PARKS FOR THE PEOPLE: STUDIO TO PRACTICE

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• Beyond the Pig War: Final Dispatch from San Juan Island

  Posted on: September 4, 2012

  

  On the 30th of August I packed up my desk in the visitor center at American Camp. From the far-end of the double-wide trailer nestled north of the golden prairie I surveyed the shelves for any remaining books to return to the History and Interpretation library, stacks of scholarship crammed unceremoniously but in careful order behind the door of the Park Manager’s office. I leafed through printouts of the 2011 NPS Call to Action, the Second Century Report, and America’s Great Outdoors and zipped them up into my backpack. I bid farewell to the retiree volunteers who, like clockwork and for consecutive summers, hoist the flags high on the parade grounds, patiently sift through the barrage of questions from a never-ending parade of visitors, and see to everything from the swearing in of junior rangers to leading seniors on golf cart tours of the cultural landscape.

  These people, though RV vagabonds, truly demonstrate the reverence for place that the National Park Service relies upon, particularly in far-flung locales. Jim and Lois, Fred and Brenda, Tom and Cathy, and Paul and Ada, to name a few — are crucial to the visitor experience at San Juan Island National Historical Park, providing the first point of official contact for visitors to English and American Camps, and perhaps the first introduction to the park narrative, a story of global importance that told from a remote place seems to often get lost in the winds off the Strait of San Juan De Fuca.

  “This is the park about the pig?” many visitors ask. Well, yes, we would tell them: but it’s more than that, too.

  This summer I looked for ways to make the park about more than the pig, or the Pig War: that folksy tale of porcine-icide hinting at the collision of American manifest destiny with the ambitions of British mercantilism in a remote corner of the Oregon Territory, circa 1859. I pushed hard on the traditional boundaries of the park mandate — to interpret the Pig War — to achieve a broader perspective on a host of topics: war and peace, disputed boundaries, and the best means of connecting past events to a contemporary audience through interventions in and readings of the landscape

  Ultimately, I wanted to answer the questions:

  – What is a 21st C take on the interpretive mandate of SJINHP?

  – What is a 21st C means of telling this story?

  And then, because plain in simple: there needs to be a new visitor center at American Camp. The trailer still has wheels on it. Please, just roll it away.

  – What is a 21st C vision for a visitor center at American Camp?

  While not polished or finished product, I emerged with the idea of moving beyond the Pig War as an isolated piece of provincial island or national history to understand it as a global-historic event, and ultimately as emblematic of the virtues of diplomacy in times of war. A visitor center in this light, is not just a place for orientation and information, but a place for more deeply and fully understanding the park message, in this case, perhaps a forum for the practice of peace and diplomacy as part of a park for the peaceful.

  

   

  If it can be said that historical parks convey stories and messages worth remembering, our memories should not be selective. The 21st C of the National Park Service increasingly looks like an era where we are asked to remember complex, at times painful histories. The history of slavery, of Japanese internment, of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race are all heavy parts of American — and Global — history that can be addressed through the reading of landscapes.

  For SJINHP, the Vietnam era of the park’s founding emerges as a narrative worthy of interpretation. What does it mean when a park commemorating peace is founded alongside escalation of the war in Vietnam?

  

  What does it mean when a primary proponent of the park, Senator Jackson of Washington, was also a proponent of the Cold War program of “peaceful deterrence“?

  

  And how does a more complex reading of history change how we understand our collective heritage as articulated in the preservation of historic landscapes? What heritage do we preserve?

  

  These questions clattered in my head as I took a last walk on the prairie, stopping to admire an all too tame fox that earlier had harassed picnickers unrelentingly for handouts.

  We think about these things, engage them, ruminate upon them, but also we come to National Parks to be subsumed in the landscape. In this way, the 21st C experience is no different than the one John Muir found as he walked into Yosemite Valley: just as parks provide a place to learn and to turn on, they also provide a place to turn off. This duality is their best idea.

  

   

   

• A Director’s Reflections on Design and National Parks

  Posted on: August 16, 2012

  NPS Director Jon Jarvis gave this talk entitled “Beyond the Visitor Center: Conservation, Design, and the 21st Century National Park,” at the University of Virginia School of Architecture in April 2011.  As your internships wind to a close, I encourage you to think about these views and how they aligned (or not) with your experiences this summer.  Those of you that travel to Washington DC this fall for the awards ceremony may have a chance to talk with Jon about your experience, observations, thoughts, and recommendations.  That’s what “Parks for the People” is all about. Thank you for all your hard work, enthusiasm, and creativity.  It was a pleasure being a part of this and learning from you!  I hope to see you this September. 

