Photo by Lexi Coon.
Robin Karson, executive director of the Library of American Landscape History, spoke at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens on Sept. 27 about the life and work of Warren H. Manning.
While Robert Jemison Jr. had a great hand in designing and building Mountain Brook, another man, hired by Jemison, was just as involved: Warren H. Manning.
Together with the Friends of Jemison Park, the Birmingham Historical Society welcomed Robin Karson, executive director of the Library of American Landscape History, on Sept. 27 to speak about Manning's previous projects and the new book her organization has recently published, "Warren H. Manning: Landscape Architect and Environmental Planner."
Karson, who said there was very little known about Manning before they began this book, opened her lecture at the beginning of Manning's life in 1860.
He was born in Massachusetts and began working with plants and landscapes from a young age through his family's business, and by the 1880s Karson said he was giving lectures regarding landscape design and was a published author. At 27, he was hired to work under the famous landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted.
There, he got his foot in the door with many clients through well-known projects, including Biltmore Estate and Stanford University. He later left the company, and in doing so, took many clients and skills with him, Karson said.
"He came in as a horticulturist but he left as someone who could conceptualize and map [out landscapes]," she said of Manning.
Manning took on at least 1,600 projects across the country, from private to public lands, from estate homes to cities.
For all of his designs, he used the natural landscapes and the local flora and fauna to plan where the roads should go and what displays should accompany them. He took care to make the areas aesthetically pleasing but practical.
Some of the towns he is known for designing — or redesigning, in some cases — are Bangor, Maine, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and, of course, Birmingham and Mountain Brook, Alabama.
He entered Birmingham for the first time in 1914 at the request of George Bullock, who Karson said was an owner of the Birmingham railway at the time. Manning presented Bullock with a vision of "a city of the future," complete with railway crossings, a layout of smaller suburbs, roadways and a multitude of parks and a parkway system so that nature was readily available to all residents.
Karson called this one of the "landmarks in American planning history" before describing the hand that Manning had in planning Mountain Brook, which she said was one of his last major projects.
He began working with Jemison in 1926 and had a final plan after many revisions, Karson said. It featured plots for homes, roadways, schools, a riding academy, riding trails, a golf course and many other elements.
He planned how the homes should be angled so that trees and other natural barriers blocked the sight lines between properties and even modeled the Old Mill — which is still standing on Mountain Brook Parkway today — after his family's home.
"During the first two decades of the 20th century, many superb American suburbs were laid out but few — if any — match Mountain Brook's vitality, sophistication and shared natural beauty," Karson said. She said the fact that so many components still exist today is a testament to Manning's work.
"Manning's sprawling legacy as a teacher, landscape practitioner, city planner, author, conservationist and civic reformer has not been fully revealed," Karson said of the new book and accompanying research. "But the work has certainly begun."
