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The Evolution of Green Space: A History of Urban Landscape in Charlotte, North Carolina, 1890-1990by Brian W. C. Sturm Honors Thesis, Department of History University of North Carolina, 2000
Special note: I am deeply indebted to Brian Sturm for taking the initiative to bring this manuscript to my attention. Contrary to popular belief, man-made landscapes are just as important as buildings to the preservationist. The essential philosophy of historic preservation to which I aspire is that history must stand at the heart of the movement, not urban design, not economic development, not even neighborhood revitalization. Therefore, the Commission's website seeks to make historical material easily accessible to the public. It is most gratifying to place this manuscript on the Commission's website. Indeed, I would urge other students who study and write about Charlotte-Mecklenburg history to contact me about having their manuscripts included on our website. Dr. Dan L. Morrill
Introduction: Beginning Six Feet Beneath the EarthWhere do we go to find shade? Where do we go to run barefoot in the grass? Why is Charlotte so proud of its many trees? Why do the people of the city complain about a lack of parks and open space? Who is responsible? Who is to blame? Who is to acclaim? This paper attempts to answer these and other more focused questions by examining a century of time in Charlotte's history, from 1890 to 1990. This paper looks at much of the history of this city in these years, though it is not simply a local history. It is intended to be my senior thesis in history, though it is not solely an historical examination. This paper discusses the landscape of a city and how it changes over time. In my learning process I have been exposed to fields as diverse and interesting as urban planning, landscape architecture and even leisure studies. What the questions add up to is a concept I call the evolution of green space. Green spaces are simply those pieces of land that have been kept open and designed for human consumption. I have chosen to talk about garden suburbs, public parks, golf courses and greenways as examples. How these elements in any urban landscape come about is a curious process. I contend that green space cannot thrive without strong human agency and landscape ideology. These human and ideological components are what drive this urban history. I want to introduce you the reader to my methodology in this paper before going into a deeper discussion of this evolution and green space itself. Examining one piece of land in the same manner as I eventually do throughout the paper will acquaint you with my methods and highlight some important aspects of this green evolution. A good place to start is on the grounds of the earliest green space in the city of Charlotte. As in many other American cities this was to be found in the cemetery. In the last decades of the 19th century Charlotte experienced unprecedented growth. The amount of green space within the city, however, remained a constant: Settlers' and Elmwood cemeteries. In the small gridiron that had always constituted the city, these were then the only green blocks. Throughout America, cemeteries were some of the first urban green spaces. The "rural cemetery" has been credited as the forerunner to the rural park and greater Park Movement. During the 19th century burial grounds once attached to churches and situated within the limits of a town were moved outside the town under a collection of influences. These carefully planned and artfully designed cemeteries outside the city acted as a health precaution, provided visitors with a more serene atmosphere, and ensured more space for the internment of the deceased. Rural cemeteries like Boston's Mount Auburn and Philadelphia's Laurel Hill gained favor in America in the 1830s and 40s for these reasons.1
The lives of Settlers' and Elmwood Cemeteries partly reflect this transformation. Settler's, a cemetery that seems to have no specific origin, has rested on nearly an entire block in the center of downtown for over two centuries. The oldest known grave dates to 1776, and the last burials took place in 1867. In 1855, Elmwood Cemetery opened on a set of hills outside of the downtown gridiron. City leaders anticipated that Settlers' would soon meet its capacity.2 At present, Elmwood still accounts for 100 acres of grassy hills but is now enclosed by an urban infrastructure of office buildings and interstate highways. As of 1990, the cemetery, one of several public burial grounds in Charlotte, held 60,000 total graves and still offered some 100 unsold plots.3
