The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
The very selection of the stones with their beautiful grain and contour invites study of the most delightful sort. Think what could be done if the same attention were given to this study as to the collecting of curios or gems or to the use of stained glass. After all there are few things finer than these marvelous effects of nature that belong to the countryside and which are generally overlooked as commonplace and not specially interesting.
The bridge over the pond in Central Park indicates the rustic effect without plants in the interstices of the stones, and the Lombardy poplars and shrubbery emphasize and screen the entrance of the footway.
Here is an example of a stone bridge of the type we have been considering, which illustrates the idea of simplicity and natural dignity and charm. To Garden and Forest, vol. i., p. 52, we owe the illustration and the following description:
"This very ancient bridge spans one of the small streams on Dartmoor in the south-west of England. Its construction is sufficiently explained by the picture—two land piers and one stream pier are connected by long spanning stones which carry parapets made up of large irregular blocks. It is hardly necessary to point out the degree to which this bridge combines picturesque beauty with durability, or to explain the fitness of such bridges for rural situations in our own country. In the immediate vicinity of a very dignified house so rude and unarchitectural a bridge would perhaps be out of place, and the same is true of those portions of an urban park where formality rules or where architectural works of importance are in view. But in the sequestered naturally treated portions of parks a bridge of this sort would be entirely appropriate; and carrying a road or footway near a country home of modest character or in a village suburb it would be a most charming feature. Naturally we have no wish to suggest that this bridge be copied either in its special form or in the size and disposition of its stones, although in both these respects it would be an excellent model. It is illustrated merely to show how very simply a stone bridge may be built and how incomparably better in effect it is than the ugly constructions in iron or the rough assemblage of planks with which in this country we are so familiar. Weather-beaten boulders as old as those in this bridge at Leatherton, and as appropriate for bridge building, lie by every New England stream, and it would need no high degree of skill to put them to service. But we seem to have thought the bare straight lines of iron more beautiful than the infinite variety of form and surface and colour of our moss-grown stones. It is full time we changed our minds."
