Nevis Court Reserve, Endeavour Hills Vic.

Endeavour Hills in Melbourne's south-west dates from the early 70s when it was developed by Lewis Land; it was reported in the Melbourne Age in 1974* that it would ultimately have a population of 40 000. As you can see from the google map there remains a lot of open space throughout at various sizes and presumed uses. 

Nevis Court Reserve is, essentially, a playground reserve with pathways going to three corners. All four corners of the reserve are exposed to the surrounding cul-de-sac roads. This visit 21 December 2018, hence the polar bears surveilling the space alongside the magpies. 

 A concreted space for a bench, presumably.

 Someone has been trying out their tags on the playground equipment but no structural damage...

*Christopher Davidson, 'Something Healthy in Development', Melbourne Age 5 June 1974 p. 21

This ad is from the Age 7 September 1974, p. 57

Barmera, South Australia

Above, Charles Reade's Barmera Garden City (draft plan no. 8) from November 1920; below, 'Current Barmera plan' with the dotted line showing area of the Reade plan. Note that the two plans are oriented differently; Reade's plan has north at the bottom. From Christine Garnaut, 'Making Modern (River) Towns: town planning and the expansion of the Upper Murray irrigation area' Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 31, 2003 pp. 69-80.  

As Christine Garnaut's excellent 2003 article illustrates, Charles Reade's time as South Australia's first state town planner has a remarkable legacy. It is not immediately obvious in the original plan above, but it is in the second illustration, that Reade included (or at least: there came to exist!) two internal reserves in his plan for Barmera. I am tempted to write that neither are particularly happy places today, but this is perhaps an ignorant assessment. They don't look like much fun on google map. The reserve within Barwell Ave, Sturt St, Bice St and Scott Ave is now a car park - see it here.  The southern reserve is in slightly better shape in a manner of speaking - at least, it has some kind of foliage on it. It's between Tonkin Ave, Fowles St, Farmer St and Manuel Road, and can be viewed here. 

Leicester Anchor Tenants' Estate

Unwin, Town Planning in Practice p. 232. Read about the Anchor Tenants Estate here. I think that the open space at the centre of this plan is here - and now appears to be agricultural allotments.

Unwin, hypothetical grid plan treatment

Raymond Unwin, Town Planning in Practice p. 314

Raymond Unwin hypothetical (?)

This image is captioned 'Groups of buildings designed to maintain square roof lines on a curving road' on p. 346 of Raymond Unwin's Town Planning in Practice (1909). Although it appears in a general discussion of Letchworth Garden City it is not designated as an actual place and I suspect it may be hypothetical. Note the Tennis Court on the lower right and the small park on the top left featuring a sun dial.

Indian Hill Garden Village, Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

There is one internal reserve in this 1915 plan for a large suburban area, as seen below:

Indian Hill is apparently a verdant and popular place today but either I'm looking at the wrong part of it or this plan was not instituted in this form.

From George B. Ford/Ralph F. Warner, editors for the Committee on Town Planning of the American Institute of Architects City Planning Progress in the United States 1917 Journal of AIA Washington DC 1917 p 191

New Holland, North Carolina

New Holland (see its present day condition here) was a major private drainage 'reclamation' project on the shores of Lake Mattamuskeet, North Carolina. The project, described in 1917 as being laid out as 'a scientifically planned town with modern provisions for social, educational, and recreational life - which schoolhouses, playgrounds, churches, public buildings, parks, community centres, and public and semi-public groups attractively groups' petered out and (according to Wikipedia) was finally discontinued, officially, in 1934.  

As presented in Ford and Warner's 1917 book (the source of the previous and next posts - see attribution below) the plan contains many numbered spaces with either road or laneway access, but no key for what the spaces actually represent. However, there is one labelled space in block 103 on what I assume is the east of the plan, between Haarlem, Carrituck, Kawana and what I assume is Albermarle Road East, labelled 'Private Park'. It has three pedestrian lanes for access.



