Social Movements and Influence Over Time
Cleveland’s most important social movement could arguably be his contribution to the Minneapolis park systems. In lending his unique touch to these parks and scenic byways, Cleveland established a park system that embodied his philosophy of open spaces, naturalistic design, and the importance of preserving these public spaces for future generations. In the words of Cleveland himself: “They will have wealth enough to purchase all that money can buy, but all their wealth cannot purchase a lost opportunity, or restore natural features of grandeur and beauty, which would then possess priceless value…” In this way, Cleveland inspired future generations of landscape architects to think before tearing down the natural landscape.
In addition, he stated that landscape architecture involved not just “decorating” the landscape, but that it was a landscape architect’s duty to design parks, residential and commercial landscapes always with careful consideration to the environment around them and to be ever mindful of how future generations would make use of them. It is evident that Horace Cleveland contributed much to the future of landscape architecture and to the pursuit for a more naturalistic landscape concept.
Cleveland’s designs in the mid-to-late 19th century shaped the future of all park systems for Minneapolis and St. Paul. Metropolitan Council Chair Peter Bell reflected on the contributions of Horace Cleveland: “Imagine this metropolitan area had it not been for the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners and landscape architect Horace Cleveland. Their vision 100 years ago helped create a network of scenic drives, parks and river boulevards along the lakes and rivers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, now recognized as one of the best urban park systems in the world.”
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“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?””
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“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
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“A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll have him cold-bloodedly handed over to the police.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)