Arnold Arboretum

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Arnold Arboretum
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark
Birch trees in the arboretum

Birch trees in the arboretum

Arnold Arboretum, Massachusetts
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Boston
Coordinates 42 ° 17 '52 "  N , 71 ° 7' 22"  W Coordinates: 42 ° 17 '52 "  N , 71 ° 7' 22"  W
surface 107 ha
Built 1872
architect Frederick Law Olmsted
NRHP number 66000127
Data
The NRHP added October 15, 1966
Declared as an  NHL January 12, 1965

The Arnold Arboretum is a herbarium and botanical garden of Harvard University in Boston in the state of Massachusetts in the United States . It was originally created as an arboretum , so it focuses on lignifying trees and shrubs . The facility is named after the businessman James Arnold (1781–1868), whose legacy made it possible to establish it in 1872.

history

founding

Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of the Arnold Arboretum

The founding of the Arnold Arboretum goes back to James Arnold (born September 9, 1781 in Providence , Rhode Island, † December 1868 in New Bedford ). Arnold was a successful businessman who was also interested in agriculture and horticulture. In 1847 he was one of the founders of the New Bedford Horticultural Society. James Arnold died in New Bedford in December 1868; his wife and only daughter had died before him. As early as 1867, he had decreed in his will that $ 100,000 of his fortune should be used for the promotion of agriculture and horticulture. He had appointed lawyer Francis E. Parker, teacher and philanthropist George Barrell Emerson, and businessman and bank manager John James Dixwell as stewards of his inheritance , who proposed that the funds be used by the board of directors of Harvard College to establish an institute with these goals deliver.

The Board of Directors of Harvard College decided to use the assets to create an arboretum to be affiliated with the college's botanical department. The newly established facility was supposed to collect and exhibit trees, bushes and perennials from the region and also to convey knowledge about these plants. As early as 1842 the businessman Benjamin Bussey (* 1757 in Stoughton ; † 1842) gave Harvard College a will in his will. This included funding to establish the Bussey Institute, an agriculture and horticultural school that taught practical farming, ornamental horticulture, botany, and basic science subjects. Bussey had also bequeathed his Woodland Hill estate in Jamaica Plain , Massachusetts to Harvard College as the school's home. Bussey had, however, ordered that his granddaughter, Maria Bussey Motley, was allowed to live in the property until her death before it was given to college. Maria Bussey Motley eventually cleared seven acres in 1870 for the construction of the Bussey Institute, which was completed in 1871.

The Arnold Arboretum was finally established in 1872 by a contract between the administrators of the wills and the Board of Directors of Harvard College. While the funds required for the construction, planting and maintenance of the arboretum were available from the Arnold Foundation, it was decided to use the land that had become the college through the Bussey Foundation for the plant. It was agreed that the assets should remain self-contained and should not be spent until they had accumulated through interest to a sum of $ 150,000. In addition, it should wait until the land of the Bussey legacy for the project was available. It was decreed that the funds should be used to create an arboretum, which was to be named Arnold Arboretum in honor of the founder. In addition, the Arnold professorship should be financed with the assets .

In the same year, the botanist and dendrologist Charles Sprague Sargent was appointed curator, and on November 24, 1873, he was also appointed director of the newly founded arboretum. Since at that time the area on which the arboretum was to be built had only just been identified and there was still no institute building, Sargent first moved into an office space in the Bussey Institute, which was in the immediate vicinity of the planned arboretum, and in the building of the Gray Herbarium in Cambridge. Sargent also set up a library and a herbarium on his private estate, Holm Lea, and later temporarily housed the administration of the arboretum here. In 1892 this moved to the Hunnewell building, which was built on the site of the Arnold Arboretum and from then on served as its administrative headquarters.

Plant of the arboretum

Location of the Arnold Arboretum in the Boston Emerald Necklace
The Hunnewell Building donated by Horatio Hollis, the main building and administrative headquarters of the arboretum

Charles Sprague Sargent spent nearly ten years designing the arboretum and its grounds. Since the Arnold Arboretum was the first arboretum in the USA, he could not orientate himself on a model. Sargent later wrote that neither he, as the future director of the arboretum, the board of directors of Harvard College, had even a vague idea of ​​what an arboretum should actually be and the labor and financial resources involved in maintaining it was. Since the cost of the facility could not be covered by the wealth donated by James Arnold, Sargent himself looked for further sponsors and donors to finance the arboretum. He was able to use his good contacts to many wealthy Boston families, so that he was able to raise the necessary financial resources. When setting up the arboretum, one also encountered the problem that the area was badly damaged by overgrazing and overgrowth and in some cases had to be recultivated at great expense.

