History of the Landscape Architecture Firm of
Hare and Hareby
Cydney Millstein
Architectural and Historical Research© State Historical Society of Missouri
Parks educate people in an art equally as grand as the art of painting or sculpture. They influence people to adorn their home ground, to plant trees and shrubs and to study nature, the mother of all true art. -- Sidney J. Hare, 1897
Sidney
J. Hare formed a landscape architecture firm with his son, S. Herbert Hare in Kansas City,
Missouri, when the practice of landscape architecture in America was still a fledgling
profession. Continuing a tradition of landscape design and city planning begun by George
E. Kessler, the father of Kansas City’s parks and boulevard system, the successful
father and son team of Hare and Hare taught us much about the nature of their art and the
beauty of the land around us. Along with other notable pioneer landscape architects such
as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., James Sturgis Pray, and Henry Wright, Hare and Hare also
"built on landscape architecture’s dual heritage as a fine art and a profession
of social environmental reform to establish the planning profession in the United
States."(1)
A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Sid Hare was born on January 26, 1860. Along with his family, Sid moved from Kentucky to Kansas City, Missouri, by riverboat in 1868. Sid had no formal landscape training, but as a high school student, he had studied horticulture, civil engineering, geology, surveying, and photography. In Kansas City, from 1881 to 1896, Hare worked in the city engineer’s office, where he was introduced to George Kessler (1862-1923). It was this relationship with Kessler, who was then a landscape engineer for the city, that inspired Hare’s interest in landscape design.
In 1896, Hare resigned from his city job to become the superintendent of Forest Hill Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri. The following year at the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents convention in Cleveland, he made his debut as an authority on cemetery design. At a subsequent convention in 1901, Hare discussed the cemetery as botanical garden, bird sanctuary, and arboretum -- probably the first such conversation of that topic on record in the design evolution of the modern cemetery. As proof of what he believed, Hare assembled at Forest Hill one of the most comprehensive collections of trees and shrubs in the Midwest.
Hare’s opinion that nature was the mother of all true art and that painting, sculpture, and landscape art were ready-made inspirations for adorning home grounds, reflected his background and avant-garde ideas.
Hare compared the landscape ideals of naturalistic parks with those of modern cemeteries. He realized that the large expanses of well-managed lawns with trees and shrub groups, which exemplified parks, could be applied to contemporary burial grounds. Over the next thirty years, Hare incorporated velvet lawns, groups of ornamental trees and shrubs, mirror lakes, curving roads and walks, and long vistas into the cemeteries he designed. By combining the distinctive features of parks and cemeteries, Hare set the precedent for two decades of refinements in cemetery design and ambience.
Hare resigned his office at Forest Hill in 1902 to establish himself in the practice of landscape architecture. His resignation was "a great loss to Forest Hill" but a "blessing to cities, cemeteries, and wealthy families in twenty-eight states."(2) In the first decade of the 20th century, Hare already had established a well-reputed and successful business, partly due to his 1897 article entitled "The Influence of Surroundings," which appeared in the notable publication Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening. Among Hare’s early projects in Kansas City and the region were Cunningham Park in Joplin, Missouri (1907) and Waterway Park and Parkwood Subdivision in Kansas City, Kansas (1907). More than twenty-five major projects in six states either had been completed or begun by the time Hare’s son returned from college to join his father in partnership.
A plan
for the Bethany Hospital grounds in Kansas City, dated 1910, confirms the year that the
office became Hare and Hare. The new partner, just back from studying landscape planning
at Harvard University, was S. Herbert Hare. As a special student, Herbert had been
admitted to Harvard’s School of Architecture in 1908. He completed the work for a
masters, but the degree was not granted because he had not satisfied the required
preliminary course work. With Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. as his principal instructor,
Herbert was one of the first six students in the United States to formally prepare for the
new profession of landscape architecture. The Harvard program, the nation’s first
landscape architectural curriculum, produced "most of American’s leading
landscape architects for the next half-century."(3)
During their twenty-eight year association, Sid preferred to pursue park and cemetery projects, while Herbert mastered the details of community planning and design. Herbert also worked as a consultant to City Planning commissions throughout the Midwest. Early commissions included Wagner Place, Jefferson City, Missouri (1913); Point Defiance Park, Tacoma, Washington (1914); the Park and Boulevard system, Kansas City, Kansas (1915); Campus of the University of Kansas, Lawrence (1913-1918); and several cemeteries, in addition to smaller private and public projects. Their trademark -- winding roads contoured to natural topography, preservation of trees and valleys, and an eye for the scenic vista -- became well established.
