Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens
Encyclopedia
Botanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
s located at 2655 South Park Avenue, Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, USA in South Park
Cazenovia Park-South Park System
Cazenovia Park-South Park System is a historic park system located in the South Buffalo neighborhood at Buffalo in Erie County, New York. The interconnected set of parkways and parks was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted as part of his parks plan for the city of Buffalo.The system consists of the...
. These gardens are the product of landscaping architect Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
, glass-house architects Lord & Burnham
Lord & Burnham
Lord & Burnham was a noted American boiler and greenhouse manufacturers, and builders of major public conservatories in the United States....
, and botanist and plant-explorer John F. Cowell
John F. Cowell
John Francis Cowell was an American botanist. He was the first director of the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens. Cowell was born in Wrentham, Massachusetts and studied law in Boston....
.
The idea of the Gardens first began in 1868 when the Buffalo Parks Commission started meeting with landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, Sr., and Partners. In the late 1880s, they asked Olmsted to design a new park for South Buffalo; the eventual design included two new parks: Cazenovia Park and South Park, which was created in 1894-1900 from 156 acres (63 ha) of farm land.
South Park eventually became today's botanical gardens. In Olmsted's design, its conservatory
Conservatory (greenhouse)
A conservatory is a room having glass roof and walls, typically attached to a house on only one side, used as a greenhouse or a sunroom...
would showcase tropical plant species, while the rest of the park was designed to feature hardy species including an arboretum
Arboretum
An arboretum in a narrow sense is a collection of trees only. Related collections include a fruticetum , and a viticetum, a collection of vines. More commonly, today, an arboretum is a botanical garden containing living collections of woody plants intended at least partly for scientific study...
, pinetum, shrub garden, and a bog garden. Formal gardens around the conservatory led visitors into informal park along walking paths. South Park also was to include a large pond for boating, a ring road for horse carriages, and a meadow. However, the proposed walking paths, boat house, and bandstand were never completed.
The conservatory's tri-domed glass, wood and steel building was designed by the premier conservatory designers of the time: Lord & Burnham
Lord & Burnham
Lord & Burnham was a noted American boiler and greenhouse manufacturers, and builders of major public conservatories in the United States....
. Construction methods were based upon the famous Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
and Kew Gardens Palm House in England. When built in 1897-1899, it was one of the largest public greenhouses in the country (at a cost of $130,000). Today there are fewer than a dozen large Victorian conservatories in America. This is one of only two with a tri-dome design (the New York Botanical Garden
New York Botanical Garden
- See also :* Education in New York City* List of botanical gardens in the United States* List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City- External links :* official website** blog*...
is the other).
The first director Professor John F. Cowell oversaw the growing of plants for the park and personally located and obtained unusual tree specimens. He spent decades exploring the Americas and the Caribbean, sending back seeds and small plants for the conservatory. Shortly after it opened, thousands of visitors to the 1901 Pan-Am Exhibition visited South Park's conservatory and gardens, which thus quickly gathered national renown.