From 1874 Charles Sprague Sargent was in close contact with the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted , with whom he exchanged ideas about the idea of ​​transferring the land to the city of Boston, which in return would provide funds for the construction of the arboretum. According to his ideas, the arboretum should be both a recreational facility for citizens and an encyclopedic tree museum for scientists and should be integrated into the parkland of Boston. In 1878, Sargent commissioned Olmsted, with whom he had similar scientific and artistic goals, to design a system of paths and a site plan with areas designated for certain plant families and genera. When arranging the plants, Olmnsted followed the botanical classification according to George Bentham and Hooker .

Concrete negotiations between Sargent, the Harvard board of directors and the city of Boston about the transfer of the site finally began in 1877, but dragged on for years, as initially both the college and the city had reservations about taking over the site. Sargent's hands were tied during this time, he could not implement the road and planting plan without the consent of the city of Olmsted, and he now had major space problems, the trees and bushes grown in the arboretum's nurseries could not be planted. After the city council rejected a draft treaty by vote in October, Sargent and Olmsted jointly initiated a public campaign during which the "Arboretum Question" was discussed in the newspapers. They drafted a petition, which was signed by 1,305 of the most influential Boston citizens, and eventually got the city council to approve a treaty in December 1882 that was essentially Sargent's vision. The elaboration of the exact terms of the contract took another year, so that the contract was not signed until December 20, 1883. Then in 1882 the city of Boston bought the 120 acre lot of the arboretum from Harvard University, which made it subordinate to the Boston park administration. The city also purchased an additional 48 acres that was added to the original site. Harvard University has been contractually assured that it will be able to lease the site for a symbolic sum of one dollar per year and for a period of 1,000 years. The city of Boston undertook to pay for the maintenance of the boundary wall, the gates and the path system and to provide police surveillance within the arboretum. The administration of the arboretum was guaranteed complete autonomy in decisions relating to the collection of plants and their care, as well as in the management of the buildings. In return, she undertook to make the arboretum accessible to the public all year round with free entry.

The Arnold Arboretum also became part of the Boston Emerald Necklace designed between 1879 and 1896 by Olmsted , an amalgamation of parks in Boston and Brookline. The parks, which are connected by avenues and waterways, have a total area of ​​approx. 4.5 km². The name Emerald Necklace refers to the shape of the park landscape on the map, which seems to hang down from the “neck” of the Boston Peninsula. In the park system, the Arnold Arboretum in the north-west represents an important link between Franklin Park in the south and the chain of parks that extends from west to east.

After signing the contract with the city of Boston, Sargent was finally able to devote himself more to the planting, expansion of the plant collection and the structural equipment of the arboretum. In 1883, the city of Boston began building the path system. In 1885 the first groups of trees could be planted. The basis of the arboretum was initially formed by the native trees that had been found on the previously largely overgrown area. First, the wood collections of the genera Fagus , Fraxinus , Ulmus and Carya were created.

Finally, a separate fund was set up to maintain the arboretum buildings. A generous donation from Horatio Hollis Hunnewell in 1892 financed both the conifer collection and the construction of an administration building, the Hunnewell Building, which was then used as a museum.

Since January 12, 1965, the arboretum has the status of a National Historic Landmark . The Arnold Arboretum was added as a site to the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966 .

Exhibits

The Arnold Arboretum contains around 13,000 plants representing around 4,000 botanical species. Wood species from North America and East Asia are a focus . The collection was previously enriched by collections of plants from East Asia by Charles Sprague Sargent, Ernest Henry Wilson , William Purdom , Joseph Hers and Joseph Rock , among others . More recently, material came from Asia through the “Arnold Arboretum Expedition to Japan and Korea” of 1977, the “Sino-American Botanical Expedition” of 1980 to the Chinese province of Hubei and other expeditions to China and Taiwan .

