Each Little World

Garden Bloggers Buffalo fling: Architecture

When the 20th Century dawned, Buffalo was the "Queen City of the Great Lakes." And that's how I always thought of it growing up there in the 1950s and 60s. It still was big, bustling and beautiful — with the glow of big steel like a beacon in the night.

I left New York State for Wisconsin in 1972, and thus my experience has been reduced to sporadic visits over the intervening years. But much of what I loved best — Buffalo's art and architecture — remains; and in some cases is better than ever.

 

NY TIMES PHOTO

A parkway designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.
 

It is a cliche that when cities fall on hard times — whether in the South after the Civil War or in the Rust Belt — one of the results is that buildings remain in use / in place / in view, a timeline of history. And Buffalo is filled with them, especially in the neighborhoods where Jim Charlier (Art of Gardening) and Elizabeth Licata (Gardening While Intoxicated), our hosts for Buffa10, both live.

 

NY TIMES PHOTO

Daniel Burnham's 1896 Ellicott Square Building was always a "landmark" building, in the sense that one would meet friends there; the same way that that folks in Chicago met at the Marshall Field's clock. Sullivan's Guaranty building is at the right rear.

The upcoming third annual Garden Bloggers Fling — Buffalo10 — will be a feast for history and architecture buffs. Don't just take my word for it. According to Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation:

"Buffalo is one of America's great designed cities. The interweaving of great architecture, landscape architecture and important historic sites makes Buffalo a must see destination for preservationists, designers, history buffs, and anyone wishing to see an inspiring example of American design." 

NY TIMES PHOTO

The inside of Burnham's Ellicott Square building is a visual feast.  
 
 

For serious architecture fans, I recommend getting a copy of "Buffalo Architecture: A Guide" before you come. I've had a copy since it was published in the early 1980s and use it every time I visit the city. It is filled with informative essays and divides the city into sections and focuses on the architectural highlights and history of each.

    

 

NY TIMES PHOTO

Louis Sullivan's 1895 Guaranty building is embellished with terra-cotta tiles.
 

If you are curious about the architects whose work can be found in Bufflalo, the city is home to Adler and Sullivan's Prudential building, H. H. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital, and Richard Upjohn's St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral. There are five prairie houses by Frank Lloyd Wright  — only Chicago has more FLW — as well as buildings by Daniel Burnham, Albert Kahn, and the firms of McKim, Mead, and White, and Lockwood, Green and Company. 

   

NY TIMES PHOTO

Kleinhan's Music Hall, by Eero and Eliel Saarinen, also has legendary acoustics. In addition to being the site of numerous concerts, it was where both my high school and college graduations were held, thus giving me a brief moment on stage.

    

Among the more recent architects with work in Buffalo are Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Walther Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudloph, Minoru Yamasaki, and the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. 

    

WIKIPEDIA PHOTO

If you're driving to Buffalo10, consider a stop at the Roycroft Campus in East Aurora, just outside the city. It is home to the restored workshops of Elbert Hubbard, perhaps the most well-known practitioner of the Arts and Crafts philosophy espoused by William Morris. You can stay overnight — or just stop for lunch — in the beautiful 1905 Inn, filled with the furniture and copper work of the Roycroft artisans.

    

 

NY Times photos used without permission.

The Last Lion

January is turning into a month of reading biographies. After the Mitford sisters, I ordered another one of Lovell's bios from the public library. While waiting for it to come in, I zipped through the 400-page  "Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy." The biography is the work of a group of reporters from The Boston Globe, edited by Peter S. Canellos, the paper's Washington bureau chief. If anyone would know — could know — the full story of Ted Kennedy's life, it's the Globe, which has been following the family for as long as there's been a Kennedy family to cover. 

At age 36, Ted was the remaining Kennedy brother, with the weight of his family's and the country's expectations on his shoulders. It was a burden that nearly crushed him. We all watched him fail in a spectacular fashion and then spend the rest of his life redeeming himself: publicly, privately, quietly and gregariously. 

