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Cleveland, Horace William Shaler (1814–1900)

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Black and white photograph of Horace William Shaler Cleveland, date unknown.

Horace William Shaler Cleveland, date unknown. Uploaded by Wikimedia Commons user SusanLesch.

Horace W. S. Cleveland was a pioneer landscape architect. His greatest achievement was designing a system of parks and parkways in Minneapolis. He advocated preserving spaces for parks in the rapidly growing cities of the American West. Cleveland was especially influential in preserving the banks of the Mississippi River gorge in St. Paul and Minneapolis as parkland.

Cleveland became a landscape architect at a relatively late age. He was forty years old when he went into business as a landscape gardener in Boston, not far from his boyhood home of Lancaster, Massachusetts. Following the Civil War, he moved to New York City, where he worked for America's most famous landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Cleveland and Olmsted, who became lifelong friends, both believed that parks are essential to the life of cities.

In 1869, Cleveland moved to Chicago, where he continued to design parks, cemeteries, and private estates. He sought work in other midwestern cities, too. In February 1872 he came to Minneapolis to give a lecture on the importance of landscape architecture, especially preserving open spaces in rapidly growing cities. This turned out to be a pivotal moment, both in his life and in the history of the Twin Cities.

The reaction to his lecture was so positive that he repeated it in St. Paul two nights later. It became the basis of his book Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West. The book was published in 1873 and remains a classic in the field.

Cleveland's lectures in Minnesota resulted in new work. The St. Paul City Council asked for his ideas on parks in St. Paul. His advice influenced the city's purchase of the land that became Como Park. Also in St. Paul, he designed Oakland Cemetery and created a plan for the St. Anthony Park residential neighborhood.

In 1883, the efforts of Minneapolis leaders to create parks met with success when the state legislature established a park board for the city. One of the first acts of the new board was to hire Cleveland to create an overall plan for Minneapolis parks.

Cleveland presented the plan, "Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis," to the park board in June 1883. He proposed a series of parkways that would encircle the central city, connecting parks in each section. He also proposed creating parkways around Lake Harriet and part of Bde Maka Ska (Lake Calhoun) as well as along both sides of the Mississippi River gorge to preserve those places of natural beauty.

The park board tried to implement Cleveland's parks-and-parkways plan, which was later named the Grand Rounds, but couldn't afford to buy all of the land it required. Many years later, the park board did accomplish many of Cleveland's objectives, although the parkways were placed farther from the city center than he would have liked.

Cleveland moved from Chicago to Minneapolis in 1886, at age seventy-two, to help the park board as it implemented his overall plan and to design individual parks. Among the ones he designed were Loring, Riverside, Farview, Logan, Powderhorn, and Elliot parks.

In 1888, St. Paul hired Cleveland half-time as landscape architect for that city's new park board. He helped create plans for Como Park and Phalen Park, and he encouraged the city to preserve its riverbanks, too. In 1890, he was hired to design the layout and landscaping of Summit Avenue from Lexington Avenue west to the river.

Cleveland played an important role in the creation of a park centered at Minnehaha Falls in 1889. His support for a park there helped persuade Minneapolis to purchase the land for a state park. Although no drawings exist showing Cleveland's vision for Minnehaha Park, he favored preserving the natural landscape at and below the falls.

Age and illness led Cleveland to return to Chicago in 1895 and live with his son. When the American Park and Outdoor Art Association approved its constitution in 1898, it named two honorary members, Cleveland and Frederick Law Olmsted. Cleveland died in Chicago in 1900 and was buried at Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis.

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Blegen, Theodore C. Horace William Shaler Cleveland: Pioneer American Landscape Architect. Minneapolis: H. N. Bruce Printing Company, 1949.

Cleveland, Horace William Shaler. Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West. Chicago: Jansen McClurg & Co., 1873. Reprinted with introduction by Daniel J. Nadenicek and Lance M. Neckar. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003.

———. Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis. Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith, and Harrison, 1883. http://books.google.com/books/about/Suggestions_for_a_system_of_parks_and_pa.html?id=mLQ1AAAAMAAJ

———. Public Parks, Radial Avenues, and Boulevards. Outline Plan of a Park
System for the City of St. Paul
. St. Paul: Globe Job Office, 1885.
http://books.google.com/books?id=F-ECAAAAYAAJ

———. The Aesthetic Development of the United Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Minneapolis: A. C. Bausman, 1888.

