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Society's child: the gardens of the Felipe de Neve Branch Library

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Society's child: the gardens of the Felipe de Neve Branch Library

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Content SOCIETY’S CHILD: THE GARDENS OF THE
FELIPE DE NEVE BRANCH LIBRARY

by

Jonathan E. Froines

_____________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION

December 2012

Copyright 2012 Jonathan E. Froines
ii

Acknowledgements

I have been fortunate to have had extraordinary faculty advisors, mentors and institutions to help
me in the writing of this thesis. First, I am indebted to Kenneth Breisch, former Director of the
USC Historic Preservation Program, who recruited me to the program after I took his intensive
summer course. He continually challenges me to go deeper in my scholarship, and I thank him
sincerely for that.

I would also like to extend my deepest thanks to Trudi Sandmeier, former Director of Education
at the Los Angeles Conservancy and now Director of Graduate Programs in Heritage
Conservation at USC, for her brilliant discovery of the former Shakespeare Garden at the Felipe
de Neve Library and her subsequent suggestion to Ken Breisch that I consider the garden for my
thesis. Her guidance during this process has been invaluable.

My third committee member, Brian Tichenor, has been a great influence both in my preservation
and landscape architecture studies. I am continually amazed by the extent of his knowledge, and
I am honored to have him as a teacher. His leadership in combining architectural history and
design is inspiring.

I extend thanks to Rachel Berney, who swept me into her Olmsted work as a research assistant in
my first year at USC, and who helped me hone my academic interests in preservation to include
both historic and cultural landscapes.

iii

I also thank the staff of the Felipe de Neve Library for opening up their files to me, especially
Laurie Reese, Children’s Librarian. With gratitude, I used resources from the UCLA Special
Collections, USC Digital Library, the Los Angeles City Archives, the Braille Institute of
America and others. Thanks to Mitchell Bishop, Curator of Historic Collections at the Los
Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, for sharing files with me – and for that great
ride around the Arboretum on a golf cart to see the gardens designed by Edward Huntsman-
Trout. Also, thanks to the gracious staff of the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department
for supplying me with digital scans of the original plans for the gardens of the Felipe de Neve
library. Thank you to Jen Miller of Melendrez Design Partners for providing the firm’s
landscape plans for the Felipe de Neve Library rehabilitation in 1998.

I would also like to thank the Heritage Conservation program as a whole, for enlivening in me
the thrill of discovery in the study of architecture and history. I admit to feeling like an
archeologist in unearthing information that the library, in addition to the Shakespeare Garden,
also once had a Fragrant Garden for the Blind - with its ruins still apparent today… although in
the guise of a parking lot.

Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Andrea Hricko and John Froines, for their patience
with me in this endeavor – and my friends whom I have had to put somewhat on hold during this
graduate school process. Thank you for bearing with me, and thank you so much for your
support.

iv

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Abstract

Introduction: Brief History of Sunset Park (Lafayette Park), 1890-1929
Donations by Shatto and Wilshire to the city
Controversy over oil drilling in and around the park
Park realized

Chapter 1: Library and Early Landscaping, 1929-1950
Creation of the library building
Building description
Austin Whittlesey, architect for the library
Initial landscape and hardscape
Precedent

Chapter 2: Felipe de Neve Library Shakespeare Garden
Shakespeare’s Allusions to Flowers and Plants
Shakespeare gardens in the U.S. (1901-1918)
Formal English Gardens Evoking the Period when Shakespeare Lived
Shakespeare Gardens in the United States (1919-)
Dedication of the Felipe de Neve Library Shakespeare Garden, 1932
Members of the Lovers of Shakespeare Society at the Garden’s Dedication
The Shakespeare Garden at the library through 1960s

Chapter 3: Felipe de Neve Library Fragrant Garden for the Blind
Precedent I – Early Gardens for the Blind
Precedent II - Fragrant Gardens for the Blind
The City of Los Angeles and the Fragrant Garden for the Blind
The Bel-Air Garden Club
Mrs. Oscar Lawler
Mrs. Manfred Meyberg
Fragrant Garden for the Blind, Felipe De Neve Library, description
Edward Huntsman-Trout, designer of the Fragrant Garden for the Blind
Blossom Lane and Mrs. John Bowles

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Chapter 4: 1970s to the Present: Felipe de Neve Library
Neighborhood changes, crime, closure, current conditions
Renovation
Current conditions: Original landscape & Shakespeare Garden
Current conditions: Fragrant Garden for the Blind
Integrity of historic features

Conclusion: Heritage Conservation and the gardens of the Felipe de Neve Library
Historic Designed Landscapes
Next steps: Heritage conservation
Security
Water
Next Steps: Architectural/Landscape history

Bibliography

Appendix

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List of Figures

Figure 01. Overlay of historical stream course running through Lafayette Park

Figure 02. Location of Lafayette (Sunset) Park and Doheny/Canfield Oil Well

Figure 03. Photograph of Lafayette Park, 1913

Figure 04. Lafayette (Sunset) Park Pond, ca. 1900-1910

Figure 05. Lafayette (Sunset) Park postcard, date unknown

Figure 06. Front Façade & Entrance Path, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 07. Rear Façade, Terraces & Lily Pond, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 08. Plan of Library Terraces, Lily Pool, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 09. Top Terrace and Rear Façade, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 10. Top Terrace and Rear Façade, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 11. Lower Terrace, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 12. Plan, Section, Elevation of Lily Pond Fountain, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 13. Rear Façade & Early Landscaping, Felipe de Neve Library, 1929

Figure 14. Title block, Entry Gates to Library, Lafayette Park

Figure 15. Drawing of Fountain Feature, Felipe De Neve Library, 1929

Figure 16. Titleblock, Noting “Drawn by C.C. McElvy”

Figure 17. Battle Hall, Boston Public Library, Biblioteque Ste. Genevieve

Figure 18. Rear Facade, Lily Pond & Terraces, Felipe de Neve Branch Library, 1929

Figure 19. Orangerie, Versaille

Figure 20. Bird’s Eye View of Caltech Master Plan

Figure 21. Shakespeare Border at Hillside, NY, 1901

Figure 22. Image of Elizabethan Knot Garden, 1577

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Figure 23. Image of New Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 1920

Figure 24. Jens Jensens’ Plan for Shakespeare Garden at Northwestern University

Figure 25. Map of Location of Shakespeare Gardens, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 26. Lily Pond, Fountain and Shakespeare Parterre, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 27. Dedication of Shakespeare Garden, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 28. Advertisement for Clyde F. Murphy’s “The Glittering Hill”

Figure 29. Lily Pond, Fountain and Tropical Plantings, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 30. Edward Huntsman-Trout Plan Drawing for Fragrant Garden for the Blind

Figure 31. Felipe de Neve Library Fragrant Garden for the Blind, 1954

Figure 32. Children Playing in Lily Pond, Felipe de Neve Library, 1978

Figure 33. Planting List for 1926/9 Plans for Longpre & Echo Park

Figure 34. Melendrez Design Development Drawing for Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 35. Courtyard, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 36. Remnants of Shakespeare Garden Planter Bed, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 37. Current Condition of Fountain and Sculpture, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 38. Current Condition of Lily Pond, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 39. Callistemon citrinus, East Side of Lily Pond, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 40. Fragrant Garden Used as a Parking Lot, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 41. Fragant Garden Brick Wall & Railing, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 42. Extant Asphaltic Concrete Paths, Fragrant Garden, Felipe de Library

Figure 43. Laurus nobilis tree, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 44. Kumquat Trees in Fragrant Garden, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 45. Before & After I, Lily Pond, Felipe de Neve Library

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Figure 46: Before & After II, Lily Pond, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 47: Before & After III, Shakespeare Garden, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 48: Before & After IV, Fragrant Garden for the Blind, Felipe de Neve Library

Figure 49: Polaroid Photograph of Poster Depicting Lafayette Park

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Abstract
The Felipe de Neve Library was built in 1929 in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. In
the subsequent decades after construction, a number of community groups advocated for unique
landscape insertions to the site. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks built a lily
pond and a series of terraces descending down the slope from the Library. On and adjacent to
these terraces and pool, members of the public installed a Shakespeare Garden, and later, a
Fragrant Garden for the Blind designed by noted landscape architect Edward Huntsman-Trout,
designer of Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Yet over time, these gardens were abandoned by
city services, and today, while extant, exist only in a state of ruin. In this study, the nature of this
site is investigated and evaluated through its history. What do we have here? Is this an important
site? Is this a site worth restoring or rehabilitating? How do the physical remnants of the site
relate to the people and events of early Los Angeles? Through an in-depth investigation of
archival photographs, news stories, and books, the history and meaning behind the site and its
surrounding environs are discovered. In the final chapter, we discuss the historic integrity and
significance of the site, and how this might be transposed to a rehabilitation or restoration. We
conclude that the gardens of the Felipe de Neve Library are an important resource for the city of
Los Angeles. Designed to provide respite, entertainment, and education for the public, the
gardens encapsulate the history of a neighborhood, and if rehabilitated, would allow the current
residents of Westlake to add the next chapter to its rich history.

1
Introduction: Brief History of Sunset Park (Lafayette Park), 1890-1928

The Felipe de Neve Branch Library is an historic site of .41 acres located in Los Angeles,
California, at the northwest corner of Lafayette Park, a small public park in the Westlake
neighborhood. The City of Los Angeles owns both the library grounds and Lafayette Park.
1

The Felipe de Neve Branch Library was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1987 as part of a multiple property nomination of Los Angeles Public Library Branches
constructed between 1910-1930.
2
Additionally, the library is designated as Los Angeles
Historic-Cultural Monument No. 452 (Designated 10/17/1989).
3
As the following description
from the nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places, prepared by the Los
Angeles Conservancy in 1985, states:
The Los Angeles Branch Library System Thematic group is comprised of 22
buildings in various period revival styles constructed to house the initial branch
library system of the City of Los Angeles… Many of these buildings are based
upon various Mediterranean styles representative of Southern California in the
early twentieth century, and are located in parks or are surrounded by maintained
landscaping. Most were designed by prominent commercial and/or institutional
architects of the time incorporating architectural features suggestive of famous
literary figures.
4

Throughout the library’s history, its gardens have served as an important public space for the
enjoyment of nature, the education of the community, and as a social gathering space.
Simultaneous to the architectural design of the library, the Los Angeles Department of
Recreation and Parks created a series of terraces emanating from the south side of the library
down the hill from where the library stands and into Lafayette Park. These terraces terminated in

1
Los Angeles Conservancy, “National Register Nomination Form,” Los Angeles Branch Library System (Thematic
Nomination), 1985, http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/64000066.pdf.
2
Ibid.
3
City of Los Angeles. Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) List, City Declared Monuments, 18,
http://preservation.lacity.org/files/HCMDatabase111510_0.pdf.
4
Los Angeles Conservancy, “National Register Nomination Form.”

2
a fountain that spilled into a large rectangular lily pond. The pond was lined with boxwood
parterres and paths, and planting beds beyond the paths, symmetrically arranged on both sides of
the pond.
Starting only three years after the library was built, community groups took an interest in
the grounds of the library. In 1932, a local literary club donated its time and money to creating a
“Shakespeare Garden” along these terraces and plantings beds, filled with flowers and shrubs
from the Bard’s plays and sonnets. Later, in 1954, a garden club group took interest in the site,
petitioning for and subsequently sponsoring a “Fragrant Garden for the Blind.”
While the Felipe de Neve Branch Library was built through funding from a city bond
measure passed in 1925, the Shakespeare Garden and the Fragrant Garden for the Blind owe
their existence to social clubs with civic-minded and wealthy patrons who donated both time and
money to develop the gardens in this Westlake neighborhood.
Whereas in the 1890s and first half of the 20
th
century Lafayette Park was the “go to”
place for the city’s white, wealthy elite, today the area is primarily lower-income Latino (73%,
according to the Los Angeles Times neighborhood mapping service, with 68% of residents
foreign-born) and has a high crime rate.
5
In many ways, the neighborhood and its history
reflects the major demographic changes that have occurred over time in Los Angeles, as wealthy
residents moved out of downtown and lower income residents, including immigrants, moved in.
Today, the majority of the grounds of the Felipe de Neve Branch Library are fenced off
and in disrepair. The lily pond has been drained, the bronze plaques that once dedicated the
Shakespeare Garden have been stolen, and the Fragrant Garden’s ruins are used as a parking lot.
The gardens are fenced off both from Lafayette Park and from the library itself.

5
Mapping L.A.’s neighborhoods, Los Angeles Times website, http://projects.latimes.com/
mapping-la/neighborhoods/neighborhood/westlake/.

3
What do we have here? Is this an important site? Is this a site worth restoring or
rehabilitating? How do the physical remnants of the site relate to the people and events of
early Los Angeles? In the following study, the character and quality of the Felipe de Neve
Library gardens are investigated and evaluated through their history and current
conditions.

Donations by Shatto and Wilshire to the city

In September of 1895, Clara Shatto deeded a parcel of land to the City of Los Angeles for
use as Sunset Park. She was the wife of George Shatto, a wealthy businessman and real estate
developer originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who was most famous for his vision of
turning Catalina Island into a tourist destination.
6

Clara Shatto’s eleven-acre gift carried with it the stipulation that the land forever be used
for park space – and also that a boulevard be constructed through the property. She had agreed
to this arrangement in conversation with H. Gaylord Wilshire, who owned the adjoining 35-acre
tract between Sunset Park (today’s Lafayette Park) and Westlake Park (today’s MacArthur Park).
Wilshire was a land developer. He agreed to construct and donate a part of his property between
the two parks, 1200 feet long and 120 feet wide “for Boulevard purposes,” if the City agreed to
implement a park and streetscape in the Shatto-gifted parcel. All of this was related to an interest
in developing a subdivision with homes for the city’s growing elite. The result was the first
segment created of Wilshire Boulevard, which would later be dubbed the “Champs-Elysees of

6
Jeannine L. Pederson, Catalina Island (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2004), 9.

4
Los Angeles,” or the “Grande Concourse,” a principal boulevard of what would become the
megalopolis of Los Angeles.
7

Controversy over oil drilling in and around the park

The Sunset Park parcel was on the westernmost edge of the original Spanish land grant of
Los Angeles.
8
The lot was sunken below the surrounding area, providing a natural drainage
ditch, and a meandering creek ran though the space (fig. 1).

Figure 1: Image with overlay of historical stream location running through Lafayette (Sunset) Park. Map courtesy of Ballona
Historical Ecology, http://www.Ballonahe.org. Stream line and park outline traced and emphasized by author for legibility.

According to a 1924 article in the Los Angeles Times on “Rivers Lost to This City,” the Arroyo
de La Brea (Spanish for Stream of Oil) purportedly began at Sunset Boulevard and Mohawk
Street (in present day Echo Park) and meandered southwesterly through Sunset Park, eventually
feeding into another tributary.
9
The name of this creek, Arroyo de La Brea, seems to have been
a harbinger of the oncoming oil boom in the city.
10

7
Kevin Roderick and J. Eric Lynxwiler, Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles (Santa Monica: Angel City,
2005).
8
Navigate LA website, http://navigatela.lacity.org/index.cfm.
9
“Rivers Lost to City,” Los Angeles Times, December 24, 1924, Part II, 1S.; and
Shawna Dark, et al. “Historical ecology of the Ballona Creek watershed.” Southern California Coastal Water Research Project
Technical Publication 671 (2011): 75.
10
The presence of oil along these creeks west of the Central City had been noted for some time. In Victoria Padilla’s book,
Southern California Gardens, the author quotes from Historical Memoirs of New California by Fray Francisco Palou: “…for the
explorers saw some large marshes of a certain substance like pitch; they were boiling and bubbling, and the pitch came out mixed
with an abundance of water. They noticed that the water runs to one side and the pitch to the other, and that there is such an
abundance of it that it would serve to caulk many ships. [Ballona Creek west of Cienega. The springs of pitch were the La Brea
Pits.].”

5
Edward Doheny, Charles Canfield and colleagues drilled the first oil well in Los Angeles
in 1892, at the intersection of Colton Street and Glendale Boulevard, discovering what is now
called the “Los Angeles Oil Field.” In the five years after their success, more than 500 new
wells were drilled within the city.
11
The undeveloped Sunset Park parcel sat on the southwestern
edge of the Los Angeles Oil Field, only 1.5 miles from Doheny and Canfield’s well. The vacant
land immediately became the focus of heated controversy, as oil speculators drilled closer and
closer to the parkland.
To protect the Shatto gift, the City of Los Angeles defined a 1200-foot perimeter around
Sunset Park that barred speculators from drilling wells near the park. Nonetheless, this perimeter
was continuously breached. Historical maps show oil wells lining the park boundaries, some as
close as 40 feet to the park (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Location of Lafayette (Sunset), Macarthur (Westlake) Parks and Doheny/Canfield Oil Well. Dark blue markings are
previous locations of oil wells in the area. Map courtesy of Navigate LA, text in red added by the author.

11
Paleontological Research Institute, “The Story of Oil in California,”
http://www.priweb.org/ed/pgws/history/signal_hill/signal_hill.html.