    

 

 

I grew up Irish Catholic on the East Coast and my Republican parents voted for JFK in 1960. I was working on Bobby Kennedy's NY state primary campaign as a college student when he was killed. Since I lived through this period, I could hear all the voices — Bobby Kennedy talking in Indianapolis the night Martin Luther King was assassinated, or Ted giving his eulogy for Bobby — in my head as I read them in the book. As a result, for me this was not a book that shed a lot of new light on what I witnessed, though it opened my eyes to what I was paying less attention to: Ted's Senate career. 

John McCain called Ted Kennedy the "last lion of the Senate ... the single most effective member of the Senate if you want to get results." And that's what much of the book is about: the legislation Kennedy authored, or was involved with, as well as the whole legislative process. His ability to see the big picture and to work and wait and work more to achieve the desired legislation was eye-opening. The book clearly showed why he was so effective compared to other members of Congress as well as pointing out failures of the system.

The book is brisk, factual, and generally free from bias, full of reporters' attribution of every quote and bit of critical information. The book is also thorough; reporters seemed to have talked to every staffer and many, many family members and colleagues. The only remaining question is whether I should consider that chapter now closed — or read the same events in Ted's own words in his autobiography, which was published shortly before he died in August, 2009.  

    

 

The people's historian

"In every period of history, people have found ways to help one another — even in the midst of a culture of competition and violence — if only for brief periods, to find joy in work, struggle, companionship, nature. 

"The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done — bring about great change with little violence."

— Howard Zinn, (1922 - 2010)

A People's History of the United States

 

Chicago Spring Fling redux

For quite a few years my winter treat was a day spent at Olbrich Botanical Gardens at the annual Horticulture Magazine Symposium. It was where I tracked trends, fought attacks of plant lust and worked at becoming a more informed gardener. But mostly I sat in the dark seeking inspiration.

With no snow in the forecast, a brief warming trend and no more Hort magazine symposiums, I decided we should seek inspiration further afield: with Dan Pearson at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Pearson is the wunderkind of contemporary landscape design, working on projects around the world and author of a new book — "Spirit: Garden Inspiration" — which was the basis for his pair of lectures we attended on Saturday. 

    

Dan Pearson watches the auditorium fill up before his talk Saturday.

While Pearson gave us plenty to look at and to think about, so did our walk through the CBG. Neither one of us had ever been there in winter, so we made a quick tour of some of the spots that had captured our attention last May when the garden bloggers descended en masse as part of their Chicago Spring Fling. 

THE JAPANESE ISLAND GARDEN:   

  

   

 

    

THE ENGLISH WALLED GARDEN:  A checkerboard of clipped boxwood alternates with herbs in the foreground while a bright blue bench rests in the shadow of the pergola.

 

 

    

MORE WALLED GARDEN: The sweep of the curved bench against the back wall is no match for the scene-stealing weeping Katsura tree in the center of the garden. Our winter visit gave us a close-up of the severe pruning this tree gets in order to keep it in bounds. We plan on treating our Katsura the same way.

 

 

 

 

    

BRANCHED BEAUTY: Winter is the ideal time to enjoy all the clipping, pleaching, topiary and assorted other pruning techniques that the CBG does so well — and that is one of the aspects of the garden that most appeals to me. 

 

 

 

    

PLANTS AREN'T THE ONLY THINGS THAT GO DORMANT IN WINTER.

 

 

    

WINTER REVELATIONS: Shapes, patterns and a softer palette that would be lost in summer, predominate at this season.

 

 

 

Winter bulbs at the CBG

Trust the staff at the Chicago Botanic Garden to create an indoor bulb display as eye-stopping as this summer sweep of white Alliums and willows, which we snapped while visiting the outdoor display gardens as part of Garden Bloggers 2009 Spring Fling last May.

