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Preservation Case Study: Camden’s Harborside Parks No other community in Maine “has a legacy of public landscape design that equals that of Camden,” wrote the Olmsted scholar Charles E. Beveridge. “With the elegant amphitheater of Fletcher Steele and the simply conceived harborside park of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the town possesses spaces planned by two of the most important American landscape architects of the twentieth century.” The two parks were commissioned by Camden philanthropist Mary Curtis Bok and built between 1928 and 1935 to complement a new library building. They provide a green space of about 4 acres at the edge of the town’s busy center, overlooking the scenic harbor. Steele designed the Camden Public Library Amphitheater on a sloping site behind the library to take best advantage of both the view and the existing lay of the land. The garden theater embodies the qualities the Boston-based landscape architect most admired—mystery and comfort, “with vistas and compositions appealing to the painter.” His 1928 design also struck a spare, modernist note, particularly in the abstract use of lithe white birch. It was one of Steele’s rare public commissions and one of his few landscapes that is now open to visitors. Across Ocean Boulevard, Harbor Park provides a view for the amphitheater. Paths traverse a broad lawn and loop through low masses of herbaceous plantings, shrubs, and trees that frame the water prospect. Harbor Park also commands wonderful views of the busy harbor. In the decades since Bok commissioned the two parks, generations of residents have used them for private respite and public celebrations. But by the mid-1990s these landscapes had become foot worn and threadbare. Their aged plantings had grown out of scale with the design. The loss of lower limbs on the spruce in the amphitheater had punctured the curtain of green that defined the once-compelling space. In Harbor Park, rickety benches and crumbling sidewalks posed safety hazards. In 1997 the landscape historian Eleanor Ames and her husband, Charlton Ames, provided funding to commission a preservation plan to restore and rehabilitate the parks. But when the plan was presented, it drew unexpected fire from residents, who balked at regrading a hill in Harbor Park and some of the tree cutting it recommended as first steps toward restoration. To resolve the conflict, the trustees appointed an independent commission, which has worked closely with the historic preservation firm to develop a phased version of the plan that omits the regrading and calls for trees to be replaced as they die. Mort Strom, who chairs the commission, says that the public solidly backs this plan. Most of the construction drawings for the project are complete, and the commission has carried out some of the recommendations, including paving the road and sidewalks between the parks. “It’s really cause for celebration that we have guidelines for all pieces of the restoration of the amphitheater and a rehabilitation for Harbor Park,” says Patricia O’Donnell, principal of Heritage Landscapes, the firm commissioned for the work. O’Donnell has high praise for the consensus process. This summer residents will vote on a bond to pay for some of the preservation measures, and the library will mount a private campaign to raise the rest of the funds. “At this stage,” says Strom, “the town has to show that they’re interested in the continual restoration project.” (See related article.) Photographs: |
