Olmsted
designed the [Fens] so that it would appear to be a natural salt marsh around
which a city had happened to grow. The effect of such a marsh in the city,
he explained, "would be novel, certainly, in labored urban grounds, and
there may be a momentary question of its dignity and appropriateness, but
[it] is a direct development of the original conditions of the locality
in adaptation to the needs of a dense community. So regarded, it will be
found to be, in the artistic sense of the word, natural, and possibly to
suggest a modest poetic sentiment more grateful to town-weary minds than
an elaborate and elegant garden-like work would have yielded." (Zaitzevsky
57) |
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