Halprin Quintet

Multiple Locations

“Many of these places have their significance in the underlying geometry of the city, yet it’s a measure of the man and his imagination and determination that these spaces were entrusted to him and his colleagues and that he touched them, shaped them and made them vivid to our senses. In many cases it is his mark that made them landmarks. His vivid imagining of how a place might be; of how people could experience it with fresh awareness and how it could provide valuable moments of social encounter, made these into places that guide us to new understandings.”

— Lawrence Halprin Memorial Service by Donlyn Lyndon, FAIA, December 20, 2009

Halprin was, without doubt, among the foremost landscape architects of the twentieth century. His prolific career spanned more than five decades, with highlights that include the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (in Washington, D.C.), Freeway Park (in Seattle, WA), and the Portland Open Space Sequence (in Portland, OR). His firm was a seedbed for many talented designers now celebrated in their own right, and the innovative techniques he pioneered changed the field forever. Influenced by the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and New Deal-era programs that provided social relief, Halprin believed that he could and should contribute to the greater good. He wanted to improve the lives of urban dwellers during a period when many people were fleeing cities and new highways were destroying older neighborhoods.

Halprin’s oeuvre initially included residential gardens, campuses, and housing projects, but by the mid-1960s his firm, Lawrence Halprin & Associates, had turned decisively to creating urban landscapes, including a series of innovative plazas, parks, pedestrian malls, and public spaces that garnered international notice and critical acclaim. Halprin focused not only on the design of his projects, but also on the design process itself. Influenced in many ways by his wife, dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin, his approach was phenomenological, foregrounding the experience of moving through the landscape. He developed new graphic techniques to represent such experiential movement, and, radically for the time, involved local communities in the creation of the spaces they would inhabit.

Landslide Conversations

The result was landscapes that demanded interaction and exuded dynamism, a dynamism matched by Halprin’s magnetic and bold personality. Expanding on the lofty ambitions pioneered by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., (a personal hero) in park making and city shaping, Halprin propelled these ideas forward in an age of Modernism – both in his built works and in his influential treatises Cities (1963) and Freeways (1966).

Along with the work of Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, James Rose, Robert Roytston, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, John Simonds, and other Modernist landscape architects, ��ұ�� has from its very beginnings championed Halprin’s legacy. ��ұ�� convened two international conferences on Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture (1995 and 2002), and published the conference proceedings thereafter (Spacemaker Press, 1999 and 2004). Halprin and others were featured in ��ұ�� books and publications (Pioneers of American Landscape Design, 1999; Shaping the American Landscape, 2009; and Shaping the Postwar Landscape, 2018), helping to bring critical visibility to and awareness of his work and legacy; and he was the focus of an early ��ұ�� Pioneers video oral history.

For all five of the Halprin sites featured in this report, deferred maintenance was a key issue that put them at risk. A lack of awareness about the importance of each site within the context of cultural landscapes generally (and Halprin’s legacy specifically) often led to a lack of stewardship and care. In each case ��ұ�� worked to educate the public and city officials; brought media attention to the sites; collaborated with partners; urged public involvement; promoted designation on local, state, and/or national registers; and, with Freeway Park and Park Central Square, became a consulting party in Section 106 deliberations. Key to its advocacy and engagement has been its Landslide reports and exhibitions.

In 2008 ��ұ�� dedicated its Landslide program of at-risk landscapes to twelve Marvels of Modernism, including two of Halprin’s sites (Heritage Plaza and Manhattan Square Park). The exhibit highlighted the fact that many Modernist landscapes had, until recently, been misunderstood and underappreciated. ��ұ��’s partners in drawing attention to these irreplaceable works were the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY, and Garden Design, which, along with ��ұ��, co-curated a travelling exhibition of newly commissioned photographs. Design Within Reach showrooms and regional American Society of Landscape Architects chapters (including New York, Chicago, Northern California, Illinois, and others) co-hosted travelling signboard exhibits displayed in more than a dozen cities. The exhibit gained widespread media attention, including from The New York Times, directing public attention to Halprin’s sites and generating enthusiasm for thoughtful stewardship solutions.