6
Since the gift of the Park to the city in 1895, the park had remained vacant and had been filled
with debris from the surrounding construction and drilling. At one point during the oil
controversies, the city officially considered turning the park into a large “sump-hole,” or a pit to
dispose of refuse and sewage.
12

Oil speculators, and the politicians they influenced, claimed that the park would never be
usable space because the ground was too saturated with “brea.” Mayor Frederick Eaton, after
declining to approve an ordinance put forth by City Council that would have forever deemed the
parcel for parkland, was paraphrased in a Los Angeles Times article:
The Mayor says that it is nothing but a brea bed and would never be useful as a
park. Trees and shrubs could not be made to grow there unless earth were
brought from a distance and substituted for the present soil. Even then, the Mayor
says, the oil would ooze out of the ground and it could never be used as a park.
13

Gaylord Wilshire, who donated the land to connect Westlake and Sunset Parks, wrote a scathing
review of the situation. He stated:
It is self-evident that Wilshire Boulevard would not have been laid out in its
generous way [the Wilshires spent $30,000 on the project], to connect Westlake
Park with a “natural sumphole…The soil itself is much better, naturally, for
foliage and vegetation than was Westlake Park before its improvement. Three
quarters of it is regularly sown to barley, which disposes the false statement that
there is so much brea in the soil that it is valueless. As a matter of fact, not one-
tenth of the soil has any brea in it, and the portion dedicated by Mrs. Shatto is
absolutely free of brea.
14

Three days after his initial disapproval, Los Angeles Mayor Frederick Eaton signed an
ordinance dedicating Sunset Park on December 9, 1899.
15

12
H. Gaylord Wilshire, “Facts About Sunset Park,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1899.
13
“Further Delay: Sunset Park Ordinance,” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1899.
14
H. Gaylord Wilshire, “Facts About Sunset Park,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1899.
15
"Sunset Park Dedicated: Mayor changed his mind and signed the ordinance,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1899. It is
insinuated in the article that the Mayor, a councilman and an inspector, determined there was little oil within the site, and perhaps
enough oil the surrounding area to allow the space to be used as a park.

7
Park realized
A photograph from 1913 shows the park in a finished, albeit young, state, composed of
curvilinear paths, large expanses of turf grass, tree plantings, and boxwood parterres. The south
and east sides were lined with palms and a small pond is visible on the northwest corner of the
parcel (fig. 3, 4).

Figure 3: Photograph from 1913 depicting the young Lafayette Park. Charles C. Pierce, photographer, “View of Lafayette Park
(formerly Sunset Park), from the Bryson Apartments,” USC Digital Library, Accession Number 5769, January 1913. Permission
pending.

In 1918, the name of the park was officially changed from Sunset Park to Lafayette Park, in
commemoration of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a Frenchman who had fought in the
American Revolution under George Washington. Lafayette Park was formally re-dedicated in

8
September 1920.
16
Over the next decades, Lafayette Park transformed from a degraded site
filled with debris and surrounded by oil wells, to a refined pleasure park lined with upscale
houses and apartments. These homes were inhabited by the fledgling city’s wealthy elite.
17

Figure 4: Photograph depicting the pond at the northwest corner of the Park. Charles C. Pierce, photographer, “Lafayette Park
(formerly Sunset Park) Looking Southeast,” USC Digital Library, Accession Number 158, 1900-1910. Permission pending.

A 1937 article in the Los Angeles Times called Lafayette Park the “aristocrat” of the City’s parks:
If parks were snobs Lafayette Park doubtless would be one. For it is the aristocrat
of our city parks, and a handsome one to boot...The park has some noble trees and
inviting lawns. It has much of the aspects of a large city park in a fashionable
district. Uniformed nursemaids with small children come out on weekdays and
one often sees fashionably dressed men and women taking their daily
constitutionals on its walks.
18

16
“Will observe Lafayette Day: Celebration of the Marne Victory Tomorrow Afternoon,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1920.
17
See, for example: “In Many Sections: Local Real Estate Firm Busy with Building and Development in City Subdivisions,” Los
Angeles Times, December 27, 1908. Article describes active construction of expensive homes underway near Sunset Park.
18
Timothy G. Turner, “Lafayette Park Called Playground Aristocrat,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1937.

9
A new branch library had been sited in the park, with beautiful landscaping and the addition of a
Shakespeare Garden. Later, in 1954, a Garden for the Blind was constructed. By then, the City of
Los Angeles had more than two million residents.

Figure 5: Hand-colored photograph postcard depicting Lafayette Park (formerly Sunset Park). Published by Benham Indian
Trading Company, date unknown. LA History Archive website,
http://lahistoryarchive.org/resources/CommonGround/resources/postcards.html.

10
Chapter 1: The Library and Its Early Landscaping, 1925 -1950

Creation of library building
Harvard-educated Everett R. Perry took over as head librarian for the City of Los
Angeles in 1911, at age 35.
19
Prior to his arrival, the Los Angeles Public Library had suffered
from inconsistent directorships, buffeted by political whims of both the City Council and the
Mayor. The previous librarian had served less than a year before Perry’s arrival, and most did
not serve more than five years.
20
When Perry arrived, the Los Angeles Central Library was
located on the third floor of the Hamburger Building on 8
th
Street in downtown Los Angeles. In
an article he wrote for the Los Angeles Times, he described the building as housing a department
store. On his first trip to the library, he took the elevator. When arriving at the third floor, the
elevator operator announced: “Furniture, carpets and the public library.”
21

Perry set about establishing a permanent and more appropriate home for the Central
Library and also for establishing more branch libraries through the city. He served as City
Librarian for 22 years.
In the early and mid-1920s, Perry wrote letters to the City Council and to the local
newspapers, complaining that the city had grown so rapidly that the population was outpacing
the ability of its branch libraries to meet the educational needs of the populace, especially
children. He compared the library resources in Los Angeles to those in other cities, such as
Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland had one-seventh of the square mileage of Los Angeles at the time,
he argued, and it had 52 branch libraries, while Los Angeles had only 42 branch libraries.
22

19
“Man is found for librarian: called from New York and quickly engaged,” Los Angeles Time, September 10, 1911.
20
Ray E. Held, The Rise of the Public Library in California (Chicago: American Library Association, 1973), 95-96.
21
Everett R. Perry, “The Public Library Is People's University,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1921.
22
“Urges Bond for Libraries,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1925.

11
Through the work of Perry and the Board of Library Commissioners, a new bond
measure for branch libraries was considered in 1925 by the Los Angeles City Council. The
library board explained that the City needed more libraries, just as the City Council had
recognized that the expanding City needed more police stations and fire houses. The measure
towards branch libraries, originally considered at $1,000,000, was placed on the ballot for
$500,000. It passed in 1925.
23

By 1927, seven new branch libraries had opened and more were under construction, all
funded by the 1925 bond measure. According to a pamphlet produced by the library on the
history of the Felipe de Neve branch library, librarian Perry then turned his attention to the need
for a branch library in the Westlake district.
Realizing the need for a library in the vicinity of Westlake Park, Mr Perry,
librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, interviewed Mr. Van Griffith, then
chairman of the Board of Park Commissioners; Mr Perry, Mrs Socha, Mr Griffith
and Miss Althea Warren then went out to Lafayette Park to look over the ground.
The decision of the Park Commissioners was that only if the library Board would
consent to build a $100,000 building would they grant them a site facing Wilshire
Boulevard. - The Líbrary Board, therefore, accepted a site on Sixth Street
instead.
24

In addition to the chair of the park commission board, the city staff who accompanied
Perry included Mabel V. Socha, then vice-president of the park commission board (who in 1930
became chair of the board) and Althea Warren, a member of the library board, who became the
City Librarian (1933-1947) after the untimely death of Everett Perry.

23
“Branch library vote proposed: petitions ask for election on $1,000,000 issue,” Los Angeles Times,
April 12, 1925.
24
“History of the Felipe de Neve Library,” pamphlet, http://dbase1.lapl.org/webpics/calindex/documents/11/521257.pdf. Note
the incorrect punctuation in this pamphlet is cited exactly how it appears in the pamphlet, which may have been appropriate at the
time the pamphlet was written.

12
She later became the President of the American Library Association.
25

The site they selected for the new Felipe de Neve Branch Library was at the northwest
corner of Lafayette Park, in a small parcel of land (.41 acre) cut out from the Park property.
Architect Austin Whittlesey was selected to design the library. On January 31, 1929, the Board
of Library Commissioners awarded the contract for construction to Harry J. Rinert, of 101
Robertson Drive, with the contract totaling $29,655.
26
The branch library was informally
dedicated on July 1, 1929, but the official dedication was held on September 4
th
1929, to
coincide with the anniversary of the founding of Los Angeles, “the deed for which Felipe de
Neve” became famous.”
27

Although not well-known to Los Angeles residents today, de Neve is a critical figure in
the founding of the City of Los Angeles. While he was governor of California from 1775-1782,
he received permission from King Carlos III of Spain to establish a pueblo, and on September 4,
1781, a small settlement was formed called El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles
(The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels).
28

The dedication of the Felipe de Neve Branch Library occurred on the 148
th
anniversary of
the founding of the City of Los Angeles, as part of a celebration called “Felipe de Neve Day.”
Several hundred attendees, including head librarian Everett R. Perry, heard a presentation by
Orra E. Monette, then president of the Board of Library Commissioners, who proclaimed:

25
Los Angeles City Clerk. “City of Los Angeles Officials,”
http://cityclerk.lacity.org/chronola/index.cfm?fuseaction=apFacultyDetail&OfficeHolderID=2203.;
Kevin Starr, “L.A.’s New Library,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1993.;
Library History Buff. “Happy 125
th
Birthday Althea Warren,” http://libraryhistorybuff.blogspot.com/2011/12/ happy-125th-
birthday-althea-warren.html. Warren was a highly respected librarian, with two books written about her praising her good will
and her work. She was also a director of the Victory Books Campaign during World War II.
26
“Branch Library Contract Let,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 1929.
27
“History of the Felipe de Neve Library.” Pamphlet, http://dbase1.lapl.org/webpics/calindex/documents/11/521257.pdf.;
“Library to be dedicated. Ceremonies at branch in Lafayette Park will take place on Felipe de Neve Day,” Los Angeles Times,
September 1, 1929. The article noted that the President of the Los Angeles Historical Society would be present, as well as the
former president of the Southern California Historical Society.
28
“The Early Settlement of L.A. Los Angeles Past, Present and Future,” University of Southern California archives,
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/la/historic/la_settlement.html.

13
I believe that the selection of the name for this branch, that of Felipe de Neve,
the founder of the city of Los Angeles, is particularly appropriate. The more we
know of this really great character the more we are moved to admiration. He
was a strong man, a good man and a statesman, a real George Washington to
California, founding cities, freeing the peoples and codifying laws.
29

Monette was president at different times of various Los Angeles banks and was prominent in
civic, financial, social and civic circles, donating money to various library ventures. Although
some personal controversies had earlier (in 1922) placed his name in unfavorable light in the
press, continued to be a sought-after civic leader.
30
A great supporter of public libraries, he had
successfully urged passage of several library bond measures prior to the 1925 measure, asking
residents to think of the library system as their own and not for just the upper class: “This is not
Monnette’s nor Perry’s library … The Library belongs to the people of Los Angeles and it is the
duty of the citizens to take care of it.”
31

Felipe de Neve Library Building description

The Branch Library was constructed on the northwest edge of the Park, the highest point
on the property. Austin Whittlesey was the architect, the son of architect Charles F. Whittlesey.
The Italian Renaissance Revival structure is one story high and of brick construction. The main
body of the structure is rectangular, approximately 130 feet in length and 50 feet in width, with a
red-tile gabled roof (fig. 5). The main structure is flanked by two wings on the west and east,
also of brick construction, but with flat roofs. The central entrance has a large floral detail of cast

29
“Fiesta honors city birthday,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1929.
30
Monnette was not without controversy. In 1922 his wife sued him for a separation, with a public display of an alleged
indiscretion printed in the newspaper which resulted in his dismissal from a bank position. “Says banker’s love died…. wife tells
of letter about other woman,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1922. Just a few months later, the scandal had died down and the
couple reunited. See: “Monnette quarrel ends: Banker and his wife reunited,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1922.
31
“New library to serve all city,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1921.;
When Perry died at the age of 57, the Los Angeles Times described his contributions numerically: “Perry built up the library from
166,045 volumes in a rented office building to 1,400,000 books in the Central Library and its 48 branches. During that same time
readers increased from 50,000 to 400,000 and last year 13,500,000 books were borrowed from the library, giving it the third
largest circulation in the United States.” See: “Friends mourn city librarian,” Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1933.

14
stone in the door surround. Above the door is a tile mosaic depiction of the Seal of the City of
Los Angeles. Five vertical windows line each side of the entrance in symmetry. As it was
originally constructed, the rear façade was composed of five large arched windows. This library
building will be discussed further at the end of the chapter.

Figure 5: Front Façade, Entrance Path, Sidewalk, 1929. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

Austin Whittlesey, architect of the Felipe de Neve Library
As a young man, Austin Whittlesey aspired to work in the offices of architect Bertram
Goodhue, coming to the “…conclusion that Mr. Goodhue was the only man who could give him

15
the training in architecture he wished.”
32
Whittlesey moved to New York from San Francisco
when he was 20 years old to seek an opportunity to work at the firm, and two years later he was
hired. Whittlesey’s future work would be heavily influenced by his tenure at the Goodhue
offices from 1915 until at least 1922.
33

Bertram Goodhue’s early work was characterized by the Gothic, and he completed a
number of important East Coast cathedrals while with the firm of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson.
As his projects’ scope expanded westward, Goodhue’s historical references transformed to
include forms of Byzantine, Egyptian and Spanish influences. Goodhue travelled extensively,
including in Spain and Northern Africa, and rigorously applied elements from these travels to his
architectural designs. Most notable about Goodhue was his flexibility to work in different
historical traditions, as well as his fluency in combining often disparate traditions into new
architectural form. Such talents were present in his design of the Panama-California Exposition
in San Diego (1915-1916), the master plan for the California Institute of Technology, the Los
Angeles Central Library, and much of his residential work in California.
34

Austin Whittlesey was also fascinated by historical form. Noted by Goodhue as one of
his best draftsmen, Whittlesey won the Le Brun Traveling Scholarship Competition in 1916,
which allowed him to travel in Spain and North Africa.
35
Whittlesey had been trained in the
École des Beaux-Arts tradition, which included the ritual of the “Grand Tour,” where one would
take an extended journey to examine Europe’s great architecture. In Patricia Gebhard’s book on
George Washington Smith, she describes Austin Whittlesey as a prime example of a young

32
George E. Hartman and Jan Cigliano, Pencil Points Reader: a Journal for the Drafting Room, 1920-1943 (New York:
Princeton Architectural, 2004), 33. Originally published in Pencil Points in June, 1922.
33
Ibid.;
Note: I have searched many sources for Whittlesey’s exact dates of employment, and whether it is possible that after his move to
Los Angeles, he might have still worked for Goodhue, perhaps until Goodhue’s death in 1924. This requires further investigation.
34
See: Romy Wyllie, Bertram Goodhue: His Life and Residential Architecture (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007).
35
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, introduction in The Minor Ecclesiastical, Domestic, and Garden Architecture of Southern Spain,
by Austin Whittlesey (New York: Architectural book Publishing Co., P. Wenzel and M. Krakow, 1917), v-viii.

16
American who pursued this Beaux-Arts tradition and published his drawings and photographs.
She explains, paraphrasing Goodhue, that due to the outbreak of World War I, Whittlesey kept
his travels to the neutral states of Spain and its Moroccan territory.
36
According to Goodhue,
Whittlesey returned in July of 1917, after learning of the United States’ entrance into that War
only a few months before.
37

Whittlesey published two books based on his travels: The Minor Ecclesiastical,
Domestic, and Garden Architecture of Southern Spain (1917) (for which Bertram Goodhue
wrote the preface), and The Renaissance Architecture of Central & Northern Spain (1920). In his
preface to the 1917 book, Goodhue called Whittlesey a “budding architectural talent in America”
and someone with “admirable photographic equipment, an inquiring mind, and the traditional
artistic temperament.”
38
Whittlesey’s first book about Spanish architecture was published just a
few years after Goodhue had designed the Panama California Exposition in San Diego, bringing
the Spanish Colonial Revival to the masses. In 1922, Bertram Goodhue described the two books
on Spain by Whittlesey as “already standards.”
39

In the June 1922 edition of Pencil Points, a short biographical sketch claimed Whittlesey
had at that point worked for Goodhue for 7 years, “excepting the time he spent in the army and in
traveling abroad.”
40
Under Goodhue, Whittlesey was placed in charge of work on the Nebraska
State Capitol, considered by many to be Goodhue’s greatest work. Whittlesey also produced
several elaborate perspective drawings depicting the Nebraska capitol-to-be, for which

36
Patricia Gebhard and George Washington Smith, George Washington Smith: Architect of the Spanish Colonial Revival (Salt
Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2005), 34-35.
37
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, introduction in The Minor Ecclesiastical, Domestic, and Garden Architecture of Southern Spain,
by Austin Whittlesey (New York: Architectural book Publishing Co., P. Wenzel and M. Krakow, 1917), v-viii.
38
Ibid.
39
George E. Hartman and Jan Cigliano, Pencil Points Reader: a Journal for the Drafting Room, 1920-1943 (New York:
Princeton Architectural, 2004), 51. Originally published in Pencil Points in June, 1922.
40
Ibid.

