Flashback or Fast Forward--Rochester's Highland Park

Last summer, my husband and I took our four children to Rochester’s Highland Bowl, or should I say the John Dunbar Memorial Pavilion, ca. 1937, for the Monroe County Parks’ program "Free Movies in the Parks." On one particular evening, the title was Back to the Future, originally released in 1985 when I was a sophomore in college. Fast forward 25 years and here I am procuring my own version of Back to the Future by taking my kids to the same spot where I first heard, saw, and fell in love with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel during the then popular “Opera under the Stars” series, probably around 1972.

We sat on the lawn in the beautifully landscaped park, enjoying the harmonious relationship of the amphitheater, a product of human hands, with the sloping hillside, carved from glaciers, a natural acoustic partner for the "Bowl." The ampitheater or the "Bowl" as it is now widely referred to, was originally dedicated in 1937 to the late John Dunbar who is credited with the early establishment of the world class Lilac collection in Highland Park.

Many of our friends and neighbors who reside in the City of Rochester also attend these firefly-lit summer events. On this night, the crowd was surprisingly small for a gorgeous August evening. The potential crowd, I surmised, whittled down by the competing outdoor movie series screened on the same night in the nearby Towns of Brighton and Pittsford. My observation made me pause and consider the impact that sprawl and decentralization has had, and will continue to have, upon the oeuvre of childhood, and adult experiences alike which, only a generation ago could be shared with someone from 3 doors to more than 30 miles away. The collective memory and the vocabulary that comes from common experience, can be crucial as a launching point for discourse and understanding.

In the early days of the Bowl, the Rochester Philharmonic and other symphonic programs performed frequently during the spring and summer performance season. Today, a smattering of events are on the program annually, including Shakespeare in the Park, concerts, the movie series I attend with my family, and other community activities.

My suggestion: do your best to attend an event in the Highland Bowl, and if you have children, bring them. Look around and enjoy the legacy of Ellwanger, Barry, Olmsted, and Dunbar, while Frederick Douglass and Goethe look on. The first 20 acres of Highland Park was gifted by George Ellwanger & Patrick Barry in 1887. Their gift served as a catalyst for the establishment of the City’s Department of Parks, the hiring of internationally recognized landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the establishment of an Olmsted designed park system in Rochester--one of four in the nation--and the cultivation of a world class botanical collection that draws millions annually. We are fortunate to be the recipients of decades of vision, philanthropy, and planning. The Highland Bowl site’s naturally occurring landscape was appropriately retained and maximized by people like Ellwanger, Barry, Olmsted, and Dunbar. It is an incomparable venue and should be part of every greater Rochesterian’s vocabulary.

Today, Thursday, August 18^th is the last program of the summer for the “Free Movies in the Parks” series at the Highland Park Bowl. Adults can enjoy The King’s Speech, a quintessentially English film amongst a uniquely American cultural landscape.

Posted by Maranne McDade Clay, Grants Administrator

Olmsted was on to something

Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Rochester's Seneca/Maplewood, Genesee Valley, and Highland Parks, was convinced that exposure to nature was necessary to counteract the effects of city life. Here's what Olmsted and his design partner Calvert Vaux had to say, describing their plan for Central Park:

[The purpose of urban parks is to provide] the feeling of relief experienced by those entering them, on escaping from the cramped, confined and controlling circumstances of the streets of the town; in other words, a sense of enlarged freedom is to all, at all times, the most certain and the most valuable gratification afforded by a park. [cited in Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance]

Here's how I described this in the National Register Documentation for the Municipal Park System of Rochester:

Olmsted's urban parks were intended, first and foremost, to contrast with the city. Like other advocates of the pleasure ground movement, Olmsted firmly believed that access to nature could be physically and psychically restorative to city dwellers. He stated that landscapes with the right combination of characteristics could "refresh and delight the eye and through the eye, the mind and spirit." Olmsted was convinced that this restorative process could only work subconsciously, through exposure to an environment that appeared to be totally natural, even if it was actually manipulated to some degree.

Olmsted's approach was to create large urban parks (pleasure grounds), their specific character rooted in nature but enhanced by the skilled hand of a landscape architect, that provided access to the particular scenic effects that had the most positive psychological impacts on park visitors. In Rochester, Olmsted designed a classic pastoral landscape (gently rolling hills, calm water, and broad curves, intended to provide a sense of unity and harmony) for Genesee Valley Park, and a contrasting picturesque landscape (rugged terrain, bold landforms, and dramatic scenery, intended to inspire awe at the mystery and grandeur of nature) for Seneca/Maplewood Park. Scientific research appears to support Olmsted's views on the restorative power of nature. A recent blog post uses 21st-century language to describe a very 19th-century, Olmstedian concept:

Thoreau would have liked this study: interacting with nature (at least when compared to a hectic urban landscape) dramatically improves improve cognitive function. In particular, being in natural settings restores our ability to exercise directed attention and working memory, which are crucial mental talents. The basic idea is that nature, unlike a city, is filled with inherently interesting stimuli (like a sunset, or an unusual bird) that trigger our involuntary attention, but in a modest fashion. Because you can't help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky - paying attention to the sunset doesn't take any extra work or cognitive control - our attentional circuits are able to refresh themselves. A walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.

The next time you feel like you need to restore your psyche, spend some time in an Olmsted park, and thank Frederick Law Olmsted, a man ahead of his time, for his magnificent gifts to our city.

Posted by Katie Eggers Comeau, Advocacy Coordinator