Currently on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a piece I’ve wanted to see as long as I’ve known about it. To my knowledge, though, it hasn’t been on view since the museum first opened in 1872.
Along with being a co-designer of Central Park, British-born architect Calvert Vaux also designed New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Natural History Museum, the two world-class institutions that flank the park. A major reason few know this is that in both instances, Vaux’s work, while foundational, was quickly lost under generations of expansions. His entrance facing the park was soon covered by a much larger entrance (see image below). Later, of course, the Fifth Avenue entrance with its sweeping stairs and grand statuary became the one we know today.
Beneath the new entrances and many added art wings and galleries, the Gothic hall that Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould built remained. It just got buried. The same was true with the Natural History Museum where it’s still possible to pick out the original building if you view the sprawling complex from above. But with the art museum, the original building was completely covered and lost from sight.
On the second floor now, though, if you take a left at the top of the grand staircase and make your way to the French impressionists, a distinctly Vaux arch has been revealed beneath many levels of former display walls. The arch is one of several that used to grace the exterior of the original building and are clearly visible in early photos.
My son pointed it out to me, and I was delighted to see it being treated as the work of art it is. The floor had been cut to contain the stonework, rather than hide it, and there was a brief but informative description of the object. As glad I was to see it, the display underscored the central irony in Vaux’s life. As incredible as his buildings and designs were, he had an even greater gift for perpetually being upstaged and his contributions overlooked. Just outside the museum, of course, is the park that Olmsted would have had nothing to do with designing if Vaux hadn’t suggested a collaboration.
Understanding this collaboration has been an ongoing research project I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around.
Calvert Vaux was trained in London and worked most of his life in America as an architect. When he was first hired by Andrew Jackson Downing to return to America with him, it was as an architect. Downing designed landscapes for his clients who wanted grand grounds for their grand estates. Vaux was to provide the plans for the homes, and in their few years together, he designed dozens and dozens of residences.
For most of my life, I’ve believed that the division of work was similar between Olmsted and Vaux. Fred took care of the landscapes, while Calvert was busy building bridges, park buildings, and terraces. There are so many bridges and buildings in Central Park, it was easy for me to believe this was their clear and equitable division of labor. Recent research suggests I’ve been wrong.
While it is true that Olmsted had nothing to do with the design or construction of the bridges and buildings—he had no training or experience in this regard—when hired to be the park’s superintendent, he was equally unskilled in landscape design. As we all know now, he had the aptitude, but when construction of Central Park was underway, he’d never done anything remotely like it before. With Downing, this had been Vaux’s profession for years.
More significantly, both thought Central Park had too many buildings in it.
When Vaux and Olmsted reunited as business partners in 1865 after the Civil War, they went on a nearly seven year park building spree. They built parks in Buffalo, Chicago, and across Connecticut, but very few of these parks included any buildings or bridges designed by Vaux. (The few memorials and gazebos that do exist today were all added later.) Prospect Park, their second largest, demonstrates a far lighter touch to construction in favor of less adulterated wilderness. The apparent separation of tasks in Central Park (buildings vs landscape) is simply not evident anywhere else. For the bulk of their time together, they were both designing the landscapes they worked on—but only one of them was getting any credit for the work. Only Olmsted would go on to be known as the “father” of landscape architecture.
This credit imbalance was true then, as it is now. They discussed the discrepancy at length in their correspondence while Olmsted was in California, prior to their partnership. Whenever asked, Olmsted always maintained he wouldn’t have his career without Vaux, but increasingly people weren’t asking. They just assumed Olmsted, the more public figure, was the brains behind the operation. Overtime, it seems he got tired of correcting them.
When the chance to work on the Metropolitan Museum of Art came, it coincided with the end of the Olmsted & Vaux partnership and very likely precipitated it. The two would remain friends and continue to work together sporadically, but my sense is that Vaux saw designing New York City’s premier public museums as his chance for some of the limelight. If his moment of fame came, it was brief.
Coincidentally, around this time, Vaux was also working north of the city in Hudson, NY on the estate for the famous landscape painter, Frederick Church. The grounds and mansion on the hill above the Hudson River are known today as Olana and are world renowned. But here, again, Vaux has managed to defy credit. Although one of the nation’s leading architects AND landscape architects did the plans and oversaw the work—and the house and grounds very much reflects Vaux’s style and tastes—today, his name is a footnote in the general histories of the estate. Rather, visitors are erroneously told that the client designed his own house and grounds, and it’s commonly referred to as “Frederick Church’s Olana.”
Seeing Vaux’s two-tone Gothic arch correctly credited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art may be a small step in the right direction, but as a fan, I was grateful for it.
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