    

 

    

The garden's winter arrangement of pots of "Lemon Lime" Amaryllis underplanted with "Jacob Classic" Hellebore and trailing "Diamond" ivy is dramatic enough to hold its own, even when surrounded by huge photos of classic water gardens. 

    

 

 

    

The massive containers of Amaryllis are shown parading down the CBG's own indoor water feature in the Joseph Regenstein Center, where we had gone to hear garden guru, Dan Pearson, speaking about garden inspiration. This display — located outside the auditorium where Pearson was speaking — proves the folks at the CBG are no slouches themselves when it comes to providing inspiration.

    

 

Starting from seed

I haven't grown anything from seed for years. There are any number of reasons for that including finding room for a grow-light setup and learning a whole new gardening process. But mostly it's the fact that I live in a city that has a legendary farmers' market in a state that is one of the most "marketed" in the nation, according to the book, "The Flavor of Wisconsin."  I can find amazing veggie plants that someone else has already started, to say nothing of a vast assortment of produce available to me all season long.

    

BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS    

But if I were going to be tempted, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds would be the one to do it. Earlier this winter they sent me their 2010 sample book; smaller than their catalog, it showcases one flower or vegetable per page. I stopped in my tracks when I came to "Tomato Violet Japser," aka Tzi Bi U (above). Described as being high yield, what caught my eye was its glorious, streaked color. It has a yellow fleshed sister — Topaz — but she looks pale and bland in comparison to this Oriental jewel. ($3.00 for 25 heirloom seeds).  

    

    BAKER CREEK HEIRLOOM SEEDS 

And if I was growing "Violet Jasper" tomato, then I'd surround the plants with the equally dramatic "Black Swan" poppy (Papaver somniferum). It has gorgeous double flowers, which Baker describes as having "frilly cut petals of burgundy to almost black." I think these shreds of color would make the perfect accompaniment to the deep flecks of color in the tomatoes ($3.00 for 300 heirloom seeds). 

And be sure not to miss Baker Creek's "Seed Bank" store which you can read all about on their Web site. 

The Mitford sisters

I decided to start the year off right by reading something from my endless TBR pile, "The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family," Mary S. Lovell's biography of the famous (or infamous, depending on your view) siblings. It's a totally engaging read and offers something for nearly everyone, with its mix of aristocrats and eccentrics, true love and infidelity, The Great Depression and WWII, fascism and communism. All of it played out in one family who came to define an era and continued to make news long afterwards. 

The cast of characters includes Muv (Sydney), Farve (David), and seven children: Nancy, the eldest and a best-selling novelist; domestic Pam; only son Tom; beautiful Diana who married British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley and spent the war years in jail; Unity whose obsession with Hitler led her to shoot herself in the head the day war was declared between Britain and Germany; Jessica (Decca) who ran away to fight the Fascists in Spain and became a best selling author in the U.S., and Deborah (Debo) who grew up to marry a duke just as she predicted as a child. Essentially, the Mitford family was torn apart by the opposing political ideologies of the sisters. 

Unity Mitford (left) and her sister, Lady Diana Mosely, with members of Hitler's SS troops at the September, 1937, Nurembergy Nazi Party rally. 

For anyone curious about the Mitfords, this family bio is the place to begin. Lovell sorts out fact from fiction, myth from malicious gossip; not an easy task since the sisters were often inventive in their own memoirs and roman a clef novels. The entire family used endless nicknames for themselves and everyone they knew. Two sisters actually corresponded with each other, both using the name Susan. The girls had secret societies and even a coded language. All of this shows up in Decca's cult classic, "Hons and Rebels," but it's Lovell who puts all the sisters' books — and lives — in context.  

Lovell points out in the book's introduction that, though politics plays such a critical roles in the Mitford family, she doesn't take sides; preferring instead to "explore the richness of the personalities, not to judge them." I felt that Lovell did have her own bias, seeming much of the time to have that particularly English awe of the upper class. To me, she also revealed her British background in the fact that she only saw the "muckraking" description of Decca's classic book, "The American Way of Death," as perjorative; I saw that moniker as a badge of pride.

