University Preservation: Cranbrook Educational Community

A National Historic Landmark, Cranbrook is a cultural complex founded in the early twentieth century by the newspaper magnate George Gough Booth and his wife, Ellen Warren Scripps Booth. The stellar list of architects commissioned to build there includes Eliel Saarinen, Albert Kahn, Bertram Goodhue, and, more recently, Steven Holl and Raphael Moneo. The buildings are set in important cultural landscapes, with formal gardens, natural woods, lakes, and waterways. Funding will enable Cranbrook to create a preservation plan for its historic landscape.

Background


The evolution of the campus landscape has been dynamically unfolding over a period of 100 years and entails Cranbrook’s transition from private estate to the development of the educational institutions that exist on the site today. Throughout its history, various designers, artists and gardeners have helped to shape the landscape, but the vision as crafted by George Booth in the early 20th Century has provided a unifying background for the institutions and support facilities that have developed as separate pieces within the overall campus framework. In this cultural landscape report, we have sought to identify key landscape features and themes throughout the history of Cranbrook. Primary emphasis has been on several signiﬁ cant precincts within the landscape—namely the Grotto Lakes area, Millrace area, Kingswood School and Kingswood Lake area, and the area of the Cranbrook School. While George Booth hired a series of designers and gardeners to advise him on the development of the grounds, it is clear that shaping the landscape of Cranbrook was one of his own personal passions: “Nature I love, and, next to Nature, Art.” Inﬂuences on the Cranbrook landscape came from many sources—an obvious love of the native woods, lakes, and streams of the upper Midwest United States and Canada; travels abroad to country estates in England, France and Italy; George Booth’s son Henry’s immersion in the southern Appalachians near Asheville and the Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate; and the general style emphasized in Arts and Crafts gardens of the early 20th Century. Booth’s father Henry W. Booth and son Henry also offered many suggestions for speciﬁ c features or areas. Many of the place names—“Cranbrook,” “Glassenbury (or Glastonbury) Lake,” and Angley Wood” came from similarly named places near the family’s ancestral home in Kent, England. George Booth regarded the landscape at Cranbrook as a constantly evolving canvas; Booth himself kept a 1904 plan of the property on which he noted erasures and additions as they were made.

By early 1905, Booth eagerly sought the help of landscape gardener, H. J. Corﬁeld, who had advertised his services in Country Life. Booth wrote to Corﬁeld, I should be glad to receive more particulars concerning your experience in charge of country estates and to know whether you would care to consider an engagement with me to take charge of the general improvement of my country place near Detroit. For your information in brief would state I purchased about one year ago 175 acres with many natural conditions favorable to beautiﬁ cation and all conditions calculated to make a desirable country estate. Only the ﬁrst years work of improvement has been done so that most of the work is yet to be undertaken and carried out. Corﬁeld developed a basic landscape plan for the property that included many of the early roads and the farm complex located near what is now the Kingswood site.

Corﬁeld’s plan did not show the outlines of Glassenbury Lake (later re-named Kingswood Lake) but he clearly worked closely with Booth and Samuel Morley, Booth’s farm superintendent, to shape the basin and plant the shorelines and islands of the lake. Corﬁ eld’s work was largely complete by 1907 and included re-grading the Old Mall area, constructing the South Cascade (or Waterworks), removal of old barns north of the cottage and reseeding the area to lawn, construction of a stone gateway at the Lone Pine entrance to the Old Mill Road, and completion of Lilac Lane leading to the new farm buildings north of the lake. In a letter of reference written for Corﬁeld in 1908, Booth suggested that Corﬁ eld had carried out a “complete revolution of the entire property.” He further noted that “the work he undertook was the reclamation of a tract of land consisting of 225 acres and converting it from one of the roughest pieces of farm land possible into a country estate…Several miles of perfectly graded driveways were created, and an artiﬁ cial lake, cascades, etc., accompanying which was an immense amount of necessary grading, lawn-making, etc. Also carrying out of very extensive planting plans.” By the early 1920s, the evolution of the Cranbrook landscape took a major shift as Booth turned his attention toward developing six institutions on the grounds of his estate -- Brookside School, Christ Church CranbrookFigure 1, Kingswood and Cranbrook Schools, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Cranbrook Institute of Science. Booth initially identiﬁ ed his vision for these entities in 1924 about the time his son Henry completed his architectural degree from the University of Michigan and formed an architectural practice with his classmate J. Robert Swanson. Booth commissioned both Henry and Swanson had been fascinated by Saarinen’s design and teaching skills and were glad to have the beneﬁ t of the Finnish architect’s fresh insights and expertise to guide their work. By the summer of 1926, George Booth established the Cranbrook Architectural Ofﬁ ce under Saarinen’s leadership to design all subsequent buildings for the Cranbrook campus.

