edgerton park: new haven's ode to the english manors and landscapes

7/23/2019 Edgerton Park: New Haven's Ode to the English Manors and Landscapes

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Edgerton Park:

New Havens Ode to English Manors and Landscapes

Jonathan Hopkins

History of Landscape Architecture

RWU SAAHP Fall 2010

Sara Butler

12/2/10


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Edgerton Park is a 22 acre1 public park located on the New Haven-Hamden border in Connecticut

(Image 1). Originally, the park was the private estate of a wealthy industrialist and capitalist, one

Frederick Brewster (1872-1959), a descendent from the Brewster family of the 1620 Mayflower landing

and Plymouth, MA settlement. In 1906, Frederick Brewster purchased the 22 acre property, which sits

along Whitney Avenue at the edge of town. Beginning in the late 1880s and continuing until the 1910s,

Whitney Avenue experienced a suburban development boom fueled by a horse-drawn street car line -

later replaced with an electrified trolley extending northward from the city center.2 By 1909, Brewsters

estate included a 12-foot high stone wall around the property (Image 2), gatehouse (Image 3), carriage

house, conservatory (Image 4), mansion (Image 5) and fully designed landscape. The mansion and

landscape were designed by Stephenson and Wheeler of New York as a Tudor style, English Manor

House with complementary 18th Century English landscape garden-inspired grounds. As part of

Brewsters will3, the mansion was demolished after his wifes death in 1963 and the estate was turned

over to the City of New Haven to be used as a public park, which it remains to this day. Maintenance and

improvement costs to the park are shared by public funding sources and private donations, which support

the remaining structures, buildings and landscape.

Although the property has moved from private management to public-private partnership

management, the park remains faithful to the original design. Therefore, what was experienced by guests

a century ago is similar to what may be experienced by the public today. On-street parking surrounding

the site is provided for patrons entering from one of two south-facing entrances and one north-facing

entrance. Two wrought-iron gates (Image 6)and one opening, each just large enough to fit a single car

through, serve as the only breaks in an otherwise continuous grey stone wall that surrounds the entire 22

acre site. The main entrance is located down slope to the east and is accessed off of Whitney, from Cliff

Street. An impressive stone-veneered, slate-roofed gatehouse welcomes visitors upon entering and at one

1The 22 acres making up Edgerton Park (Edgerton Park Conservancy)

majestic 25-acre Edgerton (Hamden Chronicle)2

[Land lining Whitney Avenue] remained parkland until the horsecar arrived in the 90s, when the estate began to

break up into building lots (Brown)3

The house was demolished by the owners orders when the estate was left to the city in 1963 (Brown)


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time would have served as a check-in for guests4 of the Brewster family. A winding roadway circulates

through the rolling landscape connecting the gatehouse with the conservatory and the second entrance

located uphill and west of the main entrance, then the road continues to the carriage house and the final

entrance located at the top of the hill on the north side of the site. The buildings are placed on the site in a

manner reminiscent of pavilions in emblematic gardens. Clusters of different species of trees have been

organized around the southeastern part of the site to control views, define space and shade or light paths.

Clusters are used to confine the main entrance, providing a visual impediment to the rolling open field

that lay beyond. Moving along the roadway the trees vanish ahead to reveal the open field, while

plantings to the west, shade the road and block any views that would serve as a distraction to the sunlit

hill. Beyond the bright and open hill lies a small ravine filled with densely packed trees fighting one

another for sunlight. Continuing on the roadway leads to the discovery of what the plantings to the west

were previously blocking a large garden attached to the conservatory. The road splits and visitors can

continue northward towards Brewster Fountain (1991) or head west around the back of the conservatory

to the garden entrance. The gardens are maintained privately by people who rent plots to grow vegetables,

flowers and plants. In the center of the garden is a peculiar site - four curved, trimmed hedges forming a

75-foot diameter circle around a central grass plot. To the north, past the gardens and conservatory, are

fields with a splattering of fully, grown rounded trees much in the spirit of Downings Beautiful aesthetic5

and benches facing east, which look over the entire southern half of the park and the Mill River with the

large trap rock ridge of East Rock beyond (Image 7). From this viewing area, patrons can go back down to

the roadway or walk parallel to the stone wall on the grass, under tree canopies to the third entrance and

continue to the large carriage house and adjacent garden. Beyond the carriage house are the stables, which

hold the New Haven Police Department horses. The carriage house is surrounded by flower plantings

with a hydrangea-lined axial path running to the east and terminating at a commemorative bench, which

4For years, the Brewster New Years Eve party at the huge English Manor Housewas New Havens annual social

highlight. (Hamden Chronicle)5

The Beautiful style landscape as a modern design aesthetic and defined by open spaces, round-headed trees,

scattered plantings, soft terrain, etc.


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faces back towards the building to plantings and large iron-framed, lead-imbedded glass windows (Image

8). Back on the roadway walking towards the Brewster Fountain, now from the other side, leaves only

one area left to discover - the bridge. The small ravine seen earlier from near the main entrance is now

viewed from above. Although initially a very Beautiful landscape (Image 9), the ravine has overgrown

with coniferous specie trees, which act in opposition to the arch of the stone bridge6. Traveling into the

now wooded area reveals the narrow bridge (Image 10) that crosses the miniature ravine and persuades

guests south with dense tree plantings back to the foot of the open, rolling field where park-goers are

likely to be seen sprawled out on blankets and children running around them.

