LANDSCAPE

Barnsdall Olive Grove Initiative

Barnsdall Park is the only landscape designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son Lloyd Wright that is currently used as a city-owned public park. It may also be the most complete example of Wright’s talents in the design of the land. For these reasons alone the park is an historic resource of international significance. The need for conserving this legacy, for restoring and repairing the elements of its landscape, should be self-evident.

— Melanie Simo, Barnsdall Park: A New Master Plan for Frank Lloyd Wright’s California Romanza.

VISION

The Barnsdall Art Park Foundation has partnered with the Los Angeles Parks Foundation and the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks to restore and sustain Barnsdall Art Park’s historic olive grove, which was established in the 1890s.

In 2021, as part of its Barnsdall Art Park 100 | 50 | 50 Campaign, the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation contributed $25,000 to the Los Angeles Parks Foundation’s Adopt-a-Park program. Those funds are being used to pay for the horticultural survey and analysis of the olive grove, an improved irrigation system, updated pruning plan, and the necessary care of the site’s 463 olive trees for one year.

A comprehensive strategy for planting additional olive trees at the park has also been established, and efforts are underway to add trees to the open spots within the grove’s elegant 20-foot grid. This urban ecology project is a collaboration with the Los Angeles Parks Foundation’s Park Forest initiative, which adds trees to city parks to offset our carbon footprint, cool surface air temperatures, and educate the public about climate change.

Contributions to the Barnsdall Olive Grove Initiative will amplify the beauty and integrity of this treasured 130-year-old landscape. The revitalized and expanded number of olive trees in this vital neighborhood green space will improve the air quality of the East Hollywood community and support the City of Los Angeles's goal to plant 90,000 new trees as part of L.A.'s Green New Deal.

The Department of Recreation and Parks is extremely grateful for the partnership we have with the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation and the Los Angeles Parks Foundation. We appreciate their commitment to ensuring that the Barnsdall Park historic olive grove continues to be a healthy landscape of olive trees that the East Hollywood community, visitors, and generations to come can enjoy. — Mike Shull, General Manager, City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

The Los Angeles Parks Foundation is committed to restoring our city’s urban forest through tree-plantings and restoration projects. We are honored to work with the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation and the City of Los Angeles at this significant historic site and beloved community park. — Carolyn Ramsay, Executive Director, Los Angeles Parks Foundation 

During our soil analysis and assessment of the condition and health of the site, we discovered that 46 olive trees are likely from the original grove established in the 1890s. Those historic fruiting trees have produced 58 seedlings that are growing near the older tree canopies. We’re hopeful that those special seedlings may be nurtured into vibrant saplings at the Los Angeles Parks Foundation headquarters at the historic Commonwealth Nursery in Griffith Park and replanted at Barnsdall Art Park and other locations throughout the city. — Katherine Pakradouni, Project Manager and Horticulturist, Los Angeles Parks Foundation

Please support the revitalization and expansion of the Barnsdall Olive Grove with an online, tax-deductible donation.

HISTORY OF THE OLIVE GROVE

In his 2014 article entitled, “When East Hollywood's Barnsdall Art Park Was an Olive Orchard,” for his KCET Lost LA series, Nathan Masters writes, “Before the Hollyhock House, there were olive trees—a veritable army of them, some 1,225, each spaced 20 feet apart, marching up the hillside in an orderly grid formation.” Masters explains how Joseph H. Spires established the commercial orchard in the 1890s, in order to earn revenue while he developed his unrealized plans for a grand hotel atop the site. His property became known as Olive Hill. “In 1916, the hill stood in for Jerusalem's Mount of Olives in D.W. Griffith's ‘Intolerance.’ Four years later, on April 4, 1920, an estimated crowd of 10,000 assembled around Olive Hill for Hollywood's first Easter sunrise service with the Los Angeles Philharmonic—a tradition that moved the following year to the Hollywood Bowl,” Masters explains.

Aline Barnsdall purchased the 36-acre tract from Spires’ widow. Barnsdall’s goal was to use the site for her home and an ambitious theatrical arts complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The existing olive grove was preserved and incorporated into Wright’s landscape plans, which he created with his son, Lloyd Wright.

