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TT: re: the history & ideology of "the lawn"
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Date: Tue, 03 Feb 1998 09:47:49 -0500
From: Alice Ingerson <ingerson@arnarb.harvard.edu>
To: Richard@Flora.Com (Thank you so much, Alice Ingerson!)
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This may be more than TreeTowners want on this subject, but--
Frank Jessup Scott Scott began advocating a uniform setback from the
street, and no fences between neighbors, for new suburban developments in
the 1870s, and put his ideas into practice first in Toledo. His major
ideas can be found in his book, <italic>The Art of Beautifying Suburban
Home-Grounds</italic> (New York: D. Appleton Co., 1879, reprinted in 1886
by John B. Alden Co. of New York).
For a broader perspective on Scott, see James L. Machlor,
<italic>Pastoral Cities: Urban Ideals and the Symbolic Landscape of
America</italic> (University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), esp. ch. 4,
"Landscape as Cityscape: Urbanization and the Western Garden";
and
Fred E. H. Schroeder, <italic>Front Yard America: The Evolution and
Meanings of a Vernacular Domestic Landscape</italic> (Bowling Green State
University Popular Press, 1993), esp. parts 4 ("The Coming of the
Lawnmower") through 6 ("As Toledo Goes, So Goes the Nation").
Schroeder's book is a fun read (it came out of the long-running program
on "popular culture" at Bowling Green State in Ohio). It has lots of
great photos and drawings showing how the front yard evolved from a
place to grow food or pen animals into a purely ornamental place that, to
the delight of some (who thought sharing views was democratic) and the
disgust of others (for whom this violated their sense of individual
liberty and private property), seemed to "belong to the neighbors" more
than to the homeowner.
That might be the aspect of greatest interest to treetowners,
actually--since ecosystems can't function and evolve if they are managed
one property, or even one owner's tenure on a given property, at a time.
Yet many Americans still feel those should be the fundamental units of
space and time for making land use decisions.
==============================(TreeTown)===============================