Robert Storer Stephensons 1909 design was very much in the tradition of 18th Century English

landscape gardens, like those designed by Lord Burlington, Coplestone Bampfylde, Henry Hoare II and

slightly later precedents by Capability Brown. Even elements of the parks movement lead by Frederick

Law Olmsted can be seen in some of the later adaptive use of the property. However, Edgerton Park

perhaps most resembles the principles laid out in AJ Downings landscape design work for large suburban

mansion residences (Image 11). On large enough sites, Downing felt that a mixture of the modern styles

could be accomplished tastefully. Edgerton Park is certainly a prime example of this mixture successfully

implemented for the Brewster Estate. The Tudor style mansion with steeply pitched gables, dormers,

textured walls and asymmetry in Stephensons design was well placed in a landscape of coniferous, spire-

top trees and a winding road. The entire experience of the roadway, however, is not one of picturesque

quality, but rather is varying in spatial definition, light penetration, shadow contrast and views.

Downings natural style contains these same elements, which are first derived from the form and style of

the architecture then begin to vary as the landscape progresses outward from the residence. Along one

pathway, some routes are clearly defined and visible ahead, while others are hidden and meandering.

Open spaces are revealed through strategic view corridors and vast, open expanses. As showcased in

Edgerton Park, Downing often placed trees to screen undesirable or unwanted views. While agriculture

6According to AJ Downing, a pointed and angled bridge would be more appropriate in the now picturesque

landscape of the ravine.


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was usually Downings unwanted association, Edgerton Park was a private estate in the middle of a

substantial residential neighborhood and privacy was of utmost concern to a wall and trees around the

perimeter were a necessity. Considering that the original estate provided a retreat from the industrial

city7, Downing would have greatly admired the effort to create a more dignifying space for people to

inhabit. Unfortunately, not all of the design decisions made in Edgerton Park have been in accordance to

Downings natural aesthetic standard.

There are some stark differences between the principles that Downing adhered to and showcased

in his work and components of Edgerton Park, many of which are derived from the adaptive use of the

estate as a park. In addition to the issues already discussed with the arch bridge and the topiary hedge in

the garden, another difference between Edgerton Park and Downings Mansion Resident is the design of

water features. In 1991, a classical fountain, balustrade and staircase funded by descendents of the

Brewster family - were constructed of polished white granite in quite stark contrast to the natural forms of

the landscape and rough-cut grey stone of the existing architecture (Image 12). Downing would have

characterized its style as being ancient rather than modern. Although, if the fountain was deprived or

maintenance and allowed to become ruins, it would then be considered picturesque by Downing. Natural

looking streams and bodies of water, like those found in early work by Capability Brown, were integral in

creating ideal environments where people could live in harmony with nature rather than in opposition to

it. Downing was adamant about preserving nature from such destructive forces as rail road expansion and

clear cutting forests. Therefore, he perhaps would not have looked too forgivingly on the choice to create

a fountain that used piping and electrically powered pumps to move, lift and control water. At the bottom

of the ravine, there is also a sewer drain system that carried excess storm water away. Downing probably

could have envisioned this as an opportunity for a narrow water feature running under the bridge and into

a larger, irregularly edged body of water. This way something that is currently hidden from view could

become a focal point of the landscape. While there are many similarities between Downings landscape

design principles for estates and Edgerton Park, there are certainly some areas of divergence in execution.

7The estate was intended as a retreat from the industrial city. (Edgerton Park Conservatory)


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Edgerton Park, located on the outskirts of New Haven, CT, serves as a magnificent example of a

landscape garden originally built for an American version of the English manor. The landscape borrows

many of the guiding principles from early and late 18th Century English landscape gardens, and the 19th

Century Parks Movement and work done by Andrew Jackson Downing. The park also serves as an

interesting example of adaptive use that follows in a tradition exemplified in places like Versailles in

Paris, where private estates are transferred to public ownership. Edgerton Part, while not perfect, certainly

provides a landscape that makes for an experience worthy of comparison and worthy of its National

Register of Historic Places designation as an historic district8 with seven contributing buildings, eight

other contributing structures, and one contributing object.

8National Registry of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Edgerton (Image 13)


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References

1 Edgerton Park Conservatory Website

http://edgertonpark.org/history.htm

Hamden Chronicle Article (September 3, 1964)

2 Brown, Elizabeth. The Hartford Turnpike: Whitney Avenue New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and

Urban Design pg. 36 (Yale University Press, 1976)

3 Brown, Elizabeth. The Hartford Turnpike: Whitney Avenue New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and

Urban Design pg. 39 (Yale University Press, 1976)

4 Hamden Chronicle Article (September 3, 1964)

5 Downing, Andrew Jackson. Section II. Beauties and Principles of the ArtTreaties on the Theory and

Practice of Landscape Gardening pgs. 45-60 (New York & London, Wiley and Putnam 1844)

6 Downing, Andrew Jackson. Section II. Beauties and Principles of the ArtTreaties on the Theory and

Practice of Landscape Gardening pgs. 45-60 (New York & London, Wiley and Putnam 1844)

7 Edgerton Park Conservatory Website

http://edgertonpark.org/history.htm

8 Janice L. Elliot and Marian Staye. National Registry of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Edgerton

National Park Service (March 10, 1988)
http://edgertonpark.org/history.htmhttp://edgertonpark.org/history.htmhttp://edgertonpark.org/history.htmhttp://edgertonpark.org/history.htmhttp://edgertonpark.org/history.htmhttp://edgertonpark.org/history.htm

edgerton park: new haven's ode to the english manors and landscapes

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