17
construction began in 1922.
41
In the June 1922 edition of “Pencil Points: The Journal for
Draftsmen,” a gathering was described where Goodhue introduced Whittlesey:
Yet he it is who has the Nebraska State Capitol in charge and who is producing at
my instigation at the present moment, God-knows-what-kind-of-Classic. Also he
does Gothic just as well. Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Whittlesey.
42

Whittlesey married Goodhue’s secretary, Marie Bachman, in 1921, and they eventually
moved to Los Angeles, where he worked for a number of firms.
43
According to Southwest
Builder and Contractor, Whittlesey was “granted [a] certificate to practice architecture in
California” in May of 1924.
44

Shortly thereafter, he was noted for designing the interiors of the Los Angeles City Hall
(1926-1928) with John C. Austin, John and Donald Parkinson, and Albert C. Martin.
45
The
Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) entry for City Hall describes Whittlesey as
architect for the interiors, “responsible for the coordination of the craftsmen who worked on the
building including sculptors and decorative painters.” That same HABS report states that the
City Hall structure “clearly draws its form from Bertram Goodhue's design for the Nebraska
State Capitol.”
46

Also in Los Angeles (but after designing the Felipe de Neve Library), Whittlesey worked
as a staff designer for the firm Allison & Allison, a prolific and prominent California firm. In an

41
Frederick C. Luebke, A Harmony of the Arts: The Nebraska State Capitol (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1990) This book
includes two drawings credited to Austin Whittlesey. See pages 29, 108. See also: Charles Harris Whitaker, ed., Bertram
Grosvenor Goodhue: Architect and Master of Many Arts (New York City: Press of the American Institute of Architects, 1925).
42
Hartman and Cigliano. Pencil Points Reader: a Journal for the Drafting Room.
43
Ibid.
44
“Granted certificate to practice architecture in California,” Southwest Builder & Contractor, May 16, 1924.
45
David Gebhard and Robert Winter, Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2003),
260.
46
Historic American Buildings Survey, National Park Service, Department of the Interior. HABS No. CA-2159,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ca/ca1200/ca1261/data/ca1261data.pdf.

18
article on the work of Allison and Allison, the author, Sally Sims Stokes, quotes author Kevin
Starr:
47

A significant percentage of three generations of Southern Californians have
attended grammar school, high school, college, and university in Allison &
Allison buildings … or worshipped in Allison & Allison creations ... or shopped
in Allison & Allison department stores, read in Allison & Allison libraries, posted
their letters at Allison & Allison post offices, sending their utility bills to the
[Allison-designed] Southern California Edison Building ... worked in Allison &
Allison factories and warehouses, banked in Allison & Allison banks; were
admitted to Allison & Allison hospitals, and, finally, were laid to rest at Allison &
Allison creations such as ... the Mausoleum and Chapels of Forest Lawn
Memorial Park in Glendale. They did all this, moreover, in buildings which each
bore the Allison & Allison imprint of solidity, scholarly reference, and
appropriately assertive public presence.
48

While with Allison & Allison, Whittlesey displayed the flexibility in architectural form
he had witnessed in Goodhue, designing the Tudor-Gothic Kerckhoff Hall at UCLA in 1930, and
the Art Deco-influenced Southern California Edison Building in 1931.

Initial landscape & hardscape

The Whittlesey-designed library building was connected to Lafayette Park through the
design skills of the City’s Department of Recreation and Parks.
Based on one archival photo (fig. 5), it appears that the front façade of the Library was
planted with a half-circle patch of turf grass between the entrance paths and the sidewalk. These
entrance paths were also in a half circle, running adjacent to the turf, and extended east and west
from the entrance to the sidewalk along Sixth Street.
In the rear, two stepped terraces extended out from the building. At the base of the
façade was a planting bed running the length of the building, and a large flagstone terrace,

47
Sally Sims Stokes. “In a Climate like Ours: The California Campuses of Allison and Allison,” California History, Vol. 84, No.
4 (October 2007); 26 – 65.
48
Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 211-213.

19
approximately 130 feet long by 40 feet wide. Two small beds in the north east and north west
corners, approximately 10 feet long by 15 feet wide, were planted with a single tree each, of
unknown type.

Figure 7: Rear Facade, Lily Pond & Terraces, 1929. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

The top terrace was terminated to the south by a brick wall, with two staircases leading down to
a second terrace (fig. 10). This terrace was much narrower than the first, approximately 95 feet
long by 15 feet wide. Along this terrace was a secondary planting bed against the north wall,
approximately four feet wide and running the entire length of the terrace between the two stairs.
Again this terrace terminated to the south by a brick wall, and the two stairs continued to the
ground level, where they led out in paths flanking a large lily pond. At the center of the lower
terrace the fountain trickled water into a pool, with a tiled spillway leading the water into the lily
pond.

20

Figure 8: Plan of lily pond & terraces, 1929. Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

21

Figure 9: Top terrace and rear library façade. Note: No early photographs were found depicting this area, but this photograph,
from the 1980's, matches the original plans for the site. Felipe de Neve librarian’s scrapbook.

Figure 10: Top terrace and rear library façade, view from east. Felipe de Neve librarian’s scrapbook.

Figure 11: Lower terrace, steps, planting beds, and flagstones. Felipe de Neve librarian’s scrapbook.

22

Figure 12: Plan, Section, Elevation of Lily Pond Fountain & Rill, 1929. Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of
Recreation & Parks.

23

In an undated photograph (fig. 12) which appears to be the first photograph taken of this
rear façade (based on the size of the plantings and trees), a formal, Mediterranean style planting
of boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) parterres line the paths and young Italian cypress trees
(Cupressus sempervirens) flank the fountain and either side of the stairs abutting the fountain.

Figure 13: Rear Facade and Landscaping, 1929. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

The Department of Recreation and Parks still holds the design drawings for this
landscape in its archives.
49
Most of the drawings were completed by a draftsman with the
initials “PJC.” Unfortunately, little more information on this person has been discovered. Jay A.
Wilson was the “lead landscape architect” in the Department at the time. Wilson’s name and

49
The Los Angeles Department of Recreation & Parks has design drawings for the Lafayette Park site in their archives in the
downtown Los Angeles office.

24
position are listed on the title block on most of the drawings. Very little has been discovered on
his specific work in this project or future projects.

Figure 14: Title block, entry gates to library, Lafayette Park, 1929. Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

L. Glenn Hall was listed on the title block of these drawings as “Lands. Engr.”
(Landscape Engineer). L. Glenn Hall would become the first Forestry Chief for the city of Los
Angeles.
50
He was instrumental in the organized planting of street trees in the nascent city. Hall
would oversee a project in 1931 that planted 40,000 trees, including 25,000 palm trees.
51

Additionally, in a six-month period ending May 21, 1933, Hall wrote a series of twenty-four
articles in the Los Angeles Times describing and advocating for notable street trees.
52
Little is
known to what extent Hall was directly involved in the library garden design or construction, but
his oversight role is important to note.
While there is little information on any of the directly involved parties and their hand in
the design of the library landscaping, one drawing is quite interesting. The terraces met the lily
pond with a small fountain that filled a pool and then cascaded down a series of blue tiled steps

50
Nathan Masters, "A Brief History of Palm Trees in Southern California,” December 07, 2011, accessed July 30, 2012.
http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/history/la-as-subject/a-brief-history-of-palm-trees-in-southern-california.html.
51
Ibid.
52
L.G. Hall, "Times' Series on Trees Ends," Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1933.

25
into the lily pond. The drawing for this fountain shows an elaborately detailed fish head as the
water spout. These drawings were signed “C.C. McElvy” (fig. 15, 16).

Figure 15: Drawing of Fountain Feature, 1929. Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

C.C. McElvy, or Carl C. McElvy, would later be known for his work as principal architect at
UCLA. Born in Los Angeles, McElvy attended UCLA until Architecture was dropped from the
curriculum, and finished his studies at USC in 1923. According to his obituary in the Los
Angeles Times, McElvy worked for fourteen years in the city of Los Angeles, for the Department

26
of Parks and Recreation as well as the Planning Commission. McElvy became a registered
architect in 1939 and in 1944 was appointed principal architect at UCLA. From this post, which
he held for almost twenty years, he oversaw the design and construction of buildings on the
UCLA campus, including the Botany Building (Paul R. Williams), Sproul Hall (Welton Becket
& Associates), Dykstra Hall (Welton Becket & Associates), and the Faculty Center Building
(Austin, Field & Fry).
53

The obituary quotes a former associate: “Carl was the professional architect who
translated the ideals of the academic planners into the actual university buildings…And, in so
doing, he probably oversaw the design and construction of well over half of what now comprises
the UCLA campus.”
54
In 1963, McElvy was named State Architect by Governor Pat Brown, and
was reappointed in 1967 by Governor Ronald Reagan. Carl McElvy was twenty-five years old
when he drew the ornamental fountainhead for the library garden lily pond; it would be 10 more
years before he became a registered architect.

Figure 16: Title block, noting “Drawn by C.C. McElvy,” 1929. Courtesy of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

53
Jordan Sollitto, "State Architect Guided Building of UC Campuses," Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1980.;
"UCLA Lists Deadline for Bids on Hall,” Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1958.;
"Work Start Set for Big UCLA Unit," Los Angeles Times, March 30 1958.;
“New Campus Building Set for Faculty," Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1957.
54
Jordan Sollitto, "State Architect Guided Building of UC Campuses," Los Angeles Times, August 25, 1980.

27
Precedent

The rear façade of the Felipe de Neve Library designed by Whittlesey, with its large arched
windows, is typical of Italian Renaissance Revival works, especially libraries. Examples include
Cass Gilbert’s Battle Hall (1911), McKim, Mead, and White’s Boston Public Library (1887-98),
and Henri Labrouste’s Biblioteque Ste. Genevieve (1843-51) (fig. 17). In earlier library
buildings, the façade of arched windows is primarily on the second floor of the building. Author
Mark Gelernter describes the Boston Public Library:
Just as the Renaissance palaces placed the main reception rooms on the second
floor and marked them outside with larger windows, the Boston Public Library
lights main public rooms on the second floor with a grand arcade of windows.
55

Figure 17: Top to bottom: Cass Gilbert’s Battle Hall, 1911, Austin, TX; McKim, Mead, and White’s Boston Public Library
(1887-98); Henri Labrouste’s Biblioteque Ste. Genevieve (1843-51). Photographs by Ken Breisch.

55
Mark Gelernter, A History of American Architecture: Buildings in Their Cultural and Technological Context (Guildford (Great
Britain): Biddles Limited, 2001), 202-203.

28
In the Felipe de Neve library, though only one story tall, Whittlesey maintains this
convention with regard to light entering the building through the windows. The large arched
windows on the south side of the building light the reading room space, while the thin vertical
windows on the north façade provide a modicum of light to the book stacks, while preventing
sun damage to the books. In effect, Whittlesey horizontally compresses this library convention
into one floor.
At the Felipe de Neve Library, which is on a hillside, the grand arcade of windows sits on
the ground floor. Whittlesey’s and the Department of Recreation and Parks’ designs interweave
gracefully, as the large arched windows, coupled with the terraced landscaping, appear to an
observer standing any distance away, to be situated on the second floor (fig. 18).

Figure 18: Rear Facade, Lily Pond & Terraces, 1929. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

29

On the other hand, there are also examples of buildings, such as the form of many
orangeries (fig.19) where large arched windows are located at the ground level, as we see at the
de Neve Library. The orangeries would typically open out into a garden, often paved with
decomposed granite or cobblestone, and were lined with potted citrus trees (which could be
seasonally taken inside for protection). While these connections in influence, precedent and
intention cannot be confirmed, they are brought up for purposes of discussion.

Figure 19: Orangerie, Chateau de Versailles, 2009. Photograph by David Crochet.
It is unclear what involvement Whittlesey might have had with the landscaping around
the Felipe de Neve library, yet it is important to consider. The plans for the garden area,
discussed earlier in this chapter, were created by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and
Parks. These plans show a blank space stating “Future Library Building.” This leaves the
possibility open that there was a certain amount of interplay between the design of the library
building and the garden hardscape.
As part of the landscaping, the lily pond has historical antecedents extending back to
Persian gardens – and local precedent abounding in the work of Bertram Goodhue, among
others. The main pavilion at the Panama-California Exposition, for example, was framed by a
large reflecting pool dotted sporadically with water lilies. A symmetrical arrangement of

30
landscape elements emanated outward from both sides of the pond edge – with a turf grass strip,
walkway, and then shrubs and trees. Bertram Goodhue was hired to create the master plan for
the nascent California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and his design for the central building,
though never constructed, was also set against a large reflecting pond, and lined symmetrically
with rows of Italian cypress (Cupressus sempervirens). Whittlesey worked in the Goodhue firm
during this time, and produced some of the early renderings for this master plan, including a
beautiful bird’s eye view (fig. 20).
56

Figure 20: Austin Whittlesey, bird’s eye view drawing of Caltech master plan, 1932. Courtesy of the California Institute of
Technology Archives.

56
Romy Wyllie, Caltech's Architectural Heritage: From Spanish Tile to Modern Stone (Los Angeles: Balcony, 2000), 32.;
Romy Wyllie, email correspondence with the author, September, 2012.

31
Whittlesey’s direct involvement with the Caltech project is a strong indicator that he may
have been involved in the landscaping of the Felipe de Neve library, most notably the decision to
include a rectangular pond or pool, as the this feature was so prominent in the Caltech plan.
Finally, Goodhue’s design of the Los Angeles Central Library utilized terraced steps on it
west side, as well as a terraced water feature to the north. The Central library was completed
only three years before the Felipe de Neve Branch Library and likely influenced some of
Whittlesey’s thinking about the branch library and perhaps the designers from the Los Angeles
Department of Recreation & Parks. Whittlesey worked in Goodhue’s office at the time the
Central Library was being designed but it is unclear whether he was involved in the project,
since he was leading work on the Nebraska State Capitol at the time.
Drawings in Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue: Architect and Master of Many Arts (1928)
depict the Central Library in two different early design stages. The first “scheme” (not adopted)
shows the Central Library with large, arched windows. The draftsperson is uncredited, although
the drawings appear quite similar in style and technique to Whittlesey’s drawings of the
Nebraska State Capitol. Whether Whittlesey drew them himself is one issue to be investigated,
but if he did not, it is likely that he may have witnessed them while still at the firm.
Perhaps the loudest local precedent for the library and grounds was the William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library in West Adams, constructed between 1924 and 1926. West Adams, like
the Westlake neighborhood, where Lafayette Park resides, was one of the other wealthy enclaves
of the young city of Los Angeles. The Clark library was privately funded and then gifted to the
University of California. Robert D. Farquhar was the architect, one of the pre-eminent
Mediterranean-Revival architects of the time. The two-story brick building was designed in
1923 in the Italian Renaissance style and included extensive grounds. The grounds, designed by

32
Farquhar with notable landscape architect Mark Daniels, and implemented and installed by
Daniels, were laid out also in a formal Italian style and cost more than $400,000.
57
They
included a lawn on the eastside of the building to complement a sunken terrace on the west
side.
58
A Los Angeles Times headline proclaimed that the Clark grounds “… will be the finest
landscaping job in America.”
59

The Clark Library itself at the time was touted as “one of the most expensive buildings of
its kind in the world and cost $1,180,000.”
60
Both the Clark and Felipe de Neve libraries are
relatively small in size, with Clark 76 feet in length by 72 feet in width and the Felipe de Neve
Library approximately 150 feet by 50 feet.
The total bond money in 1925 devoted to the Los Angeles Branch libraries was
$500,000; the Clark Library cost more than double that amount for its single edifice. The
landscaping itself almost equaled the cost of the full branch library bond that was passed by
voters in 1925. It is safe to say that an architect such as Austin Whittlesey, and the Department of
Recreation and Parks, charged with designing a small library in this developing city of Los
Angeles, would likely have been aware of this opulent creation of a library and gardens in the
same city.
Perhaps what is most notable about this site in relation to the Felipe de Neve is the
similarity in landscaping. While both use the ubiquitous vocabularies of low boxwood parterres
and hedges, the layout of paths amongst these parterres is virtually identical. The sunken garden
in the Clark library is replaced at de Neve with a lily pool, both surrounded by boxwood lined

57
Sam Watters, Houses of Los Angeles: 1920-1935. Volume 2 (New York: Acanthus Press, 2007), 162.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid., 169. UCLA hired landscape architect Ralph Cornell to redesign some of the grounds in 1937.
60
“Clark Gardens Begun,” Los Angeles Time, March 18, 1928.

33
paths, and both terminating in a fountain at the base of the building plinth, with symmetrically
aligned steps on either side of the fountain.
These comparisons of such common forms may seem tenuous. However, this was a time
when historical/revival forms were very popular and highly sought after. Books such as Arthur
Byne and Mildred Stapley Byne’s “Spanish Gardens and Patios” were on many architect’s
bookshelves.
61
Whittlesey’s own book The Minor Ecclesiastical, Domestic, and Garden
Architecture of Southern Spain is noted as having been on the shelf of architect George
Washington Smith, during the time he designed the Casa Del Herrero estate in Montecito.
62

Additionally, renowned architect Julia Morgan modeled “House C” of William Randolph
Hearst’s San Simeon estate on a Cordoba, Spain residence that Austin Whittlesey had
photographed and published.
63
The details were shared, with each architect creating his/her own
unique forms.

61
Robert Winter, Architecture of Entertainment: LA in the Twenties (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 2006), 64.
62
Robert Sweeney and Marc Appleton, Casa Del Herrero: The Romance of Spanish Colonial (New York: Rizzoli, 2009), 105.
63
Victoria Kastner and Victoria Garagliano, Hearst's San Simeon: The Gardens and the Land (New York: Abrams, 2009),
89,100.

