SouthCoast Wonders: Why are Olmsted parks important? The history of 8 Fall River projects
FALL RIVER — April 26 marks a special celebration — the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted, known as the father of American landscape architecture.
Olmsted is most famous for co-designing New York’s Central Park — his first ever park design. But he, and the company he founded, also had a hand in designing hundreds of landscape projects nationwide, including three parks in Fall River.
Olmsted visited Fall River in 1870. He wrote a report with plans for what would become South Park, sharing some thoughts about how to make life in this increasingly industrialized city a bit more pleasant.
“Although the natural advantages of your city for refined and healthful out of door recreation are very great, they seem thus far to have been singularly disregarded and the wealth which exists in them wasted," he wrote. “Your narrow streets and the habitual confinement of a large part of your population within walls during the greater part of the day makes it particularly desirable that some such comprehensive scheme as we have suggested should be adapted."
Olmsted believed that viewing beautiful scenery was good for people’s health. His parks are beloved for using an area’s natural topography to create naturally flowing public spaces, often with curved, winding paths that encourage people to interact with the area in a way completely different from the gridded streets of a city.
The firm Olmsted started in 1857 in New York became highly sought-after for its elegant designs. He eventually relocated to the Boston area, where he'd designed the Emerald Necklace parks. Upon his retirement in 1897, his sons took over the firm. Olmsted died in 1903. The Olmsted Brothers and later Olmsted Associates ran the firm until 1979.
Here’s a brief look at the history of eight Olmsted projects in Fall River — including three parks and some other spots you may not have known about.
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Kennedy Park
Fall River’s biggest park is nearly 60 acres of lush greenery that reaches from South Main Street to the Taunton River. It’s a place rich in Fall River history, but for much of the early days, it wasn’t in Fall River at all — it was farmland in Tiverton, Rhode Island. The area became Fall River when, in 1862, the Massachusetts state border was moved 2 miles south. Fall River acquired the land to create a park in 1868, and hired the firm of Olmsted Vaux & Co. to draw up plans.
In an 1870 letter from Olmsted to the city’s Commission on Park Improvements, he refers to part of the plan as “Bay Park,” having fallen in love with the Taunton River vistas. “The preeminent advantage of the Bay Park seems to be the views across the water to the North and West which it commands the opportunity for uninterrupted outlook in these directions,” he wrote.
The area between South Main Street and Broadway, which became known as South Park, was laid out and improved in 1871 — and here you can still see a few of Olmsted’s influences today, with winding paths and trees along the north and south sides that block the view of the rest of the city.
Olmsted Brothers improved South Park in 1903, along with the rest of the land, adding the overlook, pond and ice rink, and the rolling hills down to the Taunton River — a job that cost about $40,000 in 1904 dollars, or $1.3 million today.
As the jewel in Fall River's parks, South Park is the starting point of parades and the site of major events like the Great Feast of the Holy Ghost. President William Howard Taft entertained tens of thousands of people in 1911 during a days-long festival to mark the 100th year of cotton production in Fall River. Thousands saw President Bill Clinton in 1996 stumping for Democratic candidates John Kerry and James McGovern. In 1963, the city renamed South Park for a president: John F. Kennedy, to honor the mark his assassination left on the public.
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Ruggles Park
Also in 1868, the city bought part of the old Rodman Farm known as Ruggles Grove. The area was originally lush with trees. But by the turn of the century, the area had lost many of them and the park was looking worse for wear.
In 1901, Fall River established its first Parks Commission with a loan of $182,000 to play with — a bit over $6 million today. When it hired the Olmsted Brothers to fix up the rest of South Park, it also hired them to redesign Ruggles Park, in the middle of a working-class neighborhood near tenements and mills. John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. drafted a plan that included a ball field, a “little folks’ playground” and gracefully curving paths. Some exposed ledge they discovered, they refashioned into a fieldstone retaining wall that wends along the eastern side.
Construction wasn’t easy. According to a September 1903 note from Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., contractor Thomas J. Kelley had some choice words to say about Fall River Parks Superintendent Howard Lothrop and about the local workers.
Olmsted said Kelley “took the occasion to complain of Mr. Lothrop and the Fall River people in general ... who are entirely inexperienced in park work or how to do it.”
Regardless, about $39,000 later and about eight months past schedule, the park was built. Today, the park is small but a marvel, with the Manny Papoula basketball court atop the ledge sloping down Locust Street to Seabury, and mature, majestic oak trees throughout.
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North Park
Green spaces sprang up all over Fall River in the early 20th century. The city's population was soaring thanks to the textile industry, about 105,000 at the turn of the century — and the city wasn't even at its peak.
In 1904, the city set aside land for North Park, and again hired the Olmsted Brothers to design it. In a report, they describe it as “a neighborhood park located between two distinct types of community — a residential district of good character along Highland Avenue, and a poor tenement-house district." Fall River has always had rich people on the hill and working-class people living “below the hill.” North Park was to occupy the hill itself.
Olmsted Brothers wasn’t crazy about the idea, because the land was so steep. In fact, they mentioned that “Hood Street and President Avenue are impassable for vehicles.” “The character of the site renders it unsuitable for a park,” they wrote; “nevertheless, it is devoted to this purpose by the city.”
