Laurel Hill Terraced Garden

These coordinates mark the exact location where the garden once stood. The brick remnants of the garden still remain, now overgrown by the encroaching forest.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Laurel Hill Cultural Landscape Report prepared by John Milner Associates, Inc. for the Fairfax County Park Authority in 2009:

INTRODUCTION

Near the community of Lorton in Fairfax County, Virginia, the Laurel Hill House was the ca. 1787-1790 home of William Lindsay, who served in the Virginia Militia as a major during the American Revolution; Laurel Hill was also the name of the estate. The property originally comprised a large portion of what is today considered the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory National Register Historic District, which today also overlaps with Laurel Hill Park land and the Laurel Hill Adaptive Reuse Area.

Just one hundred feet southeast of the Laurel Hill House, obscured today by encroaching successional forest, a formal Terraced Garden contains numerous brick walls, steps, and paved walks constructed by prisoners with the bricks they manufactured.

In 1921, Albert Harris was appointed Municipal Architect for the District of Columbia. Harris studied architecture at George Washington University, began his career in the Chicago office of Henry I. Cobb, and returned to D.C. and joined the firm of Hornblower and Marshall. While with Hornblower and Marshall, Harris assisted with the design of the Baltimore Customs House, and the U.S. National Museum, now the Natural History Museum. As Municipal Architect, Harris designed schools, firehouses, and other public buildings. He also contributed to the comprehensive plan for George Washington University, creating the quadrangle, University Yard. While Municipal Architect, Harris recommended the “development of landscape gardens in connection with new school buildings, in line with present effort of Washington School authorities to surround children with all possible cultural influences rather than to make school a prison-like experience for the young.” Harris may have had a role in encouraging similar projects, such as the Terraced Garden at the Laurel Hill House, as part of progressive efforts within D.C. Penal Institutions. This is not documented but might be an informative approach for additional research.

In September 1937, the grounds of Laurel Hill were described as follows: “aside from the very beautiful and ancient box, there is little left of the old garden. There are still a few trees which may have been there when the house was built.” This description mentions nothing of the extensive terraced garden that appears to have been under construction in the 1937 aerial photograph. A local resident, Irma Clifton, recalls a large group of boxwood located on the north side of the house that was destroyed in the 1980s, but these do not appear on the 1937 or 1953 aerial photographs

Very little about the Laurel Hill House site in particular was documented after it ceased to serve as a residence sometime during the late 1960s to early 1970s. Photographs of the house taken during the 1970s show it to be in good condition at that time. During the 1980s and 1990s, various organizations sponsored work days to clean up the area, including a 1997 Eagle Scout clearing project in the Terraced Garden.

The D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory National Register Historic District is significant for its building complexes and landscape areas associated with a Progressive-era penal institution. The Laurel Hill House functioned as the Superintendent’s residence for the institution during the period 1914-1961. The Laurel Hill House was listed as a contributing feature in the district’s 2005 National Register Nomination (the district was listed on the National Register in 2006). The ca. 1962 garage described in the nomination as a non contributing feature has been demolished. Other contributing features on the Laurel Hill House site include the Laurel Hill Entrance Drive, a two-lane un-striped asphalt road that retains its historic alignment; the brick retaining wall along the entrance drive, which runs for approximately 250 feet along the road edge; the Lindsay Cemetery; and the Terraced Garden. The landscape in the immediate vicinity of the house consists of approximately two acres of yard north and south of the house and the Terraced Garden that occupies a half-acre to the southeast. Designed in the neoclassical style, the Terraced Garden is comprised of a series of outdoor rooms and walks, organized along a primary and secondary axis and featuring parallel terraces. The garden includes brick walls and steps, brick-paved walks, the remains of a rectangular reflecting pool (filled in with soil and inoperative), remnant ornamental plantings, brick-edged planting beds, and the remains of what was likely a rock garden, with a surviving pedestal fountain (also inoperative). The brickwork has been identified as characteristic of that constructed by prison labor throughout the historic district, but much of this brickwork is presently obscured by overgrown vegetation and accumulated soil.

The Fairfax County Comprehensive Plan recommends that the Laurel Hill House and its associated Terraced Garden be designated a heritage resource area. While the Fairfax County Park Authority does not own the house, the plan recommended that they provide technical assistance in a public-private partnership to develop the Historic Structure Report for the Laurel Hill House and this Cultural Landscape Report as components of a phased historic preservation plan.

EXISTING CONDITIONS

Designed in the neoclassical style, the garden is consists of a series of outdoor rooms and walks organized along a primary and secondary axis and featuring parallel terraces. The garden contains brick walls and steps, brick-paved walks, the remains of a rectangular reflecting pool, remnant ornamental plantings, brick-edged planting beds, and the remains of a rock garden with a surviving pedestal fountain. The brickwork has been identified as characteristic of that constructed by prison labor throughout the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory National Register Historic District. This, and the fact that the garden exhibits important defining features typical of early 20th-century neoclassical gardens, present the major contributing factors to the historic significance of the study area.

LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTION BY CHARACTERISTIC
Overview and General Assessment of Brick Masonry

The Laurel Hill study area site features the Laurel Hill House, once home to William Lindsay, the Lindsay Cemetery, the neoclassical Terraced Garden constructed in the 1930s, the former entrance drive and an associated brick retaining wall, a construction road trace also dating to the early 20th-century, and surrounding woodlands. The features of this cultural landscape, organized by landscape characteristic, are described in detail below.

Most of the constructed features in the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden and environs, including stairways, steps, walks, retaining walls, pedestals, and garden bed edging, were built with brick masonry. Stairs and paths are addressed more specifically in the Circulation section; walls in the Buildings and Structures section; and edging in Small-scale Features. The type of brick used throughout the site is a hard-fired, fine red clay brick with no evidence of impurities. Its typical dimensions are 8-1/8 by 3-3/4 by 2-1/16 inches. The bricks appear to be quite uniform and are machine made. The grayish-white mortar is cementitious, with medium to fine aggregate.

Since the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory owned brick kilns at a site nearby along the Occoquan River that were active during construction of the Terraced Garden, the brick was most likely produced there and laid by prisoners, as was the brick used to construct the buildings at the Reformatory, Workhouse, and Penitentiary complexes. The quality and consistency indicates that the brick yard produced good materials based on a relatively sophisticated knowledge of brick. The proficiency carried out in the brick manufacturing extended to the masonry skill that built the Terraced Garden. The existing condition of the Terraced Garden masonry serves as a testament to this craftsmanship. Brick walls, stairs, and edgings are in remarkable condition, particularly considering the lack of basic maintenance done over the last decade at the site. The durability of the masonry suggests the brick and mortar selected complimented each other and made for an overall well-built system.

Thoughtful design and craftsmanship can be seen in some of the Terraced Garden features, such as the bench on the eastern transept of the garden. Highlighted characteristics of this bench include a stylized, concave curved base and a slightly reclining back support, both of which took great skill to engineer.

While general conditions of the masonry at the Laurel Hill site are good, problem areas exist. Biological growth, including moss, lichen, mildew, and vine attachment, threatens integrity. Particularly at risk are bricks with direct ground contact, such as: flowerbed edgings (moss); areas where invasive growth is rampant (vines); and especially moist areas where copings have been compromised (lichen, mildew, moss). Open joints, that is, joints between the bricks from which the mortar has fallen out, typically affect 20 to 30 percent of each element. Some cracking, spalling, and displacement of brick and some entire structures are evident, and the capstones on some wall sections should be replaced and repointed.

