Looking back at history can help Harrisburg forge ahead
Some principles from the more than a century old “City Beautiful Movement” can still apply to modern projects, such as the Harrisburg Southern Gateway.

City Beautiful was the first great national sustainable living movement. In the late 1800's, it recognized that cities should be permanent, desirable places in which to live and that proper development is necessary:

• to elevate cities from the visual and functional chaos of unregulated development and
• to prevent the disastrous fires, such as the Great Chicago fire, and disease, such as the outbreaks of typhoid that were common in cities at that time.

Click here to enlargeA City Beautiful Plan provided fundamental urban infrastructure. It addressed water and sewer systems, road improvements, school buildings and a system of parks and open spaces.

You can see influences of the movement in today's Harrisburg.

While some of the rationale may have changed in the past century, City Beautiful principles and benefits are as applicable today as they were more than 100 years ago. In considering options for the Harrisburg Southern Gateway, the team is factoring some of these concepts into the planning process.

Benefits of City Beautiful planning:

• A positive city image through infrastructure improvements.
• Urban design of reclamation areas for mixed-use development and as public areas that promote collective enjoyment.
• Attract more visitors to the city.
• Provide the physical structure for the expansion or the logical expansion of the city.
• Provide aesthetic character to areas of a city.
• Create economic development benefit by optimizing the development density of the central city, making it more desirable and justifying higher-quality, more permanent construction.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1870-1957) and Harrisburg native Horace McFarland were the acknowledged intellectual leaders of the national City Beautiful movement. Recognizing the need for comprehensive city planning, Olmsted advocated "proper placement and adequate design," including housing, transit, and a system of parks, playgrounds and public recreation grounds. Olmstead and his school felt that balancing landscape and inhabitants represented "nature perfected." Olmstead's advocacy of balancing areas of formally controlled buildings and designated reserves of open space influenced the development of Harrisburg's parks and greenway system.

Influences on green space and bridge architecture
Harrisburg was renowned throughout the nation for its City Beautiful planning and was the smallest city to implement a complete City Beautiful plan.

Click here to enlargeEarly in the twentieth century, City Beautiful planners realized the value of strongly defined gateway into cities. They planned the two very powerful entrance sequences that define Harrisburg today - the State Street bridge entry from the east, which leads to the Capitol as the symbol of state, and the Market Street Bridge from the west, leading to the center of commerce.

The monumental pylons of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Bridge at State Street are one of the most powerful city entryways in America. Such gateways introduce and orient the city to visitors and residents.

The Market Street Bridge provides a smaller scale, but no less skilled, design. The cost of the monumental Market Street Bridge was borne by the League for Municipal Improvement, a private organization prominent in the City Beautiful movement.

A Brief History of City Beautiful improvements
Around 1900, Harrisburg was a thriving industrial area, yet it was a dreadful place to live because of dirt, danger, unpaved streets and industrial pollution, and trash, coal ash and sewage were placed directly into the Susquehanna River.

Citizen-activist Mira Lloyd Dock took up the cause of urban reform. She encouraged the legislature to threaten to move the capital to Philadelphia if Harrisburg did not make improvements. She and publisher/amateur naturalist McFarland founded the Harrisburg League for Municipal Improvement.

With a charge of $1 to join, the League charted a course for change.

Click here to enlargeIt led political, financial (through bond issues) and planning advances as well as many improvements that were completed around 1915. For example, the length of paved streets increased from four miles to 74 miles.

Warren Manning (1860-1938), who was Olmstead's chief horticulturalist and protégé, was hired in 1902 to develop a plan for a system of open spaces and civic improvements.

Click here to enlarge"It would be a public calamity if all the luxuriant greenness was to be swept away, exposing the backyards of dwellings, and destroying the shade and verdure from which the occupants of these homes gain so much," Manning reported of the tree-covered bluff that fronts Allison Hill. His vision was for "one-twentieth of the area of a city should be preserved for parks," with a system of parks and greenways surrounding the City. By 1915, Manning's plan had expanded the city's parkland from 46 to 958 acres, including the 5-mile River Front Park, Wildwood Park, and parts of the Greenbelt, leaving a legacy of open space for inhabitants into the next century.

If you want to read more:

• "Warren H. Manning, Landscape Designer, A Tribute to a Pioneer in a New Profession." Landscape Architecture Quarterly (April 1938): 148-153. Obituary.
• McFarland, J. Horace. "An American Garden." Outlook (7 October 1899): 327-333.
• "Suggestions for Beautifying the Home, Village and Roadway." American Civic Association, Outdoor Art Department. Leaflet No. 6. 2-11.
• Buck, Diane M. "Olmsted's Lake Park." Milwaukee History (December 1982): 55-64. Mentions W. H. Manning's visit to Lake Park representing the Olmsted firm.
• Town Sites on Government Reclamation Projects." Landscape Architecture Quarterly (April 1914): 117-