Following the first National Register designations of Halprin-designed landscapes in 2010 (Park Central Square, Heritage Park) and 2013 (Portland Open Space Sequence), ��ұ�� saw a softening of interest and an opportunity. In May of 2016 ��ұ�� was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant totaling $35,000 to help mount a traveling photographic exhibition, The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin.

The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin opening at the A + D Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 2017. Photo courtesy ��ұ��.

The exhibit, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of Halprin’s birth, opened at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., in October 2016 and traveled extensively thereafter. For the opening exhibit, organizers secured artifacts from the Halprin archives at the University of Pennsylvania, including original drawings, photographs, plans, shadowbox dioramas, and other items. While honoring Halprin and his career, the exhibit also called attention to the continued need for informed and effective stewardship of his irreplaceable legacy.

In concert with the Halprin exhibition, ��ұ�� also orchestrated a What’s Out There Weekend: The Public Landscapes of Lawrence Halprin of free tours dedicated to Halprin’s legacy in the U.S. and Israel, 2016. Photo by Ginger Garza.

Since the initial designation of Denver’s Halprin-designed Skyline Park twenty years ago (which still remains at risk), ��ұ�� has championed Halprin’s extensive and unrivaled design legacy. As evidenced in these five success stories, all with diverse state and local partners, there is a public appetite and enthusiasm for revitalizing this unique and significant legacy.

Meet the Designer

Born in New York City, Halprin earned a B.L.A. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. After apprenticing with Thomas Church, he opened an office in 1949. A prolific designer, his projects evoke natural forms and processes, and are marked by attention to human scale, user experience, and social impact.

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Charlottesville Mall

Charlottesville, Virginia

“In order to make possible a gracious, unhysterical kind of life on a city street, it has become clear that the automobile must take second place and be excluded.”

— Lawrence Halprin, Cities (1963)

Designed by Lawrence Halprin & Associates in the mid-1970s to revitalize the city’s downtown, Charlottesville Mall is significant not only for its subtle and innovative design solutions, but also for incorporating community workshops into the design process. Opened in 1976, the project is located along the city’s historic Main Street, just two blocks from its 1780s Courthouse Square. This eight-block-long by 60-foot-wide street has become Charlottesville’s public living room. Theaters, restaurants, shops, and apartments line a lively space characterized by willow oak bosques, a brick floor, and significant outdoor seating with moveable chairs and tables. Several small-scale fountains also punctuate the sequence.

Background

In 2002 the mall received the accolades of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, acknowledging it as one of three programs that brought a “downtown back to life.” With the demolition of the Halprin-designed sculpture garden at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond in 2006, the Mall is now the sole surviving project by Halprin in the state of Virginia.

Meet the Designer

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Professor Elizabeth Meyer at Charlottesville Mall exhibit, University of Virgina, Charlottesville, VA, 2010. Photo by Charles A. Birnbaum, courtesy ��ұ��.

Advocacy and Engagement for Charlottesville Mall

Although the site survived through the end of the twentieth century, at a time when many pedestrian malls from the same period were being demolished, it suffered from years of deferred maintenance, leading ��ұ�� to enroll the Mall in its Landslide program of at-risk landscapes in 2008. ��ұ�� also addressed concerns over “cosmetic upgrades” proposed by a 2005 master plan.

In the fall of 2008 students and faculty from the University of Virginia’s departments of architectural history and landscape architecture, led by Professor Elizabeth Meyer, began researching and documenting the Mall. Their findings, including information from interviews conducted with Dean Abbott, who worked on the project in Halprin’s office, were compiled in an exhibition and small 2009 publication. Their work went on to capture public and media attention, and influenced some factors in the Mall’s rehabilitation, including the conservation of the Mall’s historic brick paving.