In 1913 the firm attracted the attention of J.C. Nichols, who hired the Hares to work on the Country Club District in Kansas City. In addition to laying out approximately 2,500 acres, the firm designed the grounds for many of the homes, including some of the five-acre estates that made up the original Mission Hills, across the state line in Johnson County, Kansas. Herbert was personally responsible for subdivision planning, for many of the detailed entrances and parks, and for creating appropriate settings for many of the imported objects d’art that Nichols placed throughout his developments. By collaborating with Nichols on the masterplan, the firm made the jump from "site scale" to "district scale planning." [See also the WHMC-KC exhibit on Ward Parkway.]
Most of Hare and Hare’s private work ceased during World War I, with the exception of Sid’s cemetery design business. Herbert worked for the United States Government, designing military installations, including Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas (1917), five camps and cantonments in the South and projects for the U. S. Housing Corporation.
Hare and Hare collaborated again with Kessler and J. C. Nichols on the plan for the new town of Longview, Washington, the largest pre-planned city of its time outside Washington, D.C. During the early 1920s, community planning and design changed appreciably when America realized the needs of an increasingly industrial and technological society. In 1922, as one of the "first post-war manifestations of this awakening,"(4) Longview, Washington was created.
Hare and Hare received the design commission, with George Kessler as design consultant and J.C. Nichols retained as realty consultant. The plan, which included a central business district, three residential areas, suburban acreage, and a central manufacturing district, also provided an area for two enormous mills. Longview was a challenging assignment because of its scope and demonstrated Hare and Hare’s expertise in yet another aspect of their practice -- city planning.
By the end of the 1920s, the firm’s national reputation was secure. Projects in twenty-eight states, including cemeteries, college campuses, subdivisions, parks, and military camps, had been commissioned. Hare and Hare also collaborated with prominent Kansas City architect Edward Buehler Delk in planning the Country Club Plaza, yet another J.C. Nichols development in Kansas City, Missouri. Herbert began to spend a great deal of his time with the public sector as a consultant to city planning and parks commissions throughout the U. S., in cities such as Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Oklahoma City. The appointment of the firm to finish George Kessler’s Kansas City, Missouri commissions when he died in 1923 "was a measure of Kessler’s respect and trust of the Hare and Hare firm."(5)
Between the depression and Sid Hare’s death in 1938, Hare and Hare completed
several Kansas City, Missouri projects including the Laura
Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden in Loose Park (Sid completed the planting plan in
1937, a year before his death) and the setting for the Nelson
Gallery of Art
(1930-1937; now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art).
Yet much of the firm’s work in the 1930s was outside Kansas City, partly because Hare
and Hare was finishing Kessler’s commissions and partly because of Herbert’s
disagreements with local politicians. Notable commissions from this era include plans for
numerous state parks throughout Missouri that began in 1937 and continued through the
1950s (Arrow Rock, Bennett Springs, Mark Twain, Table Rock, and Wallace); campuses for the
University of Houston (1937-1950); University of Kansas Medical School, Kansas City,
Kansas (1934-1936); University of Texas at Austin (1932-1939); and private developments in
Wilmington, Delaware and Houston, Texas.
