Photo of Henry Wright superimposed on a scheme of one of his "City Beautiful" conceptualizations.

All about Henry Wright

Henry Wright was born in Lawrence, Kansas in 1878 to a Quaker family. His parents were both college-educated and his father was a certified public accountant, who was noted for his pioneer studies in cost accounting for housing. After graduation from high school, Wright worked as a draftsman for Root and Siemens, Kansas City Architects. His first interest was architecture. In pursuit of that interest, Wright studied at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from their two-year program in architecture in 1901. He returned to work for Root and Siemens after graduation.

In 1903, George E. Kessler, the chief landscape architect for the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904, asked Root and Siemens for assistance in doing work on Forest Park in St. Louis. They sent Wright to assist. Wright joined Kessler's firm after the project was complete and worked on the project for restoration of Forest Park, the landscaping for Washington University and a system of parks and boulevards for the St. Louis Civic League. In addition, he worked with Kessler on the design of parks, parkways and boulevard systems in many cities including Kansas City, Denver and Cincinnati. 'Through Kessler, who had worked for Frederick Law Olmstead, Wright came under the influence of one of the few seminal minds in planning that the nineteenth century had produced, and his own community plans establish him as perhaps Olmstead's most adept continuator.

In 1909, Wright, with the agreement of Kessler, went into private practice. From 1910-1913, Wright designed the private areas of Brentmoor Park, Forest Ridge, West Brentmoor and housing at St. Louis Country Club for the upper class. These projects demonstrated Wright's interpretation and amplification of Olmstead's concepts of landscape architecture including curvilinear layout of roads, irregular shaped lots, and working within the topography of the land to develop a naturalistic park-like setting. As Wright noted himself in an article in Current Architecture, these projects were part of the evolution of his planning ideas that reached full expression in Radburn. In 1917, Wright prepared the plat the Hi-Pointe Subdivision, he was in fact designing his first town. Unlike his earlier projects, it was designed for a broad range of socioeconomic groups and included not only single-family residences but also multifamily, religious, educational, recreational and commercial areas. In order to understand the historic context in which this plat and the plats for Hi-Pointe Addition, De Mun Park and Tuscany Park were prepared, one must understand the history of the City Beautiful movement expressed in Olmstead's tradition of naturalistic design, Garden City Planning, and their evolution into Wright's New Town movement.

City Beautiful and Garden City Planning and the Progressive Era

The streetcar lines were in large part responsible for the expansion of suburban growth into the late nineteenth century. This growth exploded as the automobile grew in popularity. The access to these modes of transportation made it possible for people to escape the city. Cities were increasingly becoming more crowded and congested and the rapid industrialization produced conditions that were frequently not healthy. The move to the suburbs first was solely for the upper class. However, with the growth of populism during the Progressive Era, the focus turned to providing better housing for all, including the middle and working classes.

Responses to the suburban growth varied. Initially, the use of the gridiron city plan was the norm. However, the desire for a more naturalistic park-like setting was great. In 1869, Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux platted Riverside, Illinois. This project addressed this desire. The plat was designed to follow the topography of the site. The roads and walks were laid out with gentle curves and the lots were irregularly shaped. Olmstead's plan became the basis for laying out suburbs in the emerging practice of landscape architecture and Riverside became the archetypal example of the curvilinear planned suburb.

Olmstead's principals were integrated and codified by Charles Mulford Robinson into a movement given the name City Beautiful. The National Register Bulletin on Historic Residential Suburbs best summarizes the important elements of the City Beautiful Movement. A general plan of development, specifications and standards, and the use of deed restrictions became essential elements used by developers and designers to control house design, ensure quality and harmony of construction, and create spatial organization suitable for fine homes in a park setting.

At the same time that the City Beautiful movement was gaining popularity, another city planning model that grew out of the Progressive Movement in Britain found its voice. The English Garden City was designed as a socially integrated community for working-class families. It was introduced in 1898 by the English social reformer Ebenezer Howard in his book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. The movement called for comprehensive planning with a unified plan of architectural and landscape design. The ideal city was a series of concentric circles of houses and gardens for persons with varying income and occupations. Commercial shops, public buildings, and a large park formed the center of the city. On the outer ring were industrial activities, an agricultural college and social institutions. The city was designed to provide a healthy environment that included sunlight, fresh air, open space and gardens. The English Garden City did not call for the large areas required by Olmstead. Instead the gardens, courts and common grounds were created by efficient land use and the use of multifamily dwellings.

American Progressives wanting to encourage housing reform and the creation of a healthy environment for all, including those in the middle and lower class, embraced the English Garden City Movement. The fact that the Garden City principles were consistent with the move toward comprehensive planning and the development of cost efficient higher-density housing in an attractive and healthful environment merely added impetus to their acceptance by planners in the United States.

Wright recounts a personal experience that he had in 1902 when he was visiting in Ireland that demonstrates the early melding of his love for landscape with the economic efficiency of the examples offered by European cities. "I passed through an archway in a blank house wall on the street to a beautiful villa fronting upon spacious interior gardens. That archway was a passage to new ideas, which have struggled up through the ensuing years! I learned then that the comforts and privacy of family life are not to be found in the detached dwelling, but rather in a house that judiciously relates living space to open space, the open space in turn being capable of enjoyment by many as well as by few."