George Kessler and Dallas

[Chase Lalouette]

            The City Beautiful movement began with Daniel Burnham, who challenged architects to make city plans that had “magic to stir men’s blood”. George Kessler was a fellow planner and believer in the City Beautiful movement. Kessler was born in Germany in 1862, raised in Dallas, studied landscape architecture in Germany, and eventually accepted a planning job in Kansas City. His Kansas City creation of urban parks and boulevards opened the door for him to similarly plan Memphis, Cincinnati, Denver and several other American cities.

            Kessler “produced a master plan for Fair Park in 1904” and went on to conceive “Dallas’ first and most ambitious master plan” which included remedies for the constantly flooding Trinity River, raw streets, and lack of boulevards, parks and other public spaces. Kessler was a pragmatist and visionary, combining genius architectural engineering with lovely street views. Kessler’s Dallas plan was published in 1912; it proposed massive earthen levees to be placed along the Trinity to control flooding, complimented by “symmetry, order, proportion, and long axial vistas”. The plan also suggested removing all railroad tracks that ran across downtown streets and consolidating freight and passenger rail traffic into one central location. Kessler also envisioned boulevards creating a loose ring around the city core and the new train station being surrounded by plazas, fountains, and sculptures.

            Sadly, Kessler’s Dallas plan was submitted just as the City Efficient movement was gaining ground. City Efficient urged beautification and aesthetics to take a back seat to economy, utility and tax rates. The new movement claimed that City Beautiful plans were “impractical and extravagant” and that city plans should not hold concern for the big picture or future. Due to this retraction of support for Kessler’s plan, his projects took longer to complete, or were disregarded all together. The Civic Center was constructed 65 years later and designed by I.M. Pei, Kessler’s majestic gateway can only be seen through Ferris Park, which lacks the beauty he had planned, the only boulevard constructed was Turtle Creek, and Dallas is still waiting for Kessler’s plan of a Fair Park link. Dallas failed to implement Kessler’s comprehensive plan, and that led to a century of insignificant planning commissions. The void created by lack of a complete city plan allowed for hundreds of special interest planning developments with no overall commitment to bettering the city for all residents. Dallas supreme concern for individual property rights also pushed large city parks and open spaces to the budget back burner of city officials.

            Kessler was a passionate City Beautiful planner; he saw cities as canvases awaiting extravagant, yet useful, works of art. He focused on elegance and refinement through concentration and connection of people as opposed to dispersion and sprawl. His plan for Dallas included City Beautiful staples, like monumental civic buildings and civic gateways, but was only partially realized. An example is the City Beautiful grandeur of City Hall Plaza, which otherwise lacks a specific axis of design. Kessler’s Dallas plan might have been extraordinary, and created a city more amazing than Dallas today, if it had just had more support.

Sources

http://www.dallasnews.com/section-archives/125th-anniversary/headli...