Caption: Charlottesville Mall exhibit, University of Virgina, Charlottesville, VA, 2010. Photo by Charles A. Birnbaum, courtesy ��ұ��.

��ұ�� again highlighted the Mall in The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin, noting ongoing challenges following its 2008 rehabilitation. Citing additions to the site that were not in keeping with Halprin’s design intent, ��ұ�� called for clear design guidelines to be established for any changes, alterations and additions. In addition, ��ұ�� urged that the Mall be listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In partnership with Preservation Virginia, ��ұ�� organized a field visit to Charlottesville Mall as part of its What’s Out There Weekend: The Public Landscapes of Lawrence Halprin. The tour was led by Meyer, who introduced participants to myriad reasons for the street’s success.

Building on the rehabilitation work and the public’s interest, in June 2023 the Mall was as the Downtown Mall Historic District, a significant step towards a future listing in the National Register. This state-level recognition by the Virginia Board of Historic Resources notes that of the more than 200 streets around the United States that were pedestrianized between 1960 and 1980, the Charlottesville Mall is one of approximately 30 that remain pedestrian-only. That it continues to be an active commercial and cultural corridor within the historic downtown core is a testament to the design process and principles championed by Halprin.

Freeway Park

Seattle, Washington

“It accepted the idea of the chasm by including wonderful waterfalls that fell down into the chasm where you could see the cars go by. And then within the area enclosed by the freeway we did some wonderful stepped Babylonic-type gardens full of plants and lovely things. And everybody has loved it ever since. That seems to me one of the good things about that park too, and that is that it accepts the nature of where it is and uses it as part of the solution. Now the two pieces of the city are connected. The healing occurred easily.”

— Lawrence Halprin,

The first park in the world to be built over a highway, this 5.5-acre site is perched above Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle, where it uses the air rights of the interstate. Completed by Lawrence Halprin & Associates under the design direction of Angela Danadjieva, and with Jean Walton as the lead horticulturalist, the first phase of the park opened in 1976; it was a daring and innovative response to the newly built interstate, which, in the 1960s, had cleaved the city’s downtown from the First Hill neighborhood, virtually cutting the city in two. The park was the progenitor of a new design typology – emulated to this day – that boldly reimagined the role of the public park as an element of infrastructure.

Background

Landslide Conversations

The park is defined by a series of irregular, linked plazas that are intertwined and enclosed by board-formed concrete planting containers and walls. Halprin and Danadjieva had previously collaborated on Portland’s Auditorium Forecourt, which abstracted a mountain waterfall. Here, Halprin’s office abstracted the topographic undulations of the city’s landscape. The separate areas of the park, known as the Central Plaza, East Plaza, and West Plaza, achieve consistency and cohesion through a shared materials palette of concrete, broadleaf evergreen plantings, and site furnishings.

Site Plan for Freeway Park, Seattle, WA. Image by Lawrence Halprin & Associates, courtesy ��ұ��.

The Central Plaza is dominated by a roiling sheet of water in freefall, tumbling over an assertive assemblage of overhangs and outcrops. The spaces are differentiated through the dynamism of the water features that occupy the spaces and the attendant differentiation of moods. The park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

Meet the Designer

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Alison B. Hirsch (right) leads fellow Halprin experts on a tour of Freeway Park prior to a panel discussion at a Town Hall event, Seattle, WA, 2019. Photo by Charles A Birnbaum, courtesy ��ұ��.

Advocacy and Engagement for Freeway Park

��ұ�� enrolled Freeway Park as a Landslide site in 2006. Over time the park experienced a continual erosion of its original design elements. Plans in the guise of making the park “safer” and more habitable also failed to reference the precedent-setting status of the park and its design, proposing the demolition of several of the concrete retaining walls and the alteration or removal of two of the original fountains. The Freeway Park Association was formed in 1993, operating in cooperation with Seattle Parks and Recreation; they worked to build a broader constituency for the park.

