New Jersey – Writing New Jersey Life

Spring ambience, Cherry Hill

“…there is…a pleasure common, constant and universal to all town parks…in other words, a sense of enlarged freedom is to all, at times, the most certain and the most valuable gratification afforded by the park”. Frederick Law Olmsted

The sounds of Central Park: birds singing, children laughing, musicians playing, and water trickling are all the melody of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s harmonious vision of the park. Their artful landscape design draws one into a retreat with nature that inspires painterly artists and sculptors alike. More recent tunes like those of the Delacorte Clock and the Carousel have added to the park’s charm.

Delacorte Clock

Happy park goers at Cherry Hill

The National Historic Landmark in the heart of Manhattan began with a city competition in 1857. The prize went Frederick Law Olmsted, park superintendent, and Calvert Vaux, an English-born architect. The philosophy of Frederick Law Olmsted, considered the father of American landscape design, was to create parks that instilled a feeling of community within cities. His parks included not just fields, but diverse recreation for wide appeal. Olmsted’s principles of landscape design visually drew in park goers to varied landscape themes that brought a sense of tranquility. Calvert Vaux, co-architect of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, implemented their aesthetic vision of Central Park, to render landscape into art. With this principle in mind, Vaux designed Bethesda Terrace and the park’s iconic bridges.

Cherry blossoms on Pilgrim Hill

Some fun facts about the park: A stroll through the two and a half miles (4 km) from north to south in the park represents traveling from the city, containing landmarks, to the wooded countryside of New York state. Walking all the way around the park’s 843 acres (341 hectares) is a six-mile (9.6 km) trip. Topsoil brought in from New Jersey and Long Island helped create the rolling landscapes of the park. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created harmonious oases throughout the city, including Manhattan’s Riverside Park and Morningside Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Fort Greene Park, Carroll Park, and Herbert Von King Park. Frederick designed parks in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the grounds of the US Capitol, and Mount Royal Park in Canada. Together with Calvert, he created a plan to protect the natural beauty of Niagara Falls.

Cherry Hill

San Remo Building

The Olmsted-Vaux design

Olmsted and Vaux in the Garden State

With the success of Central Park, other commissions for Olmsted and Vaux followed, including nearby Newark, New Jersey. Branch Brook Park, envisioned by Frederick, was the park of our childhood. Cherry blossom season meant family poses in Easter best beneath branches of flower petals that gently caressed our newly bared arms in the spring sunshine. The breeze carried the crunch of crinoline, the jingle of the ice cream truck, and the rustling of robes as proud graduates also posed beneath swaying blossom branches. The flowering cherry trees were and are the special occasion trees for New Jerseyans, spring in itself celebratory after a long winter. Caroline Bamberger Fuld, who shared the Olmsted-Vaux vision, brought the trees from Japan and nurtured them on her own Orange estate before having them planted in the Newark-Belleville park.

Of the parks and grounds throughout New Jersey attributed to Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons, John Charles and Frederick, Jr., known professionally as the Olmsted Brothers, the Twombly-Vanderbilt Estate, now Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Florham Campus, Madison, The Lawrenceville School campus, and Cadwalader Park, Trenton, Frederick personally designed. Verona Park, Maplewood Memorial Park, Anderson Park, Montclair, and Warinanco Park, Roselle and Elizabeth were projects carried out by the Olmsted firm. Among the private residences Calvert Vaux planned, the Wisner Estate in Summit, now Reeves-Reed Arboretum on the National and State Registers of Historic Places, is where visitors enjoy scenic walks and gardens. If the rare person does not recognize the names of Olmsted and Vaux at Garden State stops, the mention of Central Park sparks immediate admiration.

Central Park and Verona Park with the Olmsted design that draws us in: curving paths, a varied landscape of rolling hills, playing fields, meadows, and water.

Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Hennessey Hall, the former Twombly-Vanderbilt Mansion in Madison

Wisner House and daffodils on the Bowl, Reeves-Reed Arboretum in Summit

A Lifelong Park

Central Park is a park for our lifetime. The exploration of the big rock by the American Museum of Natural History marked our first family visit, the site summited again on a field trip with young classmates. The late 70’s brought James Taylor and his concert for Sheep Meadow, which may be news to my mother-reader. On city excursions with girlfriends, the 80’s had the fun of JFK, Jr. sightings whether he was tossing a football, throwing a Frisbee, or doing pretty much anything in a boyish way. A walk through the park on visits back to the States in the 90’s felt like officially coming home. The anchor was not only the park’s beauty, but people in harmony with nature in a way that seemed unique by being both within and away from the city.

West 72nd Street entrance

A few years into the new millennium came the unexpected thrill of living in New York City, and the park, a former destination, was now a neighbor. Cozily tucked into a living space, I appreciated Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision of a place for everyone to go and feel free. At one point, I was fortunate enough to walk through the park to go to work, which meant that I arrived with a smile for others and returned home with cares left in green fields. If I completed enough work on Saturday, the reward was a Sunday morning spent in the park, reading the papers by the Conservatory Water, applauding the nearby roller skate dancers in warm weather or the sledders on Cedar Hill in cold, or dropping by the Met or the 92nd Street Y to meet friends in a bounty of good fortune. We all have memories like these with more to come thanks to the Central Park Conservancy, dedicated staff, and volunteers.

