Kessler and his successor, Lawrence Sheridan, practiced in the era of civic works, when city planning and landscape architecture were aligned professions. Cities hired landscape architects to design their cities to improve their livability and, by extension, their competitiveness. It was important enough to Indianapolis business leaders that they hired Kessler to develop the plan that included 12 parks with more than 1,100 acres, 35 miles of parkways and 15 miles of boulevards.
However, you would have to be more than 70 years old to have experienced the scope and beauty of Kessler's system, because after World War II we neglected our beautiful parks. Indianapolis was not alone. Many cities shifted their public investment to building roads to the suburbs. The U.S. entered an era of public works, when engineers replaced landscape architects as city-builders. Efficiency and cost-driven standards for facilities replaced landscapes.
From 1940 to 1980 Indy failed to take care of parks, bridges, and waterways. They became ruins and overgrown drainage-ways. A beautiful travel and recreational experience was largely wrecked. Important parkways and boulevards were divided with interstates, widening them stripping boulevards of landscape, and encouraging auto-oriented land uses.
Indy's peer cities are rediscovering their Picturesque and Romantic Period. They are restoring their historic landscapes, adding recreational opportunities and enhancing their contributions to storm-water management.
Buffalo and Louisville have beautiful parks systems designed by Fredrick Law Olmstead, the designer of New York’s Central Park. In Buffalo they have prepared a master plan and design guidelines for the system’s restoration. The Buffalo Olmstead Conservancy supports the programming, funding, and restoration of the city’s extensive park system.
Olmstead designed 18 parks and six parkways in Louisville. The Olmstead Parks Conservancy is working with Louisville’s Metropolitan Parks Department to rally volunteers, fundraise, and restore the city’s historic park system. Louisville has a beautiful set of master plans for each park. Louisville’s Olmstead park system is also on the National Register of Historic Places.
Before coming to Indianapolis, George Kessler designed the grounds for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. He also designed park systems for Kansas City, Memphis, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Mexico City.
As the City Landscape Architect in Kansas City, Kessler marshaled the design and development of the city’s park and boulevard system. Besides celebrating Kessler’s parks, Kansas City has developed a detailed set of design standards and guidelines for the boulevard and parkway systems. Kansas City is protecting and repairing their connecting thoroughfares.
Cincinnati has a city parks plan developed by Kessler in 1907. In 2008, the city prepared the Cincinnati Centennial Parks Plan, which builds on Kessler’s open-space framework with a focus on hillsides, streams, greenways and trails. As with Kessler's, the new plan develops natural corridors, parkways and boulevards that connect the city.
Like the business leaders who hired Kessler to begin with, people in our peer cities are recognizing how their historic parks and civic boulevards enhance livability and make them more competitive. Remember, it was the Commerce Club, the precursor to the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, that hired Kessler.
Now is an especially good time for Indianapolis to prepare a comprehensive parks and boulevards plan that reinvests in Indianapolis park and landscape traditions. Consider the work already taking place. The $1.6 billion combined sewer overflow project, to prevent sewage from flowing into rivers, is to be completed by 2025, making boating and water contact safer. And Reconnecting Our Waterways, funded by Lilly Endowment and cosponsored by more than 100 organizations, is working on how to turn streams and rivers into recreational and community assets.
The City partnered with the Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, the State Historic Preservation Office, to place the Kessler Plan in the National Register in 2003. The nomination process provided a treasure trove of documentation that can used to repair and enhance our parks and boulevard legacy.
Indianapolis needs a landscape design plan for reconnecting the park and boulevard system’s fragments, reestablishing its identity, and restoring views and access to our cultural landscape.