The lands on which the Buffalo parks were to be laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, were not “ready made” sites simply awaiting the placement of a few trees and shrubs. The lands selected for the parks were promising, but were such as a blank canvas, tubes of paint and some brushes are to a fine painting. The Park – now Delaware Park – had no island dotted expanse of water nor open rolling meadow; rather, Scajaquada Creek cut across partially wooded farmland. The Parade – now Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park – while a relatively flat and open expanse, was anything but a large flat ground ready for the planned military marching displays. Before plantings, paths and supporting structures could be completed, extensive site work was required. That is where civil engineer George K. Radford entered the picture at Buffalo.
George Kent Radford was born in September 1826, at Plymouth, Devon, England. His father, William Manly Radford, was an established civil engineer practicing in London. His early years as a professional engineer were spent working with his father, and later, with his brother Edward. He was the resident engineer at construction on the Regent’s Canal, his work there including overseeing a new entrance and other locks, the enlargement of the basin and reservoirs, and installation of hydraulic machinery. From 1852 to 1853.He and his younger brother, Edward C. Radford, performed Parlimentary surveys for railways, water supplies and docks, and they also performed work for James M. Rendel, a prominent London civil engineer. Rendel was a pioneer in the application of hydralic machinery for the operation of canal locks, and he was also the president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1852 and 1853. The Radford brothers left Rendel’s practice in early 1853 and opened their own architectural office in London. George married Catherine Jane Helsham at Stepney, Middlesex on 31 March of that same year.
The brothers closed their London practice in 1854 and emigrated to Toronto, Canada. There, his wife gave birth to a son, William Helsham Radford, on 22 July 1854, Two months later, 23 September 1854, George won a competition to the design new intakes for the Toronto Water Works, a private firm supplying water to the city. His association with the water firm increased, and by 1856, he was serving as the manager of the water works, He simultaneously continued to list himself as an architect and civil engineer in the Toronto directory.
In 1857, in partnership with his brother, architectural office in Toronto, G. K. & E. Radford, Architects and Civil Engineers was established. They received some residential commissions, but their most significant one was for St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Toronto. Their Gothic Revival structure has been recognized as a Canadian national historic site and still stands, although converted to non-ecclesiastical use. The brothers’ collaboration lasted until July 1858, when Edward returned to England, leaving George working on his own in Toronto until December of that year.
George and family also returned to England in 1859, and he resumed his practice as a civil engineer at London. He applied for membership in the British Institution of Civil Engineers in 1863, and was accepted as a member on 13 March. Later that year, on 8 October, his wife gave birth to a daughter, Catherine Charlotte “Kate” Radford.
It is unclear when Mr. Radford left England for the United States. It is clear that he was working in the U.S. in January 1866, as he was working for the Indiana Southern Railway in Cincinnati, Ohio, as its supervising engineer. In 1868, Calvert Vaux traveled to England to survey parks and architecture in anticipation of a book he was planning. Mr. Radford accompanied him and assisted the survey; whether he met Vaux in the U.S. and travelled with him to England, or if he was introduced to Vaux at London, I have not been able to verify.
It is certain, though, that Radford sailed to New York in September of 1868 with his family, settling in first in New York City and later in New Rochelle, NY. He became employed by the firm of Olmsted & Vaux as an associate engineer. As he advanced with the firm, he was entrusted to serve as the firm’s local supervisor for their major planned community project at Riverside, Illinois, beginning late in 1868.
By mid 1870, Radford had moved to Buffalo on behalf of Olmsted and Vaux. There he assisted Olmsted & Vaux with the early layout and plans to be incorporated into their proposal for a new system of Buffalo parks. Once the proposal was accepted, the firm recommended to the newly established Buffalo Board of Park Commissioners that be be engaged as the supervising engineer for the project. They cited him as a “… a gentleman of superior ability in his profession”. The Park Board followed the recommendation and hired him, with the title of “Chief Engineer”. Crews under his supervision broke ground for work on the park in September of 1870, even before complete plans had been received from Olmsted, drawing on his intimate familiarity with the project.