34
Chapter 2: Felipe de Neve Library Shakespeare Garden

The works of British poet and playwright William Shakespeare are replete with
references to flowers and plants, and literary experts have long combed his works trying to locate
all of them. Numerous books have been written identifying the allusions.
In 1932, the Lovers of Shakespeare Society, a Los Angeles literary club, dedicated a
“Shakespeare Garden” at the Felipe de Neve Library.
64
By that time, many other gardens of its
kind had been developed around the world, some dedicated to plants and flowers found in
Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets and others created to evoke what a garden might have been like
when Shakespeare lived.

Shakespeare’s allusions to flowers and plants

During the Victorian era (1837-1901), several books about Shakespeare’s garden
allusions were released. One was a decorative gift book (packaged something like a candy box)
called Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon (1852), created by Paul Gerrard.
65
In a marketing flyer,
Gerrard described his floral compositions having been suggested to him during a “summer
ramble on the banks of the Avon and other localities surrounding the home of our Great Poet.”
66

This gift-book typified the nostalgic productions coming into existence during this era, when
industrialization and the cultural, literary, and artistic upheavals that would follow it made many
want to return to ‘simpler times.’ Shakespeare’s works came to signify this sentimental reaction
to modern times.

64
“Shakespeare Garden to be Dedicated Saturday,” Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1932.
65
Gail Marshall, ed., Shakespeare in the 19
th
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 210.
66
Ibid.

35
A significant book about Shakespeare’s allusions was published by Rev. Henry
Nicholson Ellacombe in 1877 entitled The Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare. In his
second edition (1884), the author offered this opinion of the playwright’s descriptive gifts:

That he was a lover of plants I shall have no difficulty in showing; but I do not,
therefore, believe that he was a professed gardener, and I am quite sure he can in
no sense be claimed as a botanist, in the scientific sense of the term. His
knowledge of plants was simply the knowledge that every man may have who
goes through the world with his eyes open to the many beauties of Nature that
surround him, and who does not content himself with simply looking, and then
passing on, but tries to find out something of the inner meaning of the beauties he
sees, and to carry away with him some of the lessons which they were doubtless
meant to teach.
67

Another book called Shakespeare’s Garden about the ‘Avon Bard’s’ mention of flowers
and plants in his writings was published in 1903, written by J. Harvey Bloom.
68
In the more
recent book The Language of Flowers: a History, Beverly Seaton quotes author Richard Altick
as describing why Shakespeare was so admired during the Victorian era:
At one and the same time, he was an unapproachable genius and a perfectly
knowable human being, endowed with all the traits which the everyday Victorian
held so dear: earnestness, domesticity, modesty, wholesomeness, personal
simplicity.
69

Seaton posits that Shakespeare’s love of flowers impressed Victorian writers because they saw
this as a sign of his wholesomeness and simplicity.
This sense of Shakespeare’s garden allusions led to creation of a number of actual
gardens filled with plants and flowers that were mentioned in his sonnets, plays and poems.
Other ‘literary gardens’ also appeared during this time – commemorating Chaucer, Shelley, and
Keats – but it was the idea of the Shakespeare garden that truly took hold, and in the next 50
years would spring up in various city parks and private gardens around the globe.

67
Henry Nicholson Ellacombe, The Plant-Lore and Garden-Craft of Shakespeare (London: W. Satchell and Co., 1884), 2.
68
J. Harvey Bloom, Shakespeare’s Garden (London: Methuen & Co., 1903).
69
Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 26.

36
Shakespeare gardens in the U.S. (1901-1918)
The earliest documented Shakespeare Garden in the United States appears to have been
created at the estate of Lady Warwick, in Hillside, New York, near Albany. Alice Morse Earle’s
1901 book “Old Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth” describes the site in some detail, stating that
the garden had been created “ten years ago,” equating to 1891.
70

Figure 21: Shakespeare Border at Hillside, NY. Reproduced in Alice Morse Earle, Old Time Gardens Newly Set Forth (New
York, London: The Macmillan Company, 1901).

Alice Morse Earle’s description and reaction to the Hillside garden displays the comfort
that she and many others found in the form of the Shakespeare Garden:
Many garden makers forget that a flower bed is a group of living things –
perhaps of sentient beings – as well as a mass of beautiful color. Modern
gardens tend far too much toward the display of the unified effect of growing
plants, to a striving for universal brilliancy, rather than attention to and love for

70
Alice Morse Earle, Old Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth (New York, London: The Macmillan Company, 1901), 215-219.

37
separate flowers. There was refreshment of spirit as well as of the senses in the
old-time garden of flowers, such as these planted in this Shakespeare Border…

The scattering inflorescence and the tiny size of the blossoms give to this
Shakespeare Border an unusual aspect of demureness and delicacy, and the
plants seem to cling with affection and trust to their human protector; they look
simple and confiding, and seem close both to nature and to man. This homelike
and modest quality is shown, I think, even in the presentation in black and white
given on page 216…
71

The Christian Science Monitor published an ongoing series of articles on Shakespeare
Gardens, starting with a 1915 piece quoting a visitor to a small Shakespeare Garden in London.
That visitor, A. Speirs Mosher, referred to the London garden as “a little dream garden, unique in
its associations and charm, for it contains all the plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s works, and
which give rich color to his immortal verse.”
72
Other articles and letters to the editor at the time
noted that there was also a Shakespeare Garden in Highgate, an area of North London and
another in Birmingham, England.
73

The year 1916 marked the 300
th
anniversary of Shakespeare’s death – and also sparked a
resurgence of interest in both his plays and the horticultural references in them. That year, a
small garden in Central Park that had been planted several years prior was renamed the
Shakespeare Garden, and committees were formed to help sustain its future.
74
In 1916, several
women’s colleges opened Shakespeare Gardens, including one at Vassar College in
Poughkeepsie, New York, and another on the grounds of Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
75

71
Ibid., 216, 218.
72
“A Shakespeare Garden in London,” The Christian Science Monitor, March 22, 1915.
73
G.M. Gonsalves, “Shakespeare Gardens,” The Guardian and The Observer, August 1, 1915;
The Christian Science Monitor, Shakespeare's Garden, January 28, 1920;
See also: George Johnson, A Complete List of Shakespeare's Plants for Use in the Shakespeare Garden at Lightwoods Park,
Birmingham (Birmingham (England): Hudson and Son Printers, 1915).
74
“A Shakespeare Garden,” Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 1916.
75
Vassar College. Vassar Encyclopedia, http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/buildings-grounds/grounds/shakespeare-garden.html.;
“Shakespeare Gardens,” Christian Science Monitor, May 13, 1916.

38
Another was dedicated in Cleveland, Ohio.
76
Several of these gardens (e.g., Vassar’s and the
one in Cleveland) subsequently took on broader themes: Vassar’s became focused on English
garden plants from the 17
th
century and Cleveland’s became the “British Garden.”

Formal English gardens evoking the period when Shakespeare lived

In 1919, Shakespeare scholar and trustee of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Ernest Law
began restoring New Place at Stratford-on-Avon to evoke what it may have been like when
Shakespeare lived there.
77
He subsequently published a book entitled Shakespeare’s Garden,
Stratford-Upon-Avon, containing illustrations from photographs and reproductions of old
woodcuts. Law told newspapers that he hoped to collect 200,000 plants from around England
and that the King and Queen had sent some Elizabethan-type roses, which had been planted in
the formal “knotted” garden style (described below).
78

Lacking substantial evidence for the form of Shakespeare’s own garden, if one existed,
the creators of Shakespeare Gardens turned to formal English gardens of the Elizabethan period
for their precedents. Yet even these precedents were strongly diluted. Author Charles Quest-
Ritson, in The English Garden: A Social History, cites Sir Roy Strong as stating that many of the
formal Tudor and Renaissance gardens of England were uprooted and replaced by picturesque
landscapes in the English Landscape Garden tradition – such as those of Charles Bridgeman,
Capability Brown and Humphry Repton – leaving very little evidence of the form of these earlier
gardens.
79
Additionally, Quest-Ritson said:
The problem is complicated by the fashion that evolved in the middle of the
nineteenth century for the re-creation of the olde worlde Elizabethan gardens: the

76
Cleveland Shakespeare Club website, http://www.clevelandmemory.org/ebooks/tpap/pg39.html.
77
“A Shakespeare Garden,” Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 1921.
78
Ibid.
79
Charles Quest-Ritson, The English Garden: A Social History (Boston: David R. Godine, 2003) 14-15.

39
‘Elizabethan’ garden at Montacute was laid out in the 1840’s, the maze at Hatfield
(that most incorrect of ‘historic’ gardens) dates from 1841, while most of the
ancient yews known as ‘the Sermon on the Mount’ at Packwood were planted
after 1850.

It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that the customary solution to our ignorance
about sixteenth-century gardening is to … illustrate them with photographs of
modern Tudor-style gardens. These are usually reconstructions made either at the
time of the Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth century … when the
passion for Tudor Revival gardens based on patterns and plans in obscure French
herbals seems to have gripped every well-heeled Englishwoman possessed of a
sixteenth- or seventeenth-century manor house.
80

While extensive and detailed information is limited, all accounts of these “Elizabethan”
or “Tudor” gardens align with the following details. The gardens were enclosed by walls, trees,
or large hedges on all four sides. The layout of paths and planting beds was characterized by
axial, four-square arrangements, the squares being bordered by clipped boxwood, or fragrant
herbs clipped to make a border. Beyond this border would be planted colorful perennials. These
forms were eventually elaborated into “knotted gardens” where the edging would be formed into
“knots” – geometric shapes that intertwined with each other and formed large compositions. In
The English Garden (1937), Ralph Dutton described the concept:
Quite early in the fifteenth century the “knotted bed” began to take the place of
the simple rectangle of previous years. The knot would be designed in a formal
pattern, the geometrical lines being carried out in some dwarf shrub or herb which
was kept closely clipped … The spaces between the box-hedges were either
planted with flowers … or strewn with colored earths, sand or even ashes to give
variety and tone. It was a style of gardening which was to remain in favour for
two centuries.
81

In The English Garden: a Social History, Charles Quest-Ritson states:
Knot gardens were the most common feature of sixteenth-century gardens. They
were an English phenomenon, little known in France or Italy … Knots remained
popular right until the time of James I, when they tended to be replaced by the

80
Ibid.
81
Ralph Dutton, The English Garden (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1937), 32-33.

40
more complicated designs in box which are known for their French name,
parterres de broderie.
82

Figure 22: Image of Elizabethan Knot Garden, 1577. Reproduced in Ernest Law, Shakespeare’s Garden, Stratford-upon-Avon
(London, Selwyn & Blount. 1922)

Figure 23: Image of New Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 1920, as reconstructed by Ernest Law. Reproduced in Ernest Law,
Shakespeare’s Garden, Stratford-upon-Avon (London, Selwyn & Blount. 1922)

82
Charles Quest-Ritson, The English Garden: a Social History, 22-23.

41
Shakespeare Gardens in the United States (1919-)
As noted above, in the decade following Ernest Law’s ‘restoration’ of New Place at
Stratford-Upon-Avon, a number of Shakespeare Gardens sprung up in the United States, with a
few designed by notable landscape architects. In 1920, Northwestern University in Illinois
planted a Shakespeare Garden. Jens Jensen, considered one of the foremost landscape architects
in American history, was hired to create the plan for the space. The design is composed of an
area enclosed by large trees and shrubs, with clipped hedge borders of Hawthorne (Crataegus
monogyna) and perennial plantings at the center. A sundial stands at one end and a bust of
Shakespeare on the other. According to author Robert M. Grese, Jensen realized in his design
that many of the plants mentioned by Shakespeare would not survive the Chicago climate.
Instead he fashioned the garden as one full of plants common to English gardens in the
Elizabethan era.
83

Figure 24: Jens Jensens’ plan for Shakespeare Garden at Northwestern University. Reproduced in Robert E. Grese, Jens Jensen:
Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 110-111.

83
Robert E. Grese, Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 110-
111.

42

It was at this time that another American Shakespeare Garden, that of Central Park in
New York, was becoming extremely popular. A 1923 article in the Christian Science Monitor
contains an interview with the gardener at the Central Park Shakespeare Garden, who reported
that 800 school children a day were visiting the site. The reporter stated that:

It is a very democratic garden. There are masses of spider lilies as wild and
rambling as if they grew beside a country roadside. There are rare Japanese lilies
and tiger lilies gaudy and bold. A larkspur sways beside yellow pansies … An
Oriental poppy flames over a border of mignonette, hob-nobbing with the Scotch
thistle. But roses are given the most space… spreading a blossomy mangle across
the grey rocks. The whole garden is fragrant with them.
84

A number of other Shakespeare Gardens followed: the Brooklyn Botanical Garden
opened a Shakespeare Garden in 1925; the town of Wessington Springs, South Dakota, in 1927;
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, in 1928; and Portland, Oregon in 1931.
85
In 1932 Esther
Singleton published the second edition of her book The Shakespeare Garden, an extensive
volume detailing the history and form of Shakespeare Gardens and the symbolic meanings of the
flowers and herbs to be used in such gardens.
86
The Felipe de Neve Branch Library, the subject
of this thesis, opened its own Shakespeare Garden that very year.
A later American example occurred 25 years after the Felipe de Neve Shakespeare
Garden was dedicated, in 1959, when landscape architect Ralph Cornell designed a Shakespeare
Garden at the Huntington Library & Gardens in San Marino, California. Cornell was a premiere
figure in California landscape history and a friend and mentor of Edward Huntsman-Trout, who
also designed a subsequent garden at the Felipe de Neve Branch Library.

84
“Shakespeare's Garden in New York,” Christian Science Monitor, June 29, 1923.
85
“Create Shakespeare Garden,” Washington Post, May 10, 1931.
86
Esther Singleton, The Shakespeare Garden (New York: Century, 1922).

43
Dedication of the Felipe de Neve Library Shakespeare Garden, 1932

Newspaper articles in the Los Angeles Times reported on the dedication of the
Shakespeare Garden that took place at the Felipe de Neve Branch Library on April 23, 1932.
According to the Times, the garden had been four years in the making and close to 500 people
were present at the dedication ceremony.
87
The articles credited a local theatre club named the
Lovers of Shakespeare Society with the idea, creation and implementation of the Garden.
According to archival photos and a map found in the Felipe de Neve librarian scrapbook (fig.
25), the Shakespeare Garden seems to have been located on the east and west sides of the lily
pond, in the form of perennials and shrubs planted behind boxwood parterres bordering the
flanking paths.
88

No other records depicting the garden’s exact location have yet been found, save a Los
Angeles Times news story describing part of the garden located on the lower terrace in the rear of
the Library. The article states that “Below the bronze tablets were growing and blooming many
flowers loved and mentioned by the great poet, including Ophelia’s Rosemary.”
89
We note that
a circular bronze plaque with a bust of Shakespeare and two rectangular bronze plaques inscribed
with quotes were affixed to the brick wall above the planting bed on the second terrace above the
lily pond and gardens (fig. 27).
90

87
“Shakespeare Garden to be Dedicated Saturday,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1932.;
“Garden of Shakespeare Dedicated to City’s Use,” Los Angeles Times. April 24, 1932.
88
One document was found that might indicate that the Shakespeare Garden extended over a larger area. A blurry photograph of
a map of Lafayette Park was discovered in the Felipe De Neve librarian’s scrapbook that shows a large formal garden extending
some distance beyond the lily pond to the south. This is the only image of such a garden, in both Lafayette Park archives at the
Department of Recreation and Parks and the Felipe De Neve archives. Further investigation is needed. See Appendix for image.
Note: the scrapbook’s pages are not numbered.
89
“Garden of Shakespeare Dedicated to City’s Use,” Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1932.
90
Ibid.;
A search of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner archives revealed only one short story with no additional information beyond that
of the Los Angeles Times.

44

Figure 25: Map of Location of Shakespeare Gardens, Felipe de Neve librarian scrapbook box.

Figure 26: Undated photograph with lily pond and Shakespeare Garden parterre on right, Felipe de Neve librarian
scrapbook box.

45

Figure 27: Dedication of Shakespeare Garden, showing terrace planter bed and bronze plaques,
Los Angeles Times, “Garden of Shakespeare Dedicated to City’s Use,” 1932.

The plaques depicting Shakespeare and his words at Library had been donated by Henry
L. Chapin, described in the Los Angeles Times as a “patron of the arts.”
91
Chapin had bought the
bronze bust of Shakespeare in Paris forty years earlier.
92
The two bronze tablets of quotes were
produced in Belgium. Very little is known of Chapin’s life or work except that he had also
created a marble sculpture of two girls for Westlake Park (now Macarthur Park).
93
According to
Edan Hughes “Artists in California, 1786-1940,” Chapin was a retired jeweler who moved to Los

91
“Shakespeare Garden to be Dedicated Saturday,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1932.
92
Ibid.
93
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940, 3
rd
edition (Sacramento, CA: Crocker Art Museum, 2002).