As an exemplar and a progenitor of a landscape typology, ��ұ�� suggested in 2016 that future designation of the park in the National Register of Historic Places, as a National Historic Landmark, or even as a World Heritage Site, could help honor and steward Halprin’s groundbreaking work. Freeway Park was listed in the National Register in 2019, stemming in part from a Section 106 review initiated by the Federal Highway Administration in October 2016, which began after plans were announced for a $1.7 billion expansion of the nearby Washington State Convention Center. ��ұ�� was an official consulting party in that review. A coalition including the Community Package Coalition and the Freeway Park Association obtained $10 million in funds to support the Freeway Park Improvements Project, with construction slated to begin in summer 2020.

Through the efforts of ��ұ�� and other groups, Freeway Park was designated a local landmark in 2022 and is now protected by a city ordinance. With the $10 million in funding, Seattle Parks and Recreation will be required to meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for future work and to engage with the public through multiple avenues of outreach. Phase one of the project will provide new lighting, wayfinding signage, seating, plantings, irrigation, and enlarge Seneca Plaza. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025, bringing new life to a site that, along with others by Halprin and according to Rich Haag, is a “monumental tableau of the interplay of energy, sound and light of columns of water” where spectators are “irresistibly challenged to test their bravado, their skills and join in the fun.”

Heritage Park Plaza

Fort Worth, Texas

“Heritage Park is a new framework for ritualistic experience, it is a commemorative space that recognizes the collective past of the city. It is a processional design that through choreographed movement reveals the narrative of the city’s founding.”

— Alison Hirsch, City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America (2014)

Conceived to commemorate the city's founding as the Camp Worth military post in 1849, this half-acre plaza forms part of the 112-acre Heritage Park, located along the Trinity River. Heritage Park Plaza was designed by Halprin with Satoru Nashita as part of the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial Celebration. It opened in 1980. (Freeway Park, noted above, was another Halprin-designed Bicentennial commission.) Heritage Park is located at the site of the original fort, highlighting its historic symbolism and the impressive views that originally drew settlers to the spot. It is sited on a steep bluff where the West and Clear forks of the river converge, just north of the Tarrant County Courthouse and west of the Paddock Viaduct (the Main Street Bridge). As Alison Hirsch has observed, the site channels water downward to the Trinity River, “demonstrating reverence to the topographic feature that made this site historically significant.”

Background

Opening day event at Heritage Park Plaza, Fort Worth, TX, 1980. Image courtesy ��ұ��.

Overall, the plaza is an intimate space composed of interconnected terraced concrete pathways, geometric rooms, and flowing water channels. As with many of Halprin’s projects, the design focuses on the visitor's purposely choreographed processional experience passing through the outdoor rooms (Halprin would adopt this commemorative and dynamic aesthetic for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., the plan for which he was working on at the same time). Water flows down from the upper portion of the site, connecting to larger water features, including rills, waterfalls, and water walls. The tree canopy emphasizes live oaks, usually sited in intimate lawn areas. The design and layout reinterprets Camp Worth’s original footprint, while also incorporating a water wall with a representation of the original plan of the fort, and another wall fountain featuring a raised inscription that reads: "Embrace the spirit and preserve the freedom which inspired those of vision and courage to shape our heritage.”

Meet the Designer

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Heritage Park Plaza Signboard, Marvels of Modernism, 2008. Image courtesy ��ұ��.

Advocacy and Engagement for Heritage Park Plaza

The plaza was originally part of a larger vision for downtown Fort Worth, which failed to be realized, thus isolating the park from the rest of the downtown area by a road system uncongenial to pedestrians. Disuse led to deferred maintenance, and over the years the plaza witnessed a steady decline. In 2007 it was closed indefinitely to visitors. Fountains were turned off, trees became overgrown, understory plantings died or were removed, and steps, paving, and site furnishings deteriorated. A forbidding chain link fence was installed around the plaza and entrance to the park. As the risk of demolition swelled, ��ұ�� enrolled Heritage Park Plaza in its Landslide report, Marvels of Modernism. With increased public and media attention, enthusiasm for solving the planning and stewardship challenges without destroying the park gained momentum.