The Terraced Garden lies just southeast of the Laurel Hill House on the side slope of the ridge as it descends into the wooded east drainageway. The garden itself is now partially wooded and overgrown, and it is difficult to discern the whole area from a single vantage point. The garden consists of a series of formal landscape spaces divided by walls and terraced levels and connected by linear walks and steps. Steps leading down from the level, north yard provide the primary approach to the garden. The first space reached within the Terraced Garden from this approach is the central walk, which extends east from the bottom of the steps across the width of the garden to the east stair, on the same terrace level as the semicircular terrace.

The semicircular terrace is north of the central walk, edged by a four-foot-high curved wall. The central walk spans the length of its flat edge. Both spaces are slightly obscured by a scattering of saplings and small understory trees and an overgrowth of vines and weeds.

The rectangular terrace lies below and on axis with the semicircular terrace. Four steps lead down to this garden area from the central walk. The rectangular, level terrace is edged by large trees on the south and east and features a rectangular pool at its center. In the northwestern corner, three narrow steps lead to a landing with a sculpted brick bench/retaining wall; the entire west edge of the rectangular terrace has no hard edge, but slopes gently up to the south yard. The entire area is now overgrown with saplings and weedy vegetation. A stair at the east end of the central walk leads down to the lower terrace. South of the east stair, the lower terrace becomes a narrow, level, earthen platform that gently descends along the perimeter of the rectangular terrace, eventually curving around its south edge and disappearing into the natural topography. North of the east stair, the lower terrace remains more structured, with a low retaining wall on the uphill side, a brick walk, and a brick edged forsythia bed along the top of a tall retaining wall on the downhill side.

This forsythia walk leads to a sunken rock garden just northeast of the semicircular terrace. A large ash tree shades this bowl-shaped area, where there is also a fountain that has overturned. Large, rough stones cover the slopes of the rock garden; these are not found anywhere else on the site. A stair leads down through the tall retaining wall below the rock garden to access the east terrace, a narrow, level space containing three pedestals and a narrow stair that eventually slopes down towards the east drainageway. The north section of the lower terrace and the east terrace form a space that feels distinct and remote from the upper garden and lies in the deeper shade of tall woodland trees.

There are several less formal spaces that are not as geometrically defined but are also associated with the Terraced Garden. One is a vista that at one time visually extended the garden to the south; all that remains of this space is a sparsely vegetated, 20-foot wide swath through the woods, extending along the garden’s axis across a dell that drops off at the end of the rectangular terrace.

Topographic Modifications

The Terraced Garden at Laurel Hill was designed to follow the natural topography of the ridge as it falls away towards the drainageway east and south of the house. To form the cascade of various garden spaces, it appears that the builder used cut and fill to sculpt earthen terraces and other forms into the existing natural slope.

The eastern edge of the north yard appears to have been purposely leveled and defined on its low side by a low curving wall, on the other side of which the landform slopes steeply into the garden below. The elevation of the north yard is approximately five feet above the top of the curved enclosure wall of the semicircular terrace.

The semicircular terrace, a level area in the form of a half-circle with a 35-foot radius, is edged along the north by a partial retaining wall about four feet tall. The wall was built roughly perpendicular to the natural fall of the land, so the west half of the wall is retaining, and the east half is free-standing.

Approximately three feet below and south of the semicircular terrace to the south sits the rectangular terrace, a large level area of about 85 by 100 feet. The south and east edges of this terrace slope away to a retaining wall on the east and into the dell to the south. On the west edge of the terrace, an even, gently sculpted slope connects the rectangular terrace to the south yard, approximately ten feet in elevation above the level of the terrace.

Below the retaining wall of the rectangular terrace is the southern half of the lower terrace. A low retaining wall contains the steep slope above the lower terrace, south of the east steps. The lower terrace continues below the rock garden, which is a bowl-like, concave area in the northeast quadrant of the garden about 35 feet across at the top edge with a level area about ten feet across at the bottom of the bowl.

The east terrace lies east of the rock garden. It is about four feet wide and hugs the foot of the six-foot high wall that supports the north half of the lower terrace. Beyond the terrace, the site drops off into the east drainageway fifteen to twenty feet away.

Views and Vistas

The view from the Laurel Hill House to the Reformatory and Penitentiary survives as the predominant long view at the site today. Views in all other directions are now heavily wooded. If a view of the garden from the Laurel Hill House once existed, vegetation obscures it today. Potential views of the garden from within the house are not known due to the lack of access to the interior and upper floor windows at the time of the site visit.

Axial views within the Terraced Garden are largely obscured by invasive vegetation. Focal points such as statues or plantings that may have existed at the terminus of some internal views are missing today.

The vista, a cleared linear view through the woodlands across the drainageway, would have provided a primary terminal vista for the garden. Currently overgrown, the vista is not easily discerned today.

Laurel Hill House site

Informally, visitors can approach the Terraced Garden across either the North or South yards, which are kept mown. Formally, The Terraced Garden contains a carefully designed network of stairways, steps, and walks that access the garden’s five levels. Constructed almost entirely of brick, these circulation features vary in size and form. They are integrated into the system of walls and landings. Most of the brick features associated with the Terraced Garden are those that comprise the system of walks, retaining walls, cheekwalls, and stairways that afford access to each of its five levels.

The overall circulation pattern begins at the west entrance stairway and descends to the central walk, from which several stairs lead up to the enclosed semicircular terrace, down to the rectangular terrace or, farther east and further down, to the lower terrace. In the garden’s northeast corner, another stairway descends into the woodland to the east terrace, where there are pedestals that were part of an additional garden feature that was either never completed or is now missing.

Stairways and steps

The west entrance stairway begins at the north yard retaining wall and leads south to the central walk. Composed of brick, this entry consists of two short flights of six steps, each with a landing in the middle and another at the bottom. Brick retaining walls supported by brick pedestals with concrete caps edge the stairway on both sides. A free-standing metal lamp standard is secured to the outside corner of the southwest pedestal. Most bricks in the structure remain in good condition, but mortar is missing in 50 percent of the joints in the pedestals and in 20 percent of the joints in the retaining walls. The upper west and lower east pedestals are missing their concrete caps. The lower east pedestal has been completely repointed since its original construction, presumably to correct some damage and is displacing about ½” at its base. A two-foot-square patch of efflorescence mars the west inside cheek wall. Along the south cheek wall there are four square feet of disaggregated, or crumbling, brick and around four linear feet of structural cracking. The landings and the central walk are paved using a running bond pattern. The method of installation is difficult to discern without excavation, but is most likely brick laid on sand.

From the central walk, a single step leads through an opening in the central walk retaining wall to the bench landing. From the bench landing, the bench steps, a narrow set of four brick steps, two feet wide, leads to the east and down into the rectangular terrace. Narrow single-wythe cheek walls flank this stairway. The steps have some displacement. The north cheek wall has detached from the steps and pulled four inches away from the treads.

The central steps lead south from the midpoint of the central walk down to the rectangular terrace along the primary axis of the Terraced Garden. This feature is composed of five 6-foot-wide brick steps; the second tread from the top is two feet deep, and the lower three treads are one foot deep; the risers are approximately eight to ten inches tall. The central steps are in generally good condition with 20 percent open joints. A minor spall mars the west cheek wall; the bottom portion of the cheek wall on the east side has displaced two to three inches outward and is missing four or five bricks.

The east stairway, a long set of brick steps, leads from the east end of the central walk down to the lower terrace. There are a total of fifteen steps, five feet wide and of slightly irregular heights and lengths. The upper steps are contained within the tall brick walls flanking the central walk while low cheek walls support the lower half of the steps. This structure has 10 percent open joints and some efflorescence on the north cheek wall. There is some minor cracking—about two square feet—along the south cheek wall and a few spalled bricks. The southeast pedestal is displacing northward and the lower coping on the east cheek wall has displaced in multi-directions. There appear to be two brick-lined swales on either side of the east steps. These have been laid with various sizes of salvaged bricks. The swales direct surface stormwater runoff down the hillside, minimizing the effects of runoff on the stairs.