Previously, George Booth had joined with his son Henry to design the ﬁ rst sections of Brookside School and had commissioned the New York ﬁrm of Bertram Goodhue Associates to design Christ Church Cranbrook. The ﬁrst of the new institutions to be built under Saarinen’s direction was Cranbrook School, constructed between 1925 and 1937 by the Wermuth company of Fort Wayne, Indiana, the contractor of Christ Church Cranbrook and all subsequent buildings constructed during George Booth’s life. A. C. Wermuth, the owner of the ﬁrm, successfully argued that it would be cheaper to build Cranbrook School from scratch rather than to adapt the older farm buildings for academic purposes. The plans developed by Saarinen and the Cranbrook Architectural Ofﬁ ce arranged the buildings of Cranbrook School around a large central Quadrangle, with a series of smaller courtyard spaces. All were richly textured with ﬁ nely detailed brick paving and intricately carved limestone reliefs and other features. The school complex comprised dormitories, faculty and staff residences, a dining hall, garages, athletic facilities, an astronomical observatory, classrooms, study halls, and a library. Bordering the eastern edge of the school, along “Academy Way,” Saarinen and Booth developed a grouping of studios and residences that formed the nucleus of the incipient Cranbrook Academy of Art. To enhance the beauty of these buildings, Booth added fountains, antique architectural fragments, and sculptural works, including many by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles, who arrived at Cranbrook in 1931. Throughout the history of the development of Cranbrook, there has been a long tradition of moving plants from place to place. In earlier days the ﬁ elds and fencerows would often be a source of plants for use in other areas.

In other periods, earlier plantings would be moved around as the landscape continued to evolve. Furthermore, in earlier periods plantings were done on a massive scale—typically purchasing sapling trees and shrubs by the hundreds. If necessary, plants would be held in temporary nursery areas until reaching a size suitable for planting. This process not only saved money, but also allowed for the ﬁtting of particular specimens to their locations. Roads and paths have also been mutable, changing throughout the development of Cranbrook. Early records are full of notations of roads being removed or added, some for aesthetic and others for practical reasons. Finally, throughout the history of the development of Cranbrook, there has been a tension between the natural or naturalized landscape and the more highly developed garden spaces. While a few spots on campus—namely Angley Wood—have survived with little intentional change, most other areas have been consciously drained, dredged, or otherwise manipulated. While Booth and many of the designers he employed (Corﬁ eld, Simonds, Eichstadt) practiced a more “wild” aesthetic in the broader landscape, Booth also appreciated carefully ordered, formal gardens like those near the house or in the courtyards at Cranbrook and Kingswood Schools. This contrast persists today, although earlier horticultural plantings in the courtyards have lost some of their original diversity, and the more naturalistic portions of Cranbrook have been increasingly overrun with many invasive plants.

Despite these changes, Cranbrook remains one of the most fascinating public campuses in the U.S., particularly because of this layering of designers and evolution over time. It remains a testament to the vision and generosity of the Booth family.

Issue


This begins with assessments of: the period of signiﬁcance; overall landscape site integrity; incompatible features; and character deﬁ ning features. The next stage involves an evaluation of existing conditions relative to historic plans or photographs of the period of signiﬁcance. Overall cultural landscape condition estimates and a ﬁnding of integrity analysis are then assigned, based upon whether character deﬁ ning features are still present on the site. An additional determination is made to assess whether the overall site integrity is reﬂected in the site’s ability to convey its signiﬁ cance. As part of the analysis, the National Register criteria are applied to location, setting, feeling, association, design, materials, and workmanship. The concluding step is to establish strategies for treatment which deﬁne the design approach and long-term management of the cultural landscape.

Methods


Preservation Preservation is deﬁ ned as the act or process of applying measures necessary to sustain the existing form, integrity, and materials of an historic property. Work, including preliminary measures to protect and stabilize the property, generally focuses upon the ongoing maintenance and repair of historic materials and features rather than extensive replacement and new construction. New exterior additions are not within the scope of this treatment; however, the limited and sensitive upgrading of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and other code-required work to make properties functional is appropriate within a preservation project. (An example of a preservation project at Cranbrook would be stabilization of Stone Bridge.)

Rehabilitation Rehabilitation is deﬁned as the act or process of making possible a compatible use for a property through repair, alterations, and additions while preserving those portions or features which convey its historial, cultural, or architectural values. (Most of Cranbrook’s woodland landscape areas will undergo rehabilitation in order to sustain biological diversity.)

Restoration Restoration is deﬁned as the act or process of accurately depicting the form, features, and character of a property as it appeared at a particular period of time by means of the removal of features from other periods in its history and reconstruction of missing features from the restoration period. The limited and sensitive upgrading of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and other code-required work to make properties functional is appropriate within a restoration project. (Restoration would include replacement of Cranbrook School pavements with snow melting technology.)

Reconstruction Reconstruction is deﬁned as the act or process of depicting, by means of new construction, the form, features, and detailing of a non-surviving site, landscape, building, structure or object for the purpose of replicating its appearance at a speciﬁ c period of time and in its historic location. (If any portion of the original Booth Cottage landscape were built, that would be a reconstruction.)