   UVA_April25_2011_HowlandLecture

   

• Encamp(y)ment, 2012

  Posted on: August 15, 2012

   

  The last weekend in July brings Encampment to the San Juan Islands and history comes to life on the parade grounds of English Camp.

  For staff and volunteers, this means a constant 4 day hustle beginning with preparation for the event, extending over the two days of the event, and ending in the break-down the day after. Thus I’ve had no opportunity to forward the 21st Century Visitor Center concept, other than through discussions with a number of the local staff and volunteers, living history re-enactors, and visitors from all over the US.

  What I have had an opportunity to do is witness for the first-time how a strange combination of eccentricity. authenticity, and whimsy combine to make Encampment Weekend a compelling and fun event, both for the participants and the visitors. It’s a festival of sorts, and one worth a few words and images here.

  First, a word about re-enactments. The National Park Service, despite forays into modern architecture and recent developments in digital technology, is at its core a steward of folksiness. Re-enactments, which I’d always viewed second-hand, usually in civil war documentaries on public television, always struck me as folksiness brought to the extreme of parody. 

  “Who are these people?” I would think of the re-enactors: “Why do they do this?” It seemed to me that re-enactments performed the generational divide the NPS is so keen on addressing: the re-enactors, generally older, fired muskets, wore wool costumes, marched in time, and were so invested in their roles that they spoke in period affect. The spectators, especially younger park visitors,  flashed photos, texted images to their friends, asked clever, detached questions, and seemed generally amused by the spectacle. It all seemed kind of silly and an easy thing to gloss over.

  Yet after the weekend, I feel differently. Yes, there is silliness — lots of silliness. But there is also energy, there is learning by listening and learning by doing, and above all, there’s a reverence paid to the place through these events, through the upholding of tradition, and in particular through the dedication of the re-enactors. They were the most impressive and their knowledge was eye-opening. They had no trouble reaching across generations, engaging youth, adults, and those in between. And they’re volunteers! They do it for the love of it, the chance to travel, and really, a sense of honor amongst peers that is readily discernable in how they talk to one another.

  They are quite a resource to National Historical Parks and we rely on them, otherwise there’s no way events like Encampment come to fruition year after year.

  It was quite an experience — we nearly tripled our typical visitor count, with visitors flocking to the island from Seattle and Vancouver, along with locals who come every year for the festivities.

  Finally, members of the Henry M. Jackson foundation were on-hand to celebrate the senator’s 100th birthday, as was an executive officer for the USS Henry M. Jackson, the nuclear submarine named after the late senator. The Park Superintendent presented members of the Jackson family with a wayside, a duplicate of that located along one of the best views in the park: the crest of Mt. Finlayson, where on a clear day 3 National Parks are visible — Mt. Ranier, Olympic National Park, and Ebey’s Landing National Recreation Area.

  For more on Senator Jackson’s role in the NPS, click here.

  Here are some pics.

  Here’s a short video from the event.

• Reverence of Place

  Posted on: July 23, 2012

  Last week Shaun posed a great question about the role of design in bridging conflicting values evident in respecting place, reaching out, and sustainability in regards to Gateway NRA.

  Floyd Bennett Field is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance in the history of aviation. Some NPS preservationists think development at Floyd Bennett Field is beginning to chip away at its historic character. Yet camping is such an amazing way of reaching out to the community both locally, regionally, even nationally.

  So here’s a thought: does the conversation have to be either/or? What is the role of design in bridging conflicting values evident in respecting place, reaching out, and sustainability?

  I’m sure in our respective programs, we’ve all learned that design plays a major role in meeting the challenge of recognizing and balancing the goals of preservation/respecting place vs. moving forward into the 21^st century/making historically important places more relevant and relatable – how to make something old and remote meaningful to people today.