The rock garden stairway leads from the lower terrace down to the east terrace. Four and a half feet wide, this set of ten steps is aligned on axis with the center of the rock garden and flanked by brick walls that join the east terrace retaining wall. This structure is in good condition with only 10 percent open joints. One brick is missing from the northwest pedestal and all the brick caps on the pedestals have failed joints. The southwest pedestal is displaced and contains a few spalled bricks.

The short flight of six east terrace steps is twenty-two inches wide and somewhat obscured by accumulated soil and debris. The steps lead from the east terrace down the west slope of the east drainageway. The steps have moss and other biological growth, open joints, and missing brick.

Walks

The brick walks within the Terraced Garden are variously paved in running bond, basketweave, and Spanish bond brick patterns. Some brick walks were identified as present beneath a layer of accumulated soil and vegetation, but it was not possible to distinguish their patterns because they are obscured by this material. Therefore, their condition is listed as fair.

The central walk is six feet wide and ninety feet long, paved in brick in a running bond pattern set crossways to the walk. Running in a straight line east-west, the central walk forms a major cross-axis within the Terraced Garden.

The bench landing provides access to the bench and the western route from the central walk to the rectangular terrace. Measuring five by ten feet in front of the bench, this platform is paved in a Spanish bond brick pattern.

The semicircular terrace walk parallels the curved wall. A five-foot-wide planting bed lies between the wall and the two-foot-eight-inch-wide, brick-paved and brick-edged walk. Buried beneath a thick layer of accumulated soil and vegetation, the paving pattern is not distinguishable.

The rectangular terrace walk runs east-west along the planting bed at the bottom of the central walk wall. This four-foot-six-inch wide walk is paved in running bond brick pattern laid east-west, parallel to the walk direction, and has a mortared brick edging on both sides. It is partially covered by accumulated soil and vegetation.

The pool walk leads from the central steps and rectangular terrace walk to the pool, and surrounds the pool on all sides. This path is four feet eight inches wide, and is paved in common-bond brick paving, all running east-west, regardless of the direction of the walk.

The lower terrace walk, just below and parallel to the rectangular terrace, is an unpaved path edged with stretcher course brick. This path begins at the bottom of the east stairway, and disappears halfway down the length of the garden to the south. It is very difficult to discern due to minor erosion and thick soil and leaf litter accumulation, and it is possible that it once extended to the end of the rectangular terrace retaining wall.

Leading north from the east steps along the lower terrace is the forsythia walk, an unpaved path also edged with stretcher course brick. The walk is well covered in accumulated soil and engulfed in forsythia shrubs growing in and along it. A few bricks are missing along the edging and many have been slightly displaced. One small section along the west side of this path appears to have been recently rebuilt, and replacement brick is in evidence along the path.

Garden turf walks appear to have been present in the semicircular terrace, between the brick-edged beds. No grass surfacing remains today within their boundaries.

Vegetation

Much of the young woody and weedy vegetation on the Laurel Hill site today is the result of a decade or more of low-level maintenance practices, which included lawn mowing but not checking growth of invasive or volunteer vegetation within the garden areas or caring for the ornamental plantings that would have been a part of the Terraced Garden. These practices have resulted in the loss of all but the hardiest ornamental plants that would have existed in the Terraced Garden when it was maintained more intensively. Surviving ornamental plantings are mostly shrubs and bulbs. Some of them have naturalized, apparently migrating into locations they might not have been planted in originally.

Shrubs

Shrub plantings in evidence include showy forsythia (Forsythia x intermedia) growing thickly along the forsythia walk on the lower terrace and massed on the forsythia bank in the dell. It appears to be healthy and is growing out of bounds in a few places, such as into the brick walkway. Shrub roses of two or more varieties are located within the semicircular terrace and in a bed at the southeast corner of the rectangular terrace. These appear to be planted specimens rather than the invasive multiflora rose often found on disturbed sites, but the varieties have not been identified. Spiraea (Spiraea x vanhouttei), a popular white-flowering garden shrub, is evident in several places in the rectangular terrace. A bush honeysuckle, possibly Lonicera fragrantissima, grows in the eastern bed of the semicircular terrace. While this species can spread on its own, this specimen is relatively large and appears to be the only one in this area, which indicates it was probably planted.

Perennials and bulbs

Non-woody ornamental perennials and bulbs are found in the Terraced Garden and around the house. These plants were identified in mid-spring, and there may be additional later-season flowering plants in the Terraced Garden that were not evident in early May. A single Chinese peony (Paeonia lactiflora), which appears healthy despite shaded conditions, is growing at the south end of the border in the rectangular terrace, at the east edge of the vista. As it was not in bloom during the site visit, the color of the flower is currently unknown.

In the environs of the house are several areas that may have been flower beds along the edges of the building, as remnant plantings were noted in these areas. These include a pink-and-white-striped, fringed tulip (Tulipa L.) growing on the south side of the house east of the front door and a pink garden hyacinth (Hyacinthus orientalis) growing just west of the north, or back, door of house.

Throughout the Terraced Garden, daffodils (Narcissus L.) are evident. They are scattered in locations including the rectangular and semicircular terraces, the rock garden, the large lower terrace, and along the construction road trace. Those observed in the rock garden were a double-flowering variety. The daffodils have likely naturalized from their original planting locations.

Unidentified varieties of naturalized bulbs cover much of the terrace slopes around the edge of the rectangular terrace. With light green, sword-shaped foliage about six inches tall in early May, they appear to be a variety of daylily, but it was not possible to tell for certain at the time of the site visit.

Structures

Numerous structures are associated with the Terraced Garden, including a pool, a brick and concrete bench on a landing, many brick free-standing and retaining walls, a set of three unidentified pedestals, and a few drainage features. All are predominantly constructed of mortared brick, with some elements in concrete.

The rectangular pool is located in the center of the rectangular terrace. Measuring about twelve feet wide and forty feet long, it is edged by a one-foot-high brick wall with a brick cap and is surrounded by a brick walk. The depth of the pool is unknown, as it is currently filled with earth and brush, including saplings and understory trees, but the interior appears to be of concrete painted blue. A metal hatch at the north edge of the pool contains water valves. Based on its appearance and context, the pool was almost certainly ornamental and not meant for swimming.

The built-in bench is constructed of solid brick, with brick arms and a concrete seat; its high back forms a retaining wall to the west. The bench is approximately eight feet long and eighteen inches wide, with a subtly concave curve to the brickwork under the seat. The bench is missing four bricks on its south corner; 20 percent of the bench and wall behind it should be repointed and the joints cleaned of biological growth. A four-inch crack mars the bench top. Substantial displacement in the wall that joins the bench to the bench stair has been caused by an overgrown tree just behind the bench.

The bench landing is about three feet high and ten by five feet in dimension. The landing has been laid in Spanish bond. The brick is in good overall condition.

Three brick pedestals stand ten feet apart along the edge of the east terrace. Each possesses a mortar bed on the top surface that may have once held a cap or finial, now non-extant. The pedestals are currently tilting or sliding off the terrace and are in poor condition with biological growth, open joints, and missing brick.

A five-by-six-foot, one-foot tall brick planter stands north of the Terraced Garden on the slope below the north yard. Rubble in the area suggests former features or walks associated with this planter.

Walls

Brick walls provide much of the visible structure of the Terraced Garden. Most are retaining walls, while some are free-standing and serve to separate areas from one another. A few walls serve both purposes. All are of common-bond mortared brick. Many of walls terminate in square pedestals with concrete caps. The main walls are described in greater detail below.

