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Preservation Case Study: Tower Grove Park In the years following Henry Shaw’s death, the landscape at Tower Grove Park saw change, but it was more gradual and far less drastic than the wholesale redesign that transformed the Missouri Botanical Garden. Dead trees were not always replaced, structures deteriorated, and a more picturesque aesthetic crept in, perhaps unconsciously, when officials did restore plantings. The park’s director, John Karel, notes that some of Shaw’s original tree species proved to be ill suited for the climate, and short-lived flowering trees cycled out within a few generations. “On top of that, St. Louis was an industrial city, and air pollution started killing the trees, as it did in many cities, between 1900 and 1920,” he says. “This coincided with a time when funding was growing less adequate, and the park began a long, slow decline.” Insufficient funds resulted in a far less diverse collection of trees, as park managers chose from what was affordable and readily available. As a result, the park today has an overrepresentation of silver maple (Acer saccharinum), pin oak (Quercus palustris), and sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Since its mid-twentieth-century low point, however, Tower Grove Park has undergone a renaissance led by a committed constituency. As Karel writes in his afterword to Henry Shaw’s Victorian Landscapes, “A crusade of sorts was undertaken from the late 1980s that mobilized the latent energies of . . . the Commissioners, the staff, the surrounding neighborhoods, hundreds of volunteers and donors, and a new organization regional in scope, the Friends of Tower Grove Park.” In 1989 their efforts culminated in the park’s designation as a National Historic Landmark, the fourth urban park to be so recognized. The designation raised the profile of preservation efforts and opened new funding opportunities. After making urgent structural repairs, Karel and his staff turned their attention to the living landscape. “We have good documentation, including a map from the late 1870s depicting the species and locations Shaw had in mind, and park reports from the 1880s,” Karel says. “Fortunately for us, the park was born in the age of photography, so we also have lots of photographs.” The pictures in particular reveal the degree to which later plantings had “muddied the crispness and diversity and liveliness of the gardenesque,” he observes. After studying these documents in depth, Karel and his staff concluded that the founder regarded the park in part as a demonstration area for woody plants that would be viable in the local climate, and that could thrive with the limited level of care possible in a public park. “We feel he wanted to grow as diverse a collection as possible, with particular interest in native trees of the Mississippi Valley,” Karel says. These concepts, along with restoring the original gardenesque aesthetic, guided the current replanting plan. “We haven’t ripped out post-Shavian trees, but as trees have cycled out, we’ve replaced them gradually, which doesn’t result in social trauma,” Karel says. Over the last ten years, the staff increased plantings to about 120 new trees a year, with a focus on shade trees lining streets and paths. Trees planted in the 1920s are dying out, and the park staff is deploying an enriched palette of original species—including willow oak, red and scarlet oak, sour gum, sassafras, sourwood, persimmon, redbud, amelanchier, arrowwood viburnum, and witch hazel—and planting them in the original gardenesque spirit. This diversity will produce, among other things, more exciting seasonal color changes. Carol Grove, author of the LALH book, and Karel say that Shaw’s clearly emerging design, coupled with Grove’s book, could help visitors realize that American parks were not always Olmstedian. Karel also says he believes that the book will help support efforts to restore and preserve Tower Grove Park in at least three ways: “First, it provides new insights on some basic design issues that enrich our understanding, so that our landscape decisions are better informed. Second, the book will provide a public-relations stimulus, which should prove valuable in raising funds for park projects. Perhaps most important, it will broaden and deepen public comprehension of Tower Grove Park as a work of art, an intact product of nineteenth-century human imagination that survives with almost miraculous integrity in our time. This comprehension will be the park’s best defense against a future recurrence of harmful neglect, or worst yet, well-intentioned development or redesign that would corrupt or degrade that integrity.” (See related article.) Photographs: |