46
Angeles in 1913. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1851, and passed away in Los
Angeles in 1944.
94

Members of the Lovers of Shakespeare Society present at the garden’s dedication

Details about key members of the Lovers of Shakespeare Society present at the
dedication provide insights into the type of residents living in Los Angeles at the time and what
might have brought them to the City.
Los Angeles Times articles describing the dedication of the Felipe de Neve Shakespeare
Garden state that David H. Harris (D.H. Harris), President of the Society, had designed the
plantings, but upon his death, the Lovers of Shakespeare Society finished and executed his
plan.
95
According to a short obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Harris had been an “educator
and businessman.”
96
Further research shows he was originally from New England, and had lived
for a time in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as in Jacksonville, Illinois.
97
Before coming to Los
Angeles, Harris was involved with a society related to Transcendentalism as well as another that
studied and wrote about Hegelian philosophy, known as the “St. Louis Movement.” He had also
been a member of two literary societies, including a Shakespeare Club and an Aristotle Club.
98

While in Illinois, D.H. Harris served as Superintendent of Public Schools in Jacksonville. D.H.
Harris moved to Los Angeles in 1926 with his wife, and lived there six years until his death in
1932.
99

94
Ibid.
95
“Shakespeare Garden to be Dedicated Saturday,” Los Angeles Times, 1932.
96
“Last Rites for David H. Harris Set Tomorrow,” Los Angeles Times, January 6,1932.
97
David H. Harris, “A Brief Report of the Meeting Commemorative of the Early Saint Louis Movement in Philosophy,
Psychology, Literature, Art and Education,” St. Louis, 1922.
98
James Good, “‘A World-Historical Idea:’ The St. Louis Hegelians and the Civil War,” Journal of American Studies, 34,
(2000): 447-464; David H. Harris, “A Brief Report,” 1922.
99
“Last Rites for David H. Harris Set Tomorrow,” Los Angeles Times, January 6,1932.

47
Upon Harris’ death, Clyde F. Murphy took over as president of the Lovers of
Shakespeare Society. Murphy was present at the dedication ceremony and formally presented
the garden to then Mayor of Los Angeles, John C. Porter.
100
Clyde F. Murphy was born in Great
Falls, Montana in 1899. After serving in World War I in the hospital corps, and subsequently
receiving a law degree, he married and moved to Los Angeles in 1924.
101
Murphy practiced
trial law in Los Angeles until 1939, when he retired to pursue writing. His one novel, “The
Glittering Hill,” a fictional account of Irish copper miners in Butte, Montana, was published by
E.P. Dutton & Company in 1944 and won the first Lewis & Clark Northwest Award.
102

Figure 28: Advertisement for Murphy’s “The Glittering Hill.” Miami Daily News, 1945.

Murphy seems to have adapted well to southern California’s world of celebrity. Twenty
years after moving to Los Angeles, he sold the movie rights for his book to producer Sam Jaffe

100
“Garden of Shakespeare Dedicated to City’s Use,” Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1932.
101
“Guide to the Clyde Francis Murphy Papers,1897-1946,” The Northwest Digital Archives.
http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/findaid/ark:/80444/xv79347.
102
Brady Harrison, All Our Stories Are Here: Critical Perspectives on Montana Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2009), 43.

48
and director Lloyd Bacon for $75,000. The director cast Humphrey Bogart and Hedy Lamarr for
parts in the film, but both declined. The movie never went into production. Murphy died in
1946.
103

Another Society member present for the Garden dedication was Dr. Francis D. Blakeslee,
who served as Master of Ceremonies.
104
Blakeslee was an educator and clergymen originally
from Vestal, New York. He had worked as a clerk in the Quartermaster General’s office
between 1864-65, during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. After this, he went on to become
a pastor, and later would serve as president for several higher education institutions and
seminaries – including the East Greenwich Academy, Iowa Wesleyan University, and Cazenovia
Seminary in New York.
105
In Los Angeles, Blakeslee and his wife were a strong presence in
society circles, with the pastor serving as vice-president of the Lovers of Shakespeare Society,
and his wife as president of the Browning Society, a group of prominent Los Angeles women
celebrating the work of Robert Browning by sponsoring poetry events at the Los Angeles Public
Library and publishing a book on the poet.
106

The Lovers of Shakespeare Society, the Browning Society, and other civic and literary
organizations served to connect like-minded people who had moved to a new city without the
titles and codes of their old social circles. In turn, these people were forced to create a new
reality for themselves. This was expressed through the creation of clubs, which both served to

103
“Guide to the Clyde Francis Murphy Papers,1897-1946,” The Northwest Digital Archives.
Stephen Michael Shearer, Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010;
Brady Harrison, “All Our Stories Are Here.”
104
“Shakespeare Garden to be Dedicated Saturday,” Los Angeles Times, 1932.
105
Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography (Chicago, Ill. American Publishers'
Association, 1909-14. v.4).
Catalogue of the East Greenwich Academy, 1893. Providence, RI: Snow & Farnham, printers,1893.
106
Los Angeles Times, “Garden of Shakespeare Dedicated to City’s Use.”;
Los Angeles Times, “Poetry Week Sponsored by Local Society,” May 1, 1932, B10.;
For books published by the Los Angeles Browning Society, see “Robert Browning: Revue de deux mondes, August 15, 1851” by
Joseph Antoine Milsand, translated by Mary B. Stowell (Blakeslee), 1925.

49
connect people through shared passions for literature and the arts, but also defined social class
systems in the young city.

The Shakespeare Garden at the library through 1960s

In a photograph from 1937 (fig. 29), and in undated photographs appearing to be from the
same period, the planting palette around the fountain and terraces seems to include many sub-
tropical and tropical plants. Plants such as the Giant Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai), banana
trees (Musa acuminata) and others are shown overflowing from the planting beds, almost
obscuring the fountain. Creeping fig (Ficus repens) covers the terrace wall and steps.

Figure 29: Photograph of lily pond and tropical plantings, 1937. Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

50
By the time of the 1937 photograph, the urn-shaped fountain at the head of the lily pond had
been removed, and a white sculpture of a nude took its place. This sculpture, designed by Thyra
Boldsen, was cited in the SOS (Save Outdoor Sculptures!) files as having been installed in 1941,
though the photograph here shows some discrepancy in this date.
107
Boldsen was a renowned
Danish sculptor who donated figurative sculptures to the Exposition Park Rose Garden in 1936,
Griffith Park in 1937, and Banning Park in Wilmington in 1938.
108

Author Victoria Padilla, in her 1961 book, Southern California Gardens, cites the
Shakespeare Garden as a notable landscape destination in Los Angeles.
109
It appears to have
existed until at least 1969, when the bronze plaques were stolen from the terrace.
110
Two years
later, in 1971, a column by Jack Smith in the Los Angeles Times described the author’s dismay at
discovering that the Shakespeare Garden no longer existed and that the plaques were missing.
111

This is the last record found of the Shakespeare Garden.

107
“Finding Aid: Save Outdoor Sculptures (SOS),” LibGuides at University of Southern California,
http://libguides.usc.edu/content.php?pid=38994.
108
“Marble Statues at Exposition Park Rites,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1936;
“Art Board Approves Designs for $7,824,816 in Buildings,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1938.
109
Victoria Padilla, California Gardens: an Illustrated History, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 333.
110
“Plaques Stolen,” Westlake Post, July 31, 1969.
111
Smith, Jack. “Thinking Man’s Park Bench.” Los Angeles Times, Oct 24, 1971.

51
Chapter 3. Felipe de Neve Library Fragrant Garden for the Blind

In 1951, the Bel-Air Garden Club petitioned the City of Los Angeles’ Parks and
Recreation Department to allow the club to build a scent garden for the blind adjacent to the
Shakespeare Garden at the Felipe de Neve Library in Lafayette Park. The club, with members
from the wealthy neighborhood of the same name on the west side of Los Angeles, was
successful in its pursuit and subsequently hired notable landscape architect Edward Huntsman-
Trout to design the space. Approximately 1,000 square feet in size, the garden officially opened
in 1954, with several celebrations and dedications for sections of the garden between 1951-1957.

Precedent I – Early Gardens for the Blind

Gardens specifically designed for the blind seem to have first appeared in the early
twentieth century. Perhaps one of the first gardens for the blind was built in 1914 on the roof of
a new building in New York City, the Bank of the United States.
112
This roof garden did not
claim to be fragrant, but it was specifically dedicated to the blind. The address has been given as
81-87 Delancey Street, in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, near today’s
Tenement Museum.
113
The garden was dedicated by the William J. Gaynor Memorial Fund for
the Blind. According to a New York Times article on the dedication:
As a memorial to the late Mayor Gaynor there will be a roof garden for the use of
the blind of the east side. The roof garden will be equipped fully. In connection
with it will be a large room to be used as a library. Concerts will be given once a
week for the blind by the officers of the bank.
114

At the dedication, the president of the new bank stated:

112
“Garden for Blind in Gaynor’s Memory,” New York Times, January 19, 1914.
113
Other sources state the address for this bank as 77 Delancey Street. The Bank of the United States is perhaps most noted as
the first bank in the United States to have customers rapidly withdraw their money at the start of the Great Depression.
114
“Garden for Blind in Gaynor’s Memory,” New York Times, January 19, 1914.

52
Among the blind are some who are self-supporting and many are in institutions,
but they never have had a general meeting place for recreation and social and
intellectual improvement. To provide for this want we have set aside part of the
building for the Gaynor Memorial.
115

Three years after the roof garden’s dedication, the United States entered World War I,
and many soldiers returned home with injuries that left them blind. In 1934, a vegetable garden
for “sightless veterans” opened in Eltham, UK, managed by a man who lost his sight in World
War I.
116

The plight of returning blind soldiers also sparked the particular interest of Hugh
Findlay (1879-1950), military veteran and former Professor of Landscape Architecture at
Columbia University, New York. During World War I, one of Findlay’s positions was to
organize and direct 29 “camp farms” at which conscientious objectors and prisoners from
Germany were interned and created their own vegetable gardens. Later, he oversaw several
thousand “war gardens,” also called “victory gardens.”
117
He was a popular speaker on
gardening topics and in advance of one talk in Virginia, a local paper described Findlay as “one
of America’s foremost horticulturalists” who could give talks that “made his listeners feel the
romance and drama of the soil.”
118
Findlay retired from Columbia in 1945 after 26 years on the
faculty, during which time he also worked on creating a series of tools that blind gardeners could
use to be self-sufficient when gardening. A 1946 article in Science News Letter described the
tools:
Spades with bars to keep them from biting too deeply into the soil, hoes with clips
so that wire can be used as a guide in keeping rows straight, and weeders with

115
Ibid.
116
“Garden Planned for Blind,” The Hartford Courant, August 12, 1934.
117
“Findlay retires as director of arboretum,” Herald Statement (Yonkers, NY), July 6, 1945,
http://fultonhistory.com/newspaper2010/YonkersNYHeraldStatesman/YonkersNYHeraldStatesman1945Grayscale/YonkersNYH
eraldStatesman1945Grayscale-2182.pdf.
118
“Society: Plan Lecture Series for Garden Lovers,” The Freelance Star News, September 26, 1935.

53
side extensions so they will not get too close to the crop – this strange assortment
of tools enables blind men and women to have gardens of their own.
119

According to an article in the Pittsburgh Press, Findlay spent twenty-seven years
attempting to convince tool manufacturers to produce the implements for blind gardeners, but
was unsuccessful. He eventually decided to pay to have the tools manufactured himself, and by
the end of World War II, they were being used all over the country, as well as in several other
countries.
120
Notably, the tools were also said to be used in convalescent homes, naval hospitals
and military camps by blind patients.
121

In 1947, Mrs. John J. Greene, President of the Texas Garden Clubs, Inc. in Austin, TX,
created a new garden club and named it after the professor/inventor, calling it “The Hugh
Findlay Garden Club.” In an article in the Montreal Gazette in 1947, Mrs. Green explained her
reasons behind creating a garden for the blind:

We started garden therapy during the war in camps, hospitals and convalescent
homes…and we sent a lot of our plants to Europe. When the war stopped, we still
wanted to help the disabled. Then we thought of the blind.
122

In 1946 Hugh Findlay published a book “Gardening for Health and Happiness,” dedicated to the
benefits of gardening for the blind, which is now out of print.
123

Precedent II - Fragrant Gardens for the Blind

The first fragrant (or scent) garden for the blind – “to be smelled, not seen” – appears to
be one built in 1939 in Belmont Park, Exeter, UK.
124
A New York Times article in 1954
specifically on gardens for the visually impaired described the Belmont Park garden as “the first

119
“Garden Tools to Aid Blind,” The Science News-Letter, Vol. 50, No. 6 (Aug. 10, 1946), 86.
120
“Unique Garden Implements Godsend to Blind Veterans,” Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), April 21, 1945.
121
Ibid.
122
Teddy Dosne, “Blind Gardeners Are Assisted by Especially Designed Tools,” The Montreal Gazette, October 16, 1947.
123
Full text of book: http://www.worldcat.org/title/gardening-for-health-and-happiness/oclc/064752657.
124
Ruth Aldo Ross, “Fragrance the aim: Gardens to be smelled, not seen, have been installed in several cities,” New York Times,
July 18, 1954.

54
public garden for the blind.”
125
The Exeter website describes the Belmont Park Garden as
“England’s first garden intended especially for the blind.”
126
Restored in 2007, it is now called
the Sensory Garden. The Exeter website describes the current garden this way:

Landscaping in the new Belmont Sensory Garden follows three main themes of
stimulating scent, colour, and texture with variations of bark and stem
types. Daphne, Chamomile, Mint and Lilacs offer tantalizing scents to visitors.
Floral Sweetbox or Sarcococca confusa is in the garden to compliment the herbal
element. While Bergenias, Penstemons, a mixture of ferns and other herbaceous
plants provide a variety of sights and smells throughout the year. Plants with
engaging textures or prominent seed heads have also been woven into the mix. As
the site develops, the plants and herbs are kept at eye level and arms reach in
order to enhance the tactile and visual experience.
127

Ten years after the Belmont garden for the blind opened, Helen Keller wrote a letter to
the John J. Tyler Arboretum outside Philadelphia praising the staff for work that had begun in
constructing a Garden for the Blind at the Arboretum. She stated:

Heartily I hope that this noble example may spur cities where the blind live
throughout the country to plant special garden nooks for the pleasure and
instruction in the wonders of nature.
128

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was a prominent figure in the media the first half of the twentieth
century, whose influence on the shifting attitudes and interest in the blind is not trivial. Keller
was both blind and deaf yet managed to graduate from Radcliffe College and go on to become an
author and well-known public figure. Her life inspired books and movies.
The Arboretum’s Garden for the Blind opened in 1951, the same year as the Felipe de
Neve Fragrant Garden for the Blind began to be constructed (The latter garden is described in
detail later in this chapter). The Philadelphia garden was designed as two terraces, facing south

125
Ibid.
126
Belmont Sensory Garden, Belmont Park. Exeter City Council Website.; The park itself had opened in 1886 as a recreation
area for the “children of St. Sidwell’s,” a village east of Exeter.
127
Belmont Sensory Garden, Belmont Park. Exeter City Council Website.
128
“The Fragrant Garden at the John J. Tyler Arboretum.” Herb Society of America Website.

55
for maximum sun exposure, one running 65 feet and the other 100 feet in length.
129
The Herb
Society of America website describes the garden’s more recent renovation:

The most recent redesigning of the garden was in 1981, and again, the emphasis
was on using only fragrant herbs. Over 100 varieties of herbs are used in the
garden, guaranteeing a continuing blooming from early May with the bulbs,
through June and July with lavenders, alliums, dianthus, heliotrope, monarda,
nigella, and basils, on into the fall with scented geraniums, oregano, salvias,
mints, tagetes, to mention a few.
130

A New York Times article of 1954 featured the attributes of the Los Angeles Felipe de
Neve fragrant garden, including a large photograph of it, and also stated that there were about
nine other fragrant gardens for the blind in the U.S. at that time (fig.31).
131
These included:

• The Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s Fragrant Garden, under construction in 1954 and
opened in 1955, designed by the renowned landscape architect Alice R. Ireys.
132
Ireys’
obituary states that this garden “became a prototype internationally for gardens used by
people with disabilities.”
133

134

• Fort Worth, TX “Lighthouse” at the Botanic Garden
• Dallas, TX sponsored by a local garden club
• Alamagordo, NM, located at the School for the Visually Handicapped
• Camp Allen, Bedford, NH, where there is a special herb garden
• St. Louis, MO, maintained by the Flower Arrangers Circle of St. Louis and by local
Brownie Troops
• Vinton, IA, at the School for the Blind
• Leeper Park, South Bend, IN
• Cleveland, OH

A number of scent gardens for the blind were designed and built during the 10 years following
the New York Times article. These include, among others:
• Central Park, NY in 1955

129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.
131
Ruth Aldo Ross, “Fragrance the aim. Gardens to be smelled, not seen, have been installed in several cities,” New York Times,
July 18, 1954.
132
Paula Dietz, “Alice Ireys, 89, Dies; Designed Elegant Landscapes Bridging Traditions,” New York Times, December 17, 2000.
133
Ibid.
134
We note that in that same year, a documentary film on the life of Helen Keller won the Academy Award for Best
Documentary, again perhaps part of the apparent interest at the time in focusing attention on the blind. “Helen Keller: Her Story,”
a documentary film also known as “The Unconquered.”

56
• Chicago, IL in 1957
• Dallas, TX in 1958
• Raleigh, NC, 1960
• Savannah, GA, 1963.