The yard wall, located along the top edge of the Terraced Garden, curves 125 feet in length along the hillside east of the house, from northeast of the house to near the top of the west entrance stairway. This wall is approximately one foot tall, of common bond, and capped with brick; it is not a retaining wall, but defines the eastern edge of the level lawn of the north yard in a gentle curve. The curved yard wall is nearly covered in biological growth, including vines, moss, and lichen, and has open joints and many cracked or missing bricks. There are several long sections where the capping brick layer is missing.

The central retaining wall, ninety-five feet in length, is aligned east-west along the south side of the central walk, reinforcing the cross-axis that separates the semicircular and rectangular terraces. The wall has two breaks in it, one at the bench landing and the other at the central steps. Both breaks are accented by square pedestals with concrete caps. Associated brick walls flank the upper steps and function as retaining walls. About 20 percent of the brick joints in the central retaining wall are missing mortar. The two-wythe, brick coping along the top of the wall is cracking apart along its central horizontal joint. Another fifty linear feet of cracking along the south side of the coping shows movement throughout the central retaining wall. Nearly one-hundred bricks in the coping are spalled from excess water accumulated in this area from open joints and cracking. East of the central stairs, a small section of wall is displacing slightly southward. Two hundred twenty-five square feet of the wall shows efflorescence and spray-paint graffiti on the south side of the wall affects five square feet.

Most of the semicircular terrace retaining wall remains in remarkable condition with less than 10 percent open joints. There is some minor cracking in the wall. To the east side of the central portion of the wall a fifteen linear foot horizontal crack is opening in the coping brickwork. Five square feet of efflorescence is also present. On six square feet of the brick coping is black biological staining that either originates from nearby vegetation such as adjacent black walnut trees or is a micro-organism, such as lichen.

The lower terrace retaining wall, a low brick retaining wall, stands approximately one foot in height, and retains the base of the sloped bank above the lower terrace and forsythia walk. It stretches about forty feet north of the east stairway, terminating in a curve into the rock garden, and runs at least the same distance to the south of the east stairway, disappearing beneath accumulated soil and debris.

The east terrace retaining wall, below the forsythia walk and rock garden, defines the edge of the east terrace area. This seventy-foot-long, six-foot-tall brick wall has forsythia spilling over the top, but appears to remain in good condition with only 10 percent open joints, located at brick copings, and a small amount of efflorescence. A significant crack runs the full height of the wall just south of the rock garden stair, about fifteen linear feet long. Here the wall has shifted, while the rock garden stair has anchored a portion of the wall to the hillside.

Terraced Garden features

A small, white-painted, cast-concrete pedestal fountain lies on its side in the rock garden. Composed of a shallow hexagonal bowl on a hexagonally faceted pedestal, the fountain is three and a half feet tall and has stubs of water pipes extending from its base. Although it has been overturned and cut off from water pipes, the fountain appears generally intact. It is lying in the low point of a semicircular recess lined with carefully placed limestone and marble boulders. The fountain has some exfoliation especially at the edges of the basin. The piping is corroded and detached from the water source. Some repairs appear to have been made, including an attempt to skim coat the bottom of the fountain basin with a cementitious parge.

Mortared brick edging is found along most of the Terraced Garden’s planting beds and edges brick paths as well. Some sections of the edging are missing or covered by accumulated soil and biological growth, with some displacement. Significant biological growth, primarily moss, grows on the brick used to outline the semicircular terrace beds, as it is in direct contact with the ground. Approximately 20 percent of all bricks in this area are spalled or missing. Overall, edging throughout the Terraced Garden is in fair condition.

Planting beds are found in many locations throughout the Terraced Garden and immediately around the house, as well as along the yard wall. Beds are mostly edged in brick. Some of the beds contain remnant plantings, while most are covered in weedy growth. Planting beds identified in the field include: in the semicircular terrace, a five-foot-diameter circular bed in the center, curved beds on either side of the circle, and a five-foot-wide border along the curved wall; large, brick-edged 6-foot-wide beds bordering the north, south, and east edges of the rectangular terrace; a two-foot-wide brick-edged bed containing forsythias along the edge of the forsythia walk; a four-foot-wide bed along the top of the yard wall and a four-foot wide brick-edged bed along what was the east side of garage. It is likely that planting beds surrounded the house, because flowering bulbs were located there during the site visits.

SIGNIFICANCE EVALUATION

Based on the research conducted on behalf of this Cultural Landscape Report (CLR), it has been determined that the Laurel Hill site and Terraced Garden possess local level significance within the areas of Social History and Landscape Architecture under National Register Criterion A and C. The property is primarily significant for the design of the neoclassical Terraced Garden. The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden is significant for its association with the progressive prison practices at the District of Columbia Reformatory. It was constructed by prisoners from bricks manufactured at the workhouse and reformatory complex, but it is unlike many of the other existing structures in the historic district. It is an unusual example of one of the many projects undertaken by prisoners that were intended to provide an opportunity for them to learn new skills they could potentially employ upon their release.

Significance Within the National Register Historic District

The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden is significant under Criterion A, Social History, for its role in the prison’s Progressive Penal reform programs of the early and mid-20th-century. It is also significant under Criterion C, Landscape Architecture, as an example of a designed garden compatible with the 20th-century Colonial Revival/neoclassical style that defines the architectural significance of the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory complex as a whole. The Terraced Garden is listed as a contributing element of the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory Historic District.

Criterion A

The Laurel Hill site and Terraced Garden are significant under Criterion A, Social History, as part of the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory’s Progressive Penal programs of the early and mid-20th century. The Progressive Penal Reform movement considered the main function of a prison to help prisoners adjust to life in normal society thus them to reach their full potential. Elements of this movement practiced at the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory include an individualized approach to the rehabilitation of each prisoner, rather than a prescribed punishment; use of solitary cell confinement only for serious offenders; abolition of lock-step, the rule of silence, and the chain gang; and increased educational opportunities, in both an educational and vocational setting. All of these elements were intended to create an idealized community within the prison that resembled normal society outside the prison. The purpose of this was to teach a prisoner how to function within the free community when released. Vocational training was a central part of the prisoner rehabilitation process and included farm, orchard, and nursery jobs; brick masonry; and other vocations.

The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden was almost certainly built and maintained by Reformatory prisoners, like the other features within the overall D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory property from this period. It fit into the prison’s progressive programs as a tool for providing prisoners with practical training in construction and landscape work. This training was intended to give the prisoner the skills necessary to become a productive member of society.

Criterion C

Under Criterion C, the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden is significant in the area of Landscape Architecture as a neoclassical garden. This landscape style is derived from Italian gardens and architecture and was popularly used in America during the Country Place era (1900-1940) in the design of private estates. The Terraced Garden embodies the neoclassical landscape ideals through its defined proportions, formal architectural structure of terraces and brick walls, and perpendicular axial arrangement with a defined terminus for each axis.

The Terraced Garden, while highly unusual for its correctional institution setting, is in all other respects typical of gardens constructed on private estates throughout the region in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the first part of the 20th century, new attitudes toward design and new social paradigms set the stage for a return to classical forms. The 1892 Chicago World’s Fair and Columbian Exposition, with its axial, architectonic spaces and classical architectural forms, exerted a great deal of influence. During the period known as the Country Place era (1900-1940), new found prosperity and mobility allowed the industrialist upper class to move out of cities and take up country estates, and the middle class to follow, in a movement to new garden suburbs. The notion of the agrarian ideal—of human spiritual and physical purity in rural settings—had become fashionable, a respite from the industrialized city. The large, relatively inexpensive lots outside city limits, now easily reached by automobile, could accommodate the kind of house and garden that would display one’s affluence and status. Landscape historian Robin Karson calls the 1920s “one of the most intense gardening episodes in American history.”

