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20 DARWIN D. MARTIN HOUSE // CULTURAL LANDSCAPE REPORT 1864 - 1902 BUFFALO & PARKSIDE Generally completed by 1825 and propelling commerce and growth in the region, the City of Buffalo, New York, was at the western terminus of the 500-plus mile long Erie Canal. With a historical population expanding more than 1,300% over the forty years between 1830 and 1870 – from less than 9,000 to more than 115,000 – the city’s growth was fueled on the full vigor of the now pervasive industrial age. 1 The city’s location and its flourishing economic growth through the middle of the 19 th century was, in part, the foundation for what became the “best planned city…in the United States, if not the world,” as famously quoted by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. It was under these prosperous circumstances that Elam Jewett, founder of the first envelope manufacturing company and then publisher of the Buffalo-based Commercial Advertiser, retired and purchased 400 acres of farm land – known at the time as the Daniel Chapin Farm. 2 1 U.S. Census Bureau, Population of the 100 Largest Cities and other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1900, Population Division Working Paper No. 27, Washington D.C., 1998 2 Josephus Nelson Larned and Charles Elliot, A History of Buffalo: Delineating the Evolution of the City, Volume 2, The Progress of the Empire State Company, New York, 1911, 193. The farm consisted of a large tract of land that included what is now known as the Parkside East neighborhood. 3 Located approximately four miles north of Buffalo’s downtown core, the portion of the Chapin farm that eventually developed into the Parkside neighborhood was known as the “Buffalo Plains.” 4 The area was rural well into the 1860s. The only transportation route was Main Street, built in 1797, which linked Buffalo to Williamsville. 5 Although the area was mostly undeveloped, the growth and prosperity of the city helped interest grow in establishing parkland within Buffalo. [Fig. 6] Population growth was substantial in the city, and although Jewett’s land was well outside of the urban area, demand was quickly rising for increased urbanization and development of the country side. It was under these conditions that, in 1868, the progressive leadership of the city retained landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., to undertake comprehensive and large scale planning of a park system. Olmsted, The Park (Delaware Park) and Parkside Originally simply referred to as “the Park,” Olmsted Sr. had selected a site much further 3 “History of Parkside,” Parkside Community Association, accessed May 13, 2014, www.parksidebuffalo.org/history. 4 National Register of Historic Places, Parkside East Historic District, Buffalo, Erie County, New York, National Register, 1986, 289 5 Ibid., 11. from the center of Bufflao than the city’s leaders desired. 6 Calvert Vaux, Olmsted’s partner in the design of the recently completed Central Park in New York City, was a partner in developing the overall parkland plan, though apparently out of the country at the time of site selection. 7 The design plans for the park system were mostly complete by 1876, consisting of one large park (The Park, now known as Delaware Park) and several smaller parks throughout the city, all connected by an extensive system of landscaped parkways. One of the essential features of Olmsted’s parkland plan was his concept of introducing a planned residential suburb adjacent to the northeast boundary of Delaware Park. Olmsted’s intent was that this designed residential suburb (preceded in 1869 by Riverside, Illinois, his innovative planned suburb in Chicago) was to buffer the park from noxious uses and prevent incoming development from ruining the park experience at its periphery. 8 The proposed development characterized Olmsted’s pioneering concept of a suburb as a community “where each family abode stands fifty or a hundred 6 Charles Beveridge, “Frederick Law Olmsted’s Vision for Buffalo,” in The Best Planned City: The Olmsted Legacy in Buffalo, Burchfield Penny Art Center, 1992, 1. 7 Much has been documented about the creation of the Buffalo park system, which can be read in more detail in the numerous individual or district National Register nominations, as well as the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy and UB School of Architecture and Planning published master plan: The Olmsted City - The Buffalo Olmsted Park System: Plan for the 21st Century. 8 National Register of Historic Places, Parkside East Historic District, 288. Site History and Evolution 2