People travel the world for bucket list experiences, but there is nothing like passing beneath a fragrant canopy of delicate flowers. The cherry blossoms have given turn to the crab apple blooms in the symphony of spring in Central Park. Welcome spring with a walk in the park.

Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” by Jose de Creeft, commissioned by George Delacorte

Monument to John Lennon, gift of the City of Naples, designed by Bruce Kelly; Strawberry Fields commissioned by Yoko Ono

Cyclists everywhere enjoying spring

Cascading blossoms

Vibrant spring colors

Every view is like a movie still (throwback to last spring)

(Sources: centralparknyc.org, olmsted.org, fredericklawolmsted.com, centralpark.com, nycgovparks.org, nytimes.com, smithsonian.com, branchbrookpark.org, tclf.org, ci.columbia.edu, biography.com, eyeofthedaygdc.com, nps.gov, neh.gov, metmuseum.org, amnh.org, modernfarmer.com, aoc.gov)

The New Jersey Pinelands were the source of Dr. James Still’s inspiration, where his ingenuity led him to flourish as a homeopathic physician. Known in South Jersey and the Philadelphia area as the “Black Doctor of the Pinelands,” Dr. Still, 1812-1882, became an admired healer and one of the wealthiest men in South Jersey at a time when a formal medical education was not available to him. Early Recollections and Life of James Still, his 1877 autobiography, written during evenings after he treated patients, is still in print.

“Inspiring” is often overused, but his autobiography is, in the form of hard-won wisdom shared with the utmost generosity. As a deeply religious man, Dr. Still knew the Bible well. Though he wrote with modesty about his lack of formal education, his writing has a biblical eloquence: “I can only account for success by endeavoring always to be honest in all things, – in medical treatment and in business operations, – and in a reliance upon that Divine Being who cares for the sparrow in its flight, and who uses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. These principles I have endeavored to instil in the minds of my sons.”

As a child, Dr. Still felt a calling to medicine, “From that day on I did not want any knowledge save that of the healing art” and dedicated himself to it with a remarkable self-discipline, “…I would commit my life to Nature’s God, hoping all things that ended well would be well. I formed a habit of doing anything at the time appointed for it to be done. If I promised to do a thing, I did it. If I had to go anywhere, I was always on time. There was nothing like present time to me, and if I commenced to do a thing, I would finish it.”

Having recognized his calling in youth, Dr. Still learned from nature and sought out other opportunities in Indian Mills, now part of Shamong Township, when formal education was not available. He observed Native Americans’ use of medicinal herbs and apprenticed with a Caucasian doctor. Dr. Still’s fortune came from selling his homeopathic remedies, which he invested in farmland and rental properties in Medford, New Jersey and the surrounding Pinelands area. He was generous in lending money to help others get their start in life.

Conscious of being a role model, at times in his autobiography, Dr. Still directly addresses readers: “Rise in the morning with a cheerful spirit, and try to retain it during the day” and “Merit alone will promote you to respect.” More specifically, he encouraged, “…I would like to be an example to my sons, and all other poor young men who shall be so unfortunate as I was to have to commence the battle of life without education or pecuniary means.” Dr. Still’s son James, Jr., became the second African-American man to graduate from Harvard Medical School, doing so with honors.

In his accomplished family, James was brother to William, a Philadelphia abolitionist and author of The Underground Railroad, 1872, unprecedented as the narratives were from the point-of-view of escaped slaves. Recording the narratives provided not only records, but the means for family members, some traveling under assumed names as fugitives, to find each other. In helping others, William Still discovered their lost brother Peter, for whom he had searched for years. William had shared in this longing with their mother after she had to leave Peter and another brother behind when she escaped from slavery. Of his brothers’ reunion, James wrote: “He served in slavery forty-five years, and by saving and industry was enabled to buy his freedom from his master whilst living in Alabama…. He came to Philadelphia…and found his own brother clerk in the Anti-Slavery office there, and from him learned the whereabouts of his mother and brothers.”

As for Dr. Still’s own path, saving lives and alleviating the suffering of his patients, he shared, “To me it has been a source of much pleasure to know that I have been a benefactor to mankind.”

The woods pictured are behind Dr. Still’s former Medford home, considered a mansion despite his modest description. The Still family, working with the Medford Historical Society members, were instrumental in saving Dr. Still’s office. All volunteer regularly to support its restoration through the Dr. Still Historic Office Site and Center for Education. Updates on his family’s devotion to Dr. Still’s legacy through historic and literary projects are led by his great-great-grandnephew, who preserves the Still family history, as noted in South Jersey News.

For more information on visiting, scheduling a group tour, or supporting the restoration of Dr. Still’s medical office and education center by volunteering or donating, please visit Dr. Still Historic Office Site and Education Center and the Medford Historical Society. Donations may also be mailed to:

Dr. Still Education Center
PO Box 362
Medford, NJ 08055

If you are visiting Medford, there are many wonderful historical sites in addition to the elegant charm from its galleries, shops, and restaurants. At its heart you will also find a park, lively with children playing, newly dedicated to Dr. Still.

Quotes from Dr. Still’s “Early Recollections and Life of Dr. James Still”. Adapted text from “The Moral Quandary of Heels. All Rights Reserved © 2013 Kathleen Helen Levey. Published on “Writing New Jersey Life” on 6/21/17

Writing New Jersey Life

People and places of New Jersey…with some travels.

Tag: New Jersey

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