If Lovell could maintain her objectivity in the face of some family members' association with Hitler, I could not. Unlike most of those who initially viewed HItler in a favorable light, Diana never recanted or repented. Unity could not, after her self-inflicted head wound affected her mental capabilities. Decca did not speak to Diana for 34 years because of it, while their parents' marriage was torn apart over Hitler and, to a lesser extent, Decca's Communism. It should be noted that, though Decca fought with the Communists against the Fascists in Spain, she ultimately left the Party and repudiated it when the full extent of Stalin's atrocities became known.

 

The book exposes a lot of sordid behavior but, having read about Mosley's first wife in Anne de Courcy's bio of the Curzon sisters, most of that was no longer surprising. What was noteworthy was how little the Mitford sisters — as adults — ever seemed to have seriously examined their parents' backgrounds which so clearly influenced their behavior and attitudes toward their children. Sydney's mother died when she was eight years old and by the time she was fourteen, she was in sole charge of running her father's London household and its finances. Is it any wonder that she was undemonstrative and did not provide the maternal affection her children craved? The poor child had never had any herself, so how could she behave any other way.

Meanwhile David was the second son: ignored, sent to second-class schools and thwarted in his choice of a military career. School was too unhappy a memory to foist such an experience on his daughters, especially in an age when women rarely had a formal education. The desire to go to school was strong among the Mitford daughters, however, and some bitterly complained about the lack of it. Their successful literary output, however, suggests that they didn't suffer all that much as a result of home-schooling.

Reading the literary output of the various Mitford offspring presents a very different picture of the family than Lovell offers. Nancy fictionalized their life for her books, Lovell points out, while Decca fabricated it and Diana conveniently forgot as needed. Until his death, Tom was the only member of the family who was "on speakers" (Mitford for speaking terms) with everyone else.

 

Debo, the youngest Mitford child whose husband was the Duke of Devonshire, before a foxhunt in the early 1950s. 

The Mitford sisters reminded me of an acquaintance of mine: Everyone called him "Frank," not his real name, but because of his "frank" utterances. Eventually I realized he wasn't frank; he was rude and cruel and his pronouncements were calculated to harm rather than charm. That's what life among the Mitfords looked like to this reader. Throw Hitler into the mix, and you've got a rather unsavory dish — no matter how charismatic the chefs.

Nevertheless, I recommend reading Lovell's group biography, if only to understand a family who are still making news. But also because they did know everyone of their generation, and the array of people who show up — John Betjman, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Bobby Kennedy, Beverly Nichols — is staggering.

Winter solitude

Winter solitude — 

In a world of one color

the sound of wind.

— Matsuo Basho,  translated by Robert Haas

    

 

 

 

Great-grandmother's Bloom Day

 Northern gardeners who participate in the monthly display of what's growing in our gardens, known as Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, are forced to focus on our indoor pots of bulbs and flowering house plants at this season. Because of the vast array of horticultural choices in today's world, we tend to think that we are on the cutting edge of winter gardening. But up here in Wisconsin, it's nothing new — as you can see from this photograph of Mark's great-grandmother, poised on the doorstep of her log house with a pot of blooming bulbs in 1925.

 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day: 1.15.2010

Botanical jewels

    

 

 

 

 

    

Gertrude Stein declared, "Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing," in her ground-breaking book, "Tender Buttons." These six 19th Century steel buttons, however, are anything but tender. The mere fact of their continued existence defines them as tough little treasures, showing their years in a patina of fine lines and bits of rust. Nestled at the bottom of an ancient Chinese bowl, they're January's Bloom Day offering; as beautiful to my eyes as any bulb in its glass. 

The first one pictured is the smallest, about the size of a dime; the fourth button is the largest at the size of a quarter. As always, thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens who hosts this world-wide look at what's blooming where.

Update: For all you button fans, here is the store to visit next time you are in NYC. If that's never going to happen, then there is a book that is almost as good as a visit.