The much greater rapidity with which patients convalesce and may be returned with safety to their ordinary occupations after severe illness, when they can be sent to the park for a few hours a day, is beginning to be understood. The addition thus made to the productive labor of the city is not unimportant.
The park, moreover, has had a very marked effect in making the city attractive to visitors, and in thus increasing its trade, and causing many who have made fortunes elsewhere to take up their residence and become taxpayers in it—a much greater effect in this way, beyond all question, than all the colleges, schools, libraries, museums, and art galleries which the city possesses. It has also induced many foreigners who have grown rich in the country, and who would otherwise have gone to Europe to enjoy their wealth, to settle permanently in the city.