Historic & Cultural Landscapes
The documentation and preservation of historic landscapes is a relatively new and often misunderstood branch of the preservation movement. Unfortunately, many significant landscapes are lost before their value is fully recognized. While historic landscapes frequently provide important context for buildings and structures, they can also exist independently or encompass broader cultural landscapes that include dozens or even hundreds of structures and entire communities.
Historic and cultural landscapes are central to the story of place as it unfolds across the land. They not only tell us about our past, but also reveal unwritten histories, including social patterns and evolving relationships with the environment. By recognizing and preserving these landscapes, we deepen our understanding of culture, strengthen our sense of continuity in time and place, and cultivate a greater appreciation for the land itself.
Part of the 1875 Bird’s Eye View of Salt Lake City with Pioneer Park in the center. From the Library of Congress. Included in the Pioneer Park Cultural Landscape Report.
Defining Terms
But, what exactly is a historic and cultural landscape? According to The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s website, “Cultural landscapes can range from thousands of acres of rural land to homesteads with small front yards. They can be man-made expressions of visual and spatial relationships that include grand estates, farmlands, public gardens and parks, college campuses, cemeteries, scenic highways, and industrial sites.”
Because cultural and historic landscapes can range so greatly, both in scale and in their individual evolutions, they can be hard to identify.
It helps to be able to break them down into categories. The following are the four types of historic landscapes as they have been defined by the National Park Service (Preservation Brief 36).
1. Historic Designed Landscape
A Historic Designed Landscape is a landscape that was consciously designed or laid out by a landscape architect, master gardener, architect, or horticulturist according to design principles, or an amateur gardener working in a recognized style or tradition.
This landscape type may be associated with a significant person(s), trend, or event in landscape architecture; or illustrate an important development in the theory and practice of landscape architecture. Aesthetic values play a significant role in designed landscapes.
Examples include parks, campuses, and estates.
Freeway Park, designed by Lawrence Halprin, in Seattle Washington, is an excellent example of a Historic Designed Landscape. Photo by Shalae Larsen.
2. Historic Vernacular Landscape
A Historic Vernacular Landscape is a landscape that evolved through use by the people whose activities or occupancy shaped that landscape.
Through social or cultural attitudes of an individual, family or a community, this landscape type reflects the physical, biological, and cultural character of those everyday lives. Function and everyday use plays a significant role in vernacular landscapes. They can be a single property such as a farm or a collection of properties such as a district of historic farms along a river valley.
Examples include rural villages, industrial complexes, and agricultural landscapes.
The former Ogden Union Stockyards is an example of a Historic Vernacular Landscape. Io LandArch completed a (Historic American Landscape Survey) HALS documentation of the site in 2014.Photo courtesy of Weber State University Special Collections.
3. Historic Site
An Historic Site is a landscape significant for its association with a historic event, activity, or person. This may be the historic landscape type you are most familiar with!
Examples include battlefields and president’s house properties.
Promontory Point is an example of a Historic Site, associated with a historic event. Here the Golden Spike was driven in the spring of 1869, marking the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Incidentally this historic site was recently elevated to a National Historic Park in anticipation of the 2019 sesquicentennial anniversary.
4. Ethnographic Landscape
An Ethnographic Landscape is a landscape containing a variety of natural and cultural resources that associated people define as heritage resources.
Examples are contemporary settlements, religious sacred sites and massive geological structures. Small plant communities, animals, subsistence, and ceremonial grounds are often components of ethnographic landsacpes.
Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado is an example of an Ethnographic Landscape. Photo by Tonya Randall.
Takeaways
The first step in documenting and potentially saving historic landscapes is being able to identify them. By understanding the criteria by which they are categorized, you get a sense for what characteristics and features to note when looking at landscapes that might be considered historic. In other posts on our blog, I’ve discussed (and will continue to discuss) common methods for identification and recording of historic landscapes, as well as appropriate treatments for them!
