The resurgent interest in Belle Isle offers an opportunity to set the record straight regarding an oft-told tale about our beloved city jewel.
Most Detroiters have heard that Belle Isle Park was designed by Bostonian Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed talent behind New York’s Central Park, Capitol Hill and dozens of other high-profile public spaces.
■
Related:
Are Belle Isle patrols excessive? Michigan defends enforcement of park rules
■
Nancy Kaffer:
Belle Isle comments reinforce image that Detroit is a lawless place
Unfortunately, this “well-known fact” — a fact I’ve hung my hat on for years — is incorrect. And while it has been reported before, it’s worth making it clear to a broad audience. It is true that he was hired by the city and submitted a design. However, nearly everything that Olmsted intended for Belle Isle was ignored.
The Olmsted Plan, published in 1883, stressed minimalism in the park’s design. He suggested that extensive developments were inherently expensive and generational. Tastes in architectural styles and recreational demand change. Instead he urged that timeless “rural” settings be preserved. He warned that “dance houses, racetracks, museums, collections of zoology … and horticulture exhibits can be better placed elsewhere.”
Olmsted’s physical improvements were sparse: a bathhouse facing the city on the western end, ferry docks, a boathouse, shoreline paths and a central boulevard. The map included in his booklet illustrated a simple channel to drain the low lying areas — no lagoons or canals. It alluded to an area in the middle of the island for large field events, like sports and military musters. The rest, he insisted should be left natural, or landscaped aesthetically to enhance its rusticity.
While developing the plan, he ruefully prophesied that “improvements inconsistent with the above proposition” were sure to come. Olmsted was near the end of his career and did not have the patience for Detroit politics. Instead, he shifted his attention toward Chicago’s Jackson Park and the Columbian Exposition of 1893, one of his signature achievements.
In 1894, the Detroit Journal stated that the designs that Olmsted “submitted were never carried out.” Michael J. Dee, editor of the Detroit Evening News, advanced a proposal for the island. Initially rejected by the Common Council, it was later revisited by the local architectural firm of Donaldson Meier, which was ultimately responsible for Belle Isle’s pathways and lagoons.
The eastern portion remained wooded, but within a few years, the island boasted extensive gardens and formal landscaping, a police station, a menagerie (later a zoo), a racetrack, a casino dance hall, a bathhouse, a skating pavilion, an athletic building, a bandshell, two yacht clubs, an aquarium and a large horticultural conservatory. Stables, boat liveries, picnic shelters, numerous monuments and the James Scott Memorial Fountain began to crowd the “rural” spaces. A museum, carillon, golf course and marble lighthouse eventually joined the rest. Today, Central Avenue and the athletic field are the only vestiges of the 1883 plan.
Olmsted’s “true rural experience” had been unapologetically abandoned. Yet, Detroit never abandoned his name. Within a year of the Detroit Journal article, promotional brochures and pamphlets for Belle Isle cited Olmsted as the architect of this island jewel. This has been repeated ever since in books about Detroit. In books about Olmsted, reference to Detroit is sparse. When asked later about his project on Belle Isle, Olmsted said “I know nothing of this place.”
It may be difficult for some to abandon the long-held Olmsted myth, but I find solace in the fact that my favorite park was really designed by Detroiters.
Open all references in tabs: [1 – 8]