European design was also an influence. In the 1920s, with transatlantic travel becoming easier, more Americans were traveling to Europe than ever before, and the influence of the gardens they saw in Italy and France on their own design tastes was clear. Formal historicism, favored by Beaux-Arts trained architects, also fed into the new landscape forms, replacing 19th-century Victorian eclectic and Downing-style picturesque naturalism with new, highly geometrical “outdoor rooms”.

But landscape architecture was not the domain of only the upper and middle classes. A goal of the Garden Club of America, founded in 1913, was educating the public about the benefits of horticulture and gardening. The advent of neoclassical landscape architecture was also linked to reform movements of the time. The Progressive approach to solving societal ills very much rested on the notion that environmental influence could redeem and improve human character. Landscape architect Martha Brookes Hutcheson (1871-1959) dedicated much of her work to demonstrating the “importance of good design as a force for social and civic betterment.”

The City Beautiful movement, a Progressive environmental initiative, began around the turn of the 20th century, influenced by the glorious civic spaces of the Columbian Exposition. This movement sought to improve life in the cities, which had recently undergone tremendous unplanned growth—and a large influx of poverty—due to rapid industrialization and immigration. Urban slums lacked sanitation and decent housing, and disease, crime, and labor unrest were on the rise. It was believed that cleaning up the cities, through “civic art, civic design, civic reform, and civic improvement,” would solve these environmentally-influenced problems. Classically designed spaces were believed to have a positive, redemptive effect on human behavior and morality, and overall civic health. It was in precisely the same spirit that the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory was conceived and built in the 1910s.

Neoclassicism Defined

In his 1927 book Formal Design in Landscape Architecture, landscape architect Frank Waugh identified the six key features to be used in composing formal, neoclassical gardens. First, they were to have definite proportions of width to length, with his recommendations being a proportion of 7 or 8 to 5. Second, the garden was to be on different levels, with changes in grade taken up through terracing, rather than through free-flowing landforms.

Third, the structure of the garden was to be based on alignment of the major axis. Fourth, there had to be at least one minor axis set at right angles to the major axis. Fifth, these axes, major and minor, were to be visually reinforced through other garden elements such as paving, walls, and planting. Finally, each axis had to have a terminus, whether a sculpture, a vertical structure such as a pergola, a specimen tree, or an overlook to a lower or distant landscape.

Martha Brookes Hutcheson defined, in The Spirit of the Garden, the architectural underpinnings of the neoclassical garden, through text, plans and photographs. Based on Italian precedents, the garden’s formal architectural structure was axial and had level changes, pools, and defined views and vistas. “It is this knowledge of the value of axis that is as essential to good landscape-gardening as it is to good architecture.”

A “succession of related approaches” was connected axially. The combination of this architectonic rigor with her emphasis on lush planting beds, and native plants with informal forms, characterizes her garden approach as definitively American.

Hutcheson’s ideal neoclassical garden was very architectural, an extension of the house. The garden was to be composed of “outdoor rooms”. Interest was to be provided through variety, controlled vistas, and changing spaces: “the reasonable complexity of a garden makes it inviting.” Around the edges, the use of less structured plantings in more informal areas would serve to blend the garden naturally with the surrounding landscape.

Neoclassical Designers and Their Gardens

The identity of the designer of the Terraced Garden remains unknown. However, this designer was not acting alone – the garden is a clear example of a style that was repeated in many places and by many landscape architects and garden designers, both famous and anonymous. neoclassical design was exceedingly popular during the late 1920s and 1930s across the United States. The notable landscape architects of the time—including Beatrix Farrand, Charles Gillette, and Ellen Biddle Shipman—designed gardens with neoclassical characteristics in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and throughout the surrounding region. The following is a brief description and comparison of the design approaches and built works of these three well known landscape architects, presented here to provide a context for the design of the Terraced Garden.

Beatrix Farrand

Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959), one of the best known landscape architects of her time, designed gardens for both private residences and public universities. Between 1921 and 1937, Farrand also designed her best known extant garden, at Dumbarton Oaks, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It is often considered the best neoclassical garden in America.

The Dumbarton Oaks garden, while far grander in scale than the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden, has some striking similarities. Farrand worked on the principle of “make the plan for the ground and not twist the ground to fit the plan.” The garden at Dumbarton Oaks is based on the existing topography, which slopes away from the house steeply down to Rock Creek. The “house was placed deliberately off-axis, with its principal terraces extending to the east and descending into informal wooded areas below”. The North Vista, a series of shallow terraces descending from the house, was designed to draw the eye to a distant wooded hillside via a linear clearing (a device also used in 17th-and 18th-century French formal gardens). Farrand used terraces to divide the garden into distinct rooms. Six different levels within the gardens emphasize formality close to the house, and become less formal as the garden transitions into the wooded Rock Creek dell.

Farrand often centered her gardens on water features, such as the large rectangular pool at Dumbarton Oaks. She used subtle yet formal symmetry, aligning the garden rooms along visual axes, and massed plantings in borders based on color and texture. This planting aesthetic was influenced by Gertrude Jekyll’s impressionistic approach to color.15 Farrand, like Jekyll, was fond of planted borders.

Farrand used massing of particular plants to define her garden rooms at Dumbarton Oaks: the Cherry Walk, Rose Garden, and Forsythia Dell, for example. Early spring bulbs are found throughout the garden, such as the tiny blue scilla growing among the roots of a large beech tree; these plantings are intended to give a natural effect. Similarly, the Forsythia Dell’s large massing of forsythia cascading down the slope on the edge of the garden is naturalistic, yet calculated and designed, providing a transition to the woodlands beyond the garden.

These naturalistic elements, mostly found around the garden’s edges, contrast intentionally with the more formal garden areas such as the rectilinear, parterre like Rose Garden or the formal clipped aerial hedge in the Oval Garden. Cave-like sculptural stonework evokes a “grotto” on the terrace retaining walls edging the Pebble Garden.

Charles Gillette

Charles Gillette (1886-1969) designed numerous gardens, most for private estates and residences, throughout Virginia in the 1920s and 1930s. His eclectic yet formal style fell easily within the Neoclassicist fold, combining design principles of English and European Renaissance gardens with the English landscape school’s less formal aesthetic. Typically, Gillette would site gardens with formal, axial terraces close to the house, creating “well defined volumetric spaces” through the use of walls, level changes, and plantings. Lawns and wooded areas then provided transition into an informal, park-like area, viewed from the house and formal garden.

Like other garden designers of the Country Place era, Gillette used regional plants and construction materials to freely interpret the more formal historical styles. Furthermore, Gillette’s gardens are, for all their European influence, distinctively Virginian; many elements correspond to 18th-century gardens of the region that referenced Neoclassicism. These may include, according to Reuben Rainey,

"An axial organization of multilevel terraces; highly crafted masonry construction; elegant, finely detailed garden structures; and a planting design that emphasized fragrance, seasonal color, shade, and strong volumetric expression through the use of massed evergreens."

Like Farrand, Gillette was influenced by Jekyll’s color theory when it came to planting. Gillette used more evergreens than Farrand, in particular boxwood, referencing historic Virginia garden materials that were popular in Richmond and other locations where he worked.

