Csepely-Knorr Luca: Barren Places to Public Spaces. A History of Publick Park Design in Budapest 1867-1914 (Budapest, 2016)
Public Parks and Public Park design in the Second Half of the 19th Century
Joshua Major, Queen's Park, Manchester / MMU Library Joshua Major, Peel Park, Salford, postcard / MMU Library Loudon was very much influenced by the Englischer Garten and Lenné’s public park in Magdeburg; with a detailed description and analysis of these, he aimed to give direction to British designers as well.113 His views on public parks broadened throughout his career, and becoming richer, he published these several times. However, one of his core principles remained the same: he had a completely different idea about the educational role of public parks to the German theorists. For him public parks were places for education in botany and natural history, besides being places for recreation and physical activity. To achieve this goal, he proposed the creation of various scientific gardens. The first public park designed by him, Derby Arboretum, unreservedly served this goal: small plates next to plants informed the visitors about the name and the origin of the plant as well.114 The educational role of plants appeared in more indirect ways, as well in the public park theory of Britain. While discussing the flower beds in public parks, a contemporary publication mentioned: "how glad they were [the public] to find that the working classes could see a display of summer flowers without going to Kew”.ns Another layer of education in natural history was created by Sir Joseph Paxton in the Crystal Palace Park, where he wanted to show the evolution of the world through the display of a series of statues of extinct animals and dinosaurs.116 The other very influential design by Paxton was his 1847 plan for the new public park in Birkenhead, the first municipal park in Britain.117 Paxtons new feature in this park was that he separated a system of paths for pedestrians from those for the carriages and horse riders.118 He divided the different parts of the park from each other with rich planting, and tried to make it more interesting by placing small buildings from diverse periods of architectural history in it.119 From this point of view Paxton’s design shows a strong correspondence with the design practice and legacy of the classical English landscape gardens. The large lawn areas of Birkenhead Park made the free practice of various sports possible, but Paxton did not separate areas for any particular use. This first appeared in the three public park designs by Joshua Major 32