Employee

Directors of the Arnold Arboretum

Known employees

  • The plant collector Ernest Henry Wilson traveled to China from 1906 on behalf of Sargent to collect plants for the arboretum. With the three-volume work Plantae Wilsonianae published between 1911 and 1917 , Sargent published a catalog of the plant collection compiled by Wilson for the arboretum.
  • The botanist Alfred Rehder , who came from Saxony and emigrated to the USA at the turn of the century, was curator of the Arnold Arboretum from 1918 to 1940 .
  • The American botanist Susan Adams McKelvey first completed an internship under Charles Spragze Sargent at the Arnold Arboretum. From 1931 she worked there as a research assistant and undertook numerous botanical collecting trips as part of this activity.
  • The German botanist and garden architect Camillo Karl Schneider worked at the Arnold Arboretum from 1915 to 1918.
  • The Iraqi-born American botanist Ihsan Ali Al-Shehbaz worked as a research assistant at the Arnold Arboretum from 1985 to 1990.

Publications of the arboretum

As a scientific institution, the Arnold Arboretum has also published numerous of its own publications.

  • From 1888 to 1897 Charles Sprague Sargent published the weekly magazine Garden and Forest , in which subjects botany, horticulture, forestry and landscape architecture were covered.
  • From 1911 the arboretum published the Bulletin of Popular Information . Sargent initially wanted to attract visitors to the arboretum, which is why the bulletin was initially only published weekly during the growing season from the beginning of April to November. It comprised four pages each and was in the form of a seasonal guide to the plants in the arboretum that were blooming or fruiting at the time, in easily understandable language. It honored the exotic plants that Ernest Wilson had collected in China for the Arbeoretum. The bulletin was sent to all interested parties free of charge. After Sargent's death in March 1927, Ernest Henry Wilson continued to publish the bulletin, which largely retained its previous appearance. It was not until after Wilson's death in 1933 that the bulletin was expanded under the editorship of Edgar Anderson with lengthy contributions from various employees of the arboretum. In 1936 Donald Wyman took over the editorial office, from whom it was taken over by the then director of the arboretum Elmer Drew Merrill in 1941. He changed the title of the publication to Arnoldia , with which he wanted to honor the founder James Arnold. From 1979 the magazine, which has meanwhile expanded considerably in size, was published in 6 issues per year; since 1981 it has been published quarterly.
  • The Guide to the Arnold Arboretum was published in April 1911 as a 33-page booklet that described the arboretum's plant collection and contained a map of the network of paths and the various groups of plants.
  • The Journal of the Arnold Arboretum appeared from 1919 to 1990 and contained scientific articles on the subjects of botany, especially taxonomy and phylogeny, plant anatomy, cytology, embryology, and ecology, and palynology .

See also

Web links

Commons : Arnold Arboretum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Historical Biographies: James Arnold (1781–1868) on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 9, 2016.
  2. ^ A b c d e William Trelease : Biographical Memoir of Charles Strague Sargent - presented to the Academy at the Annual Meeting, 1928. In: National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - Biographical Memoirs. Volume XII, 7th Memoir, pp. 247-270.
  3. ↑ Historical Biographies: Benjamin Bussey (1757–1842) on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 9, 2016.
  4. ↑ Historical Biographies: Benjamin Bussey (1757–1842) on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 9, 2016.
  5. ^ The Genesis of the Arnold Arboretum. In: Bulletin of Popular Information. Series 4, Volume VIII, Number 1, April 26, 1940, pp. 1-11.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University: Archives IB CSS Charles Sprague Sargent (1841-1927) papers, 1868-: Guide. 1997-2013.
  7. ↑ George Bentham, Joseph Dalton Hooker: Genera plantarum. Ad exemplaria imprimis in Herberiis Kewensibus servata definita. A. Black, London 1862-1883.
  8. ^ A b Archives I A-6 BPC: Arnold Arboretum and Boston Parks Commission partnership records, 1882 - , on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 10, 2016.
  9. ^ Sheila Connor: The Arnold Arboretum: An Historic Park Partnership. In: Arnoldia. Volume 48, No. 4, Fall 1988, pp. 26-28.
  10. ↑ The Emerald Necklace on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 10, 2016.
  11. ↑ a b c Our History. on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 10, 2016.
  12. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 4, 2019.
  13. ^ Charles Sprague Sargent, Ernest Henry Wilson: Plantae Wilsonianae: an enumeration of the woody plants collected in western China for the Arnold arboretum of Harvard university during the years 1907, 1908, and 1910 . The University press, Cambridge 1913-1917.
  14. ^ Edmund A. Schofield: A Life Redeemed: Susan Delano McKelvey and the Arnold Arboretum. In: Arnoldia. Volume 47, No. 4, 1987, pp. 9-23.
  15. ↑ a b About Arnoldia. on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 10, 2016.
  16. ↑ Selected Arboretum Publications. on the Arnold Arboretum homepage, accessed on June 10, 2016.
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