Gillette frequently used vertical sculptural elements in his gardens as focal points. In the garden at Virginia House, in Richmond, Gillette composed a series of elaborate brick-paved terraces with central reflecting pools; straight and curving brick walls; pillars and piers accentuated with urns and sculptures; and views over the wooded park area below the garden. Meadowbrook, in Chesterfield County, Virginia, built in the 1920s, features a garden room arranged around a strong axis, centered on a rectangular pool surrounded by paved walks, lawn, and benches, bearing a strong resemblance to the arrangement of the Terraced Garden. Some features of his Wheelwright garden, also in Chesterfield County, are echoed by features within the Laurel Hill and other neoclassical gardens: flower beds edged in brick line an axial turf walk; at one terminus, a circular brick edged bed forms a focal point.

Ellen Biddle Shipman

Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950), an influential early-20th-century landscape architect, designed hundreds of residential gardens throughout the United States, particularly in the Northeast, in the 1910s through 1940s. Her expertise in planting, developed in her previous career as a gardener, influenced her design approach. Shipman’s gardens are distinctive for their axial arrangement, comprised of a series of spaces or outdoor rooms, each distinguished by its own character, often through use of plantings. Her gardens featured elements such as brick walls, lushly planted borders, peonies, clipped evergreens and small trees, rectangular beds, axial paths, and a central sundial or fountain.

For example, her garden at the Campbell Estate in East Aurora, New York, is a technically sophisticated design that employs formal terracing to accentuate landform and connect the house with outlying areas of the property, and features carefully considered, colorful flower planting beds. Shipman’s flower garden at the Jennings estate, constructed in 1914, features many hallmarks of the neoclassical design and spatial formula that are similar to the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden. These include terraces, an overall axial organization, a proportionally arranged rectangular garden with a curved end, and a system of brick walks; a fountain basin stood in the central terrace. Plantings in the beds were lush, with peonies, iris, lilies, hollyhocks, larkspur, achillea, primrose, and gypsophila among others. The Alger garden (1917) designed by Shipman included a “pool garden” with a rectangular reflecting pool, planted borders edging a surrounding lawn, and a bench perched on a raised platform overlooking the flower garden. The 1921 Lowe garden was designed in the same vocabulary, with the rectangular pool, borders, brick walks, and axial views typical of the well ordered, architectonic neoclassical garden style that was congruent with much of Shipman’s work.

Ellen Biddle Shipman’s view of gardening fit well into the Progressive, socially democratic views of the time. She wrote: “Gardening opens a wider door than any other of the arts—all mankind can walk through, rich or poor, high or low, talented or untalented. It has no distinctions, all are welcome.”

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

A primary objective of this CLR is to evaluate the ability of the existing landscape to represent the identified period of significance. The analysis focuses primarily on extant features, including their period of origin, associations, and modifications over time.

At this time, missing features have not been mapped due to a lack of available data in the historical records for the property. The precise condition of plantings and other missing features is not known. The current condition cannot therefore be thoroughly compared to what was present at Laurel Hill historically. However, the Terraced Garden retains its form as an example of neoclassical garden design. The garden has been thoroughly documented in the field for this CLR, and so it is possible to compare the garden today to its evident design intent and likely condition when it was in use. The analysis that follows will provide both a comparison of the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden’s current condition with what little is known of its historic condition and a comparison of the garden’s known design elements with those of the neoclassical garden type.

To summarize, the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden fulfills each of Frank Waugh’s six design requirements:

Proportion: The main area of the garden (the semicircular and rectangular terraces) has a length-width proportion of 8:5. This ratio is also known as the Golden Section, considered since Roman times to be the most aesthetically pleasing proportion of length to width.

Grade changes: the garden is organized through a series of formal terraces, including at least six changes in grade between distinct areas.

Major axis: the major axis of the garden flows through the centerline of the semicircular and rectangular terraces, aligning with the pool, walk, central stairs, and vista.

Minor axes: the central wall and walk provide, and reinforce, the garden’s minor axis. Other minor axes are associated with the rock garden, the parallel beds edging the rectangular terrace, and the lower and east terrace retaining walls. All are reinforced through paving, walls, and/or planting.

Views, vistas, and focal points: the major axis has its south terminus at the vista; and its north terminus at the center point of the semicircular terrace, where a small brick-edged bed may have been the location of a focal feature such as a statue, urn, or planting. The minor axis terminates to the east with what would have been a view out across the east drainageway.

Although Waugh’s design requirements present the clearest case for the Terraced Garden’s neoclassical design origins, the garden also exhibits qualities emblematic of Farrand, Gillette, and Shipman’s aesthetics.

Spatial Organization
Lindsay and Post-Lindsay Private Ownership (pre-1914)

When originally constructed, the house was situated on high ground, as was typical of 18th- and 19th-century country houses, affording fresh air and sunlight, well-drained land still in reach of potable water sources, a prospect over adjacent farmland, and possibly a glimpse of the distant waters of the Potomac. The front of the house was oriented south to Lorton Road and was described as having a serpentine drive winding up the hill to the front of the house. The site was surrounded by open fields giving out to woodlands, as seen on a Civil War-period map.

A picket fence reportedly demarcated the house’s front yard in the 1880s. A garden at Laurel Hill was described in an 1889 account as being on the north, or rear, of the house, but nothing remains of a garden in this area today. In addition, there are no known records from this period concerning the conditions of the eastern hillside or the presence of any kind of terracing that may have preceded the Terraced Garden that exists today. Therefore, it is likely that the Terraced Garden was constructed during the subsequent era, described below.

D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

There are no known written or visual records of the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden prior to 1937. The garden appears to be in a state of construction or reconstruction in the 1937 aerial photograph. If there was a garden on the north side of the house, it had been replaced by a concrete loop drive and parking area. The house is surrounded by construction disturbance in this aerial, including what appears to be a well-traveled temporary construction access route along the toe of the eastern hillside below the house. The route links Lorton Road and the Penitentiary, which was also under construction at the time; this route remains as a graded trace in the wooded part of the property today.

The current spatial organization of today’s Terraced Garden is legible in the 1937 aerial, but the light color of the ground indicates disturbed earth across the upper and middle terraces and along much of the hillside. The east terrace area, however, does not exhibit this trace of recent disturbance. The earthen terrace is visible, and what may have been walls running perpendicular to it on the north and south ends. It is possible that this area was also a garden, and that other garden spaces also existed before 1937. It is not possible to determine the precise nature of ground conditions from the aerial photograph alone.

In the 1953 aerial photograph, the Terraced Garden is visible in its current layout and form, and appears to contain plantings, though the resolution is not sufficient to identify any species. The construction route appears to have been revegetated.

The overall spatial organization of the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden from 1937 to today is typical of neoclassical design of this era. The Terraced Garden is a symmetrical arrangement of garden spaces along a central axis with changes in level between “rooms,” with internal views and walks arranged on minor axes perpendicular to the main axis. Multiple walls and steps define spaces within the garden, and less formal plantings around the garden’s edges, such as the forsythia masses, blend the formal garden with its wooded setting. As was typical of neoclassical gardens, such as Beatrix Farrand’s garden at Dumbarton Oaks, the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden is sited in relationship to topography, rather than to existing buildings, and as a result, it is not aligned on axis with the adjacent house.

Prison into Park (1962-present)

No notable additions or changes to the Terraced Garden are known to have occurred during this period. It appears to have retained its spatial character during this time, despite volunteer vegetative growth and loss of original plantings. While the spatial organization is intact, internal and external connections through views have been largely lost to vegetative growth that occurred during this period.

Topographic Modifications
D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden is sculpted to fit slopes on the site, much like Beatrix Farrand’s garden at Dumbarton Oaks, which is built on the slope leading to the wooded Rock Creek ravine. Formal terracing is a signature trait of neoclassical gardens. Variations in terrace size and height lend complexity and visual interest to neoclassical gardens, as described by Hutcheson, and this is the case with the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden as well. Similar terracing is evident within gardens such as Charles Gillette’s at Virginia House, and Ellen Biddle Shipman’s at the Campbell Estate.