The original sale of lots was advertised in the Raleigh News and Observer for 11 December 1916 (p. 8) and the town's first religious service was held in December 1921 (according to the Kinston, NC Daily Free Press for 22 December 1921, p. 6). The front page of the Elizabeth City, NC Independent for 13 October 1922 showed photographs of the area's pumping station and its hotel. However, ten years later the Independent proclaimed the 'New Holland Farm' to have been 'Doomed by Nature'; nature could feel slightly miffed by this headline given that the article itself, after severely pummelling 'nature' for its underhand ways, went on to blame the 'business depression' for the ultimate failure of the scheme (4 April 1931, p. 1). What is perhaps more interesting about this particular article is that it reveals one August Heckscher, 'New York financier and philanthropist' to be the initiator of New Holland.

Without wishing to go holus bolus into an examination of August Heckscher... though I so much would like to do that detective work, just on spec... I note that one August Heckscher was New York city parks commissioner in the late 1960s and early 70s (he died aged 83 in 1997); presumably (should one ever presume?!) the son of the man above. 

This site names the author of the plan as Harlan P. Kelsey, 'one of the most renowned landscape architects in America'. I found it in George B. Ford and Ralph F. Warner (eds) for the Committee on Town Planning of the American Institute of Architects City Planning Progress in the United States 1917 Journal of AIA Washington, DC 1917 p. 116

Allentown, Pennsylvania

The text accompanying this diagram does not elaborate any further on this particular feature of the 'Modification'. A quick scan of the map of Allentown suggests this proposal was not acted upon (but that there are many 'H' blocks). This gives no particular clue either except to affirm Allentown's status as a city of broken dreams.

George B. Ford/Ralph F. Warner, editors for the Committee on Town Planning of the American Institute of Architects City Planning Progress in the United States 1917 Journal of AIA Washington DC 1917 p 7

Cité Jardin, Montreal, Canada

 

It's here on google maps.

On pp. 271-2 of his seminal Designing for Man and Motor (Pergamon, Oxford 1964) Paul Ritter credits the design of this small suburban area to J. Auguste Gosselin and R. P. Jean d'Autenil Richard. Ritter writes:

'L'Union Economique d'habitation was founded by a priest with the help of a lawyer. Without any professional designers they envisaged what they felt to be healthy surroundings for the working classes of Montreal in 1940. The social, economic and moral basis was co-operation. By subscription, members joined and houses were built as quickly as the war conditions allowed it. 425 active members moved in from 1942 onwards. Sadly, tragically, the scheme met so many difficulties that it failed to progress as planned. This would have given cities all over Canada such communities. A central building providing a clinic, school, bank, grocery store, cafeteria and directors office, was working well for many years and is not being rehabilitated after some years of disuse.

'Remarkably these lay men, starting from first principles, hit on the Radburn Idea. I paid a prolonged visit to this scheme, completely unknown to planners, beyond one architect in Montreal, to whom I am deeply indebted for showing me the area. It works as well, or better, than any other traffic-segregated scheme I have seen in any country. The path areas are an informal, well-used space in which members have built swings, planted rockeries and in which the in the autumn they burn leaves after children have romped in the piles. Swimming pools would be built in the same spirit only Montreal by-laws make it necessary to fence these off because of danger to small children. Although unlit, the path system is in no way ever regarded as dangerous in the dark and in twenty years there has been no attack on anyone. The culs-de-sac get their name and individuality from the species of tree planted along them, different with each one... larch, planes, chestnuts, cedars, spruce, oak.

'These culs-de-sac have no laid footpaths along them in the main. They are worn. The area, as so many Radburn areas, has gained in value beyond the gain shown by other housing over the years. The  turnover of residents is much smaller than in Montreal in general and a few strolls around the area makes one realise why. I met Paulette Thivierge, twenty, who had lived all her life in the area. She showed a great deal of understanding and enthusiasm for the advantages of the lay-out. There was a great deal of friendly and helpful contact.'


(from p. 272 of Planning for Man and Motor). 