World War II brought a change to the firm’s commissions. Hare and Hare’s work in the early 1940s concentrated almost exclusively on government subsidized projects including military housing. From 1945 through the 1950s, Hare and Hare resumed varied projects for the private sector in 33 states, Canada, and Costa Rica including numerous campus plans: Texas Christian University, Fort Worth (1945-1955); Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1947); University of Kentucky, Lexington (1957); Kansas State University, Manhattan (1951); subdivisions in Missouri, Texas, Georgia, and Kansas; and the grounds for the Harry S. Truman in Independence, Missouri (1956) and Linda Hall, Kansas City, Missouri (1957). In addition, planning and zoning studies became a large part of their work. In 1960, soon after completing plans for Lake Jacomo, near Kansas City, Missouri, Herbert Hare died. "Hare’s death," stated an article in the Kansas City Times, "leaves a regional as well as a local void that will be hard to fill at a time when excellent urban planning was never more desperately needed."(6)
The partners that Sid and his son personally selected carried on the firm’s tradition until the mid-1960s when a number of factors contributed to a significant drop in commissioned work for Hare and Hare. Once the firm gave up the idea that they could be both landscape architects and engineers, they were faced with abolishing the engineering aspect of their work altogether. The city planning portion of their work went through the same pattern and once public funds decreased, the staff left one by one for better jobs. In 1975 a merger with Lawrence-Leiter and Company, a city planning firm, was announced. It was commonly believed that this merger would regenerate business for Hare and Hare, but in 1977, Lawrence-Leiter pulled out. In 1980, in an attempt to revitalize their work and renew their reputation once again, the firm of Hare and Hare merged with Ochsner and Associates to form Ochsner Hare and Hare, which continues today.
Sid Hare’s national reputation as a leading authority on cemetery design led him to be elected as a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (1912). Herbert was also active professionally. He frequently lectured and published articles on English suburbs and European garden cities that served as models for city and regional planning. He was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Park Executives and served as a director of the American Institute of Planners. Moreover, he served as vice president of the ASLA (he had been elected a fellow) in 1940 and as president in 1944.
© State Historical Society of Missouri
Notes
1 William H. Tishler, editor. American Landscape Architecture, Designers and Places. (Washington, D. C.: The Preservation Press, 1989), 68.
2 "The Pioneers of Cemetery Administration in America." Association of American Cemetery Superintendents. September, 1942, n.p.
3 American Landscape Architecture, 12.
4 Mellier Goodin Scott. American City Planning Since 1890. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 234.
5 Bettina C. Van Dyke. "The Evolution of 19th and 20th Century Cemetery Landscape Types as Exemplified by Hare & Hare’s Cemetery Design." Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University, 1984, 80. Copy, Master’s Thesis.
6 "In Memorium, S. Herbert Hare." Kansas City Times. April 20, 1960, n.p.
Elwood, P. H. Jr., ed. American Landscape Architecture. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1924.
Fowler, Richard B. "Herbert Hare’s Turning Point was a Spiral Curve." Kansas City Star. July 3, 1931.
Hare, S. Herbert. "The Prospective Field of our Profession." Landscape Architecture. July, 1936.
______________. "The Setting for a Museum of Fine Arts." Landscape Architecture. January, 1939.
______________. "Planning of Industrial City of Longview, Washington." Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineering. August, 1927.
Hare, Sid J. "The Influence of Surroundings." Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening. September, 1897.
Hare, Sid J. and S. Herbert Hare. The Cemetery Handbook. Chicago: Allied Arts Publishing Company, 1921.
___________________________. "Boundary Treatment of Cemeteries." Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening. February, 1916.
___________________________. "Transformation of the Home Grounds." Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening. May, 1906.
"In Memorium, S. Herbert Hare." Kansas City Times. April 20, 1960.
Newton, Norman. Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
"Obituary", Sidney J. Hare. American Association of Cemetery Superintendent’s Bulletin. November, 1938.
Piland, Sherry and Uguccioni, Ellen J. Fountains of Kansas City: A History and Love Affair. Kansas City, MO: City of Fountains Foundation, 1985.
The Pioneers of Cemetery Administration in America." Association of American Cemetery Superintendents. September, 1942.
Scott, Mellier Goodin. American City Planning Since 1890. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969.
Tishler, William H., editor. American Landscape Architecture, Designers and Places. Washington, D. C.: The Preservation Press, 1989.
Van Dyke, Bettina C. "The Evolution of 19th and 20th Century Cemetery Landscape Types as Exemplified by Hare and Hare’s Cemetery Design." Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University, 1984. Master’s Thesis; copy.
Last revised: Tuesday, October 04, 2011