This was buoyed by the landscape’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places in 2010, with Significance in Landscape Architecture – the first Halprin designation solely in this category (Park Central Square, see below, preceded this but was an expansion of an existing historic district). Most importantly, the plaza was deemed eligible for individual listing even though it was not yet 50 years old. Now with its historic significance recognized, five years of discussions would take place in which ��ұ�� was an invited participant to not only explore the best approach to rehabilitating the Halprin-designed landscape, but to do so in its greater, and very challenging, physical setting.

In 2015 Downtown Fort Worth Initiatives, Inc., collaborating with the City of Fort Worth, began work on a formal rehabilitation plan. In 2016 ��ұ�� highlighted the park once again, this time in The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin.

The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin, Fort Worth, TX, 2018. Photo by Lauren Philips, courtesy ��ұ��.

The Fort Worth City Council approved $1 million in 2020 for design work by Bennett Partners and Studio Outside related to the plaza; in 2022 the Council heard updated plans by MIG to better connect downtown with Heritage Park by improving its connectivity with both the Trinity River and the adjacent Paddock Park. These plans involve pedestrian circulation including the addition of a Canopy Walk and River Stairs to the Trinity River, which was also a goal of Halprin’s. The opening date for the new work is slated for 2026, thus capping ��ұ��’s nearly decade-long involvement as an advocate and collaborator.

Manhattan Square Park
(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park)

Rochester, New York

“Manhattan Square Park provides a kind of condensation of ideas that Lawrence Halprin & Associates simultaneously applied in other cities, but in a much more compressed multiuse park. Rather than a horizontal extension as in Portland, where the matrix of open space knits urban fragments together, here the movement was directed in the vertical dimension […].”

— Alison Hirsch, City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America (2014)

This five-acre site in the East End district of downtown Rochester was occupied by tenements prior to 1968, when the city cleared 60 apparently “blighted” acres for urban renewal. Designed by Lawrence Halprin & Associates in 1971-1972, the park was the centerpiece of the first and only phase of the Southeast Loop Plan, an open space surrounded by largely unrealized high-density development. As with Seattle’s Freeway Park (see above), Halprin was confronted with a city physically divided by a recently constructed interstate; in this case the Inner Loop. City officials hoped optimistically that this park would become “the true activity center of the new mixed-use area.”

Background

One of Halprin’s most multi-purpose facilities, the park opened in 1974, offering a reprieve from congested urban living. The park was divided into six zones, including a children’s play area with a wading pool, a hockey rink that converted to tennis and basketball courts, a large meadow for athletic events, a bermed garden shaded by a grove of trees, and a wide, tree-shaded promenade. According to Alison Hirsch, the promenade “links the park’s pieces together” and spatially connects the site with the neighborhoods just outside the Inner Loop.

Sections of Manhattan Square Park, Rochester, NY, 1971. Image by Lawrence Halprin & Associates, courtesy Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania.

The focal point of the park is a sunken, concrete plaza containing a 2,000-seat amphitheater with a restaurant, and a waterfall fountain. A steel scaffold-like frame with viewing platforms allows visitors to experience the plaza from a vertical perspective. As landscape architect Ken Smith noted in his case study of Manhattan Square Park for the 2004 ��ұ�� publication, Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture: Making Postwar Landscapes Visible, the space frame functioned in several important ways, serving as “an important element highly visible several blocks away from the park,” as “a kind of proscenium, framing the theatrical space of the sunken fountain plaza,” and as an “overlook tower rising from the structure and allowing open views across the park and downtown cityscape.” The park’s complex, multi-level spaces were realized through concrete steps and retaining walls arranged in angular patterns, creating what Halprin called a “four-dimensional” landscape.