Figure 1: John Nolen's 1906 plan for Settlers' Cemetery. This renovation created the system of pathways that still exist today within this urban oasis. (Source: Charlotte Observer, May 7, 1906, 6.) Some contrasts in the designs of these two spaces suggest Elmwood was intended to be a bucolic rural cemetery. Settlers' is a singular square plot of land while Elmwood is a spacious lot void of corners and varied in terrain. Settlers' rests across the street from one of the city's oldest churches First Presbyterian, and though the grounds have never been owned by that church or any particular denomination it has been popularly known as the "Presbyterian Burial Ground."4 Elmwood was placed away from the beaten path of townspeople and church goers thus taking the reminder of death out from under their feet and into the country. Elmwood also exhibits many more mausoleums and monuments than does Settlers' likening it more to the Classical rural cemeteries being designed elsewhere at the time. A more practical view suggests that Elmwood was simply a solution to problems caused by Charlotte's growth. Sources do not indicate this newer cemetery was ever professionally designed in the manner of contemporary burial grounds. Historian David Schuyler has described the work of horticulturist John Jay Smith at Laurel Hill Cemetery as an attempt "to unite the works of man and of nature, to create a 'tout ensemble' of scenery, landscape design, architecture, and sculpture."5 Very little French influence is felt by a visitor to Elmwood. There is no original architecture aside from the grave monuments themselves nor is there a system of curvilinear paths to enhance the viewing of graves. What is more likely is that the city sought a larger and more sanitary site for burials and Elmwood satisfied these aspects. Both these pieces of land continue to evolve within the center of the city. Elmwood, of course, is still an active burial ground and maintained by the city. Settlers' Cemetery has experienced a more checkered past in the last century enduring neglect amidst periods of restoration. In 1906 the Charlotte Park and Tree Commission took charge of preserving and beautifying the land. The commission added a wrought iron gate and hired a young landscape architect by the name of John Nolen to design brick walkways. For years, a small group of women under the Daughters of the American Revolution Auxiliary Committee for Cemetery Square cared for the grass and gravestones.6 In 1950, Mayor Victor Shaw began another beautification project that invested $10,000 in lampposts, a new fountain and stone benches.7 The cemetery acquired its present morphology in 1968 when the city spent $40,000 under a citywide urban renewal program to build yet a bigger fountain, restore Nolen's pathways and clean all the monuments.8 Today, Settlers' is more a living park than a resting-place for the dearly departed. These two pieces of land neatly illustrate several themes to be discussed later in this paper and provide an introduction to the concept of green space evolution. Settlers' and Elmwood are by definition green space because they are open spaces of land that have been designed with the public in mind. Green space does not just have to be a nature preserve void of man-made elements like tombstones. Neither does it have to be intended for any specific use such as golf or gardening. Settlers' and Elmwood both have been created to house the deceased and those mourning them in a landscaped setting. Both cemeteries also exhibit the change inherent in any piece of green space. As alive as the grass and worms therein, a piece of green space rarely retains its original design or purpose. Over the years, Elmwood has grown to accommodate more and more burials and funerary art. Settlers' has become less important as a gravesite as it has an oasis among the skyscrapers. When the cemetery reached capacity, rather than dying, it lived on, beautified into a park. This living process of evolution, in all examples of green space, revolves around two factors: human agency and landscape ideology. As ironic as it may seem, green space is part of the built environment in a city. Humans must determine the need for it, design it and make room for it in their cities. Not only is green space not spontaneous in its generation but it can cause quite a headache for the people that advocate its creation. Seeing spaces like Settlers' fall into disrepair, the town aldermen and leading industrialists created the Charlotte Park and Tree Commission in 1905. In Chapter Two, this municipal guardian of the green receives attention under the topic of public parks. The case of Settlers Cemetery also highlights a case in which a private form of human agency, the D. A. R., made a strong contribution to furthering the urban landscape. What this case does not show, as others in successive chapters do, is that private initiative has typically mustered more financial support, public attention and efficiency than has public agency in creating and altering the green space of Charlotte. Why, or why not, these individuals and groups of people insist on green space depends