The Architecture of Thomas Wisedell

With the designs for the Concert Grove House completed in 1872, Calvert Vaux then turned his attention to designing the open-air pavilion. Vaux had long admired architecture and design stemming from southern Spain, North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean as well as Turkey and India. For the pavilion, he primarily combined the concept of a chhatri (loosely translated at canopy or umbrella) along with pavilions and cenotaphs found at temples, palaces and mosques in India and combined it with an elongated, domed roof which combined French and Ottoman influences.

Vaux had developed an interest in non-European architecture early in his career, and it was especially in the bridges and pavilions of Central Park and Prospect Park where this interest was realized. To demonstrate how contemporary these park structures were, one only has to compare the designs of Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould to the pavilions designed for L’Exposition Universelle, the world’s fair held in Paris in 1867. Unlike previous expositions, this was unique in that pavilions were erected by various countries including Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and well as China and Japan.

Great Britain was heavily represented at the exposition and Calvert Vaux would have been familiar with its buildings and displays (some of which may have still been standing when he visited Paris in 1868). What may have received the most attention in the British architectural press was the boiler house used for heat and power in the “British Quarter” of the exposition. This building was loosely based on the Saiyed Usman Tomb in Ahmedabad, constructed in 1460. When the boiler house was described in the Illustrated London News, its editors mentioned the need for an open-air pavilion due to the excessive heat as well as the need to actually display the machinery. Due to India’s hot climate, the tomb (or cenotaph) as a building type was seen as having the necessary architectural principles and could be easily adapted into that specific modern function.

Though the trend of Western (especially British) architects and patrons turning towards the east for inspiration had been growing since the 17th century, the Paris exposition of 1867 was fundamental to shifting cultural thought and with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, European artists, architects and designers focused their attention on Egypt and Turkey well into the 1880’s and beyond.

Though no records exist of what materials were intended for the original roof design, it appears as though Vaux may have been thinking about a painted canvas attached over a smooth, galvanized metal (though that is purely conjectural). Photos dating from the 1870’s do show a smooth roof which appears to have replaced around the 1890’s or 1900’s with a material that had diamond shaped patterns throughout.

The purpose of such a large roof was to protect the complex wooden trusses which cantilevered out about thirteen feet from the cast iron columns. Though early photos hint to the center of the pavilion being open to some type of inner dome, its original design is not fully known. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed most of the roof on the morning of March 9, 1974 and what is there now dates from a 1988 reconstruction.

What did survive the fire however, were the cast iron columns and brackets These decorative elements were not designed to revive any specific style or culture, but rather to synthesize a variety of influences. Also, every detail including the brackets and bolt ends were designed to highlight their structural functions, clearly displaying an understanding of the French architect Viollet-le-duc and his theories on the relationship between ornament and structure.

The 1974 fire had left the Pavilion in a ruinous state and in 1984, the Prospect Park Alliance began reconstructing the damaged roof. Fortunately there were enough of the roof left to get accurate measurements and the charred remains held enough structural detail to be able to pretty accurately replicate what had been lost. In the rebuilding however, the rafters and trusses were constructed primarily of steel while incorporating some wooden beams. As for the skylight, it was completely destroyed and a slightly simplified version was recreated from photographs. The newly rebuilt pavilion reopened on June 18, 1988.

Within a few years, problems with the roof began to appear. Apparently, water was not able to drain properly and parts of the roof and ceiling were showing signs of rot. Beginning in 2016, the Prospect Park Alliance began a five year project to replace the damaged parts of the building including recasting pieces of cast iron which has deteriorated over the years. During that process, one cast iron column was sent to have its layers of paint analyzed in order to try to discover its original colors. Based on those findings as well as studies of other buildings by Calvert Vaux from the same period, a new scheme was developed and the restored pavilion reopened in April 2021.

At the end of 1873, legislative appropriation for Prospect Park had ceased and Olmsted & Vaux’ position was terminated. By that time, however, all the designs had been completed and engineer John Culyer was charged with overseeing the completion of the park’s construction and under his guidance, the stonework and buildings at the concert grove were completed in late 1874.

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Acknowledgement

I’d like to thank Amy Peck, the Prospect Park Archivist/Historian for information regarding the 1984-1988 reconstruction of the Concert Grove Pavilion.

Further Reading:

• Annual Reports of the Brooklyn Park Commissioners. 1861-1873 (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1873).
• Report of the Brooklyn Park Commissioners from January 1874 to December 31, 1879 (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1880).
• Celik, Zeynep, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992).
• Kowsky, Francis R., Country, Park & City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
• The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Volume IV: The Years of Olmsted, Vaux & Company 1865-1874 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).