Now We Know What's Out There in Palm Beach
Whenever traveling, I always try to explore parks and gardens I’ve never visited. Recently, while visiting family near Palm Beach, Florida, I decided to check out that town’s historic designed landscapes. For a place that’s so famous (think Mar-a-Lago or the Breakers), some Web surfing prior to my arrival yielded few results – just the Flagler Museum and a handful of consulting firms. Fortunately, the survey section of my personal library (which includes statewide surveys for Illinois, Indiana, Maine, and Rhode Island) has the wonderful publication Historic Landscapes of Florida by Rocco Ceo and Joanna Lombard (The Deering Foundation and University of Miami School of Architecture, 2001).
A quick review yielded the core of a half day sojourn: the opulent Flagler Museum, and its sublime Spanish/Mediterranean Courtyard, and the seven original demonstration gardens at the Society of the Four Arts (1938). Nearby, I discovered Addison Mizner’s Memorial Fountain Park (1929) in the heart of the town’s historic shopping district – one of the last projects of his career. (I suspect it was not an accident that the same year this project was completed the Garden Club of Palm Beach joined the Town in formally sponsoring the preparation of a Town Plan.)
What is remarkable about all three of these projects is not just the degree of integrity and authenticity of their surviving original designs, it’s the extraordinary commitment and civic ambition of both the original patrons and especially today’s stewards. To learn more, check out the new posting for each site on our What’s Out There web feature and do plan to visit these nationally-significant landscapes.
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April 16, 2010
The Plan of Palm Beach, Prepared Under the Direction of the Garden Club of Palm Beach, Approved by the Town Council. Chicago: Bennett, Parsons & Frost, Consulting Architects, [1930], 26 pp.
A preliminary note to the plan states that on April 8, 1929 the Garden Club of Palm Beach (GCPB) met with the Town Council and agreed to sponsor a plan. This offer approved, the Chicago firm of Bennett, Parsons & Frost was engaged. December 19, 1929 the Town council accepted the completed plan and report. This note on [p. 4] is signed by “Marion R. McKinlock [Mrs. George A. McKinlock], President [of the GCPB],” and then lists all the club members. Mrs. McKinlock and another member of the club, Mrs. Joseph Cudahy (Jean Morton, daughter of Joy Morton of the Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL), were members of the Lake Forest (Illinois) Garden Club (LFGC), the westernmost founding member of the GCA, 1913, with already a distinguished record of contributions to the beautification of Lake Forest. An honorary (gentleman) member of the LFGC was architect and planner Edward H. Bennett, the co-author of The Plan of Chicago, 1909, with Daniel H. Burnham, and his successor especially after his 1912 death, in carrying out the design planning for Grant Park, the lakefront, and the riverfront (bridges, Wacker Drive, Michigan Ave. north of the Chicago River, etc.).
By 1929 Bennett was the senior partner in Bennett, Parsons & Frost, with offices in the 1909 Plan of Chicago penthouse studio on top of the Railway Exchange Building on Michigan Avenue, overlooking Grant Park. In 2010, Edward H. Bennett III and his spouse, Marcia O. Bennett, live in a later house built on the McKinlock estate in Lake Forest, with the original McKinlock gateposts (honored in recent years with a Preservation Award by the Lake Forest Foundation for Historic Preservation, a 1976 organization founded by the late E.H. Bennett, Jr. and of which E. H. Bennett III has followed his father in serving as president).
In November 2008, as the centennial of the Plan of Chicago 1909 was getting under way, Ted Bennett (EHB III) and his spouse, Marcia, donated material that his grandfather had held back in 1953 from his gift to the Art Institute of Chicago of his professional collection: personal, sensitive, etc. With this came a copy of The Plan of Palm Beach, with a news clipping inserted later from a Palm Beach newspaper in February 1985, saying that drawings of the illustrations mentioned in the [January] 1930 book as being on display in the town hall ([p. 2]) had been re-discovered in the attic of the building, ten of them, and had been “remounted on acid-free paper and enclosed in glass with attractive wood frames” to hang in town manager Doug Delano’s office. This Bennett collection also has some 8 x 10 b & w glossy photographic prints of some of these drawings. In addition, Lake Forest College’s library Special Collection holds on deposit the archives of the Lake Forest Garden Club (Garden Club of Illinois to 1922), 1912 to the present, including rosters of members. Arthur H. Miller Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections Donnelley and Lee Library/LIT Lake Forest College 555 North Sheridan Road Lake Forest, IL 60045-2396 847-735-5064 voice; -6296 fax amiller@lakeforest.edu