  Recognizing this challenge, in 2010, NYC convened a talented panel of urban planners, architects, landscape architects, engineers, conservationists, preservationists, designers, and transportation experts to come up with an action plan for Floyd Bennett Field and Gateway NRA. One of the recommendations from the Floyd Bennett Field Blue Ribbon Panel was to:

  “Preserve and make visible the site’s aviation history, while maintaining grassland habitat. Preserve the runways (but not necessarily all of them, and not necessarily all of their pavement). Reveal their memory in a new park plan and preserve the wide vistas and surrounding grasslands of industrial allees.”

  So one of the key design challenges in expanding urban camping is siting of these new campgrounds. In my research of the park site – I came upon the initial design plans for FBF, where the land use concept displayed Designing the Parks principle: reverence for place. The basis of the development plan was to:

  – Accentuate the airport theme of the campground by preserving the taxiway axis and repeating this alignment in the campground roads; such an organization allows for natural buffer spaces with a system of interconnected trails that will branch out and link to all campsites

  – while, locating the more intensively developed recreational vehicle camping no existing paved surfaces and on the higher, well drained, shrub  covered natural areas.

  Both these elements serve to meld the site’s historic/cultural meaning with its new programmatic purpose. I’m excited to visit the site and experience it, especially after reading this interesting article about the experience camping there on the NYTs from 2010. I’m curious if the noise issue is still there, if you can really see stars in nyc, and to visit adjacent sites.

   

• Gateway National Recreation Area: Largest Urban Campground

  Posted on: July 17, 2012

  UPDATE:

  Here is a link to the latest NPS press release about the park, a link to the just released draft General Management Plan – which allows for online public commenting as well, and the info session dates below for those who will be in the area:

  A series of outdoor information sessions will take place in August 2012 at all three units of Gateway: Sandy Hook, New Jersey; Jacob Riis Park, Queens, and; Great Kills Park on Staten Island. More open houses are planned for September. Stay tuned!

  At Sandy Hook, N.J. (Lot D/Sea Gull’s Nest, Hartshorne Drive):
  Friday, August 3, 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.
  and Wednesday, August 8, 2012, 3:00 to 7:00 P.M.

  At Jacob Riis Park, Queens:
  Saturday, August 4, 2012, 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.
  and Friday, August 10, 2012 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.

  At Great Kills Park, Staten Island:
  Sunday, August 5, 2012, 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.
  and Saturday, August 11, 2012, 11:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.

  * * * * * *

  So here at the Denver Service Center, one of the projects I’ve been lucky enough to get a chance to work on is Gateway National Recreation Area in NY and NJ. I was particularly excited to work on this project because I am a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn – with Gateway’s largest site, Jamaica Bay as my backyard. Today I was tasked with understanding of concurrent or subsequent efforts of city and park, and I came upon this op-ed piece in the NYT.

   The op-ed highlights the transformation of New York over the past 10 years – some particularly inspiring examples include Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Highline, and the ongoing reclamation of Fresh Kills Landfill into the largest park in the city. The shift toward re-urbanization and reimagining urban parks in NYC is so dynamic and interesting right now; United States secretary of the interior Ken Salazar visits New York today to address an international conference, already under way, called “Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities.” Salazar challenged Gateway National Recreation Area to become a model for America’s Great Outdoors’s initiative “to establish a new generation of Great Urban Parks and community green spaces.” And so, Gateway NRA is seeking to become the largest urban camp ground in the country, with the goal of expanding public camping sites from the 40 existing to 600 by next year – an ambitious and exciting task!

  I’m excited to see how the Designing for the Parks principles will be applied to the process…we are already doing a lot of research at the Denver Service Center looking into sustainable camping guidelines. Public meetings kick off in August to update the community on the ongoing GMP process, when the team will head out to do the initial visit to understand/experience the park sites!

  

  photo: camping at Floyd Bennett Field on Jamaica Bay.

  and just for kicks – a Treepee option perhaps?

  

• Designing the Parks principles

  Posted on: July 10, 2012

  All – I read this blog on the Olin website about the Fourth of July celebration at Independence National Historical Park. Jessica Henson has been at Olin for about two years and is a UPenn grad in landscape architecture.  She does a nice job of describing the unique character of the park and the importance of design in connecting people to place.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this piece. Specifically, what design principles do you see expressed on Independence Mall? Do you see  similarities in any of the public spaces in your park?   Is there anything special here that the six design principles do not capture?

  Olin Blog-INDE Mall