Garden Cities by Sarah Rutherford

Garden Cities by Sarah Rutherford

Author:Sarah Rutherford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Garden Cities and Suburbs
ISBN: 9780747814603
Publisher: Osprey Publishing


An idealised interior, designed by Barry Parker for his brother Stanley, in Letchworth Garden City, 102 Wilbury Road. Arts and Crafts and historicist styles were strong themes, as epitomised in Parker and Unwin’s Letchworth offices.

Seventeen years lapsed before the second garden city (the final true example in England) was founded. In 1919 Howard, then nearly seventy, identified a suitable rural site for a garden city including much of the Panshanger estate near Welwyn, Hertfordshire, 15 miles south of Letchworth down the A1. Some 2,400 acres was acquired and Welwyn Garden City Ltd was floated in April 1920. Howard was more closely involved than at Letchworth. He is even said to have planted an apple tree in the garden of each original house.

For the second garden city, lessons in planning were learnt from the pioneers who designed and inhabited Letchworth. A sensitive master plan was provided by Louis de Soissons, a French Canadian architect trained at the Royal Academy and École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Although the site was quartered by railways, a grand focal Beaux-Arts layout was planned around two formal axes. The main one was Parkway, the imposing civic equivalent to Letchworth’s Broadway and The Square, running north to south alongside the Great Northern Railway. Howardsgate was a cross axis, on an equally imposing scale, leading to the station. The scenic Parkway terminated at the north end in an exedra, The Campus, a semi-circular public space to be surrounded by civic buildings, whose shape reflected the branch line against which it fitted. Functional land-use zoning separated the industry, placed beyond the main north–south railway line. The preferred architectural style moved from the Arts and Crafts rural idyll to a genteel urban Neo-Georgian style, often designed by de Soissons’ practice. Like Letchworth, extensive landscaping, based around the spinal, mile-long Parkway axis, was key to the experience and lifestyle of residents and visitors alike.



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