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Preface
- Texas A&M University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Curtis, and Karen Rozzell. Other board members were willing to sit through long interviews: Jay Baker, Jane Curtis, Susan Keeton, Christopher Knapp, Marley Lott, Kunio Minami, and Marvin Taylor. Kathrine McGovern and Sara Lindsey also provided valuable input. Mrs. McGovern opened my eyes to the birds of Hermann Park, and Mrs. Lindsey suggested the title. I am especially grateful to Stephen Fox for his patience in answering unending questions, for reading the manuscript and making beneficial suggestions, and finally, for his scholarship, on which much of this work is based. Laurie Olin was extraordinarily generous with his time, his drawings and photographs, and his insights during two lovely days I spent in Philadelphia. Without him and his role in the renewal of Hermann Park there would be no cause for a centennial celebration of the park, or, indeed, no impetus for this book. We all owe him and his colleagues a huge debt of appreciation. From the beginning Doreen Stoller, executive director of the Conservancy , has been my soundboard, source of information, and advocate. In addition she and her husband Dan Piette read early drafts, made good suggestions, and proofread final drafts. Special thanks to them both. Rick Dewees, Hermann Park Administrator for the Houston Parks and Recreation Department, was the source of innumerable facts, information , and documents—and he taught me about Google Earth’s time machine. Members of the Hermann Park Conservancy staff have also been helpful: horticulturalist Barbara Jo Harwell (conservation director ), Mike Johnson (project manager), Meghan Miller (director of development ), Eliza Wright and her successor Adrienne Saxe (marketing managers), and Caroline Urquhart (administrative assistant). Staff members of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library, my primary source of information and historic photographs, have been especially accommodating, and I would particularly like to thank Joel Draut (photographic archivist), Laney Dwyer (architectural archivist), Timothy Ronk (archivist), and Elizabeth Sargent (acting director). Mary Daniels, archivist at the Frances T he story of Hermann Park, like that of a great institution or a great city, is the story of individuals who had the exceptional foresight, political power, and social commitment to achieve their goals. The men and women who dreamed, financed, approved, designed, built, and renewed Hermann Park are as important to the history and understanding of the park as the gardens and trees. This book attempts to identify and applaud those people who stand out in the history of Hermann Park. This park has experienced cycles of appreciation and neglect, but at the age of one hundred, it is a flagship urban American park enjoyed by millions each year and nurtured by the Hermann Park Conservancy and the City of Houston Parks and Recreation Department. Hermann Park has grown with Houston, now the fourth largest city in the United States. Once located in a rural setting at the edge of town, the park today is a vibrant urban space that provides respite and enjoyment through both the institutions it holds—Miller Outdoor Theatre, the Houston Zoo, the Hermann Park Golf Course, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science—and through the variety of places one can explore in the park—McGovern Lake, the Bayou Parkland, the Carruth Playground, the Japanese Garden, the Centennial Gardens, picnic areas, and hidden trails. Houston’s Hermann Park hopes to capture the special character of the park and its significance in Houston. The park is not only appreciated by those who live in Houston, but it has also become a place sought out by tourists and the families of those who come to the Texas Medical Center for treatment. The medical center, the largest in the world, was built next to Hermann Park on land that was, until the mid-1940s, part of the park. Houston’s Hermann Park was commissioned by the Hermann Park Conservancy to celebrate the centennial of the park in 2014. My friend and colleague Jay Baker approached me in 2010, on behalf of the board of directors, about writing this book. Meetings began with a small book committee of the Conservancy board: Ann Kennedy (chairman of the board from 2010 to 2014), Jay Baker, Sanford Criner, Jane Anderson Preface xii Preface Loeb Library Special Collections, Harvard University, and David Butros of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Research Center-Kansas City, were both helpful in obtaining information and photographs from their collections. Lee Pecht, Rice University Archivist and Director of Special Collections, provided access to the collections in the Woodson Research Center at Rice...