upon landscape ideology. This intellectual factor in the evolution of landscaped earth is centered on the philosophy and aesthetics behind green space. Simply put, if a block of grass and trees is to survive in a city of sidewalks and towers it must have meaning to it. The meaning attached to green space can be planned, such as the purposes behind greenways discussed in Chapter Four, or may be unintentional, like the sentiment for Eastwood Golf Club in Chapter Three. Cemeteries are some of the most intensely meaningful pieces of land in a city because they hold our dearest history. The meaning attached to Settlers' Cemetery compelled the Daughters of the American Revolution to care for the plot of land when no other group would. The ideology imparted on or cultivated within a piece of green space is the lifeblood in its evolution. To study the evolution of green space in the urban environment is to borrow from several disciplines in the social sciences. Urban history will get you only so far. Urban historians like Gunther Barth may only discuss the Park Movement of the nineteenth century that saw architects like Andrew Jackson Downing and naturalists like Frederick Law Olmsted apply their senses of aesthetics and progressivism to landscape architecture and park planning. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's 1858 design for Central Park in New York captures this spirit. Other historians like Kenneth Jackson discuss the rise of the American suburb and its significance to our culture. The works of city planners provide more information on the design of these suburbs, parks or greenways. To understand the role green space has played in much of the twentieth century it is necessary to consult the field of leisure studies. An expert such as Douglas Sessoms explains more modern efforts such as the Playground Movement or the role of the Second World War on recreation in America. Landscape architecture also contributes as an academic field to this work including details on park horticulture and golf course construction. Few works discuss together the history of all these forms of landscape. None discusses the story of all forms in a single city.9 The layout of this work is designed to expose the reader to as many types of green space as possible. Each chapter focuses on a different form of green space and the evolution that particular form has undergone. It is my suspicion that Charlotteans and urbanites around America are not aware of the total landscape that makes up much of their fair cities. This nation has come a long way in one hundred years in terms of preserving and providing for such spaces in the city. We are at least no longer confined to going to the cemetery - not that this is entirely bad. If someone makes a judgment about the green space or open space in any city, as I have chosen to do, that someone needs to cover as much ground as possible. The green alternatives in any city abound and I consider four: garden suburbs, public parks, golf courses, and greenways. Thereby this paper is not simply a piece singularly about parks or neighborhoods or baseball diamonds but as I like it, about a complete urban landscape. Each of these chapters deserves some treatment and definition. Chapter One studies those planned neighborhoods that made the overall landscape and horticulture of the final product an objective in their development. These are the garden suburbs. Charlotte is a city of subdivisions that include homes with lawns, some modest and some grand. Garden suburbs, such as Dilworth and Myers Park, are distinct because they have made a positive contribution to the aesthetics and planning of this city. The second chapter deals with a form of land quite difficult to isolate, the public park. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Park and Recreation Department maintains public land parcels ranging from neighborhood parks to land preserves and greenways to golf courses. The public park refers to those spaces that by and large dominate the system, the grassy fields of several dozen acres with maybe a soccer field, a playground unit and some shady picnic spots. The public park is a form of green space that the city and county have been trying to perfect for years. For the sake of this chapter, its design is not so important as its purpose. Chapter Three is on golf courses and looks at one public and one private course in Charlotte. The discussion of greenways finishes the paper. Greenways in Charlotte are managed by the city-county park and recreation department but still constitute a land form distinct from public parks. They not only represent a different era in park ideology but also are an entirely unique concept in land-use planning. Thus they merit a separate and, appropriately, final chapter. Besides exhibiting different forms of landscape, these chapters in succession show a chronology of Charlotte's landscape