The City of Los Angeles and its Fragrant Garden for the Blind

Why was Los Angeles one of the first U.S. cities to create a fragrant garden specifically
for the blind?
Starting in the 1930s, the City of Los Angeles seemed to be on the forefront of advocacy
for the blind, through the work of a blind resident named J. Robert Atkinson, founder of the
Braille Institute. It is likely that his life’s work, described below, was influential in Los Angeles
residents’ awareness of, and sensitivity to, the presence of blind persons among them. In
addition, it was a period of time in which new policies were going into effect in California and in
Los Angeles to end discrimination against blind persons. For example, a law was passed to
allow blind persons to become teachers.
135
Also, in 1950, the City of Los Angeles passed a bond
measure for construction of a school for visually impaired students (the Frances Blend School,
which still exists today in Hollywood).
136

Mr. Atkinson appeared to be a well-known personality in Los Angeles in the early 1900s,
often seen riding his “Seeing-Eye-Horse” Sandy around the city. He became an important
advocate for the blind, through his efforts to provide Braille texts for the blind citizens of Los
Angeles and beyond.
137
Atkinson was born in Missouri and later became a “Montana cowboy,”
who, in 1912, by varying accounts, had some sort of “tussle” with a gun and became blind from

135
Peggy Pinder, “The Blind Teacher and Liability,” The Braille Monitor, July, 1985.
136
“About Frances Blend School,” Frances Blend School website.
137
Cecilia Rasmussen. “L.A. Then and Now: Man brought the world to fingertips of the blind,” Los Angeles Times, March 12,
2006.

57
the resulting gunshot wound.
138
He found himself “without direction” and decided to learn
Braille.
139
Surprised to find so few books written in the language, he founded the Braille Press
in 1919, and he subsequently transcribed hundreds of books into Braille, operating out of his
own garage. Eventually, he moved the Braille operation to North Vermont Avenue in Los
Angeles, where it became the campus for the Braille Institute of America, which he also founded
in 1933.
140
(The Braille Institute is still located on North Vermont Avenue, although in a newer
building). Showing the extent of his fame and media presence, when Atkinson’s beloved horse
Sandy died in 1950, the event triggered a news story in the Baltimore Sun.
141

The Bel-Air Garden Club and the Fragrant Garden for the Blind

Although there was clearly advocacy for the blind in Los Angeles during this period,
there appears to be one specific impetus behind the Bel-Air Garden Club’s decision to develop
the library’s garden for the blind. According to a 1950 account in the Los Angeles Times, one of
the club’s leaders, Mrs. Oscar Lawler, read about the Belmont Park garden for the blind in
Exeter, England, and “the pleasure it had given blind people there.” The newspaper account
reported that the Exeter garden prompted Mrs. Lawler to suggest that the Bel-Air Garden Club
consider designing a similar garden.
142
Another club member, Mrs. Robert Carson,
communicated with D.E. Manning who designed the Exeter garden, and he advised the club on
the ideal height of plants, height of railings, and which plants had the best textures and scents.
143

138
Ibid.
139
“History of the Braille Institute of America.” Braille Institute website.
140
Cecilia Rasmussen. “L.A. Then and Now: Man brought the world to fingertips of the blind,” Los Angeles Times, March 12,
2006.
141
“Blind Man Loses His Famed Horse,” The Sun, Aug 28, 1950.
142
Jessie Jean Marsh, “Group’s garden for blind dream about to come true,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1950.
143
Ibid.

58
The Braille Institute cooperated with the Bel-Air Garden Club on choosing a location for
the garden. At the time, classes for the blind were held at the First Congregational Church,
directly across Sixth Street to the north from the Felipe de Neve Library and Lafayette Park.
Because of the proximity of classes for the blind, in a city which at that time had about 8000
blind residents, a decision was made to site the garden at nearby Lafayette Park so that it would
be most useful to this population.
144
The City’s Parks and Recreation Department was also
invited in selecting the site.
145

Chronology of events in dedicating the Fragrant Garden for the Blind

Several events and ceremonies were held to honor work being done on the Garden.
These included: 1) dedication of one-half of the garden in 1951; 2) naming ceremony for the
garden in 1951, with a ceremony at the nearby First Congregational Church; 3) dedication in
1955 to honor the Braille students; and 4) dedication of Blossom Lane in 1957 in honor of Mrs.
Oscar Lawler, who died in 1954 (Mrs. Lawler’s contributions are described at the end of this
chapter).
146

The Garden for the Blind’s official dedication was in 1955, and many members of the
Bel-Air Garden club were present, along with members of the City of Los Angeles Department
of Recreation and Parks, and members of the Braille Institute. J. Robert Atkinson, still managing
director of the Braille Institute,

also attended the dedication as a special guest.
147
The Braille

144
“Namers of garden for blind receive awards,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1951.
145
Jessie Jean Marsh, “Group’s garden for blind dream about to come true,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1950.
146
“Bel-Air Garden Club will Dedicate Project,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1951.;
“Namers of garden for blind receive awards,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1951.;
“Braille Students to Be Honored at Garden Fete,” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1955.
147
Jesse Jean Marsh, "New 'Eyes' to Enhance Garden for the Blind," Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1957.

59
Institute was also involved in the naming of the garden, conducting a contest and selecting two
winners for their “identical entries” of “Fragrant Garden for the Blind.”
148

The Bel-Air Garden Club had been founded in 1931 and was comprised of wealthy
women living on the Westside of Los Angeles. Many prominent members were present at the
dedication of the Fragrant Garden, including Mrs. Oscar Lawler and Mrs. Manfred Meyberg.
Mrs. Lawler inspired the idea of the garden, and Mrs. Manfred Meyberg headed the committee
dedicated to the garden’s creation. The background of these women provides some insight into
life in Los Angeles in the first half of the 20
th
century.

Mrs. Oscar Lawler

The tradition at that time was to identify women simply by “Mrs.” followed by their
husbands’ names, leaving the women rather anonymous and unrecognized in their own right.
Mrs. Oscar Lawler (Hilda), who is credited with the “idea” for the garden, seems to have broken
away from the confined status of simply “Mrs.” She was quite visible in the press of the time for
her own personal and adventurous spirit.
Hilda Lawler was a Los Angeles native, born in the fledgling city in 1878. She had a
socially active life with her husband, Oscar Lawler, a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles who
“served as the assistant attorney general during the Taft administration.”
149
Mrs. Lawler
accompanied him to the Nation’s capital, where her “first season in Washington [1910] was a
social triumph.” She is said to have developed close ties with members of the Taft Cabinet, “by

148
“Namers of garden for blind receive awards,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1951.
149
Susanna Bryant Dakin, “Mrs. Oscar Lawler,” California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (September, 1954), 274-
275.

60
virtue of her husband’s position, and her own frank and fascinating personality, not to mention
good looks.”
150

She became a friend of Hedda Hopper, an actress and society columnist, who defined a
generation of society circle gossip, and who would pave the way for future generations of tabloid
celebrity gossip columnists. Hopper described Lawler as having been born into a “pioneer
family” and living a dramatic life. According to Hilda’s son Charles Lawler, who would later
teach sculpture at Pomona College, his mother had been the first white woman to travel from
Capetown to Cairo in Africa. Hilda Lawler is described as having “entered wholeheartedly into
the adventure, as she did into the adventure of life.”
151

Hilda Lawler was also noted for her civic engagement. As columnist Hopper recalled, at
the time of Mrs. Lawler’s death:

Her family came first. Yet she always found time to do things for her community.
She was one of the most civic-minded women I’ve ever known…A member of
the board of Children’s Hospital and the Philharmonic, she worked for the
Community Chest, the Red Cross, was an associate member of the Women’s
Group of Caltech and UCLA. She sponsored the Western Religious Conference
and was a member of the Bel-Air Garden Club and a sponsor of our symphony
orchestra.
152

Besides her membership in the Bel-Air Garden Club, Lawler was clearly passionate
about gardening and horticulture, telling Hedda Hopper that the four pine trees that lined her
garden were her “children” and her “string of pearls.”
153

150
Louise George, “Special Correspondence of the Times. Los Angeles life in the Washington social swim,” Los Angeles Times,
April 10, 1910.
151
Susanna Bryant Dakin, “Mrs. Oscar Lawler,” California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (September, 1954), 274-
275.
152
Hedda Hopper, “Great Deeds Left by Hilda Lawler.” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1954.
153
Ibid.

61
Mrs. Manfred Meyberg

Mrs. Manfred Meyberg chaired the committee that brought the project from concept into
form. This committee hired noted landscape architect Edward Huntsman-Trout to design the
garden. The committee also gathered one-third of the 3,000 plants needed for the garden from
members of the Bel-Air Garden Club’s members’ own gardens, which may have included
selections from Mrs. Meyberg’s own garden. The Meyberg’s lived on Copa de Oro Road in a
house designed by famous architect Paul Revere Williams, and the house was noted for its
landscape design. According to author Victoria Padilla in her book Southern California
Gardens, thousands of people would visit the Lawler house every spring during the Bel-Air
Garden Tour, hearing of its expansive yard that instead of lawn was covered with thousands of
tulips and Spanish iris.
154

Mrs. Manfred Meyberg would later donate the funds to create the Aquatic Garden at the
Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Gardens. Little else is known of Mrs. Manfred
Meyberg, but her husband, Mr. Manfred Meyberg, was one of the premier nurserymen in
Southern California. Meyberg was born in Los Angeles in 1886. Allusions to Horatio Alger
abound in articles about him, with Meyberg rising from “office boy and janitor” to President of
the Germaine Seed and Plant Company.
155
He would become a key figure in defining and
expanding the Southern California nursery trade. And while he often argued against the title of
“plantsman” – arguing that he was only a businessman
156
-- he often betrayed this fact by way of
his civic engagement. Meyberg helped found the Southern California Horticultural Institute, the
Los Angeles Men’s Garden Club, Los Angeles Beautiful and the State and County Arboretum.

154
Victoria Padilla, California Gardens: an Illustrated History, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), 206.
155
“Man Behind the Plant,” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1963.
156
Ibid.

62
He was even instrumental in the decision to make Strelitzia reginae (Bird of Paradise) the City
flower of Los Angeles.
157

It is worth quoting Victoria Padilla, who gave special thanks to Mrs. Manfred Meyberg in
the preface of her seminal book, and dedicated the book to Manfred Meyberg, saying:

When Manfred Meyberg died suddenly in the fall of 1956, the city of Los
Angeles lost one of its best friends, for few men have worked any more zealously
to promote its welfare. His whole life was dedicated to making his community a
finer and more beautiful place in which to live.
158

Fragrant Garden for the Blind, Felipe de Neve Library, description

Based on Edward Huntsman-Trout’s design drawings for the Fragrant Garden, two
archival photographs, and extant remnants, the Garden consisted of a circular walkway around
two existing eucalyptus trees, separated by a central path. The two half circles created by this
central path were filled with turf grass. The outer, circular path was lined by a waist-high
aluminum railing, in order for blind persons to lead themselves around the circle, smelling and
touching the plants along the way. One article noted Braille plant identifications in front of each
plant, but these are not visible in the photographs. The circle ascended an incline in the grading
of the site, and a brick wall surrounded half the circle, functioning both as a retaining wall and a
raised bed, where one would barely have to lean over to touch or smell the plants.

157
Victoria Padilla, Southern California Gardens, 1961, 205.
158
Ibid., 206.

63

Figure 31: Felipe de Neve Library Fragrant Garden for the Blind, Reproduced in the New York Times, 1954.
Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Library of Congress.

64

Figure 30: Design drawing, Felipe de Neve Library Fragrant Garden for the Blind, Edward Huntsman-Trout. Courtesy of Los
Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

65
According to the plans drawn by Edward Huntsman-Trout, the ‘raised bed’ was filled
with a variety of different fragrant plants as well as evergreen foundation plants. Huntsman-
Trout’s drawings show a variety of common plant names sketched into the plans. These
included:
159

The lower, ground level plantings included one border of lavender, “filled in” with calendula and
marigold, and a second border of lavender “filled in” with iris varieties, roses, chrysanthemum
and Meyer Lemon. This lavender border is visible in the photograph above. Two additional
Myrtus communis bordered the Southern entrance of the central path into the circle. Larger
shrubs and trees on the outskirts of the borders included a group of Pine trees, Catalina Cherry,
Lemon-Scented Eucalyptus, Acacia, Evergreen Pear, and existing eucalyptus trees around the
outer edges.
160

The “Fragrant Garden” seems to have been a popular site, as there are quite a few
newspaper articles describing events held there. Additionally, Victoria Padilla cites it as a
notable site to visit in Los Angeles in her book written in 1961.
161

159
Edward Huntsman-Trout, drawings and plans for Fragrant Garden. The Huntsman-Trout’s drawings can be found in the
UCLA Special Collections Library, Edward Huntsman-Trout Papers, 1916-1974. Box 11, Folder 2.;
Note: The drawings do not give the Linnaean plant names.
160
Huntsman-Trout, drawings and plans for Fragrant Garden.
161
Padilla, Southern California Gardens, 333.

66
Edward Huntsman-Trout, designer of the Fragrant Garden for the Blind

Edward Huntsman-Trout was born in Ontario, Ottawa, Canada on July 1, 1889. He later
moved to Los Angeles, where he attended Hollywood High School for two years and then
studied at the University of California, Berkeley. At that time, UC Berkeley did not have a
landscape architecture program, and Huntsman-Trout majored in botany and took electives in
architecture. He went on to study at Harvard University (enrolling in 1913), and according to
Winifred Star Dobyns in her book entitled California Gardens, Huntsman-Trout was the first
person from California to study landscape architecture at that university. He completed all the
course requirements to fulfill the degree, but left before taking the final exams required to
graduate.
162

After Harvard, his first position in 1916 was in the Boston offices of renowned landscape
architect Fletcher Steele. His work with Steele greatly influenced him, as Steele was, according
to Dobyns, “one of the earliest landscape architects to promote the idea of the backyard as an
‘outdoor living room,’ ”
163
a concept that would be a driving theme in Huntsman-Trout’s work.
Huntsman-Trout served in World War I from 1917-1919 and was stationed in France.
164

Upon his return, he worked briefly as head designer in the offices of A.D. Taylor in Cleveland,
Ohio, yet upon hearing that his great-aunt was ill, he decided to move back to Southern
California to assist. He then worked as a designer for the Beverly Hills Nursery, but was
disappointed in the commercial aspect of the work. Subsequently, he opened his own design
firm in Hollywood.

162
Scripps College Landscape & Architectural Blueprint, prepared by the Blueprint Committee
With Historic Resources Group, April 9, 2004. http://www.scup.org/asset/53091/ScrippsCampusMasterPlan.pdf;
Winifred Star Dobyns, California Gardens (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 227.
163
Ibid.
164
Scripps College Landscape & Architectural Blueprint.

67
The rest of his career, which lasted until 1972, focused primarily on residential projects in
upscale Westside Los Angeles homes. These residences included landscape design for the
estates of Harvey S. Mudd in Beverly Hills, the Winnett family estate overlooking Santa Monica
Canyon and for Jay Paley,

founder of CBS.
165

Huntsman-Trout worked with architect Gordon Kaufmann to create the Master Plan and
many of the subsequent buildings and landscapes for Scripps College in Claremont, CA from
1927-1939. The site is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is noted for its
seamless integration of the buildings and landscape.
166
Huntsman-Trout was also a key figure in
the design of the Los Angeles Country Arboretum.
167
He is especially noted for his work on the
restoration of the Hugo Reid Adobe, his design of the “Old Fashioned Rose Garden,” now titled
the “Victorian Rose Garden,” and the “Herb Garden.”
168
Author Victoria Padilla counts Edward
Huntsman-Trout as among those “responsible for creating some of the most beautiful gardens in
America.”
169

Blossom Lane and Mrs. John Bowles

On April 8, 1957, a landscaped path was created from 6
th
street into the Fragrant Garden
for the Blind. This path was lined with “Bechtel’s flowering crab trees” (Malus ioensis) to form
a small alleé from the street to the Fragrant Garden. The designer is not noted in any records
found. The garden addition was dedicated in honor of the late Hilda Lawler, who, as stated
earlier, had suggested and inspired the Fragrant Garden. Mrs. Lawler had passed away in 1954.

165
Dobyns. California Gardens.;
Guide to the Edward Huntsman-Trout Architectural Landscape Drawings, Claremont Colleges Digital Library.
166
Scripps College Landscape & Architectural Blueprint.;
“Scripps College,” the Cultural Landscape Foundation website, http://tclf.org/content/scripps-college.
167
A visit by the author to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and an interview with the Mitchell Bishop, Curator of Historical
Collections, revealed no further articles about Huntsman-Trout’s involvement in the Fragrant Garden for the Blind.
168
Mitchell Hearns Bishop, “What was Huntsman-Trout thinking?” Exploring the Arboretum, Winter/Spring 2012, 10-11.
169
Padilla, Southern California Gardens, 115.