Since the park’s completion in 1905, it’s been a city landmark, visible by the thousands of vehicles that today travel quite easily up and down President Avenue. As for Hood Street, that road ends in a dead end where a hidden stone staircase is one of the city’s most unsung locales. And like South Park, the upper part of the park commands breathtaking views of the Taunton River and Somerset beyond.
The park has played host to all kinds of activities over the years — Little League tournaments, soap box derby racing down Snake Hill Road that winds downhill from Highland Avenue to the park road near North Underwood, a free Aerosmith concert in July 1973 a few months after the little band from Boston released its debut album — but it might best be known as home to the top sledding in the area. Every winter, sledders craving fresh powder flock to the steep hills that made the Olmsted brothers think twice.
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First Congregational Church
The Olmsted firms are best known for designing public parks, but they worked much smaller, too — and for private individuals. In January 1913, Sarah Submit Brayton gifted the city with the First Congregational Church, the granite edifice on Rock and Cherry streets, paying for it all out of her own pocket. She had a tremendous fortune, most of it inherited from her sister, Mary, the widow of Maj. Bradford Durfee and Jeremiah S. Young, prominent and rich industrialists.
Brayton asked the architects, Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge out of Boston, to hire the Olmsted Brothers to do the church’s landscaping. Even though she shelled out a massive sum to build the church, documents from the time show that Brayton had her limits — when told that digging, planting flowers, shrubs and two elm trees and other landscaping work would cost an estimated $2,300 to $3,000 (about $67,000 to $87,000 today), she “promptly dismissed” this idea. “I would regard the amount of money she is willing to spend as absurd,” wrote one Olmsted associate. This amount: no more than $1,500, or $43,000 today.
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Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption
That wasn’t the only local church Olmsted Brothers provided landscaping plans and services for. St. Mary of the Assumption had been built in the 1850s, but in 1927 the original rectory was replaced with the current granite structure along Second and Rodman streets.
In 1928, the Olmsted firm was hired to improve the grounds with plantings and perform grading work. An associate of the firm, Edward Clark Whiting, conducted a site visit, meeting with the Rev. James M. Quinn, then pastor of the church. Quinn had less earthly matters on his mind at the time.
“Father Quinn stayed only a few minutes and we talked of grading needed against the building to throw surface out to street,” Whiting wrote. “He didn’t seem much interested but seemed to want the thing settled and carried out somehow or other.”
To Whiting, the plans weren’t just necessary to beautify the church but the whole area. “Neighborhood is rather shabby and place could well stand a fair amount of shrub planting, also a tree or two," he wrote. “Conditions rather smoky I should think.”
Albert Bradbury Green
This small spot is hardly even a park — it’s a triangular patch of land bordered by Stafford Road and Coral and Cambridge streets. And yet this, too, is technically an Olmsted park.
In 1902, while working on South Park, the city Park Commission had the firm whip up a landscaping plan for this spot. At the time, the city was eager to have the spot improved, as it was about to pave Stafford Road. Olmsted associate George Gibbs Jr. was happy to oblige, but seemed stuck on what to do.
“Only small; has three fair maples and rough lawn,” he wrote. “Needs curb and sidewalk. Commission wants seats but it seems too small for even these.”
In their plans, the spot is called Grinnell Green — Grinnell Street is right nearby. It later became known as Cambridge Green, and is today known as Albert Bradbury Green after a wounded World War I veteran. And it has several benches.
Durfee Green
Once the city Park Commission had the Olmsted Brothers in town, they kept them busy. While working on Ruggles and South Parks and Grinnell Green, the firm was also asked to check out another triangle known as Durfee Green, bordered by High and Maple streets and Highland Avenue.
The spot, about 0.22 acres, doesn’t merit much attention in the Olmsted firm’s documents. Gibbs mentions planting the bulk of it in October 1902. Today, the spot is best known as the unofficial entrance to the Highlands neighborhood — where in the shade of several mature trees you'll find the “Welcome Historic Highlands” sign.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Home
The daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop had a full life before converting to Catholicism at age 40. She left an abusive marriage at age 45 and devoted herself to caring for the poor and sick. She became a nun, and her order founded several homes for those with incurable cancer, including one in Fall River on Bay Street in 1932. The home closed in 2002, but the building is still owned by the diocese.
In 1935, William Bell Marquis of the Olmsted firm toured the grounds after being asked to consult on a planting plan. He noted that since it was a charity hospital, “we should probably keep the costs of our services at a minimum.”
The consultation was $40 (about $840 today), with plans costing $200 to $300 (worth $6,300 today). Bishop James Edwin Cassidy gave the firm the go-ahead to draft a plan, which underwent a few revisions. Marquis reported that the place needed some work — mostly due to Cassidy’s tacky decorating sense, including chunks of marble strewn alongside the driveway and some random plantings that “looked much out of place and quite crude.”
“The caretaker on the property says that these are mostly there following the ideas of the Bishop, who picks these things up various places and sends them to the hospital and orders them to be put up,” Marquis wrote. “He says the Bishop is quite apt to do erratic things.”
Cassidy authorized Olmsted Brothers to “proceed at once” on the planting work — but then immediately afterward hired a different company to do it instead and never told the Olmsteds, leaving them high and dry. They noted in a letter that they were confused and “greatly disappointed at this abrupt termination of our professional relations with you,” but while they incurred all kinds of extra expenses preparing the job, they’d let the whole thing slide.
Dan Medeiros can be reached at [email protected]. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Southcoast Wonders: The history of 8 Fall River Olmsted park projects