Prison into Park (1962-present)

It is unknown whether additional topographic modifications occurred in or near the Terraced Garden after 1962, but it appears unlikely. The multi-level garden terraces are clearly intact today, with little erosion or other change.

Views and Vistas
D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

Views and vistas related to the Terraced Garden appear to have been partly in place on the 1930s aerial, although the lack of any vegetation within the garden would have limited the effectiveness of some designed views (plantings would have been used as framing or screening features). The vista to the south is visible on the 1953 aerial photograph as a swath cut through the woods. Axial views such as those found within the Terraced Garden are typical of neoclassical gardens of this era. Vistas were carefully planned to frame views and establish visual relationships between formal and informal garden areas. The vista to the south across the drainageway is similar to Beatrix Farrand’s North Vista at Dumbarton Oaks and similar vistas planned by Gillette toward the countryside from his gardens. Focal points such as urns and plantings were also likely present, as evidenced by the circular brick edged planting bed at the top of the central stairs. Neoclassical gardens often sited features at the end of major visual axes.

Prison into Park (1962-present)

According to FCPA staff, the garden area remained generally open and visible as recently as the mid-1990s. Today, the garden’s axial views and vistas are obscured by volunteer vegetative growth throughout the garden.

Circulation
D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

Lorton Road, like most roads that existed in the days before motor vehicles, was realigned during this period to accommodate safe automobile use. Its current alignment is similar to its appearance in 1943.

In 1919-1922 an entrance road to the newly constructed Reformatory was constructed alongside the Laurel Hill House. The road featured brick gateposts, a brick guard hut at its Lorton Road entrance, carefully constructed brick gutters, a bridge with ornamental brick sidewalls, brick retaining walls. The road itself was paved with asphalt aggregate. The road served as a main entrance to the Reformatory until the new entrance road to the west was completed in the 1950s.

The flagstone path north of the house was present in the 1920s but gone by 1937. The linear brick walks in the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden were laid out parallel to the major and minor axes of the garden and are visible in the 1953 aerial photograph. The pool was also edged in a brick path. The brick paths are constructed with basketweave, running bond, and Spanish bond ornamental paving patterns.

The layout of walkways in the Terraced Garden is typical of neoclassical gardens. Linear walks, often of brick, provided circulation but also spatial definition. Walkways separated lawns, planting beds, and water features. They aligned on the major and minor axes of the garden and, together with vistas, structures, and steps, contribute to the overall geometry. Ornamental details such as brick paving patterns were popular in neoclassical gardens and added year-round visual interest to the gardens, particularly since plantings were often tender perennials.

Paths in the semicircular garden are unpaved and were likely turf. Turf walks were also used in neoclassical gardens and were often features in perennial and rose gardens. Gillette used turf paths at Miniborya and the Wheelwright estate, Hutcheson did so at Undercliff, and Farrand employed them at Dumbarton Oaks.

The changes in level that were a fundamental part of the neoclassical garden required steps, so they are present in virtually every example of the style. Many gardens integrated steps into the system of walls. Steps were used to reinforce axes, connect different levels of the garden, and provide a structured viewpoint or framing device for vistas, as they are used within the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden. According to Martha Brookes Hutcheson, “Through the use of steps we not only solve practical problems...we add enormously to the picturesque in what we are creating, and find another opportunity for added composition....Where would Italy be if her gardens were robbed of walls and steps?”

Prison into Park (1962-present)

The entrance drive, though gated and out of use, still exists. The brick bridge, retaining walls, and gutters are all evident in various conditions. Although covered in many places with vegetative growth and accumulated leaves and organic matter, the brick walks appear to be intact. Most of the garden steps exist and are in good condition.

Vegetation

D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

Plants were the life and spirit of the neoclassical gardens of this era, the living material that filled in the skeleton of angular formality provided by the walls, terraces, stairs, and paths. As Hutcheson said: “The subtle form of arrangement plays with the mystery of flower-form and outline.” There are many uses for plants in the garden, as both structural elements like hedges and arbors, and as masses of texture and color, changing with the seasons. Each of the well known garden designers had his or her own distinctive trademark style of planting. Gillette was fond of boxwoods. Farrand delighted in unusual combinations and a broad plant palette focusing on spring flowering and massing. Shipman preferred a juxtaposition of architecturally clipped evergreen backgrounds with a wild, lushly planted profusion of herbaceous and perennial plants.

The two large boxwoods that appeared in 1920s photographs of the north side of the house, and in the 1937 aerial photograph, do not exist today. Their location is obscured in the 1953 aerial. No documentary evidence of a larger area of boxwood plantings occurs in any of these photos. There is no evidence in the historic aerials of any boxwoods in the Terraced Garden. Boxwood, as a dense, evergreen shrub, is typically visible in aerial photographs. There is a dark rectangular mass adjacent to the east terrace in the 1937 aerial photograph that may have a boxwood parterre with an arbor but more research and analysis is needed to confirm and clarify what that may have been.

Linear beds of an unidentified iris are visible in historic photos from ca. 1920s. They appear mature and well developed, bordering a flagstone walk to the north door of the house. The irises are not evident in the 1937 aerial and there are no irises apparent in the house area or garden today.

There are two shrub roses in the Terraced Garden today. The species and origin of these roses are not known. The semicircular garden includes one of the roses, and comparing the layout of its beds and turf paths to similar neoclassical gardens suggests that it may have been a rose garden at one time.

Spiraea appears in the Terraced Garden today in the rectangular terrace. These may have been part of the original plantings in the garden, but that can’t be determined because they may also be volunteers. They are in fair condition, but small, possibly due to dieback and regeneration over time in shady conditions, or they may be juvenile.

The history of the forsythia in the Laurel Hill garden is not known, although a massing of shrubs appears on the 1953 aerial in the same location where the southern forsythia mass exists today. Forsythia has been widely available since the late 19th century and remains popular today. Although it is a garden shrub that requires little maintenance, forsythia is slow to naturalize and spread. The location and quantity of forsythia in the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden indicates that there were two distinct areas of forsythia plantings: one on the slope at the south end of the garden and one along the top of the lower garden wall. These are both still present, but overgrown and presently shaded by canopy trees.

Bush honeysuckle (probably Lonicera fragrantissima) is present today in the semicircular terrace. It cannot be determined whether this was intentionally planted. A popular garden plant that can naturalize easily, it is possible that it is a volunteer.

Chinese peonies were also a popular planting in herbaceous borders throughout the late 19th and early to mid-20th century. Peonies were often planted in spots where they could be admired from all angles. Bailey noted in 1906 that among other uses in the landscape, peonies “are especially pleasing when entering into a distant vista.” This quote is of particular interest for the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden, as a single surviving Chinese peony is growing at the south end of the rectangular garden beds to the left of the central gap where a vista path may have existed.

Spring bulbs were planted at the Laurel Hill House site, before or at the same time as the Terraced Garden. Remnant tulip and hyacinth plantings around the perimeter of the house indicate that a mid-spring bulb garden was planted in beds between the brick walk and the house. Today, naturalized spring bulbs grow around the garden’s woodland edge.

Neoclassicists were fond of planning garden rooms around one type of plant, such as a Rose Garden (present in most gardens), Evergreen Garden (Shipman), Crabapple Hill (Farrand), Wild Garden (Gillette), Azalea Garden (Gillette), or Cherry Walk (Farrand). It is possible that the spaces within the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden were planted in this way; as noted above, the semicircular terrace could have been a rose garden and the rock garden likely would have had its own distinctive planting scheme.

Borders of annuals and perennials edge lawns in the neoclassical garden. The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden has planted beds edged with brick along its perimeter; a rose and a peony survive in these beds, as well as some naturalized spring bulbs.