The work required to be completed under his supervision was very extensive. The pace at which he accomplished work was impressive. By the end of the 1870 at The Park (Delaware Park), all of the drives, walkways and primary features of the Park were laid out and about 1000’ of them graded in anticipation of roadway construction. A contractor was engaged and began the work to dig out 32 acres to form the Gala Water (now Hoyt Lake) along the west side Scajaquada Creek. (The lake, in time, would total 46-1/2 acres.) Another contractor enclosed the park site, as well as the Humboldt Parkway and Lincoln Parkway sites, with a post and board fence. 230 acres of the park were ploughed, and harrowed. 1300 feet of main drain lines were installed. 25 acres of land were graded, and stumps and bushes were removed from another 20. In the areas to remain wooded, decayed trees and those deemed too small or undesirable for retention were cut down and the stumps removed. At the At The Front (Front Park), ongoing negotiations with the U.S. Government concerning the path of the park drive through a part of the Fort Porter grounds precluded work outside of planning. At The Parade (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park), a contractor erected a wooden fence to enclose the site, 11-1/2 acres of land was drained, with 625 feet of main drains laid, and 27 acres of the site ploughed, and the trees extant on the site, were culled with decayed specimens removed and the wooded zones thinned. All of this was accomplished under his supervision in just 3-1/2 months.
The extent of the site work in the parks and parkways performed over the next two years was no less daunting, but was similarly well accomplished. When the great majority of the engineering work on the new parks had effectively been completed, George Radford’s services with the Park Board were terminated on 13 January 1873 and he concluded his duties on March 15 and departed from Buffalo. He had served the Park Board for three and one half years. After his departure, William McMillan, Superintendent of Planting, was appointed as Park Superintendent to direct the further development of the grounds.
From March 1873 until 1874, Radford returned to employment with Frederick Law Olmsted (the firm of Olmsted, Vaux, and Company having been dissolved in 1872), working from New York City. On September 19, 1873, Olmsted received an urgent commission from the Northern Pacific Railroad Company to draw up plans for an entirely new city at its terminus in Tacoma, Washington. Radford was dispatched to examine the challenging site, and sent his recommendations back to Olmsted. Their joint plan for Tacoma called for a central park and broad sweeping drives, and was delivered in just over a month from their engagement. Unfortunately, the railroad decided that a more conventional street plan would more quickly allow them to sell lots and shore up its badly flagging finances. The plan was rejected at the end of December, and Radford returned to New York.
Soon after, in 1874, Calvert Vaux offered a full partnership in his own firm to Radford. During the next 18 years, the new firm of Vaux & Radford collaborated on a wide variety of institutional and residential architectural projects, and also pursued work through various architectural competitions.
The first major project the partners worked on were a pair of proposals for the huge main exhibition building for the upcoming 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a graded competition in multiple rounds, and forty-three entries were received by 15 July 1873. The Vaux & Radford design was one of ten designs invited to compete in the second round. The plan they submitted for that round elaborated on their first with additional elements added, but was not modified to incorporate a portion of the building as a permanent structure which would remain as “Memorial Hall” after the temporary main pavilion was removed at the end of the exhibition was specified in the rules. While the firm argued that such a provision was unwise and that the two structures should be separately designed and constructed, their plan was disqualified. However, their work drew significant admiration from the exposition planners that they proposed that the first Vaux & Radford design should be combined with the design of another well regarded competitor and the two firms work in collaboration. Vaux & Radford declined, and other firms designed the main exhibition building and, separately, the Memorial Hall (oddly, acceding to Vaux & Radford’s position that the two structures should be distinct.)
Later works of the firm were a beachfront Children’s Aid Society Health Home in Brooklyn (1884, demolished) a chapel for the Tifereth Israel Cemetery (1885) in Cypress Hills, NY, a series of fourteen different combination shelters and schools for the Children’s Aid Society of New York City, constructed between 1886 and 1892, the Arnot-Odgen Memorial Hospital (1888, demolished 1951), the House of Reception (1890, since demolished) for the New York Juvenile Asylum, the design of a new style six story tenement in New York City for the Improved Dwellings Association (1892, demolished 1960), and (between 1887 and 1895), important work in conjunction with Olmsted, for the Niagara Reservation project.
Radford’s partnership with Vaux did not preclude him from assisting Olmsted with some of Olmsted’s other projects. Besides the Niagara Reservation project mentioned above, he accomplished a survey of the grounds of Yosemite park for Olmsted, and drew with him the original plans for the Parkside subdivision in 1875. (Due to the investors’ financial problems, that version was not implemented, but it formed the basis for future resurrections of the venture.)
Soon after the death of his wife, on 1 July 1893, George K. Radford left New York and removed to Berkeley, California and semi-retirement. He did some further collaborations with Vaux, and in July of 1895 he performed a substantial survey of conditions of the Yosemite Valley and made a report for the Yosemite Commissioners in California, preparing detailed recommendations and providing a plan for improvements.
Mr. Radford died on 31 March 1908 at Berkeley, at age of 82. Mr. Radford is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.
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