Meet the Designer

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Manhattan Square Park Signboard, Marvels of Modernism, 2008. Image courtesy ��ұ��.

Advocacy and Engagement for Manhattan Square Park

The ideas that contributed to the park’s design were progressive and revolutionary for 1974 when it opened but did not generate the anticipated pedestrian traffic. Minimal use combined with insufficient maintenance through the 1980s and 1990s led to the park’s accelerated deterioration. The observation tower was closed, the waterfall fountain was shut off, and the lighting system on the space frame was allowed to fail. General neglect led to further decline in use, and invited vandalism. Expanding on Ken Smith’s essay published by ��ұ�� in 2004, ��ұ�� included the park in Landslide 2008: Marvels of Modernism, evocatively captured in Rick Hock’s commissioned photographs.

Following its inclusion in the 2004 publication and 2008 Landslide report, in an oral history interview with ��ұ��, Halprin suggested that championing places such as Manhattan Park and “finding ways to either modify them or bring them up to date or treasure them, but particularly treasure them if they’re worth treasuring” is “one of the responsibilities that the profession [of landscape architecture] could take on for itself.” As one of the champions of Manhattan Square Park, ��ұ�� urged renewed public investment in the site, cautioning that its unique design and features would be lost if they were allowed to continue to deteriorate.

Landslide Conversations

In 2016 ��ұ�� highlighted Manhattan Square Park again, this time in the Landslide report and photographic exhibition dedicated to Halprin. In concert with the travelling exhibition and online exhibit, ��ұ�� presented free tours of Halprin-designed landscapes such as Manhattan Square Park. The tour was led by JoAnn Beck, the city’s former project manager leading the park’s rehabilitation.

With increased local and national media attention, the city eventually approved a phased capital project based on already underway master planning efforts. Undertaken by Stantec, the rehabilitation work included opening sightlines to increase views and safety, repurposing the skating rink as a reflecting pool and pavilion, and rehabilitating the former restaurant building as an event space. In the fall of 2016, after nearly a decade of advocacy and education by ��ұ�� and others, the waterfall fountain was turned back on for the first time in 25 years.

Landslide Conversations

The park was renamed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park in 2013. In September 2022 its amphitheater was given the name “Daniel Prude Square” in honor of Prude, who lost his life at the hands of police in March 2020 while experiencing a mental health crisis. Halprin’s park continues to meet its original vision as a vital multi-use activity center for the neighboring community.

Park Central Square

Springfield, Missouri

“We felt that Park Central Square was an extremely important resource, both for the City of Springfield and for the State. It represents the work of a major figure in the field of landscape design and is a significant resource from the recent past… We have determined that the Park Central Square, Springfield, Greene County, Missouri, is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.”

— Listed in the National Register in February 2010

In 1969 the Downtown Springfield Association in Missouri set out to find a design firm to improve a barren, paved vehicular area that had recently been given park status as a memorial to the Dorsey Heer family. The association hired Lawrence Halprin & Associates, and this became the firm’s second Missouri project, following their Kansas City Civic Center Master Plan. The project was completed in 1974. According to city documents, Springfield aimed to create a “Public Square for beauty, convenience, commerce, and fun”; with Park Central Square Halprin aspired, in his own words, to create something with “a different feel which will be easily perceptible to everyone.” He aimed to create “an active space for public assembly, devoted to pedestrians and their needs and comforts.”

Background

Along with the planning and design team, Halprin considered the dynamic and complex networks of transportation and pedestrian systems moving in and about downtown. Unlike traditional squares, the streets enter at the center of each side of the square rather than from its corners, creating a sense of enclosure. The predominant feature of the square is a slightly depressed, paved, central plaza designed to cater to large civic gatherings. A fountain constructed of Indiana limestone and inspired by the region’s limestone ledges serves as its focal point, enlivened by water that cascades into a shallow basin. The design also includes ample seating areas; a pavilion influenced by Charles Moore’s work on Lovejoy Plaza (Portland, OR); a sculpture by Aristides Demetrios, who had collaborated with Halprin on other projects; accent plantings; and site-specific street furniture. When Park Central opened in 1970, the front-page headline in the Park Central News stated that it was the “Beginning of the Future for Center City.”