priorities. Through the last century, the city seems to have grasped onto each form of open space at a different time. These chapters follow this progression. The paper tries to cover each topic in its full historical context but emphasizes the heyday of each landform. The concept of the garden suburb, for instance, was in its height of development in this city from about 1890 to 1920. The public park system saw its greatest growth in Charlotte between 1940 and 1960. Though golf is as popular today as ever, most locals play on courses first constructed between 1960 and 1980. Greenways are the latest trend in green space evolution to reach Charlotte, beginning with the first county master plan in 1980 and continuing on to the very present. As the paper progresses I try to build not only a fuller history of this southern town and its landscape but also a fuller discussion of this evolution. There have been many different hands involved in the development of Charlotte's green space. There have also been many different approaches and ideas involved. All of these provide possibilities for future projects in parks neighborhoods and golf courses. Most importantly, I hope this history paper describes not a story that is complete and final but one that is destined for perpetual growth and life.  Source Notes Introduction Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Conclusion Bibliography
Manuscript Collections: Department of Manuscripts and Archives, Cornell University, Ithaca NY John Nolen Papers Department of Special Collections, Aitkens Library, University of North Carolina, Charlotte Earle Sumner Draper interview Landmark
Reports (Unpublished) Hanchett, Thomas W. "Charlotte's Neighborhood Planning Tradition." Unpublished essay, 1986. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, Charlotte. Morrill, Dan L. "Independence Park." Survey and Research Report, 1980. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historical Properties Commission, Charlotte. ----. "Old Settlers' Cemetery." Survey and Research Report, 1984. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Properties Commission, Charlotte. Government Publications: Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission. Mecklenburg County Greenway Master Plan Update. Charlotte, November, 1991 Mecklenburg County. Mecklenbug County Park and Recreation Commission. Mecklenburg County Greenway Master Plan. Charlotte, May 18, 1999. Sigmon, Joan.
Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Commision. Final Report of Pamphlets and Unpublished Sources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Parks and Recreation Department scrapbooks. DiPastena, Daniel.
Telephone interview. 22
February 2000. Radio station WGIV broadcast featuring Dr. W. L. Halberstadt, Mr. Foster Blaisdell, and Miss Alice Suiter. Ts., 10 June 1949. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Department of Parks and Recreation, Charlotte. Speizman, Morris. A Short History of the Carolina Golf and Country Club. Ts., 1979. Carolina Golf and Country Club, Charlotte. Wayne Weston. Personal
interview. 14 October 1999. Newspapers: Charlotte
Chronicle Charlotte Observer Books and Articles: Archer, John "Country and
City in the American Romantic Suburb." Journal
of the Barth, Gunther. City People. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Bishir, Catherine W. and
Lawrence S. Early, eds. Early Twentieth Century Suburbs in Cornish, Geoffrey S. and Ronald E. Whitten. The Golf Course. New York: Rutledge Press, 1981. Cranz, Galen. The Politics of Park Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. Flink, Charles A. and Robert
M. Searns. Greenways: A Guide to Planning, Design and Hanchett, Thomas W. "Before Olmsted: The New South Career of Joseph Forsyth Johnson." Atlanta History 39.3-4 (1995): 12-27. ----. Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class and Urban Development in Hancock, John L. John Nolen: A Biographical Record of Achievement. Ithaca, NY: Program in Urban and Regional Studies, 1976. Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Kratt, Mary Norton and Thomas W. Hanchett. Legacy: The Myers Park Story. Charlotte: Myers Park Foundation, 1986. Morrill, Dan L.
"Edward Dilworth Latta and the Charlotte Consolidated
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(1890-1925): Builders of a New South City." North
Carolina Historical Nolen, John. New Towns for Old. Boston: Marshall Jones, 1927. Olmsted, Frederick Law. Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns. Cambridge, MA, 1870. Ross, Donald J.
Golf Has Never Failed Me: the
Lost Commentaries of a Legendary Golf Schuyler, David. The New Urban Landscape. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. Sessoms, Douglas H. Leisure Services. 6th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984. Seymour, Whitney North, Jr., ed. Small Urban Spaces. New York: NYU Press, 1969. |
