From Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (2003). Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect, put forth his ideas for the 1892–93 World’s Columbian Exposition in a letter to Daniel Burnham, its Director of Works:
“We should try to make the boating feature of the exposition a gay and lively one,” he wrote. He loathed the clatter and smoke of steam launches; he wanted electric boats designed specifically for the park, with emphasis on graceful lines and silent operation. It was most important that these boats be constantly but quietly in motion, to provide diversion for the eye, peace for the ear. “What we shall want is a regular service of boats like that of an omnibus line in a city street,” he wrote. He also envisioned a fleet of large birchbark canoes paddled by Indians in deerskin and feathers and recommended that various foreign watercraft be moored in the fair’s harbor. “I mean such as Malay proas, catamarans, Arab dhows, Chinese sanpans, Japanese pilot boats, Turkish caiques, Esquimaux kiacks, Alaskan war canoes, the hooded boats of the Swiss Lakes, and so on.”I cannot help thinking of Steven Millhauser’s visionary environment-maker Martin Dressler.
comments: 0
Post a Comment