Massing was a neoclassical form, like the forsythia mass in the Terraced Garden; a mass of forsythia was famously used by Beatrix Farrand in her Forsythia Dell, covering nearly an acre on a steep bank at the edge of the Dumbarton Oaks gardens in nearby Georgetown. The siting and design of the Laurel Hill forsythia mass has striking similarities, although it is smaller in scale.

Because so few plants survive and no records of any original planting plans have been found, speculations about the history of plant material within the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden are conjectural at best. The neoclassical planting schemes described above can inform this theoretical conjecture.

Prison into Park (1962-present)

Irma Clifton remembers that large boxwoods on the north side of the house were removed in the 1980s. She may be referring to the two boxwoods visible in the 1937 aerial photograph. It is unlikely that additional plantings of any kind occurred after 1962 when the house was vacated. No boxwoods remain on the property today.

As facility conditions deteriorated within the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory as a whole, it is likely that some garden plantings such as tender perennials disappeared over time due to neglect. It appears that, at some point in the 1990s, maintenance ceased and the Terraced Garden went into woodland succession. It is unlikely that ornamental plantings were cultivated between 1962 and this time. Today, successional woody plants, brambles, herbaceous weeds, and vines have covered much of the garden.

Buildings and Structures

D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

The detailing and brickwork evident in the Terrace Garden’s surviving walls, steps, bench, and other features is typical of the trademark style of the many brick features constructed by prison labor at the D.C. Workhouse and Reformatory during this period.

The walls in the Terraced Garden feature carefully designed brick masonry with concrete-capped pilasters accentuating openings and cheek walls edging stairs. The similarity of attributes in the brick features indicates they date to the same period. The curved walls in the garden are geometrically laid out with a high level of sophistication: the semicircular garden’s wall curve is calculated to lie perfectly within a Golden Section, and the yard wall is a segment of an ellipse. They may have been intended to emphasize the landform of the slope between them, though today this is difficult to see through the overgrown vegetation.

Walls provided a formal edge to terraces and defined the garden rooms of the neoclassical gardens of this era. Both brick and stone masonry were used. Walls were both structurally necessary and ornamentally appealing, often set as a rigid backdrop to lush planting beds, traversed by formal steps, or accented with pilasters topped by caps, finials, and urns.

Pools were also a fixture of neoclassical gardens. Hutcheson declares, “Water pools in private gardens are almost always too small and too deep. Their margins should be simple in form.” Ornamental water features in neoclassical gardens are indeed typically small and are usually round or rectangular, rarely naturalistic or complex in form. They are either simple basins of still reflection, or feature a central statue or fountain. The neoclassical pool is edged in low ground cover, lawn or paving, and centrally placed in a garden room. The rectangular pool at the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden was constructed during this period.

Prison into Park (1962-present)

Structures in the garden have not been modified between 1962 and today, but suffer from ongoing dilapidation. No new structures were added to the site. The garage building was demolished sometime between 2006 and 2008. The Laurel Hill House has been documented in a Historic Structure Report and Fairfax County is considering alternatives for its treatment as part of its ongoing planning process for the Laurel Hill Community Planning Sector.

Small-scale Features

D.C. Penal Institutions Progressive Era (1914-1962) and Neoclassical Design Context

In the background of the 1920s photograph of the south side of the house, there is a rustic wooden garden bench standing beside the garage. No sign of it exists today (and the garage has been demolished). A built-in brick bench was constructed as part of the design of the Terraced Garden; this is still present and in good condition.

It is not known when the large arbor over the flagstone walk on the north side of the house was installed, but it was removed by 1937, when the concrete loop drive appears in an aerial photograph. No trace of the arbor exists today.

It is also not known when the small concrete fountain was installed in the grotto/rock garden area. An investigation of the irrigation pipes to which it was connected may provide an understanding of whether it is a pre-1962 feature.

In the typical neoclassical garden, benches were typically set on a low plinth or landing to allow a prospect over the garden, much as the brick bench in the Terraced Garden is situated. Another location where benches were typically placed was in proximity to water features such as a pool. Its prospect over the garden pool and views out to the woodlands reflect Hutcheson’s vision of the perfect siting for a garden seat: “comfortable and shady seats...placed where we can hear and see the dripping fountain or reflections in the still round pool….”

In the neoclassical garden, structures such as pergolas and arbors were used to shade seating or walking areas or as a support for climbing vines. Features such as urns, flowerpots, bird baths, small fountains, and sculptures provided focal points and framing elements within a garden’s overall structure. Few small-scale garden features survive at Laurel Hill today. The concrete fountain that stood in the center of the rock garden has been overturned. Features in the lower garden that appear to be pedestals may have once supported garden sculptures of some kind, but they are missing today.

Integrity Assessment

Based on the comparative analysis of historic and contemporary conditions, the Laurel Hill Terraced Garden possesses integrity for the period of significance encompassing the D.C. Penal Institution – Progressive Era (1914-1962). Virtually no physical features remain that can be definitively linked to the Lindsay period, and the few that do (such as the house) are in poor condition, which compromises their integrity.

This determination if integrity is based on available information about the current and historic conditions of the Terraced Garden, supplemented with an understanding of it as an example of the 20th-century neoclassical school of garden design. Understanding the degree to which the 21st-century landscape resembles historic conditions is challenged by the lack of specific information about those historic conditions. In physical terms, the Terraced Garden’s structure has been obscured by woodland succession. However, much of the brick masonry and grading remains in remarkably good condition and can be clearly identified as having the form and workmanship of a thoughtfully designed and well-constructed neoclassical garden.

The Terraced Garden retains integrity of location and setting. Its location on a wooded hillside below the Laurel Hill House has changed little since the end of the period of significance, other than the encroachment of the surrounding woodland. Integrity of setting is slightly diminished by the partial visibility of nearby new residential development from some locations in the garden when the leaves are off the trees.

The garden appears to possess integrity of design to the period of significance, 1914-1962, based on contextual information. However, integrity of design is diminished due to the fact that few of the garden’s plantings survive and no original planting plan has been located to date. The structural and spatial design elements of the garden are clearly visible and in good condition. The spaces, walks, walls, stairs, pool, and axial relationships are intact. The garden is easily identifiable as an example of the neoclassical design style based solely on its surviving features. It is possible that, in the future, additional information about the designer and/or the original design will come to light, helping to refine and enhance understanding of the design of the site.

The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden retains integrity of materials and workmanship for the period 1914-1962. The original brick masonry, irrigation pipes, a fountain, and stonework remain. The brickwork is of the same type and quality as that found in the buildings of the adjacent D.C. Reformatory and Penitentiary complexes from the same period, constructed by prisoner labor with bricks made at the institution’s Occoquan River brickworks. Little to no original material appears to have been removed or replaced. The garden’s surviving brick masonry and sophisticated terraced grading show a high level of competency evidenced by its continuing good condition and variety of techniques employed (curved structures, various brick bonds and patterns, sculpted landforms).

The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden retains a moderate integrity of feeling. Trees and overgrown conditions, as well as the generally dilapidated appearance of the garden, have detracted from the feeling that would have been conveyed by the original lawns, water features, and planting beds. However, the currently diminished integrity of feeling at the site can be enhanced through future treatment of these conditions.

The Laurel Hill Terraced Garden possesses integrity of association to the D.C. Penal Institution – Progressive Era (1914-1962) period of significance. Many of the features associated with the garden survive. Integrity is diminished by the overgrown and dilapidated conditions, but these are generally reversible. While a visitor to the site today might not be able to immediately understand or discern the neoclassical garden, many of the features of the garden exist in relatively good condition and present the potential for enhanced integrity of association in the future.