Rendering of Park Central Square, Springfield, MO, date unknown. Image by Lawrence Halprin, courtesy The Offices of Lawrence Halprin.

Meet the Designer

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George McLaughlin shares the history of Park Central Square from his San Francisco home, 2008. Photo by Charles A . Birnbaum, courtesy ��ұ��.

Advocacy and Engagement for Park Central Square

Although lauded at the time of its opening in 1974, the square suffered from years of poor and deferred maintenance; in 2007 the Springfield City Council proposed to demolish nearly all of it, with a major reconfiguration of the site. Ruth Kelley, a long-time property and business owner in Springfield whose daughter had studied landscape architecture, wrote a letter to the local newspaper, asking the council to reconsider. Her heartfelt letter was picked up on by ��ұ��, who contacted Mrs. Kelley.

During that initial conversation, Mrs. Kelley noted, “I think it would be a mistake to change this beautiful park and most of the people who have responded to my letter to the editor agreed.” In January 2008 ��ұ�� enrolled the park in its Landslide program of at-risk landscapes. Park Central Square subsequently became the focus of a public debate on the value of open space and design.

The City Council held a meeting in February 2008 and with less than two days’ notice prior to that meeting, ��ұ�� submitted a letter to the council members that would speak to the square’s design significance. The issues raised by ��ұ�� struck a chord with Council Member Dan Chiles, who cast the lone vote against the development plan. The proposed redesign was approved.

Recognizing the landscape’s significance, ��ұ�� became a lead consulting party for the subsequent Section 106 review, playing a crucial role in the square’s determination of eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places. In April of 2008 a representative of the City of Springfield informed the Missouri State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) that Halprin “had no personal involvement in the current design.” ��ұ�� visited George McLaughlin, the project’s manager in Halprin’s office at the time of the square’s design and construction. At his home in San Francisco, McLaughlin clarified Halprin’s involvement in the design of the square, clearly refuting the city’s claim. In May 2008 the Missouri SHPO notified the City of Springfield that the park was determined eligible for listing in the National Register and that the proposed alterations would have an “adverse effect” on the historic property, which stalled the development plan. Mark Miles, Director of the SHPO, stated, “We are confident that design approaches can be developed that address the City's and the citizens of Springfield's concerns as well as protecting the significant elements of this important historic design." The campaign to protect Halprin’s design eventually prevailed due to vocal public support, leading to a full rehabilitation of the square, including needed repairs of the fountains.

Landslide Conversations

In December 2008 Halprin stated, “I must say that I feel immensely honored to hear that Park Central Square is eligible for the National Register. I soon hope to hear that it has gained full recognition for I know that such attention usually leads to renewed public appreciation and involvement. I have always felt that in a democracy, citizens must remain vigilant and involved regarding their important shared resources.” Sadly, Halprin would not live to see this designation. In February 2010 (four months after Halprin’s passing), the square was listed in the National Register of Historic Places; the determination is significant not only because it is the first Halprin-designed landscape so recognized, but also because Park Central Square was designed in 1970, and thus less than 50 years old, a baseline for assessing eligibility.

With the park revitalized, in 2019, Dan Chiles, former city council member and mayor pro tem of Springfield, who was actively involved in the campaign to save Park Central Square, led a ��ұ�� tour as part of What’s Out There Weekends: Lawrence Halprin’s Legacy. The tour provided a history capstone for the square’s revitalization and Halprin’s vision for Springfield, describing the efforts made to save the landscape and the larger values of urban public space and design that it successfully embodies.