Everything about Calvert Vaux totally explained
Calvert Vaux (
December 20,
1824 –
November 19,
1895), was an architect and landscape designer. He is best remembered as the co-designer (with
Frederick Law Olmsted), of New York's
Central Park.
Little is known about Vaux's childhood and upbringing. He was born in
London in 1824, and his father was a doctor. Due to this social standing, his father was able to provide a comfortable income for his family.
Vaux (rhymes with
hawks) attended a private primary school until the age of nine. He then trained as an apprentice under London architect
Lewis Nockalls Cottingham. Cottingham was a leader of the
Gothic Revival movement. He trained Vaux until the age of twenty-six, and as a result, Vaux became a very skilled draftsman.
Landscapes
In
1850, Vaux exhibited in London a collection of landscape watercolors made on a tour to the Continent, and it was this gallery that captured the attention of the American landscape designer and writer
Andrew Jackson Downing. Downing had traveled to London in search of an architect that would complement his vision of what a landscape should be. Downing believed that architecture should be visually integrated into the surrounding landscape, and he wanted to work with someone who had as deep an appreciation of art as he did. Vaux readily accepted the job and moved to the United States.
Downing and Vaux worked together for two years, and during those two years, he made Vaux a partner. Together they designed many significant projects, such as the grounds in the
White House and the
Smithsonian Institution in
Washington D.C. Vaux’s work on the Smithsonian inspired an article he wrote for
The Horticulturalist, of which Downing was the editor, in which he stated his view that it was time the government should recognize and support the arts. Shortly after writing this in
1852, Downing died during a fire in a
steamboat accident. Vaux took over the partnership, and his later work in
Central Park was a fitting memorial to his late partner.
In
1854, he married Mary McEntee, of
Kingston, New York, the sister of
Jervis McEntee, a
Hudson River School painter; they'd two sons and two daughters. In
1856, he gained US citizenship and became identified with the city’s artistic community, “the guild,” joining the
National Academy of Design, as well as the
Century Club. In
1857, he became one of the founding members of the
American Institute of Architects. Also in 1857, Vaux published
Villas and Cottages, which was an influential pattern book that determined the standards for “Victorian Gothic” architecture. These particular writings revealed his acknowledgment and tribute to
Ruskin and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as to his former partner Downing. These people, among others, influenced him intellectually and in his design path.
Parks
In
1858, he made a smart political move and collaborated with
Olmsted designing
Central Park. Their plan was named “Greensward,” and they were able to obtain the commission through an excellent presentation that capitalized on Vaux's talents in landscape drawing and the inclusion of before-and-after sketches of the site. Together, they fought many political battles to make sure their original design remained intact and was carried out.
In 1865, Vaux called upon Olmsted and they decided to create a partnership. As
Olmsted, Vaux and Company, they designed
Prospect Park and
Fort Greene Park in
Brooklyn, and
Morningside Park in
Manhattan. In
Chicago they planned one of the first suburbs, called the
Riverside Improvement Society in 1868. They were also commissioned to design a major park project in
Buffalo, New York, which included The Parade (now
Martin Luther King Jr. Park), The Park (now the
Delaware Park), and The Front (now simply
Front Park). Vaux designed many structures to beautify the parks, but most of these have been demolished. In 1871, the partners designed the grounds of the
New York State Hospital for the Insane in Buffalo and the
Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane in
Poughkeepsie.
In
1872, Vaux dissolved the partnership and went on to form an architectural partnership with
George Kent Radford and
Samuel Parsons, Jr. He returned to working with Olmsted in 1889 to design
Newburgh's Downing Park as a memorial to their mentor. It would be the pair's last collaboration. On a foggy
November 19,
1895, he drowned in an accident while he was visiting his son, Downing Vaux, in
Brooklyn.
Throughout his lifetime, Vaux, while on his own and through various partnerships, designed and created dozens of parks across the country. He introduced new ideas about the significance of
public parks in America during a hectic time of
urbanization. This
industrialization of the
cityscape inspired him to focus on an integration of buildings, bridges and other forms of architecture into their natural surroundings. He favored naturalistic, rustic and curvilinear lines in his designs, and his design statements contributed much to today’s landscape and architecture.
Other famous
New York City buildings Vaux designed are the
Jefferson Market Courthouse, the
Samuel J. Tilden House, and the original Ruskinian Gothic buildings, now largely invisible from exterior view, of the
American Museum of Natural History and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Vaux is buried in Kingston, New York's Montrepose Cemetery. In 1998, the City of New York named a park looking onto
Gravesend Bay as Calvert Vaux Park.
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