The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System

2. The Making of the Park

55 The Park, a ground designated to be resorted to solely for quiet rural enjoyment. —Frederick Law Olmsted, “Late Additions to the Plan of Buffalo,” 1876 During the first year of the Buffalo park system’s existence , the greatest evidence of progress occurred within the Park, where George Radford had accomplished a considerable amount of work by the end of 1870.1 As conceived by Olmsted and Vaux, the Park was divided into two distinct sections: the Water Park, a roughly rectangular area west of Delaware Street mainly occupied by bootshaped Gala Water (the original name of the lake now known as Hoyt Lake), and the Meadow Park, a larger trumpet-shaped parcel of greensward located east of Delaware Street and consisting of 229 acres, 122 of which made up the meadow inside the Circuit Drive.2 (Fig. 2.1) Within these two contrasting landscapes, the city’s residents could enjoy a medley of pleasant amusements. THE CREATION OF GALA WATER The largest project begun that first year was the excavation of the forty-six-acre park lake, known as Gala Water. Creation of this water feature, Olmsted insisted, “should be forwarded rapidly because it requires much shifting of material over other ground, and the delay would cause embarrassment and hindrance to other operations.”3 This was indeed a major undertaking. Not only did the lakebed need to be dug out, but also Delaware Street, which bisected the lake site, had to be removed. The new line of Delaware would skirt the eastern edge of the lake and exit the northern border through a small ravine. (This is the present route of Delaware Avenue.) By the end of 1870, much of the thirty-six-acre area to the west of Delaware Street had been excavated. At the beginning of the second construction season in early June 1871, a writer from the Courier visited Radford at his makeshift office in a former slaughterhouse to the west of the marshy banks of the creek. From there, Radford took his guest on a tour of the park grounds. The article that appeared in the next day’s edition relates the earliest eyewitness account we have of the Park’s emerging landscape.4 After circumnavigating the park, Radford concluded the tour near the western end of the future lake, where the artificial body of water narrowed to about one hundred feet. Here the reporter found heavy timbers lying about waiting to be TWO The Making of the Park 56 THE BEST PLANNED CITY IN THE WORLD used in the construction of the attractive Lincoln Parkway bridge (also known as Gala Water bridge), which Calvert Vaux had designed. (Fig. 2.2) From here he also could survey one of the largest construction projects Buffalo had yet undertaken. A big crew of men was at work transforming a primeval landscape known to generations of Native Americans as a fertile summer wetland into a captivating locale for urban amusement. Although boating on the western portion of the embryonic lake began as early as the summer of 1871, wateringoftheentirebasintooklongerthananticipated.5 One reason was that diggers encountered unusual soil conditions which created unforeseen difficulties in the excavation process. The holdup was caused by the need to keep Delaware Street open until its new route along the edge of the cemetery could be constructed. In OctoFig . 2.1. Olmsted, Vaux & Company, plan for the Park and the four 200-foot-wide parkway approaches to it, c. 1870. Courtesy Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. 57 The Making of the Park ber 1872 workers began in earnest hollowing out the eleven-acre section east of Delaware Street. Happy with the progress of these operations, the commissioners in their Third Annual Report, which covered operations for the year 1872, anticipated the impending beauty of Gala Water with a series of attractive color lithographs. Completion of the road awaited the building of a bridge over Scajaquada Creek and application of final touches to the roadbed. By July 4, 1873, this work was done, and an iron bridge, which Radford had designed himself, was in place, so that the new section of Delaware Street could be opened to city traffic.6 The former roadway soon became a memory submerged beneath the water’s placid surface. In the early summer of 1874, William McMillan could proudly report that the lake was finished. “Its form is finely diversified by deep sinuosities and projecting headlands...