* Arcana this may be, but I am assuming that the Paulette Thivierge that Ritter refers to is the woman born in 1941 who married Hans de Jonge in 1964 and whose 50th wedding anniversary is captured in this video. The most interesting element of this factoid for our purposes is it tells us Ritter visited Cité Jardin in 1961, and perhaps it puts us in mind to try to make contact with Mrs. de Jonge sometime in the future to talk about Ritter's visit and life growing up in Cité Jardin too.

Some interesting takes (article + comments) on the development to be found here.

Hypothetical 'dwelling units surrounding a communal courtyard'

By Sau Lai Chan of Kuala Lumpur, from Michael Y. Seelig's The Architecture of Self-Help Communities Architectural Record Books, NY 1978 p. 58. One example of many proposed in a multiple dwelling unit cluster arrangement: 'The proposed courtyards vary in size to accommodate from 10 to 30 families with a proportional number of taps allocated to conform to the number of families. The courtyards would also serve as a private recreation space and as a utility space with laundry areas, workshops housed in simple huts, and windmills for generating electricity. The courtyards are interconnected by minor pedestrian routes 4 to 5 meters wide. The houses are designed so that their front entrances face these paths.'

'Volta River Project' Kpong, Gold Coast (Ghana) 1956

Kpong is here; it seems fairly likely this project, conceived the year before Ghanaian independence was declared, was not built. From Viviana d'Auria and Bruno de Meulder, 'Unsettling Landscapes: the Volta River Project New Settlements between Tradition and Transition', OASE #82, 2010, p. 125

Jacob L. Crane Jr: Turning City Bloks [sic] Inside Out (1929)

Wisconsin State Journal 18 May 1929 p. 3 (89 years ago today). Crane, who studied under John Nolen, would have been very familiar with the 'traditional' internal reserve form through Nolen's use of same.  In 1930 he contributed to a hypothetical 'garden plan' for Chicago which included blocks with 'interior parks and playgrounds'. (Paul Potter, 'Models to Show Garden Plan for Future Chicago' Chicago Tribune 23 March 1930 p. 26).

'The Connecticut Town Green'

Read about it here.

I have spent a little time poring over the map of Windsor but was unable to find the Palisado in question.

Woodmar, Indiana

From the Munster, Indiana Times 18 April 1924 p. 1 (94 years ago today...)

Below is a portion of an advertisement which appears in the same newspaper for 7 April, 1925 p. 9:

Woodmar is here, and the Baring and Knickerbocker Parkways are extant, however I am uncertain of the exact perameters of the subdivision is which is being described in this article. More research is required, I suspect. 

Brittgården, Tibro, Sweden

'Foot path' sketch from a book co-produced by housing ministries/agencies in the five nordic nations, Housing in the Nordic Countries Copenhagen 1968, p. 201

Reserve bounded by Gellibrand Crescent, Allenby Avenue and High Street Reservoir, Victoria

This is probably the last remaining 'intact' internal reserve from the swathe of IRs created by Saxil Tuxen in the Merrilands Estate launched 1919 - so forget a thousand years of solitude, this space is about to celebrate 100 years of emptiness.* View it here. 

Laneway from Gellibrand Ave:

 
New homes on Gellibrand use the access way for garages:

 

 From the reserve looking north to Gellibrand Ave:

* Flippancy is always fun but of course we have no idea how the reserve might have been used over the 20th century, only that it hasn't had much use (except for rear access to properties) in the 21st. History tells us that IRs generally have an ebb and flow as far as use is concerned.

Playground off Eaton Street (Eaton Parade), Laverton, Victoria

A plan produced under the Housing Commission of Victoria from the mid-70s held in the Public Records Office of Victoria shows a 'play ground' in the three-cornered block of the Laverton Estate. View the actual site here and you will see that, while the street plan was executed roughly to this ideal the internal reserve in question was not included (or at least is not there now). Once again, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this argument (if argument it was) was had.

