The Native Landscape Reader

“The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening (1916)

115 From The American Magazine of Art 7, no. 11 (September 1916): 448–50. wiLheLM MiLLeR the Prairie spirit in landscape Gardening (1916) In matters of Art our country has borrowed prodigiously from the Old World. Coming from across the seas our ancestors brought with them ideals foreign to the new continent. These ideals have been cherished and renewed as time passed until in many instances they have come to be hampering rather than inspiring. In architecture we have witnessed the transplanting of the Classic temple, the Gothic church, the French chateau, the Italian villa, the English manor house and even the Queen Anne anomaly. In landscape gardening we have repetitions of French, English and Italian designs. In painting and sculpture we can trace the influence of the great European School. All of this influence has not been detrimental, but it is time now that we were becoming a full grown nation with definite characteristics and hence an art of our own. That such is indeed coming to pass is witnessed by much of the work of contemporary architects, sculptors and painters. Further testimony to this effect is found in an extremely engaging article on “The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening,” by Prof. Wilhelm Miller, published recently in pamphlet form as Circular 184 by the Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station and reprinted in part herewith by special permission. —The Editor. The Middle West is evolving a new style of architecture, interior decoration, and landscape gardening, in an effort to create the perfect home amid the prairie states. This movement is founded on the fact that one of the greatest assets that any country or natural part of it can have, is a strong national or regional character, especially in the homes of the common people. Its westernism grows out of the most striking peculiarity of middle-western scenery, which is the prairie, i.e., flat or gently rolling land that was treeless when the white man came to southern Minnesota. On the 116 thE nativE landsCaPE as a souRCE of insPiRation prairie you can see the whole horizon, just as if you were on top of a mountain. The line of the horizon has been called “the strongest line in the western hemisphere.” This horizontal line is the fundamental thing in the prairie style of architecture, as the vertical line is in the Gothic style. The founder of the middle-western school of architects is Louis H. Sullivan of Chicago, who first jumped into fame in 1893, when he designed the Transportation Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Sullivan’s work, however, has been chiefly devoted to skyscrapers. His pupil, Wright, was the first to develop what is now called the prairie style of architecture. Naturally neither of these men is willing to accept this or any other title for work which they consider unique, but Wright acknowledges the influence of the prairie. There are now about twenty architects in this middlewestern school, and several of them are willing to accept the name of prairie style until some better name can be found for this wonderful new method of expression, which they hope will become dominant in all the states from Michigan and Ohio to South Dakota and Kansas. The prairie style of interior decoration is too new to be represented by “best sellers ” in every department store. But the old styles do not look at home in these new houses, and the architects generally design special furniture to fit each case. In general straight lines are followed, but these are modified as much as necessary for comfort and convenience. Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Booth who had much to do with getting woman suffrage for Illinois, declare that they will never live with anything but the new style furniture. They spent many years in collecting genuine antique Colohawthorns in meadow, edsel and eleanor ford house, Grosse Pointe shores, mich. (Photograph by robert e. Grese.) thE PRaiRiE sPiRit in landsCaPE GaRdEninG 117 nial furniture and then sold a houseful of it at auction to make way for something which they believe expresses the genius of the Middle West, instead of being a slavish copy of the East. In the famous Dana house at Springfield, Illinois, now owned by Mrs. German, is a window decoration, inspired by the common sumach, which was formerly despised by farmers, but is now much planted about middle-western homes because of its gorgeous autumnal...