After her death in 1946, Barnsdall’s property was subdivided into several commercial and residential parcels. By 1992, only 90 olive trees remained.

The 1995 Barnsdall Park Master Plan, created by Peter Walker William Johnson and Partners, Lehrer Architects, Levin & Associates Architects, and Kosmont Associates, proposed adding 1,376 new olive trees. Many dimensions of that comprehensive landscape plan were completed in 2003—including the addition of 315 olive trees.

REFLECTIONS

Peter Walker and I always relished the challenge of projects where historic recall was central to the task. And the Barnsdall restoration was unique...one of a kind. What a privilege it was to be part of the team. Sustaining the Vision is a worthy endeavor. Even though the plans were put together more than 25 years ago, it seems like only yesterday. But the highlight for me remains vivid...the enthusiasm of the local stakeholders. Our work session participants were open to ideas and energetic about them. The earliest sketch versions of the renderings were roughly drawn on-the-spot during the planning sessions! The source of the stakeholder excitement, in my mind, was the idea that by sustaining a vibrant history like the Barnsdall story, it can honor the past while shaping the future! What a bargain!

— William Johnson, FASLA | Co-Founder and Principal, Peter Walker William Johnson and Partners | 1995 Barnsdall Art Park Master Plan Team

Barnsdall Park, nee Olive Hill, as conceived and as restored, is an apotheosis of that very rare project in architectural history where building and landscape are an inseparable singularity. One without the other is incomplete and unexceptional. Together, they become the sublime: building completes landscape, landscape completes building.

The Renaissance Villa Lante, north of Rome, is another rare exemplar of this.

For the better part of their almost century of existence, both building and landscape were in disrepair. Only with its restored landscape, has the recently restored building realized its unique glory. Together they have warranted their UNESCO world heritage status. Fully restored, their evermore increasing magnificence is assured.

Once again, this is the Hollywood “Romanza”, the culture acropolis that Frank Lloyd Wright and Lloyd Wright conceived for their client, the doyenne of Hollywood (g)literati, Aline Barnsdall.

The future will be the continued perfecting of this masterpiece.

In childhood, I played there. At the end of junior high, I took my first Life Drawing class in the Director’s House. Early in practice, Mayor Tom Bradley appointed me (1989) to his first Barnsdall Board of Overseers; it was the first time all institutions on or related to the Park—The Municipal Art Gallery, the Junior Art Center, the (run down) Hollyhock House, and the diminished landscape and site, were ever in singular, reasonably coherent conversation. In 1991, the Planning and Development Committee of that Board (USC Architecture Dean Bob Harris, myself, and others) determined that there needed to be a comprehensive Master Plan, and that there would be no new buildings on the site, but rather a fully restored landscape. 

In 1993, the Department of Recreation and Parks and the Department of Cultural Affairs, under the direction of Al Nodal, put forth a competitive RFP for the Master Plan. 28 teams competed, only one was led by a Landscape Architect.  After a rigorous process of research, intense community engagement and vetting, the team selected—led by Peter Walker William Johnson Landscape Architects, Lehrer Architects as Urban Designer, Brenda Levin and Associates as Historical Report consultants, and Kathryn Smith as Architectural Historian—produced the Barnsdall Park Master Plan which laid out the restoration and dramatic enhancement of the Park and its reconnection to the City.

The moniker of Parkmaking in the City, Citymaking with the Park drove the Masterplan.

With funding for the Masterplan and site reconstruction coming from the 6 years-long construction of the Metrorail subway line (which goes under the northerly edge of the Park) the landscape was reconstructed and restored. The Hollyhock House was restored several years later.

The Olive Grove occupying the north slope was rebuilt and restored, as was the Pine Tree bosque, which once again effectively doubles the perceived height of the Hill. The great lawn was rebuilt and restored, and the driveway was minimally improved.

While we take for granted its current restored state with its attendant beauty, it is in fact NEW and unprecedented in our lives. The continued restoration and improvement of this secular sacred landscape remains the ongoing work.

— Michael B. Lehrer, FAIA | President, Lehrer Architects LA | 1995 Barnsdall Art Park Master Plan Team