martinhouseclr

53 2 // SITE HISTORY & EVOLUTION completed. 134 Yet no correspondence between Martin and Wright in the months following this visit reveals any dissatisfaction with the landscape as installed or designed. However, the plant material is exceptionally young and would not begin to show its true character for several years. What does instigate change, and perhaps activates the ‘beginning-of-the-end’ for the Martin House hemi-cycle, is a particularly severe storm in June that floods portions of the property and leaves a pool of water in the interior lawn section of the hemi-cycle. Martin asks about the grades of the rain basins and instructs O.S. Lang to place excess soil at the low point of the hemi- cycle in order to bring the grade up. 135 Though there is no direct record of displeasure with the hemi-cycle in months that follow, it seems clear that Martin is not content with the results even though the plants have had a mere half of a single summer to grow. Sometime in the summer of 1905 Martin hires recognized landscape architect J. Wilkinson Elliot, from Pittsburgh, PA, to redesign planting arrangements for four distinct and separate portions of the grounds. 136 Elliot was a known plantsman, whose father founded a nursery 134 FLW-DDM, 18 May 1905, WMP-UB. 135 DDM-OSL, 6 June 1905, Trans. Jack Quinan 2003, WMP- UB. 136 The J.W. Elliot plan, entitled “Details of Plantings for Mr. D. D. Martin” (UB Archives 22.0_24) includes no date. Reference to the “Willet” [Elliot] plan by Martin in a letter to Wright on 28 October 1905 dates the plan sometime between May and October of that year. in 1870, wherein he first began completing landscape designs. 137 The areas include: (1) the planting bed between the courtyard garden walkway and the pergola, (2) the hemi-cycle, (3) the front yard near adjacent to the east side of driveway and house entry, and (4) narrow beds along each side (outside) of the (believed-to-be extant at the time) peony beds in the kitchen garden. [Fig. 38] The Elliot plan includes written names for areas and features that appear to have been already extant in the landscape, while a series of numbers represent the plantings that the plan design proposes. Written names include walks, terraces, verandah, roses and ferns in area #1 (referenced above and below), lawn in area #3, and lawn and peonies in area #4. No planting key for number symbols of the proposed plantings is shown on the plan. No number is used more than once on the plan. The numbering system seems to be specific to the physical area of the plan, rather than to a type of plant that may be repeated elsewhere. The numbers start with 1, within the planting bed adjacent to the pergola, and continue to 90, located along the stone terrace at the east side of the hemicycle ends (either side of the verandah). There is no record of Martin’s dealing with Elliot beyond the planting plan, yet his hiring of J.W. Elliot was likely precipitated by the combination of Martin’s apparent unease with portions of 137 Oliver Chamberlain, “Biography of J. Wilkinson Elliott,” The Cultural Landscape Foundation, accessed May 20, 2014, http:// tclf.org/pioneer/biography-j-wilkinson-elliott. the landscape (particularly the hemi-cycle) and Elliot having authored a relatively well-circulated book entitled A Plea For Hardy Plants in 1902. The proximity of Buffalo to Pittsburgh and the knowledge of Elliot’s publication by either Martin or his gardener would have made Elliot a rational choice to solicit planting plans from as Martin seemed to struggle to reconcile with some features of the early immature landscape. It is unclear if Martin implemented small portions of the Elliot plan. 138 It is possible that the garden adjacent to the west side of the pergola (#1 above) was implemented in some fashion. Likewise, the plan for the front yard area (#3 above) includes penciled symbols on the blueprint that appear to indicate plant spacing. But it seems very unlikely that the narrow edges to the courtyard garden (#4 above) or the hemi- cycle arrangement were implemented as the photographic records does not support these features as spatially patterned by Elliot. Adding to the atmosphere of apparent dissatisfaction with the hemi-cycle in particular, is a brief mention by Wright concerning a “circular hollow.” Among the substantial amount of finishing minutiae corresponded on in the summer of 1905, Wright, without prior reference in any other known record, informs Martin: Have detail finished for lily pond in circular 138 Without the numbered key evidently associated with the plan there is minimal comparison to known conditions that can be made.