In our continuing study of Spokane’s early days and the
birth of Manito Park, last week we read some old newspaper articles about the
sales of residence building sites being advertised around the new “Montrose”
(Manito) Park. Today, we see a few more
details about the design and layout of the beautiful park itself. The source was the newspaper of the day, The
Spokane Falls Review. Read along and get
caught up in this interesting story.
All of the
information reported here comes from a book by Tony Bamonte and Suzanne
Schaeffer Bamonte entitled, “Manito
Park: A Reflection of Spokane’s Past”. You can learn more about this book at www.tornadocreekpublications.com. Please click
over to www.ManitoPark.Org or www.ManitoParkOrg.blogspot.com
to catch up on the latest chapter.
The following is an excerpt from an article appearing in the
same paper [Spokane Falls Review]
describing the coming of the Spokane & Montrose Railroad to Cook’s
development and the beauty of the area:
Our citizens will rejoice
when they can be carried quickly and cheaply to the shady groves and sparkling
fountains of Montrose Park. No one will
be credited with having seen Spokane hereafter unless he has ridden over its
heights on the Spokane & Montrose railroad… This will be the route for all
local picnics and family excursions. The
elevated property south of the business portion of the city will now come to
the front as the healthiest and most fashionable residence section.
Another description of the Montrose area was in a report to
the City of Spokane by the Olmsted Brothers, a nationally renowned landscape
architectural firm from Brookline, Massachusetts, which designed parks and
private gardens in many major cities.
The father, who had founded the firm, was one of the designers of
Central Park in New York City. On July
10, 1907, at a cost of $1,000 plus expenses, the park board hired the Olmstead
firm to prepare a preliminary recommendation for Spokane’s existing parks and
to assist in the development of an overall park and boulevard system. Following an inspection of Manito Park, they
stated:
“The city is fortunate
in possessing already a local park so large, so well situated, and accessible
as this is… The picturesque, weather-beaten ledges, especially interesting to
city people used to tidy, clipped lawns and grass plots, appear to be in
process of being covered over with a thin layer of earth followed by grass…
There is much rough, ledgy ground in this park.
Doubtless that had something to do with its selection for a park. The land, that is to say, looked discouraging
for low-priced suburban lots. In some
degree it is discouraging and costly to fit it for use as a public park, yet it
is worth more for a park than fifty foot lots… The prominent ledges are decidedly
valuable as picturesque landscape features.
They should be carefully preserved and taken advantage of in designing
all kinds of improvements.”
The Olmstead report detailed
their impression of the infant park in 1907.
The nearly two-page narrative on Manito recommended future
improvements. A third of the report was
devoted to the zoo, primarily recommended for its removal. (It was removed during the Depression, but
purely for economic reasons.) Manito
Park did not develop from a master plan, but has been a constantly evolving,
changing environment, shaped primarily by the inspiration or vision of various
park superintendents or directors. There
is a popular mistaken notion, largely perpetuated by a park department brochure
published some years ago, that Manito Park was an Olmsted Brothers’
design. Although the content of the
Olmsted report confirms an existing layout, some of their recommendations were
eventually followed: park roads were widened, paved and grades reduced; an open
area was graded for a level playing field; and continuous grassy areas were
planted. Few specific landscape
suggestions were offered, except to add another 31 acres to remove irregular
boundaries, which they felt were not conducive to pleasing park design. That suggestion never materialized.
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