Reshaping the American Landscape to Minimize Disease

Professor Robert Hewitt Professor Hala Nassar Department of Planning and Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture Landscape ArchitectureClemson University, USA Clemson University, USA

Professors Hewitt and Nassar teach courses in planning and landscape architecture at Clemson University in the United States. They are practicing landscape architects working internationally on urban design projects that address sustainability and human health. Their research interests include the influence of medicine on environmental design and international education. Their research on medicine and public health addresses both historical and contemporary changes to urban areas based on medical thought.

Background

Steady exchanges of medical knowledge between

Europe and America, and popular beliefs that

environmental modification alleviated urban

disease and improved health, contributed to the

transformation of a rapidly urbanizing

nineteenth-century America interested in

creating healthier urban landscapes.

Medical thought played a meaningful role in

this structural and functional transformation of

the nineteenth-century American urban

landscape, particularly in terms of urban

features such as hospitals, asylums,

almshouses, penitentiaries, sewerage systems,

parks, and cemeteries.

This second of two courses illustrates the

influence of medial thought on the design of 19th-

century American urban landscape through an

examination of American physician Daniel Drake,

and American landscape architect Frederick Law

Olmsted’s writings and work.

Medical Topographies in America

The publications of John Claudius Loudon and

the widely published medical topographies that

identified environmental factors

related to disease and miasma

influenced the exchange of medical

and urban design ideas

between England and AmericaFigure 9 Daniel Drake’s New Orleans Topography

Physician Daniel Drake’s (1785-1852) medical

topographies are representative of many of the

period medical studies in America referencing

conditions that associated environmental

characteristics with miasma. For example, in

these topographies, Drake described certain kinds

of soil as “necessary for autumnal fever.”

And in this work, Drake also suggested that organic soils provided “ the matter out of which a poisonous gas is formed,” and that “autumnal fever prevails most where the amount of organic matter is greatest . . .” (Drake 1854)

Mounting Etiological Evidence in America

Like Southwood Smith’s studies, Daniel Drake’s

and other physicians’ studies provided a

medical basis for the elimination,

remediation, and enhancement of

landscapes associated with specific

soil types, climates, topographies,

and settlement patternsFigure 10 Daniel Drake’sTopography of Louisville

As in England, problematic environmental

conditions were associated with standing

water, moisture in the soil, wetlands, a lack of

air circulation ( in streets and dwellings), high

population densities, and the decay of

vegetative and animal matter.

The presence of trees for oxygenation and the

mechanical cleansing of the air, wide and well-

drained streets, breezes, and wide-open spaces

were thought to prevent miasma. In America, as

the etiological evidence mounted ,so did the

impulse to develop a body of landscape and urban

design responses to the threat of disease.

New Urban Typologies

Just as physicians identified environmental

characteristics within their rationale of disease

causation, American urban designers identified

“salubrious” environmental

typologies through which to

create healthy urban areas.

Figure 11 Robert Morris Copeland’s Planfor Boston Parks and Boulevards 1852

These environmental typologies included parks

and open spaces, the planting of street trees,

the removal of urban wetlands and cemeteries,

the filling of low-lying lands, the straightening

and/or widening of streets, and the design of

new boulevards and suburbs that were less

densely populated.

Frederick Law Olmsted and Miasma

It was on the basis of these landscape typologies

that distinct urban design proposals were

provided to public health and city officials by

architects and landscape architects.

One of America’s most significant

landscape architects advocating such

proposals was Frederick Law

Olmsted.

Figure 12 Frederick Law Olmsted 1895

F L Olmsted’s (1822-1903) awareness of both

American and English medical opinion related to

disease and miasma was heightened during his

appointment as the General Secretary of the

Sanitary Commission during the American Civil War,

where he worked closely with nationally recognized

physicians and sanitarians.

Landscape Transformation

Based on Miasma Theory

Landscape characteristics

identified with miasma theory

were published by the

Commission during Olmsted’s

tenure.

Figure 13 Boston Landscape with Affinity for Miasma Prior to Transformation

Figure 14 Boston Landscape Transformed into Franklin Park

These characteristics described miasma’s affinity

for dense foliage, the power of vegetation to

obstruct its transmission, the association

between miasma and soil, and miasma’s

absorption by bodies of water. (Beverage, 1997)

Olmsted’s readings of John Loudon also

introduced him to the intricacies of miasma

theory and urban landscape design.

Urban Transformation Based

on Miasma Theory

Based on assumptions that

industrializing cities would

continue to grow Olmsted

proposed three landscape

typologies to prevent disease.

Figure 15 F L Olmsted Proposed Plan for the Riverside District in New York City

Figure 16 F L Olmsted Proposed Plan for the Riverside, Illinois

Those three typologies included: low density

urban and suburban neighborhoods, large

pleasure parks and smaller local parks, and tree-

lined parkways with connecting promenades.

According to these typologies, urban housing

needed to be less dense to permit the flow of air

to diffuse miasma.

Trees were needed throughout the city to purify

the air passing through their foliage and to act as a

barrier to miasma.

And trees in parks were needed to absorb excessive

moisture from the soil preventing the release of the

miasma.

Park Design Based on

Miasma Theory

According to Olmsted, park

edges should be planted with

trees to act as barriers to

urban miasma sources.

Figure 17 F L Olmsted Plan for Central Park, New York City

Figure 18 F L Olmsted Photo of Prospect Park, New York City

But in park interiors trees were to be planted in

small groupings to prevent the damming up of

miasma. Grass was also to be kept very short to

prevent excess moisture on its foliage, which

could create miasma. And tree-lined boulevards

were proposed to provide healthy connections

from all parts of the city to parks and less dense

housing.

These ideas shaped the American urban landscape

for at least fifty years during the 19th century. The

remnant parks, suburbs and boulevards created

through the belief in miasma theory underlying

their design still remain important parts of most

American cities; and reminds us of the important

role that medical thought plays in urban design.

References

Beverage, C E., Hoffman, C, eds. (1997) The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Defending the Union, London and Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Cassedy, J. H. (1986) Medicine and American Growth, 1800-1860, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press

Drake, A. (1854) A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, as they Appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian and Esquimaux Varieties of its Population, ed. by S. Hanbury Smith, Francis G. Smith, 2nd. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Brambo & Co

Hamlin, C. (1992) "Predisposing Causes and Public Health in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Thought," Bull. Soc. Hist. Med., 5:1, 41-70.