68
Her husband, Oscar Lawler, was present at the dedication, along with Mrs. Manfred Meyberg
and Mrs. John Bowles, the President at the time of the Bel-Air Garden Club. Also present were
many other members of the Bel-Air Garden Club along with members of the city of Los Angeles
Department of Recreation and Parks, and members of the Braille Institute. J. Robert Atkinson,
still managing director of the Braille Institute, also attended the dedication as a special guest.
170

Mrs. John Bowles, maiden name Norma Louise Landwehr, hailed from Holland,
Michigan. She had attended the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles and graduated from
Bryn Mawr College in 1942. According to a New York Times article, she was previously
engaged to a Malcolm Thompson in 1949.
171
This marriage did not seem to occur, however, as
the next historical record shows her meeting and marrying John Bowles in 1950. Little else is
known about her.
172

Normal Louise Landwehr and John Bowles were married for 43 years, during which time
he would become President of the Rexall Drug Company. Bowles was a politically active man
who encouraged African American pharmacists to open their own Rexall franchises.
173

Additionally, in 1960 Bowles was given an award by President Eisenhower for his work
encouraging voter registration.
174
Bowles was also a strong advocate for the Mexican-American
heritage of Los Angeles, serving for 10 years as the President of Los Amigos del Pueblo de Los
Angeles, and was sometimes called the “padrino,” or Godfather, of Olvera Street, the street
market tourist destination that sits in the vicinity of the “original” Pueblo de Los Angeles.
175

170
Jessie Jean Marsh, “New 'Eyes' to Enhance Garden for the Blind,” Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1957, E1.
171
Bryn Mawr College Yearbook, Class of 1942.;
“Norma Landwehr Fiancée: Graduate of Bryn Mawr Engaged to Malcolm Thompson,” New York Times, July 15, 1949.;
“Former Tarheel is Vice President of Big Drug Firm,” The News and Courier, Charleston, SC. December 20, 1954.
172
One other fact is known: there is a scholarship in her name currently at Bryn Mawr College. The Norma L. and John Bowles
ARCS Endowment for the Sciences was established by a gift from Norma Landwehr Bowles ’42.
173
Ronald Sullivan, “John Bowles,76, Rexall Executive Who Promoted Voter Registration,” New York Times, October 23, 1993.;
“Deaths: John Bowles Rexall President,” Washington Post, October 27, 1993.
174
Myrna Oliver, "John Bowles; Civic leader, former president of Rexall,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1993.
175
Ibid.

69
Chapter 4: 1970s to the present: Felipe de Neve Library

Neighborhood changes, crime, closure, current conditions

“If parks were snobs, Lafayette Park doubtless would be one,” stated an article in the Los
Angeles Times in 1937, adding that “it is the aristocrat of our parks, and a handsome one to
boot.”
176
In the 1930s, Lafayette Park was considered an area with “noble trees and inviting
lawns.” It was considered a “fashionable district,” with a news article adding that “one often sees
fashionably dressed men and women taking their daily constitutionals on its walks.”
177

With the advent of the freeways and an increasing volume of cars, the city of Los
Angeles discontinued many of its streetcar lines, making travel harder for residents living in the
Westlake area. By the 1960s, most of the white population had left both Westlake and Lafayette
Park, in what could perhaps be described as “white flight.”
178
Many of the area’s mansions were
subdivided into apartments at this time. Little news of the area is reported for this period, but the
park’s situation changed quite dramatically.
The late 1970’s and early 1980’s saw an influx of Central American immigrants into Los
Angeles, the result of civil wars in Central America bringing thousands of refugees to Los
Angeles, with many of them settling in the Westlake district, home to Lafayette Park.
Photographs of the library garden, taken by Anne Laskey in 1978, show the lily pond and park
interface as active and lively, with children playing and fishing in the lily pond.
In the Laskey photos, the lily pads remain in the water, and a Giant Bird of Paradise
(Strelitzia nicolai) dominates the outer edge of the east terrace. The tropical plantings adjacent
to the fountain have been removed and smaller plantings exist.

176
Timothy G. Turner, “Lafayette Park Called Playground Aristocrat,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1937.
177
Ibid.
178
Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Ewing, NJ: University of
California Press, 2004), 14-15.

70

Figure 32: Photographs of Felipe de Neve Branch Library Gardens, Anne Laskey, 1978. Los Angeles Public Library Photo
Collection.

71
The wall of the lowest terrace is now covered with creeping fig (Ficus repens). The
boxwood hedges are still visible on the outer edges of the paths, but have been removed from the
sides of the pool, and turf grass is in their place. Bottlebrush trees (Callistemon citrinus or
Callistemon viminalis) are visible beyond the western hedge. Three shrubs of unknown type
(possibly Pittosporum tobira) are also visible beyond the western hedge. The two trees seen in
earlier photos at the top terrace are still extant, and more mature. These trees are likely Chinese
Elms, or Ulmus parviflora.
Sadly, by the 1990s, news reports primarily focused on gang activity at Lafayette Park.
According to a Los Angeles Times article from 1994 titled “The Fall of Lafayette Park,” the Los
Angeles Police Department described a notoriously violent street gang, Mara Salvatrucha, or
MS13, as having claimed the Park as its turf beginning as early as 1979.
179
With the onset of the
Los Angeles crack cocaine epidemic in 1989, the article stated, the park became extremely
dangerous, into which only gang members, the homeless and drug addicts would venture after
dark. During this period, even the Neighborhood Watch group disbanded, as the park and
surrounding neighborhood were simply considered too dangerous.
180
As safety concerns
escalated, the city built a fence around Lafayette Park in the 1990’s, and the park was locked
after sunset.
181

The Felipe de Neve Library itself was closed in August of 1989, after the Library Board
of Commissioners deemed it seismically unsafe.
182
Nine other Los Angeles public libraries
were closed the same year, declared “condemned” as a result of the 1987 Whittier Earthquake.
183

The lily pond at the Library was drained and gardens left unmaintained. During this period, the

179
Yvette Cabrera, “The Fall of Lafayette Park,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1994.
180
Ibid.
181
Ibid.
182
M. Becke, “Restoration, Seismic Retrofitting Begin at Landmark Library,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1996.
183
Ron L. Soble and Bob Pool, "Quake-Damaged Libraries to be Closed 9 of 10 Dates Set; 5 Others Already Shut," Los Angeles
Times, May 24, 2012.

72
library and the library gardens were heavily vandalized. The Thyra Boldsen sculpture was
broken off from its pedestal and was plastered with graffiti.
The Library remained closed for a full nine years until 1998. A bond measure approved
by voters in 1989 brought funds to renovate Felipe de Neve and 28 other City of Los Angeles
libraries. Part of the stipulation was that the de Neve Library was to seismically reinforce the
building and triple its size to 12,500 square feet.
184

Renovation

The Library reopened in 1998 after an extensive renovation designed by the Los Angeles-
based architecture firm of Altoon + Porter, for which the firm won a number of historic
preservation awards.
185
Meléndrez Design Partners were brought on to update the landscaping
directly adjacent to the building. Two wings were added to the south façade of the building, one
for a reading room, the other for administrative offices. This transformed the large south terrace
looking over the park into a U-shaped courtyard. The second level terrace remained, and the lily
pond as well, but the pond was drained and left unrestored, as it remains today.
186
The original
garden areas are now completely fenced off from both the park and the library itself.
The architectural and landscape plans for the rehabilitation are held at Meléndrez, a
landscape architecture, planning and design firm in Los Angeles. The architectural plans (for the
rehabilitation) can also be found at the Felipe de Neve Branch itself. The Meléndrez design
development plans show planting updates to the front of the library, as well as the insertion of a

184
Mathis Chazanov, "Libraries Await Needed Face Lifts Renovations: Voters Approved Bonds to Revamp 10 Branches a Year
and a Half Ago, but Construction has Yet to Begin," Los Angeles Times, June 6, 1991.
185
Website of Altoon + Porter. http://www.altoonporter.com/media/awards/.
186
Meléndrez was the landscape architect for the Library renovation. Meléndrez received an award in 1997 from City of Los
Angeles Cultural Affairs Department for its “design excellence” in landscape work at the Felipe de Neve Library. See the firm’s
website: http://www.Meléndrez.com/WhatAwards.html.;
The renovation was credited in part to a $437,000 gift from sisters Wilma and Erma Schmalzried of Los Angeles. See “Eye on
the 10
th
District” newsletter, Vol. 6, Issue 1 (2011).

73
number of Tabebuia ipe, or Pink Trumpet trees, in the new U-shaped rear courtyard created by
the two addition wings. These trees were planted and still remain today. Additionally,
Meléndrez had come up with list of plants and trees that were found in the 1926 plans for
Longpre and Echo Parks, apparently to find plantings that would match the historic nature of the
library building (fig. 33).

Figure 33: Author photograph of Meléndrez Design Partners’ plant lists from 1926/9 plans for Longpre and Echo Parks.
Courtesy of Meléndrez Design Partners.

The design development drawings for the library by Meléndrez (fig. 34) also show a
number of Platanus acerifolia (London Plane Tree) to be planted at the corners of the rear

74
terrace stairs. There is no record of these having been planted. It is visible in the drawing that
no plans for the lily pool were undertaken.

Figure 34: Author photograph of Meléndrez Design Development Drawing for Felipe de Neve Library rehabilitation. Courtesy
of Meléndrez Design Partners.

Current conditions: Original landscape & Shakespeare Garden

Today, only a portion of the original designed hardscape remains. The large upper
terrace has been transformed into a small courtyard by the additions to the library. A new
staircase providing ADA access to this courtyard was constructed in the renovation.
Additionally, Meléndrez used the original flagstone (that once covered the entire top terrace) to
edge the courtyard (fig. 35).

75

Figure 35: Author photographs of Felipe de Neve Library courtyard creating through the addition of two wings. Photograph on
right shows the original flagstone paving re-used as a path.

The lower terrace is still in place, though in poor condition in parts. The flagstone floor
is cracked and discolored. Weeds often spring up through the cracks, and are periodically
mowed. In the planting bed that runs along the upper wall, no plantings remain. The
Shakespeare Garden plaques are gone, with only a circle remaining where the central plaque was
once fastened.

76

Figure 36: Author photographs of Felipe de Neve Library terrace planter bed and remnants of Shakespeare Garden dedication
bronze plaques.

The lily pond and fountain are both extant, though drained. The fountain tiling is intact
with some cracking and some missing tiles. The fountain head is missing and the plumbing
exposed. The Thyra Boldsen statue that once stood in the fountain is broken off at its base, and
the pedestal is stained with verdigris, presumably from copper plumbing (fig. 37).
In between the two staircases flanking the fountain of the lily pond, two plantings of
Bougainvillea hug the corner of the stairs on either side of the fountain. Remnants of two tree
stumps on either side of the fountain also exist. The stumps are approximately one foot in
diameter. The trees are believed to have been Chinese Elm (Ulmus parvifolia) based on a 2001
photo from the website “http://www.publicartinla.com.”
187

Upon visual inspection of the surface, the lily pond itself appears intact. The pool is
drained, and the brick edging is in good condition. A single palm seedling has sprouted in the
cracked concrete bottom (fig. 38).

187
“Thyra Boldsen, Lafayette Park Statue and Fountain, Lafayette Park, Los Angeles," website of
Public Art in Los Angeles and Southern California,
http://www.publicartinla.com/sculptures/MacArthur_Park/boldsen_fount.html.

77

Figure 37: Author photographs depicting condition of fountain and remnants of Thyra Boldsen sculpture

78

Figure 38: Lone palm seedling, drained lily pond, looking northeast. Author photograph.

The boxwood parterres along the west and east sides of the lily pond are still intact, though rank
in growth. A large specimen of Giant Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) stands in the east
corner of the terraces. This is likely extant from the original planting, seen in early archival
photos. The specimen is composed of fourteen trunks, and is approximately twenty feet tall.
The rest of this area is filled with weeds of various species.
Five trees line each side of the lily pond, beyond the boxwood parterres. These trees are
Callistemon citrinus, or bottlebrush trees (fig. 39). It is unknown when these were planted.

79

Figure 39: Callistemon citrinus, Bottlebrush, along east side of lily pool. Author photograph.

Current conditions: Fragrant Garden for the Blind

The hardscape of the Fragrant Garden is relatively intact. While its use has changed
drastically (it is now a parking lot for library staff), the form is largely unchanged (fig. 40). The
brick walls, that serve both as small retaining walls and raised beds, are in good condition, with
only a few places where bricks have broken off. The aluminum railings are also still intact (fig.
41). The asphalt paths are all in the same locations as denoted in the 1951 plan for the site. Two
rectangles of concrete, one on the middle pathway, and one along the circle, mark places where
benches stood (fig. 42). Each concrete slab has two metal hooks embedded in the concrete,
perhaps where the benches were locked in place to prevent theft and vandalism. According to

80
the Edward Huntsman-Trout plan for the garden, each bench would have sat under existing
eucalyptus trees that were present during the design and construction of the Fragrant Garden.
Three eucalyptus trees are present in the garden; they are believed to have existed prior to
the construction of the garden and even prior to the construction of the library itself. Two Sweet
Acacia (Acacia farnesiana) shrubs are planted at the corner of where the brick wall turns away
from the circle. These are multi-trunked, and rise about ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide at the
crown. On the original planting design drawing by Edward Huntsman-Trout, he notes “Acacia”
in this area. However, in a 1954 image published in the New York Times, one year after
construction, these Acacia specimens are not seen planted in this location. Two Pittosporum
species are currently planted in this corner as well, both approximately twenty feet tall and ten
feet wide at the crown.

Figure 40: Fragrant Garden for the Blind used as parking lot. Author photograph.

81

Figure 41: Fragant Garden Brick Wall & Railing. Author photograph.

Figure 42: Original asphaltic concrete paths remain. Author photograph.

82
Very little of the original vegetation remains. One Laurus nobilis, or Bay tree, stands on
the southern end of the circle. This tree has four small trunks of about 3-5 inches diameter each,
but at its base is a stump that is almost one foot in diameter, indicating that a larger, more mature
tree had been cut down. This, coupled with the intensely fragrant nature of the Bay Tree, seems
to indicate that the Bay tree was part of the original construction of the Fragrant Garden.

Figure 43: Laurus nobilis tree and remnant stump. Author photograph.

Additionally, two kumquat trees stand at the east entrance to the circular garden, also
possibly original plantings in the Fragrant Garden, due to their strong citrus scent when in
bloom.

Figure 44: Kumquat trees at east entrance to Fragrant Garden. Author photograph.

83
Figures 45-48 examine physical attributes of the library grounds, and how they compare with
their historical form.

Figure 45: BEFORE & AFTER I: LEFT: Julius Shulman, “The Town House overlooking Lafayette Park at Wilshire Boulevard
and Commonwealth Avenue, Los Angeles,” USC Digital Library, 1955. Permission to reproduce pending. RIGHT: Author
photograph of lily pond and park, 2012.

Figure 46: BEFORE AND AFTER II: LEFT: Archival photo showing lily pond and Shakespeare Garden. Felipe de Neve
Librarian Scrapbook box. RIGHT: Author photograph of lily pond and remnants, 2012.

84

Figure 47: BEFORE & AFTER III: LEFT: Dedication of Shakespeare Garden, showing terrace planter bed and bronze plaques,
Los Angeles Times, “Garden of Shakespeare Dedicated to City’s Use,” 1932. RIGHT: Author photograph of Shakespeare
Garden Wall, 2012.

Figure 48: BEFORE & AFTER IV: LEFT: Felipe de Neve Library Fragrant Garden for the Blind, Reproduced in the New York
Times, 1954. Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Library of Congress.
RIGHT: Author photograph of Fragrant Garden remnants, 2012

85
Integrity of historic features

As in architecture, historic cultural landscapes can be looked at in terms of their
“integrity.” Preservation Brief #36 defines the term:
Integrity is a property's historic identity evidenced by the survival of physical
characteristics from the property's historic or pre-historic period. The seven
qualities of integrity are location, setting, feeling, association, design,
workmanship and materials.
188

The integrity of a site or structure must be analyzed in order for said site to be eligible for the
National Register of Historic Places. While this thesis does not aim to prepare a National
Register entry, the discussion of integrity is useful as it expounds upon the current conditions of
the site. For clarity, each quality of Integrity is answered in the following list.

Location: The gardens remain in their original location, on the grounds of the Felipe de Neve
Branch Library.
Design: The design of the initial gardens is only partially extant. The large south terrace of the
Library has been built over with two additions, and now is in the form of a small courtyard. The
west entrance to this previous terrace, in the form of a brick wall framing a path, is extant, but
only leads to the side of the new addition. The east entrance is no longer present. The semi-
circular path at the south end of the lily pond is now fenced off at the lily pond, and the path no
longer exists. However, the middle terrace, the lily pond, and the Fragrant Garden designs are
all still discernible.
Setting: The gardens remain in the location of Lafayette Park; however, the Park has changed
substantially. It is no longer a shaded, woody retreat, but now is quite barren and open, and is
primarily composed of sports areas and the recreation center.

188
Charles A Birnbaum, Protecting Cultural Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes,
Preservation Brief 36 (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1994).

86
Materials: Most of the hardscape of the gardens is still in place, excepting the top south terrace,
where the library wing additions were built in 1998. As a whole, the hardscape material is in
relatively good condition. Only select areas have irreparable damage. The original vase-shaped
fountain is now missing, as is the Thyra Boldsen sculpture, noted earlier, as are the fountainhead
and the three plaques with quotes from Shakespeare’s plays. The two park benches that once sat
in the Fragrant Garden are also lost.
Workmanship: The physical evidence of the workmanship of the architect and builder are still
present in the form of brickwork, cast stone ornament, and design layout.
Feeling: The expression of the shaded literary retreat, present at the inception of the Library, is
largely absent. The feeling is very much infringed upon by the setting of Lafayette Park, which
has changed so drastically. The Library lot itself, however, separate from its borrowed views
and surroundings, does retain some feeling of the original design.
Association: The link between the Library gardens and the original civic plan to improve the
city by the construction of Branch Libraries is evident in the layout and design of the gardens
and Library. This quality of design clearly indicates a motivation to create public spaces for
public enjoyment and enrichment. However, this association is impaired by the gardens’ state of
neglect and ruin. Fenced off from the Library, with the lily pool drained and the formerly
beautiful Fragrant Garden now used as a parking lot, this association to civic pride and care is
tarnished by the gardens’ virtual incarceration. This, again, is further impacted by the poor state
of the surrounding Lafayette Park, which adds to the association of the gardens as ruins and
signifiers of urban decay.