St Phillack Reserve, Rawson, Victoria

The internal reserve is most definitely a feature derived from early 20^th century town planning. Our hypothesis, broadly speaking, is that the planners of that era were of the opinion that internal reserves gave residents of planned environments agency to shape not only their local public space but also the character and purpose of their community. However, changes in both western society (from communal ideal to individual, inward-focused family) and planning practice (little was built or designed during the 1930s and 40s, meaning that many estates designed in the 1920s or earlier were still being populated in the 1950s) left residents at best uncertain about the internal reserves they had inherited, and at worst antipathetic towards them.

It is always surprising, then, when late 20^th century designs which are not directly related to new urbanism include internal reserves. The small town of Rawson – 120 homes in less than 20 streets in the west Gippsland area of Victoria, close to the well-known gold mining ‘ghost town’ of Walhalla – was designed by Don Hendry Fulton and commenced in the late 1970s by the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, a long standing and for much of its existence very powerful semi-autonomous state government body. Though this was almost certainly not obvious at the time, the MMBW was at this point in its last decade of existence.

Rawson was built to house those working on the nearby Thomson Dam, with dormitories constructed for labourers and relatively grand homes for professional staff. Rawson, at its peak, housed 1500 people, an article in the Melbourne Age by Barbara Fih (‘The town that is too good to stay alive, Age 15 May 1985 p. 3) tells us. Fih also recounts that the MMBW ‘built a 25-metre swimming pool, squash courts, three tennis courts, a shopping centre, oval, recreation hall with a basketball court in it, a primary school and reserve.’ The town ran at capacity for two years until May 1983, when the dam was opened after which the population quickly dwindled and the houses were sold off. Public services were opened to tender with the MMBW: the local petrol station, as one example, was advertised as available for lease with the option to purchase (The Age, Wednesday 20 June 1984, p. 28).

The ‘reserve’ Fih mentions is probably not the internal reserve of interest to this blog, but a sports and recreation reserve on  Tyers-Walhalla Road. Even Google Maps seems resistant to recognizing the St Phillack Reserve, which is however featured on Baw Baw Shire’s website and noted for featuring a ‘playground’ and ‘walking trails unpaved’. Which is all true! However, confusingly, the reserve is not zoned as open space (though clearly used and, as mentioned, labeled as such).

The space is best described as an off-street children’s playground and dog park (though in truth the streets of Rawson seem to be rarely troubled by traffic). The play equipment, though not new, is in good condition. What is perhaps most interesting about the site in terms of its design is that it features a large number of old and tall trees, and while no doubt the entire Rawson area was until quite recently covered in similar vegetation, in this instance it is clear that the decision was made that an interior park space would be an opportunity to retain trees on site.

Many of the local homes feature transparent (usually, chicken wire) back fences and many also have gates into the reserve, which has three entrances. Cooper’s Creek ‘begins’ immediately south of the St Phillack Reserve but does not appear to have ever run through the land the reserve is currently located on.

A note about names: The name St Phillack is apparently that of a mountain. The nearby street Von Meuller Drive commemorates noted landscape gardener and botanist Ferdinand von Mueller (note – the commemoration misspells his name!) who climbed Mount Baw Baw. Another nearby mountain, Mt. Selma, is the inspiration for Selma Drive. Other streets recall the area’s gold mining history: Morning Star Crescent is named for the Morning Star Gold Battery site, a significant heritage location proximate to Walhalla, and Little Boy Crescent the goldfields tramway of that name. Stander Drive is after a creek. The town itself is named for a local landowning family; it was a source of some controversy at the time of creation, as the MMBW favoured the name Robertson after chief engineer A. G. Robertson (some locals are reported in a 1979 Age article to have favoured Parker Corner, apparently an extant local place name - though MMBW advertising from the late 1970s renders this as Barker's Corner) (Steve Harris and Kerry Wakefield, ‘Town hits problems’, Melbourne Age 26 April 1979 p. 13).

View it here. More pictures below. 

Thanks to the redoubtable Victoria Kolankiewicz for extensive work on this post, including locating the reserve in the first place.