| |
The 1920s were considered boom years for the School of Medicine and in
1925 the Sterling Hall of Medicine was dedicated. Planning for the building
began in 1921, and its construction was the crowning achievement of Milton
Winternitz’s tenure as dean.
Beatrix Farrand’s designs could be seen in the
planning for the Institute of Human Relations, which was dedicated in
1931. The institute, which occupied the left portion of the remodeled
Sterling Hall of Medicine (above), expanded the building and added a central
façade.
Beatrix Farrand came to Yale in 1922 and stayed for
almost 25 years. While at Yale she designed landscapes for the divinity
school, residential colleges and the medical school.
Still standing on Harkness Lawn is a sycamore that
is sometimes referred to as the Hippocratic Growth. The tree grew from
seeds imported from Ephesus, the birthplace of Hippocrates in ancient
Greece.
|
|
The medical school’s external face owes
a great debt to a pioneer of American landscape design.
By Colleen Shaddox
Inside Sterling Hall of Medicine, brain specimens from Harvey Cushing’s
collection share shelf space with 19th century physicians’ implements,
historic photographs and aging tomes on the healing arts. But the medical
school’s wealth of notable specimens is not confined to the great
indoors.
Outside its walls, an observant visitor can spot the sycamore tree
the grounds crew calls the Hippocratic Growth, which grew from a seed
that came from the birthplace of Hippocrates in Greece. Within its courtyards
grows one of the only American elms to survive New Haven’s Dutch
elm outbreak in the 1930s. And the landscaping for the medical campus—for
much of the university, in fact—is the design of Beatrix Jones Farrand,
one of the first American landscape architects. Farrand studied landscapes
and plants during an apprenticeship at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum,
and as a young woman made several grand tours of Europe—one with
her aunt, novelist Edith Wharton—where landscape paintings and vistas
of the Old World informed her sense of design.
Before coming to Yale in 1922 to start almost a quarter-century
of landscape consulting, she designed gardens at Princeton and Dumbarton
Oaks in Washington. At Yale her first project was the Memorial Quadrangle,
now Branford and Saybrook colleges. She went on to design grounds at the
divinity school, the president’s house, the residential colleges
and the medical school.
Although many of the gardens at the medical school remain out of view
to the public, Channing C. Harris, senior associate with Towers/Golde,
Landscape Architects and Site Planners, and a longtime landscape consultant
to Yale, said that horticulture helps to shape life on Cedar Street. On
the large lawn outside Harkness dormitory students receive their white
jackets in the fall, their medical degrees in the spring, and in between
bask in the sunshine enjoying pad thai and other treats from street
vendors. The narrow planting beds along the street pour color into the
neighborhood, along with the honeyed fragrance of Russian olive.
Towers/Golde has done site and landscape design for new building
and renovation projects, courtyards, rooftop gardens and streetscapes
at Yale for 25 years. This work often involves efforts to preserve older
trees and mature plantings, or recreate Farrand’s original landscapes.
Where possible, Harris said that he tries to be true to Farrand’s
philosophy, but practicality can dictate change. For example, Farrand
loved climbing vines, many of which damage buildings. So the wisteria
has mostly gone.
Farrand believed that the landscape was as important to university
life as the classroom: “We all know that education is by no means
a mere matter of books, and that the aesthetic environment contributes
as much to growth as facts assembled from a printed page,” she told
the alumni weekly at Princeton in 1926.
When the roof of the Yale Animal Resources Center, then located
in the B wing of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, developed leaks in 1986,
the School of Medicine restored a rooftop garden in keeping with Farrand’s
original vision. Using historic photographs, Norman Brody, the medical
school’s associate director of buildings and site services, and
his team of carpenters recreated original trelliswork, and roses and weeping
cherries now complete the genteel scene. There is even some wisteria,
a maintenance nightmare that Brody restrained himself from clipping back
for two full years.
Throughout Yale, many gardens have been lost to new buildings and
renovations. At the medical school new construction constantly encroaches
on the flora. But great care is taken to preserve important specimens
and to expand plantings wherever possible. The more venerable and fragile
trees in Farrand’s gardens give Brody “a white-knuckle ride
every winter,” he said. By and large they make it.
A number of improvements that would bring more blooms and greenery
to Cedar Street between York Street and Congress Avenue are under consideration.
Farrand favored spring- and fall-blooming plants, reasoning that no one
would be on campus during the summer. But the new plantings would extend
floral displays into the summer months in recognition that life on Cedar
Street is now a 12-month affair.
Colleen Shaddox is a freelance writer in Hamden, Conn.
|
|
|