Folwell, William Watts. A History of Minnesota, vol. 4. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1930.

———. William Watts Folwell: The Autobiography and Letters of a Pioneer of Culture. Edited by Solon J. Buck. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1933.

Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners. Annual Reports, 1883–1891.

Neckar, Lance. "Fast-Tracking Culture and Landscape: Horace William Shaler Cleveland and the Garden in the Midwest." In Regional Garden Design in the United States, vol. 15. Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995.

Nadenicek, Daniel Joseph. "Emerson's Aesthetic and Natural Design: A Theoretical Foundation for the Work of Horace William Shaler Cleveland." In Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1997.

———. "Commemoration in the Landscape of Minnehaha: 'A Halo of Poetic Association.'" In Places of Commemoration: The Search for Identity and Landscape Design. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001.

Schmidt, Andrew J. "Planning St. Paul's Como Park: Pleasure and Recreation for the People." Minnesota History 58, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 40–58.
http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/58/v58i01p040-058.pdf

Smith, David C. City of Parks: The Story of Minneapolis Parks. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Parks Foundation, 2008.

Tishler, William H. ed. "Horace Cleveland: The Chicago Years." In Midwestern Landscape Architecture. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

——— and Virginia S. Luckhardt, "H. W. S. Cleveland, Pioneer Landscape Architect to the Upper Midwest," Minnesota History 49, no. 7 (Fall 1985): 281–291.
http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/49/v49i07p281-291.pdf

Related Images

Black and white photograph of Horace William Shaler Cleveland, date unknown.
Black and white photograph of Horace William Shaler Cleveland, date unknown.
Black and white photograph of Horace William Shaler Cleveland, date unknown.
Black and white photograph of Horace William Shaler Cleveland, date unknown.
Map detailing Cleveland's proposal for a system of parkways in Minneapolis, 1883.
Map detailing Cleveland's proposal for a system of parkways in Minneapolis, 1883.
Color plan for Third Ward (now Farview) Park, Horace W. S. Cleveland, 1883 Annual Report, Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners, 1883.
Color plan for Third Ward (now Farview) Park, Horace W. S. Cleveland, 1883 Annual Report, Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners, 1883.
Black and white photograph of West River Parkway in Minneapolis, c.1910
Black and white photograph of West River Parkway in Minneapolis, c.1910
Black and white photograph of Logan Park, Minneapolis.
Black and white photograph of Logan Park, Minneapolis.

Turning Point

Cleveland is introduced to the Twin Cities when he gives a lecture on landscape architecture at Minneapolis's Pence Opera House on February 17, 1872. He is invited to repeat the lecture in St. Paul two nights later.

Chronology

1814

Cleveland is born in Lancaster, Massachusetts on December 16.

1854

He goes into business as a landscape architect with Robert Copeland in Boston.

1855

He designs Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

1869

Cleveland moves to Chicago, where he works for the city's South Park Commission.

1873

Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West is published. In St. Paul, Cleveland creates a plan for the St. Anthony Park residential development and designs Oakland Cemetery.

1883

Cleveland creates an overall plan for Minneapolis parks, "Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis," the blueprint for what becomes known as the Grand Rounds.

1886

He moves from Chicago to Minneapolis to assist in the implementation of his plan and to design individual parks.

1888

Cleveland becomes the city of St. Paul's landscape architect. The same year, he delivers an influential talk in Minneapolis on the need to acquire the land around Minnehaha Falls for a park.

1895

Unable to continue working due to illness and age, he moves back to Chicago to live with his son.

1900

Cleveland dies on December 5 and is buried in Minneapolis's Lakewood Cemetery.

1948

The St. Anthony Park Area Historical Association and Minneapolis Park Board place a gravestone on Cleveland's previously unmarked grave.









  

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In 1861 Horace Cleveland travelled to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia where he designed Mountain Cemetery. This cemetery was intended to replace the earlier burial ground in the town centre that had been used by early settlers. Also in Nova Scotia, he designed Victoria Park in Truro and the Public Gardens in the provincial capital, Halifax. These landmarks remain today.