George Kessler

George E. Kessler
Born	July 16, 1862(1862-07-16) Frankenhausen, Germany
Died	March 20, 1923 Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A., Burial = Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri
Spouse(s)	Ida Grant Field of St. Louis m. May 14, 1900
Children	George Edward Kessler, Jr.
Parents	Edward Carl Kessler Adolphe Clotilde Zetzsche Kessler

George Edward Kessler (July 16, 1862 – March 20, 1923) was a German American pioneer city planner and landscape architect.

"Over the course of his forty-one-year career George E. Kessler completed more than two hundred projects in places as farflung as Shanghai, New York, and Mexico City."^[1]

"Planning, wrote Kessler, should be comprehensive. Even though a grand urban design could only be realized in bits and pieces, and over a long period of years, still we should always know where we are going. Each bit and piece should be understandable by reference to the great plan of which it is a part. Planning must also be relevant to the particular city: its geography, its economic character, all its local peculiarities. 'We must,' Kessler insisted, 'deal with it in its application to the entire city.' The object is to make cities decent places for masses of people to live in. Cities grow mostly by accident in response to trends in the real estate market. Very little thought is given to their qualitative characters. But there comes a time when development must be subject to control, when further growth must be planned such that urbanization will no longer proceed at the expense of devastating 'nature.' ”^[2]

Landscape of the American Renaissance: The LIfe and Work of George Edward Kessler by Kurt Culbertson is an unpublished biography, which has extensive information on Kessler's life and career.

Early Life & Education

George E. Kessler was born in Frankenhausen, Germany to Edward Carl Kessler and Adolphe Clotilde Zeitsche Kessler. In 1865 Edward and Clotilde along with George and his sister, Fredericka Antionette Louisa, emigrated to the United States. After briefly living in New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin, the family ultimately settled in Dallas, Texas where George's father and uncle invested in a cotton plantation. His father died in 1878. After his father's death, George, at the age of sixteen, worked as a cashboy at Sanger Harris Dry Goods ^[3].

After consultation with relatives, Clotilde decided that landscape architecture would combine the right degree of creativity and practicality to suit her son's temperament.^[4] The family moved back to Germany were George received his formal training ^[4][5][6] that included:

• Two-year apprenticeship at private landscape gardening school at the Grand Ducal Gardens in Weimar, Germany. Studied botany, forestry, and design under Hofgartner Armin Sckell and Garteninspector Julius Hartwig.

• Working for several months with Haage and Schmidt, a major German plant nursery in Erfurt.

• Studying at Charlottenburg and Potsdam that included brief study at Gaertner Lehr Anstalt, school of garden design founded by Peter Joseph Lenné; technical engineering study at Gartner-Jehranstalt; study with Hofgartner Theodore Neitner at the Neue Garten; and study at Polytechnicum, the premier horticultural library in Germany.

• Completion of civil engineering course at University of Jena.

• Touring with a tutor central and western Europe and southern England for one year study of civic design in major cities from Paris to Moscow.

“Of all of it,” he later said, “the travel was of most value.”

Career

First Job & Merriam Park ^[7]

In October 1881, the Kessler family returned to New York. From January 1882 through March, Kessler sent four letters to Frederick Law Olmsted. The January 22nd letter is the first record of his attempt to begin work in the United States. In the letter Kessler wrote of his studies and travel in Europe and wondered about an arboretum job at the Boston (Arnold Arboretum). In the February 15th letter, Kessler wrote that he was “certain of a situation in Central Park” and of an offer of a partnership with a florist in Woodlawn. “Since November”, Kessler wrote, “I have been in the employ of A. LeMoult 172 and 174 Bowery, having charge of his greenhouse, seed and grass stock. Decoration of concert halls were also mostly in my care.” Kessler also sent drawings.

Olmsted responded in March and urged Kessler “to be ambitious to be master in higher fields” than pleasure grounds and home gardens. Also Olmsted encouraged Kessler to educate himself about nature through reading, reflection and excursions and to aim to free himself from German associations in order to expand his capabilities and to not limit his influence and opportunities. A recommended list of books to read was included. Olmsted concluded by writing that the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railway Company might be in need of a man to take charge of a pubic picnic or excursion ground. He told Kessler that the President, H.H. Hunniwell, would be in New York and that Olmsted had given him Kessler’s address.

On March 18, Kessler provided additional information on his work in the Bowery and wrote that if he stayed with LeMoult, he would receive fifteen dollars a week. The last letter to Olmsted on March 23 stated that Kessler was taking a Merriam Park, Johnson County, Kansas, position with the railroad at a salary of forty dollars per month. The work was to design and supervise the construction of the railroad’s pleasure park.

Merriam Park was located ten miles southwest of Kansas City, Missouri. Kessler along with his mother and sister moved to a house on John Mastin’s Johnson County farm. Besides working on the park, Kessler served as caretaker of the farm property.

Although Merriam Park had been dedicated in 1880, when Kessler arrived there was only one building intended for visitors, a square dance floor, and nearly all the valuable trees had been cut down for cordwood. Less than two years after Kessler started the park was a great success. The park had been enclosed with a fence and the main entrance was an ornamental archway. Features included an open-air shelter for large public gatherings, wild animal exhibits, picnic grounds, Pavilion, lake, tennis courts, croquet grounds, horse drawn merry-go-round, numerous swings, and a baseball diamond. The cost to enter the park was 25 cents and the park attracted more than 20,000 visitors per day. A detailed description of the park before and after Kessler may be found in The Life and Work of George Edward Kessler^[7].

Kessler maintained a nursery on the park filled with a large variety of trees and shrubs, was responsible for sales from the park’s icehouse, and arranged excursions to the park. In additon to his work at Merriam Park, Kessler prepared landscape plans and supervised the maintenance of many of the railroad’s stations in Kansas and Missouri. He also managed the company’s two experimental tree farms (1,500 acres) near Farlington, Kansas.

These activities would have satiated most men, but Kessler opened an office in Kansas City and went looking for more work. His next biggest commission was landscaping a rugged hollow—Hyde Park.

Kansas City

The Paseo at 17th Street, Kansas City, MO, completed 1897.^[8]

In 1887 Kessler was commissioned to bring order to a hollow that formed the center of a booming Kansas City's fashionable Hyde Park neighborhood. Kessler landscaped the hollow and then encircled it with a boulevard to prevent houses from turning it into part of their backyards. The layout spurred sales of stately homes along it.^[9]

The success of the project drew the attention of The Kansas City Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson who would champion the City Beautiful Movement.

On May 31, 1890, Kessler applied to become the city's landscape architect for the city's newly created Park Board. Following court challenges on whether the city could issue bonds to fund parks, Kansas City finally got the approvals to create a park board on March 5, 1892 thanks to the efforts of August Meyer. Kessler had earlier designed the grounds of Meyer's house in what is today's Kansas City Art Institute. Kansas City's model for park and boulevard systems would be used by numerous cities. Kessler was hired as the board's engineer.^[10]

Kessler would work with Meyer to lay out the city's street grid including a parks and boulevard system. The initial 1893 plan called for 9.85 miles (15.85 km) of boulevards and 323.45 acres (1.3090 km²) of parks. The Paseo was named after the famed Paseo de la Reforma, one of Mexico City's most fashionable boulevards.

On May 14, 1900 Kessler married Ida Grant Field of Kansas City, Missouri. They had one son, George Edward Kessler, Jr.

Booming Practice

George Kessler's ca. 1901 plan for Overton Park in Memphis, Tennessee.

Beginning in 1901 through 1914 Kessler designed the Memphis Park and Parkway System. His plan for Memphis included two major urban parks and a loop of landscaped roadway connecting them.^[11] In 1904, he designed and landscaped the grounds at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

The same year he also designed Fair Park in Dallas, but his biggest gift to that city was his Kessler Plan, which he created in 1909. That year the Dallas Chamber of Commerce established the City Plan and Improvement League and hired Kessler to design a long-range plan of civic improvements for Dallas. His plans included fixing the uncontrollable flooding of the Trinity River, fixing narrow, crooked downtown streets, fixing dangerous railroad crossings, and the construction of the Central Expressway. At that time his plans were not implemented and were deemed "impractical," but later it became very clear that changes were needed.

In 1910 he moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1918 Kessler returned to act as consulting engineer for the Dallas Property Owner's Association and in 1919 began working for the Metropolitan Development Association of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. On 3 January 1922, he returned to St. Louis. His plans for the Trinity River were finally implemented in the 1930s.

Kessler also drafted city plans for Memphis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Cleveland, El Paso, Denver, and Syracuse. He also designed Camp Wilson, an army cantonment near San Antonio ^[3].

He died in Indianapolis, survived by his wife and son. In Dallas, the Kessler Park neighborhood is named for him. In Indianapolis, a major street, Kessler Boulevard, is named for him. There is another Kessler Boulevard, as well as Kessler Elementary School in Longview, Washington.

Notes

Bibliography

• Brown, A. Theodore and Dorestt, Lyle W (1978). K.C. A History of Kansas City, Missouri, Pruett Publishing Company, Boulder, Colorado.
  
• Culbertson, Kurt, (June 2005). Landscape of the American Renaissance: The LIfe and Work of George Edward Kessler
  
• Culbertson, Kurt (2000). " George Edward Kessler Landscape Architect of the American Renaissance." In Midwestern Landscape Architecture, W.H. Tishler, ed., Urbana : University of Illinois Press
  
• Mobley, Jane & Harris, Nancy Whitnell (1991). A City Within a Park, One Hundred Years of Parks and Boulevards in Kansas City, Missouri, The Lowell Press Inc, Kansas City, Missouri, ISBN 0-932845-52-5.
  
• Wilson, William H. (1964). The City Beautiful Movement In Kansas City, The Lowell Press, Inc, Kansas City, Missouri.