New Historic Status for Garden’s World-Class Collections

Posted in NYBG in the News on April 2 2009, by Plant Talk

Library Building, Fountain, Allée Designated NYC Landmarks

Frank Genese, AIA, is Vice President for Capital Projects.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted last week to add the Library building, the Lillian Goldman Fountain of Life, and Tulip Tree Allée to their registry of landmarks. The designation reinforces the historic significance of these sites and guarantees their protection so that they can be enjoyed by future generations.

The grand neo-Renaissance-style Library building (formerly known as the Museum Building), the Fountain of Life, and Tulip Tree Allée together form a distinguished and monumental Beaux Arts civic space. The Library building was designed in 1896 by architect Robert W. Gibson and was constructed in 1898–1901. It originally housed the Garden’s preserved botanical specimens and was the first American museum devoted solely to botany. The 7.3 million specimen collection, the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, largest in the Western Hemisphere, now resides in the International Plant Science Center. Today, the Library building is home, fittingly, to the peerless LuEsther T. Mertz Library and its more than 1 million items spanning 10 centuries. The long, four story structure, clad in grayish-buff brick and buff terra cotta, features a symmetrical design and classically-inspired details characteristic of Beaux Arts civic buildings at the turn of the century.

The bronze sculptural group of the Fountain of Life (1903–05), designed by Carl (Charles) E. Tefft for Gibson’s marble plinth and basins, depicts a cherub astride a dolphin atop a globe and two web footed plunging horses being restrained by a female and a boy, surprising a merman and mermaid in the basin below. Gibson envisioned the fountain as the focus of the vista looking toward the building and as having upper and lower water basins, the flowing water elements giving a distinctive character both as a landscape feature and as a botanical exhibit.

Tulip Tree Allée, consisting of tulip trees lining both sides of the drives leading to the fountain, was planted in 1903–11 at the direction of Nathaniel Lord Britton, first director of the Garden. In 1903, Carolina poplars were planted along the approach to the building. By the beginning of 1904, the driveway was re-graded after completion of the main fountain basins as well as the seating area, drinking fountain (the latter in operation in June 1903), and paths leading to the Library building. Tulip trees were planted between the poplars in 1905. By 1911 the poplar trees had been removed, leaving the tulip trees. The Landmarks Preservation Commission, at the Garden’s request, landmarked Tulip Tree Allée as a general design concept, not as an exact arrangement of a particular species, allowing future Garden horticulturists to inter-plant a different species if the sustainability of tulip trees is jeopardized by future climate change.

While the Garden reigns as one of the world’s premier museums of plants, educational institutions, and scientific research organizations, few know that it is also the home of many notable historic buildings and structures. Now, the addition of these to the landmark registry adds to that distinction.