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Chapter Two: Houston Gets a Park: 1910–1914
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a lawyer and partner in the firm of Baker, Botts, Parker and Garwood. Parker’s ten-acre estate, The Oaks, contained a prairie-style house designed by Sanguinet & Staats of Fort Worth in 1909.4 Horticulture and gardening were Parker’s avocation, and a newspaper report in 1909 makes clear why Parker was a good choice to head the park commission. Mr. Parker . . . lays not so much stress on the house itself as he does on his scheme for beautifying the surroundings. . . . In this Mr. Parker will be in his element. . . . In the front there will be nothing but the giant [oak] trees that are now standing there. The lawn will be sodded and carefully kept always. But in the rear of the house and to the Baldwin Street side is where the most beautiful profusion of plants and flowers are planned. It is contemplated that all sorts of shrubbery will be planted here, with due consideration being given always to its hardihood and its beautifying attributes. Walks will wind about through a veritable Eden.5 Sadie Gwin Blackburn gives an extensive description of the landscaping at The Oaks, noting that the landscaper, Arthur James Seiders of Austin, went to California to study estate gardens and parks there and returned with a train-car load of plants for The Oaks. On the grounds were a sunken garden, a pergola, raised beds, gravel paths, a rustic arbor, and a Japanese-style teahouse beyond which were a sweet gum grove, cutting gardens, chicken yards, and vegetable beds.6 Although Parker’s estate was extraordinary for Houston, other private gardens often were described in local newspapers and in the magazine Progressive Houston, published by the city from 1909 to 1912 to inform and influence Houstonians.7 B y the time the City Beautiful Movement and the Progressive Movement, of which it was a part, reached the consciousness of Houstonians, Olmsted had died, but his ideals had not. Local advocates of City Beautiful, like their counterparts elsewhere, hoped to mobilize political and economic power to create beautiful, spacious, and orderly cities with healthy open spaces. City Beautiful’s theoretical basis was that beautification could create a harmonious social order and thus enhance the quality of life in America’s cities. This philosophy was a refinement of the Progressive Movement’s attempt to improve the harsh working and living conditions of urban industrial workers in the Northeast and Midwest by pushing for laws regulating tenement housing, child labor, and working conditions for women.2 Architectural Historian Stephen Fox best explained the connection between the City Beautiful Movement and Hermann Park: Hermann Park was one of the chief reasons that Houston became involved in efforts at city planning during the second decade of the twentieth century. Not only was the park itself a focus of civic improvement and beautification, but the properties surrounding it—largely undeveloped when the park was acquired—seemed to present an exceptional opportunity for those citizens concerned about Houston’s future to achieve an example of integrated city planning, resulting in a civic environment that was rational, healthy, and beautiful.3 Picking up where Mayor Brashear left off in 1900, Mayor Horace Baldwin Rice (1861–1929), a progressive reformer, appointed a Board of Park Commissioners in 1910 to advise on the development of a park system for Houston. The chairman was Edwin B. Parker (1868–1929) CHAPTER TWO Houston Gets a Park 1910–1914 Central Park is wonderful. I wish my town of Houston had one like it. Perhaps they will some day.1 —George H. Hermann, 1885 14 Chapter Two tioner’s school in Paris, from which he immigrated to the United States in 1821 after fighting with Napoleon at Waterloo. He returned to Davos in 1825 to marry. Both Hermanns were from well-to-do Swiss families, but they arrived in Houston after a time in Veracruz, Mexico, with very little money . Mrs. Hermann pawned some of her jewelry, and they were able to establish what is thought to have been the first bakery in Houston in 1838, on Main Street between Commerce and Franklin.10 The bakery prospered , supplying bread to the steamboats coming and going on Buffalo Bayou, and in 1842 they purchased nine of the twelve lots in block 146 from S. S. Tompkins.11 Eventually they also owned the entire city block surrounded by Walker, Smith, McKinney, and Brazos streets. In 1843 they built a two-story frame house at the corner...