87
To summarize, while the 1998 addition/rehabilitation of the library drastically changed
the way the Library building interacts with the landscape, much of the remaining site still
maintains a strong sense of integrity.

88
Conclusion: Heritage conservation and the gardens of the Felipe de Neve Library

The Westlake neighborhood in Los Angeles has seen extreme changes in its 120+ year
history. Once an enclave of the wealthy elite, it is now primarily an area with low-income
residents, and high crime, drug dealing, and gang violence remain. The residents, however, have
not been all that different – recently arrived immigrants, coming to Los Angeles for a better life
or a new start, whether that meant seeking wealth or just finding a way to survive.
Lafayette Park and the Felipe de Neve Branch Library have been present throughout
these times, a magnifying glass into the surrounding neighborhood. The park’s early leisure
class landscaping reflected its neighbors of the era, while its complete abandonment in the 1980s
and 1990s was perhaps a reflection of the City of Los Angeles’ lack of care for its lower-income,
minority residents. Today, the tides are changing again with steps taken towards renewal of the
park and library, with new financial injections creating a recreation center, a skate park, and the
rehabilitation/remodel of the library building. Yet the park, the library and its gardens are all still
bruised from past neglect.
One can find several ruins in Lafayette Park, including that of a series of gardens, once
dedicated to education, equality, and the interplay between the senses, the intellect, and the world
outside. The formerly beautiful lily pond is drained; the terraces are cracked and overcome with
weeds.
The “world outside” is currently fenced off from the residents of Westlake, the garden
ruins enclosed in chain link, inaccessible from both the library and the park. The only opening
in this fence occurs when the gate is unlocked to allow cars to park in the circular parking lot of
the Library, a circle defined by the extant walls of the Fragrant Garden for the Blind.

89
The terraces, lily pond, scent garden and literary garden – all of these once served as
valuable respites from the busy city. What are the next steps for bringing them back to the
public use?

Historic Designed Landscapes

Preservation Brief # 36 of the National Park Service deals with the
preservation/conservation of Cultural Landscapes. In this report, author Charles Birnbaum
defines and delineates what a cultural landscape is, different types, and methods of preservation.
He defines four major types of cultural landscapes – the Historic Designed Landscape, the
Historic Vernacular Landscape, the Historic Site, and the Ethnographic Landscape.
Historic Sites refer to landscapes where historic events took place, such as the Antietam
Battlefield. Ethnograpic Landscapes contain cultural resources that have religious or specific
cultural/ethnic significance (such as a religious site or a geologic structure). A third
classification, that of the “Historic Vernacular Landscape,” would appear to be applicable to the
various social club’s influence in the gardens. However, the design exercised by these groups
and whom they hired, rather than function and use, negates this classification. A fourth
definition of cultural landscape, the “Historic Designed Landscape,” is perhaps most applicable
to the Felipe de Neve Gardens.
Historic designed landscapes are ones that are aesthetically valuable, in which a
professional landscape architect or horticulturalist was involved, or if done by an amateur, were
designed in a particular garden tradition. The Preservation Brief states:
Historic Designed Landscape -- a landscape that was consciously designed or laid
out by a landscape architect, master gardener, architect, or horticulturist according
to design principles, or an amateur gardener working in a recognized style or
tradition. The landscape may be associated with a significant person(s), trend, or

90
event in landscape architecture; or illustrate an important development in the
theory and practice of landscape architecture. Aesthetic values play a significant
role in designed landscapes. Examples include parks, campuses, and estates.
189

An argument could be made for this definition of the de Neve Library gardens. Edward
Huntsman-Trout, as well as the designers noted from the Department of Recreation and Parks,
were important, highly skilled, experts in their field. Additionally, the gardens were aesthetically
valuable. However, this does not tell the whole story. For example, many of the plants used for
the Fragrant Garden for the Blind were donations to the garden by Bel-Air Garden Club
members, the club that sponsored building the scent garden. In this sense, the garden design as-
built was strongly influenced by members of this social club, not including the influence they
had during the design process itself.
The Lovers of Shakespeare Society (responsible for the Shakespeare Garden) and the
Bel-Air Garden Club (which sponsored the Fragrant Garden) were both wealthy, white social
clubs. These individuals bonded together to make their way in the unknown land of the young
city of Los Angeles. In forming these social and fraternal organizations, they were attempting to
create a reality for themselves, and in doing so, they also created a new landscape at the Felipe
de Neve Branch Library. Their activities might be viewed as a reflection of the social and
cultural attitudes of this particular social group in Los Angeles.
In conducting research for this thesis, I was struck by the large number of social and
fraternal organizations in Los Angeles in the first half of the 20
th
century. Orra Monnette, for
instance, mentioned in Chapter 1 as an ardent library supporter, belonged to more than 25

189
Birnbaum, Preservation Brief 36, 1994.

91
fraternal organizations and civic clubs and associations.
190
These clubs were clearly extremely
important to the social life of some of Los Angeles’ most wealthy residents.

Next Steps: Heritage Conservation

According to Preservation Report #36, after the type of historic cultural landscape is
defined, it is then coupled with evaluations of integrity and significance to determine a treatment
plan. These steps already have been taken for the library building itself, and the library is on the
National Register of Historic Places as a group nomination of branch libraries in Los Angeles.
The library grounds are included in this nomination, but they have not physically been addressed.
When the library was renovated in 1998, under the Secretary of Interior Standards Treatment of
“rehabilitation,” the gardens were left “preserved” in ruin and were fenced off.
In order to address the gardens themselves, a complete Cultural Landscape Report must
be completed to more closely analyze the physical condition of the site. This thesis serves only
as an investigation into the history of the site, except for a brief discussion of current conditions
and integrity in Chapter Four.
With any rehabilitation of the site, two important considerations must be taken into
account: Security and Water.

Security
In conversation with the branch librarians about the gardens, the most common concern
and frustration was crime and vandalism. One librarian explained the daily struggle with graffiti
on the library building and with homeless people sleeping in the library grounds. The librarian
described how some had found the heavily fenced in area appealing for using drugs, as once they
had climbed in, no one else could see them or get to them.

190
Who’s Who in Los Angeles County (Los Angeles: Chas. J. Lang, publisher, 1928-1929 Edition).

92
This latter problem is a great descriptor of the detractions of creating an environment of
prohibition and separation. Perhaps if the space was restored and made more open so the
community takes ownership of it, the problems of vagrancy and vandalism would diminish.
One other consideration as it regards to crime and vandalism is the question of the need
for security guards. The Los Angeles Central Library’s Maguire Gardens, which include a large
water feature, have twenty-four hour surveillance by security guards on foot. While this is likely
a relatively expensive solution, perhaps it is something the city needs to consider in creating an
environment where it can have successful civic space. Just as a museum has security guards to
protect valuable artwork, perhaps the same treatment could benefit valuable landscapes. This
may align the author with some seemingly undesirable political ideology, but the issue is worth
looking at.
An example of a park where issues of crime were successfully turned around is Bryant
Park, New York. The space was designed in1934, but early in its history a series of unfortunate
events led the park to become neglected, fomenting crime and drug dealing.
191
This in turn led
to citizens deciding not to visit the park or even walk through it, bolstering the crime in the park.
A New York Times article described:
“Whenever a warm, sunny day beckoned Arlene Hirko into Bryant Park for lunch,
she seldom made it past the first bite of her sandwich. First, bellicose drunks
would try to bully her off her bench. Then pushy drug dealers would parade past
her, peddling their goods like hot dog vendors at a baseball game.”
192

Ms. Hirko, like many others, stopped going to the park.
The landscape architecture firm of Hanna/Olin (now Olin) was brought on to redesign the
park, within its historic context, to make it safe and accessible to the public. The firm looked

191
“Bryant Park,” Project for Public Spaces website: http://www.pps.org/great_public_spaces/one?public_place_id=26.
192
Nick Rayo, “Bryant Park Journal; After 3 Years, a Park Awaits a Wary Public,” New York Times, June 13, 1991.

93
closely at a 1981 report titled “Intimidation or Recreation,” by urban planner William H. Whyte,
who had devised suggestions to make the site more “physically and visually accessible.”
193

These suggestions included:
-Remove the iron fences
-Remove the shrubbery
-Cut openings in the balustrades for easier pedestrian circulation in and out of the park
-Improve visual access up the steps on the Avenue of the Americas Provide a third set of steps
midway between the existing stairs and 42nd Street
-Provide ramps for the handicapped
-Open up access to the terrace at the back of the library with new steps
-Restore the fountain
-Rehabilitate Carrere and Hastings’ historic restroom structures.
194

The ASLA noted the park as a “…landmark experiment in design and social
programming created in response to sociology and behavioral research.”
195
The Hanna/Olin firm
cut paths through hedges, added perennial flower beds, restrooms, and lighting. Additionally,
food kiosks were brought in, and 2,000 moveable chairs. Through an innovative public-private
partnership, a new restaurant went in adjacent to the park, and a private security force was
funded for the park itself. This project was extremely successful; the park is continually filled
with visitors, and now hosts a variety of events from Fashion Week shows to outdoor movie
screenings.
196
The park is a key example in the practice or renewing urban parks. While the
park once was a disservice to local real estate, now it is a selling point.
197

193
Project for Public Spaces: Bryant Park.;
ASLA Professional Awards: Bryant Park, http://www.asla.org/2010awards/403.html.
194
Mark Francis, A Case Study Method for Landscape Architecture (Washington, D.C.: Landscape Architecture Foundation,
1999).
195
ASLA Professional Awards: Bryant Park: http://www.asla.org/2010awards/403.html.
196
David W. Dunlap, “From the Lawn at Bryant Park [Series],” New York Times, October 9, 2008.
197
Ibid.

94
Water
Another important item in any rehabilitation of the Felipe de Neve Branch Library
gardens would be a serious consideration about the scarcity of water. To the extent possible and
to the extent that they fit the educational purposes of both a scent garden and a Shakespeare
Garden, native and/or drought tolerant plantings should be considered. In a city or state owned
landscape, the sway of budgets and the subsequent deleterious effects on maintenance and water
use can mean a park’s demise. Planning for this by making any plantings self-sufficient as
possible is one counter to this problem.
Examples of the benefits of native and drought-tolerant plants in relation to maintenance
cost are widespread. A Los Angeles Downtown News article in 2011 compared the 2.3-acre
Maguire Gardens at the Los Angeles Central Library with the gardens at nearby Vista Hermosa
Park, a 10.5-acre site composed entirely of native plants, with only one area of turf grass. Vista
Hermosa’s maintenance bill was $50,000 less per year.
198

While native or drought tolerant plantings would certainly be useful in any rehabilitation
of the Felipe de Neve Library Gardens, a discussion of how to treat the now-drained lily pool is
also necessary. In considering the city’s and state’s current budget and financial problems, the
maintenance of a lily pond may be untenable. One alternative is found in a work by Bertram
Goodhue, who designed the National Academy of Sciences in 1924. The front entrance steps
include two reflecting pools, in a similar manner both to the Maguire Gardens mentioned above,
as well as the Felipe de Neve lily pond, among others. These pools were eventually drained and
are now filled with shrubs and perennials. The city of Beverly Hills took the same action with a

198
Ryan Vaillancourt, “City Pays Premium for Maguire Gardens,” Los Angeles Downtown News, August 24, 2011.
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/article_9bbf9694-ce82-11e0-aa75-001cc4c03286.html.

95
park designed by noted landscape architect Ralph Cornell.
199
During the 1998 rehabilitation of
the Felipe de Neve Branch, Altoon & Porter were charged by the city with consulting with the
Department of Recreation & Parks to “determine the feasibility of converting the existing ‘pond’
to a garden.”
200
No other records have been founding regarding whether this assessment was
completed.
While not ideal, the filling of the empty lily pool for plants could be a temporary option
for the Felipe de Neve Branch as it struggles with neglect and lack of funding. With the pool
already drained, treatments could be devised to preserve the structure of the lily pond while
filling it with soil, and allowing for plantings (and safety) until a time in the future when it can be
restored.

Next steps: Architectural/Landscape history
Several design and history items require further investigation. Regarding Lafayette Park,
the designer and original plans have yet to be found. The original plan drawings for the
Shakespeare Garden are also undiscovered. One enigmatic image has been discovered which
seems to give clues to both original designs, yet this is uncertain and unconfirmed. The blurry
polaroid of a poster depicting Lafayette Park was found in the librarian scrapbook box at the
Felipe de Neve Library. It seems to show a large, formal garden was at one time present or
planned (fig. 49). No other records of this design or its ruins have been found. This formal
garden would have extended south from the library lily pond, connecting the library and its
gardens to the larger Lafayette Park. Regarding the same portion of the site, information is

199
Larkin Minnie Owens, “In Search of a ‘Genuine’ Southern California Park” (master’s thesis, USC, 2010)
See also: “B.H. to Convert Lily Pond Into Flower Bed,” Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1974.
200
Building Program Plan for the Felipe de Neve Library, Los Angeles Public Library, January, 1992.

96
needed on why the lily pond was drained in the 1980’s. These items would provide key
information to any attempts at rehabilitation.

Figure 49: Polaroid photograph, Unknown date/photographer, Felipe de Neve librarian scrapbook. Note the Felipe de Neve
Library in the lower right of the map, and a large formal garden emanating out from the rear.

The Felipe de Neve gardens are an important resource for the city of Los Angeles. They
represent the history of a neighborhood and time in Los Angeles, and could provide ample
respite, entertainment, and education to the current community. Situated in the center of Los
Angeles, these gardens, if rehabilitated, could serve as a connective force between the often
disparate populations in the city of Los Angeles. A plan for rehabilitation should be composed
in order for the gardens to be re-opened and enjoyed by the neighborhood and city as a whole.

97
This would include developing a rehabilitation and cultural landscape treatment plan for the lily
pond and terraces, the Shakespeare Garden and the Fragrant Garden for the Blind. Just as we
have witnessed in the garden’s history, community groups should be brought on to assist - local
theatre programs, the Braille Institute, schools, and other social clubs and communities could all
play a vital role in renewing this extraordinary place.

98
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Other Sources

Felipe de Neve Library scrapbook. This is less a scrapbook, more a plastic bin filled with
clippings, photographs. At the Felipe de Neve Branch Library, in the administrative offices.
Also located here are the plans for the library renovation by Altoon & Porter Architects in 1998.

A search of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner archives/microfilm revealed only one short story
with no additional information beyond that of the Los Angeles Times. Citation:
“Students Fete Shakespeare.” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, April 24, 1932.

Navigate LA

ZIMAS
108

Appendix
Site maps and context
All maps by the author, 2012, except where otherwise noted

Google Maps view of Downtown Los Angeles & vicinity. Lafayette Park location noted with green circle
Google Maps, September 28, 2012

Lafayette Park & Felipe de Neve Library grounds

109

110

111

112

113

Felipe de Neve Library grounds, Google Maps, September 28, 2012.
114

Site documentation
All photographs by the author, 2011--2012

Drained lily pond, terraces, and rear library façade.

115

Middle and lower terraces, lily pond.
116

Views from middle terrace looking southwest.

117

Middle terrace flagstone and steps, Shakespeare Garden planting bed.

118

Fountain rill conditions.

119

Fountain tile condition.

120

Fountain sculpture remnants.

Detail on middle terrace wall above fountain.

121

Fragrant Garden for the Blind conditions.

122

Fragrant Garden for the Blind conditions.

123

Perimeter of Fragrant Garden for the Blind.

124

Perimeter of Fragrant Garden for the Blind.

125

Perimeter of Fragrant Garden for the Blind.

126

Perimeter of Fragrant Garden for the Blind.

127

Path from Fragrant Garden to Lafayette Park.

128

Front library facade and landscaping.

129

Front library facade and landscaping.

130

Front library facade and landscaping.

131

East side of library. Bottom image shows previous entrance to main rear terrace.

132

Eastern side of lily pond, conditions.

133

Eastern side of lily pond, conditions.

134

Perimeter fence at eastern side of lily pond, conditions.

135

Eastern side of lily pond, conditions.

136

Eastern side of lily pond, plantings.

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Froines, Jonathan E. (author)

Core Title Society's child: the gardens of the Felipe de Neve Branch Library

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Historic Preservation

Degree Program Historic Preservation

Publication Date 11/20/2012

Defense Date 11/01/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Austin Whittlesey,Bertram Goodhue,Branch libraries,cultural landscape preservation,Edward Huntsman-Trout,Felipe de Neve,fragrant gardens for the blind,Historic Preservation,Lafayette Park,Landscape Architecture,landscape history,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,Shakespeare gardens,Westlake

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sandmeier, Trudi (committee chair), Breisch, Kenneth A. (committee member), Tichenor, Brian (committee member)

Creator Email froines@usc.edu,jfroines@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-116355

Unique identifier UC11291249

Identifier usctheses-c3-116355 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-FroinesJon-1314.pdf

Dmrecord 116355

Document Type Thesis

Rights Froines, Jonathan E.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA