The factory in a garden: A history of corporate landscapes from the industrial to the digital age 9781526112972

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TH E FACTORY I N A G A RD EN

STUDIES IN

DESIGN & MATERIAL

CULTURE GENERAL EDITOR:

Christopher Breward and Glenn Adamson FOUNDING EDITOR:

Paul Greenhalgh

also available in the series The matter of Art Materials, practices, cultural logics, c.1250–1750

The Edwardian house The middle-class home in Britain 1880–1914

EDITED BY CHRISTY ANDERSON,

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ANNE DUNLOP AND PAMELA H. SMITH

The birth of modern London The development and design of the city

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Interiors of Empire Objects, space and identity within the Indian Subcontinent, c. 1800–1947

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The factory in a garden A HISTORY OF CORPORATE LANDSCAPES FROM THE INDUSTRIAL TO THE DIGITAL AGE Helena Chance

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Helena Chance 2017 The right of Helena Chance to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 1 7849 9300 9  hardback First published 2017 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

Lists of plates and figures

vi

Acknowledgementsxii Abbreviations

xiv

Introduction1 1 ‘The pleasant manufactory’

14

2 From model factory to modern factory

38

3 ‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’

64

4 ‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’: factory landscapes, leisure and the model employee

92

5 Designing the company Arcadia

119

6 ‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’: the power of the garden image142 7 Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?

170

8 From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’

191

Select gazetteer: company gardens and parks, c.1750–c.1960 and offices and office parks with significant landscaping, 1970–2015

214

Bibliography242 Index256

Plates and figures

Plates

Plates appear between pp. 126 and 127.

 1  The Old Silk Mill, Derby by Thomas Doughty, 1830s or 1840s. (William Varieka Fine Arts Ltd, Newport, RI)   2 A watercolour of New Lanark, Scotland, in 1818 illustrating the ­picturesque setting of the factory village, the village gardens, and the walks along the River Clyde. (New Lanark Trust)   3 Aerial view illustration of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory, Bournville, England, 1931. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)   4 Illustration of Greek dancing at Bournville, copied from a ­photograph, 1921. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)   5 An idealised view of Rowheath Park and pavilion at Cadbury, Bournville, c.1930. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)   6 ‘The Bean Crop’ at the NCR Boys’ Gardens, c.1900. (National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH)   7 Aerial view Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ, 2008. (MBisanz/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)   8 Gateway House, ‘The Hanging Gardens of Basingstoke’ designed by Arup Associates and James Russell, 1974–76. (© Historic England Archive) Figures   1.1 View of Humphreysville (later Seymour), Connecticut, as it was in 1812, c.1850. (The Connecticut Historical Society)

15

  1.2 Statue of Neptune in the grounds of William Champion’s industrial complex, Warmley, South Gloucestershire, UK. (Photograph by Dianne Long)

17

Lists of plates and figuresvii   1.3 The Apprentice House garden today at Quarry Bank Mill, near Manchester (1784), now owned by the National Trust. (Photograph by the author)

20

  1.4 ‘The Dinner Hour, Wigan’, 1874, by Eyre Crowe. (Manchester Art Gallery UK/Bridgeman Images)

22

  1.5 Salt’s Mill at Saltaire today overlooking the village ­allotments. (Photograph by the author)

23

  1.6 Pullman, Illinois. Looking south towards Lake Vista with the factory Administration Building on the left and Hotel Florence in the distance, c.1895. (Courtesy of the Pullman State Historic Site)

26

  1.7 Pullman Park, c.1890. View from second floor of the Arcade Building looking north. (Courtesy of the Pullman State Historic Site)

27

  2.1 Advertisement for Welwyn Garden City in Punch ­magazine, December 1920. (Punch Magazine)

42

  2.2 Waterworks at Letchworth Garden City, 1920s. (Image ­reproduced by kind permission of the Garden City Collection www.gardencitycollection.com) 

43

  2.3 The Hoover Factory, Perivale, 1964. (Ealing Library Local History Centre, London, courtesy of Hoover Candy)

45

  2.4 Postcard of the ‘Girls’ Playground’ at the Cadbury factory, 1905. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

49

  2.5 Postcard of the Men’s Pavilion at Cadbury with Bournbrook Hall to the right, 1905–7. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)50   2.6 Lantern slide, ‘It Pays’, from the NCR ‘Factory Lecture’, early 1900s. (The National Cash Register Company archive at Dayton History, OH)

52

  2.7 The Shredded Wheat Factory, Niagara Falls, c.1910. Shredded Wheat ‘The Wonder’s of Niagara’. (Author’s archive)54   2.8 The Shredded Wheat Factory, Welwyn Garden City, late 1920s. (Cereal Partners UK/Nestlé archive, Welwyn Garden City)56   2.9 Spirella Corset Factory, Letchworth Garden City, c.1922. (Image reproduced by kind permission of the Garden City Collection www.gardencitycollection.com)

59

viii

List Theoffactory plates in and a garden figures   3.1 The Horlicks factory in a country estate (Postcard. Racine, Wisconsin, USA, c.1914). (Author’s archive)

67

  3.2 Postcard of the United Shoe Machinery Co. Beverly, Massachusetts, c.1920. (Author’s archive)

71

  3.3 The Sears Roebuck & Co. plant, Chicago, after 1906. (Author’s archive)

72

  3.4 Architect’s drawing of the Ovaltine factory, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, with suggested landscape scheme, c.1919. (Courtesy of Twinings Ltd and the Dacorum Heritage Trust)

73

  3.5 The formal garden and fountain at the Spirella Factory, Letchworth Garden City, 1932. (Image reproduced by kind ­permission of the Garden City Collection www.gardencitycollection.com)74   3.6 The reception hall at the Shredded Wheat factory, Niagara Falls, c.1910. (Meakin, Model Factories)76   3.7 View of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, c.1905. (The National Cash Register archive at Dayton History, OH) 

79

  3.8 NCR ‘Boys’ Gardens’, 1898. (The National Cash Register archive at Dayton History, OH)

80

  3.9 Cadbury girls’ gymnasium, c.1920. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)82 3.10 Plan for the garden buildings and landscaping for the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury (c.1907) by Cheals of Crawley, Garden Architects. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

83

3.11 Employees playing tennis in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, c.1910. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

83

3.12 The lily pond in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, Bournville. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

84

3.13 The Centenary Fountain at Cadbury, Bournville, 1933. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

85

  4.1 Spirella employees resting by the fountain in the gardens to the front of the factory, 1930s. (Image reproduced by kind ­permission of the Garden City Collection, www.­gardencitycollection.com) 100   4.2 The Heinz roof garden for women, c.1900. (Meakin, Model Factories)100

Lists of plates and figuresix   4.3 Rowntree employees in the Girls’ Garden, under ­observation, 1907. (Rowntree photographs no. 154, ­reproduced from an original in the Borthwick Institute, University of York by kind permission of Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.)

101

  4.4 Dancing in the Girls’ Grounds at the Cadbury factory, 1920. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

105

  4.5 Lantern slide of the Girls’ Allotment Gardens near the Cadbury factory, Bournville, c.1910. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)109   4.6 John Charles Olmsted (centre) and John Patterson (right) in the rear porch of an NCR mechanic’s house, 18 October 1898. (The National Cash Register Archive at Dayton History, OH)

111

  4.7 Watching the ‘Landscape Lecture’ at the NCR Landscape Gardening School, Dayton, c.1900. (The National Cash Register Archive at Dayton History, OH)

112

  5.1 Map showing the location of Rowheath Park in relation to the factory and Bournville Village (east). (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)124   5.2 Cadbury Engineers’ Office plan for the Garden Club at Rowheath, Bournville (27 May 1924), on the land to the south of the road. (Cadbury, Bournville, Engineers Office archive)125   5.3 Rowheath pavilion and flower borders, October 1936. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

127

  5.4 Illustrated map of Hills and Dales, c.1910. (The National Cash Register Archive at Dayton History, OH)

129

  5.5 ‘Nature’s Way of Planting’. Lantern slide of Hills and Dales, c.1910. (The National Cash Register Archive at Dayton History, OH)

133

  5.6 Olmsted Brothers’ projected aerial view (detail) of Old River Park of the NCR, 1938. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Boston, MA)

136

  5.7 Drawing of the Old River lagoon by Mr Scholte of Olmsted Brothers. (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Boston, MA)

136

x

List Theoffactory plates in and a garden figures   6.1 Chrysler pavilion at the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago in 1933. (Hagley Museum and Library, Delaware)

145

  6.2 ‘Noon scene in Milwaukee Playground’ at the Milwaukee International Harvester Works, Wisconsin, 1914. (Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-7605)

147

  6.3 Cadbury advertisement, early 1930s. (Cadbury archive, Bournville)148   6.4 Advertisement for Shredded Wheat, Welwyn Garden City, UK, c.1930. (Cereal Partners UK/Nestlé archive, Welwyn Garden City)

149

  6.5 The Shredded Wheat vehicle livery. (Cereal Partners UK/ Nestlé archive, Welwyn Garden City)

149

  6.6 The ‘Cadbury’s Angels’ resting in the Girls’ Grounds at Bournville, c.1900. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

158

  6.7 Women employees of the Ovaltine Factory at Kings’ Langley (c.1920). (Courtesy of Twinings Ltd and the Dacorum Heritage Trust)

159

  6.8 Cadbury employees in the Girls’ Grounds, c.1915. (Cadbury Archive, Bournville)

160

  6.9 Lantern slide, ‘Like Slidertown Boys—1893’. (The National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH)

162

6.10 Lantern slide, ‘Officers of the Boys’ Garden Company’, c.1898. (The National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH)

162

6.11 Lantern slide, ‘Boys’ Gardens Developed Good Men for the Factory’, c.1904. (The National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH)

163

6.12 The front cover of NCR News (April 1925). (The National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH)

166

  8.1 The Pilkington Headquarters, St Helens, designed by Maxwell Fry and Peter Youngman. (Courtesy of the Pilkington Group Limited)

199

  8.2 Plan of Capability Green, Luton, Bedfordshire. (Courtesy of Thorpe Architecture) 203   8.3 ‘Secret garden’ on the roof terrace of Google office, Central St Giles, London. (Photograph by David Barbour, design by PENSON)205

Lists of plates and figuresxi   8.4 Secluded seating among vegetable gardens at the Googleplex, Mountain View. (Photograph by the author)

206

  8.5 Design for new Google headquarters at Mountain View by Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. (Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group)

209

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material, and the publisher will be pleased to be informed of any errors and omissions for correction in future editions.

Acknowledgements

A

people and institutions have supported me in writing this book. I especially thank my parents, Jeremy and Cecilia Chance for their generous financial assistance with the first stages, the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation who offered me a scholarship to fund doctoral fees and travel costs to the USA, the Design History Society for awarding me a generous publication grant towards the costs of illustrations and Buckinghamshire New University for awarding me two research grants to enable me to finish the book. I would also like to thank the staff of Kellogg College and the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford for its support for this project and Sarah and Hugh Crisp for donating airmiles to get me to America. Dr Geoffrey Tyack, Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford, and Director of Stanford University in Oxford, and Professor Stephen Ward of Oxford Brookes University inspired my enthusiasm for American history and their wisdom, encouragement and friendship has been invaluable. I would also like to thank Professor Stephen Daniels, Dr Mara Keire who advised on the US research and Professor William Whyte of St John’s College Oxford who would not take ‘no’ for an answer when he asked, ‘Have you found a publisher for that book yet?’ I thank the staff and readers at Manchester University Press for making that happen. Many others have kindly discussed the research with me and offered advice. These include historians of gardens, parks and company towns, Hazel Conway, Clare Hickman, Janet Waymark, Rebecca Preston, Karen Jessup, Dianne Long, Amanda Rees and delegates at the annual Design History Society conferences. Sir Adrian Cadbury, Benedict Cadbury, Keith Tandy, Dolly Green, Sonja Bata, Bill Anderson (former Chairman of the NCR), Ian Ormerod (former Director of the NCR, UK), Alan Shrimpton and Janet Mawson of the Bournville Village Trust, and Daniel Winterbottom, Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington, all shared their memories and expertise with me. Charles great many

Acknowledgementsxiii and Margo Burnette helped me with research in Philadelphia. Carolyn Johnson, Krysta Johnson and her parents and Lena Brodersen and Peter Malcolm offered hospitality in Washington DC, Massachusetts and Chicago and made my time in the USA even more enjoyable. I am beholden to the generosity and courtesy of the many archivists and librarians I have been lucky enough to meet or correspond with. Especial thanks must go to Jeff Opt and Curt Dalton at the National Cash Register Company archive at Dayton History, Ohio and Sarah Foden, the Cadbury archivist, and to the staff of the Bodleian Library and the Vere Harmsworth Library in Oxford for their unstinting professionalism. I would also like to thank Judith Wright, Archivist, Boots Co. Ltd; Carol Lockman, Marge McNinch, Jon Williams and other staff at the Hagley Library, Wilmington, Delaware; the staff of the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, Washington DC and the staff of Historic Pullman and the many other archivists and librarians for their help and hospitality. The creation and delivery of a book always affects family and friends who have to put up with hours of absence and preoccuption. I thank all my friends and my siblings for helping me to keep life in perspective, and particularly my colleague Ray Batchelor who made invaluable suggestions at the final stages and who makes me laugh when things get tough. I am indebted to my children, William and Joanna Beaufoy and stepdaughters Hatty and Cottia Thorowgood who have been constant sources of inspiration and encouragement. The forbearence, kindness and love of my husband, Jeremy has been steadfast and I dedicate this book to him, to my dear mother Cecilia, who I sadly lost during the final months of writing and to my father Jeremy, who is always quietly my guide.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations for archives have been used in the endnotes: BC The Boots Company archive, Nottingham, UK BI.RC  Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, Rowntree Collection, UK BRRC Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre, East Tilbury, UK CB Cadbury archive, Bournville, UK FGCHM First Garden City Heritage Museum, Letchworth Garden City, UK FLO.NHS Frederick Law Olmsted, National Historic Site, Boston, MA, USA HL Hertfordshire Libraries, Local Studies Section, Hertford, UK KA Kraft Foods Archive, KRAFT Foods Inc., IL, USA LC.MD.OAR  Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Olmsted Associate Records, Washington DC, USA NCR.DH  National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH, USA NCR.DH.bgl  National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH, ‘Boys’ Gardens Lecture’ NCR.DH.fl  National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH, ‘Factory Lecture’ NCR.DH.lgl  National Cash Register Company Archive at Dayton History, OH, ‘Landscape Gardening Lecture’ PSHS Pullman State Historic Site, OH, USA PSVT.SV Port Sunlight Village Trust, Sunlight Vision, Merseyside, UK UW.MRC University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, Industrial Welfare Society archive, UK

Introduction Introduction

I

world of multinationals, companies have lost a sense of place, for their physical presence is scattered across continents. Nestlé, the largest global food manufacturer, claims to have a factory in almost every country of the world. A company’s presence exists in virtual space, through a website, and via the product and corporate image, or brand. While some brands still profit by a national identity, Nestlé its ‘Swissness’ and Coca Cola a great American dream, for most brands the site of origin has become immaterial, or has been confounded by take-overs.1 There are exceptions; the chocolate giants Cadbury and Hershey showcase their world famous factories through visits to ‘Cadbury World’ in Bournville, Birmingham UK and ‘Hershey’s Chocolate World’ in Hershey, Pennsylvania, but visitors today come to be entertained or to marvel at the products’ history and production processes, not the material presence of the factory building and its landscape. Visitors arriving at ‘Cadbury World’ by car would hardly be aware of the historic factory buildings, offices and landscapes, some of which are listed by English Heritage for their special architectural and historical interest. Only those arriving by foot from Bournville Station might be surprised by the sophistication of the architecture and the acres of playing fields and gardens that still bound the factory buildings on the southern and eastern sides, a site that became renowned as ‘The Factory in a Garden’. When the first imposing, mechanised factories were built in Europe in the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon to see them embellished with ornamental features such as cupolas or clock towers to distinguish otherwise utilitarian buildings.2 Occasionally, entrepreneurs dignified their firms by building veritable temples or palaces such as the Royal Salt Works at Arc-et-Senans, France, designed by the architect ClaudeNicholas Ledoux in 1776, which he modelled loosely on a Roman theatre or, much later, the Templeton carpet factory in Glasgow built n our

2

The factory in a garden from 1889 to 1892 by William Leiper, who borrowed his design from the Doge’s Palace in Venice.3 By the middle of the nineteenth century, as ­advertising played an increasing role in marketing, a company would often promote the palpable image of its impressive buildings as a part of the marketing strategy. By the early twentieth century, corporate landscapes as well as buildings were appearing in corporate promotional materials as a significant number of companies beautified factory and office buildings with trees, shrubs and flowers, made pleasure gardens, recreation grounds and allotments for their workforce, built greenhouses and employed gardening staff. Gardens for factory workers were not a new idea for allotment gardens, and later parks, were common features of factory villages and towns from the late eighteenth century. However, by the late 1800s, many industrialists not building factory villages were looking for ways of improving employee welfare at work for altruistic and commercial purposes, and one of these was to offer outdoor, as well as indoor, recreational facilities. Sports grounds began to appear more often in the corporate landscape, either beside, or a short distance from factories and offices and by the 1920s and 1930s, sporting facilities for larger workplaces became almost essential. A small but significant number of employers enhanced their outdoor space with a pleasure garden as well as a sports ground and some companies laid out combined sports and pleasure parks and allotments for their employees and for local children. Most commissioned professional designers or nurserymen to endow their landscapes with aesthetic beauty and to make the best use of space. Garden styles at factories ranged from simple planting to ornament the approach to the factory entrance, to more elaborate landscaped parkland, to complete Italianate or French-style parterres. Landscapes at factories and other large enterprises such as insurance and power companies were created as part of a social welfare movement dedicated to improving the aesthetic, social and cultural image and life of places of work that included dining halls, libraries and education. Initially, companies providing such amenities were regarded as ‘model’, but by the 1920s and 1930s, the word ‘modern’ was more often used to describe a works with exceptional welfare and recreational facilities. With the expansion of industry in the suburbs or in the countryside, the landscaping of the elegant new factories in some areas became a factor in the aesthetic coexistence of residential and industrial development or the acceptance of a factory in a rural setting. By the 1950s, it was not unusual for large factories, offices or department stores to be equipped with sports facilities or to see commercial buildings beautified with landscaping and planting. Many employers invested some of their profits in landscaped parks, pleasure gardens or at least an outdoor seating area

Introduction3 with trees, shrubs and flowers, or a roof garden or atrium garden. By this time, landscaping for corporate clients and developers formed a ­significant proportion of the landscape architect’s portfolio. From the 1980s as heavy industries were closed down and replaced by the offices, shopping malls and warehouse ‘sheds’ of the rapidly expanding service economy, green space at the workplace often consisted of little more than the bland lawns of the office or business park, designed to be looked at, not used. But this is changing, for a corporate garden movement flourishes today. In Britain, the innovative business estate Stockley Park, west of London, blazed a trail in the late 1980s with their 160 acres of country park, golf course and offices with glazed atria harbouring indoor gardens. More recently, those technology and new media giants of the twenty-first century such as Apple and Google have made attractive pleasure gardens and allotments at their suburban campuses and city offices to stimulate the imagination and provide a retreat from conventional corporate life. Just like their luminary corporate counterparts of the early twentieth century, the new technology companies are now leading the way in using gardens and landscape design to improve staff motivation and to present a prestigious image to the world of business and to the consumer. Scope and perspectives This book presents a history of the corporate gardens and designed landscapes movement in Britain and the United States, from its origins in the early Industrial Revolution, to the zenith of factory gardens in the years preceding the Second World War and concludes with an overview of the evolution of corporate landscapes from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. The book argues that the movement emerged in the spirit of corporate competition and cooperation at the time of the United States’s ascendancy as the leading industrial nation. I acknowledge that this focus is biased by Anglo-American culture and history and that the discussion does not take into account innovative practices in mainland Europe, particularly in Sweden and Germany, in factory welfare and design.4 The central theme of this book is the relationship between two productive spaces, landscapes designed for pleasure and leisure, and industrial sites for work and economic output, with seemingly opposite functions and opposing metaphors: the machine and the garden. Industrialists attempted to assuage the effects of mass production by embracing the historical, cultural and metaphorical meanings of gardens to refine corporate culture and to redefine industry as progressive and responsible. I argue that industry contributed distinctively and

4

The factory in a garden significantly to gardening culture and to opportunities for outdoor ­recreation in the first half of the twentieth century. Analysing factories from the point of view of landscape has produced a significant new interpretation of factory design, society and culture, which draws out the meanings of time and space in the factory that are not related to the production line. This book provides the first comprehensive comparative account of the contribution of gardens, gardening and sports to the history of responsible capitalism and ethical working practices from multiple critical perspectives and draws together the existing literature on the subject with key primary material from some of the most innovative and best documented of the corporate landscapes. Accounts of gardens and recreation grounds at factories and offices in this period are relatively scarce and tend to be brief or narrow in their scope, unlike the gardens of other large institutions such as hospitals and asylums, which have received meticulous critical attention recently.5 For example, discussions of factory landscapes can be found in corporate promotional literature and in books on industrial welfare by sociologists, physicians and journalists from the 1890s.6 In the 1930s, landscape and personnel experts published articles on the benefits of factory landscaping in their professional journals, but the value of the factory garden movement to corporate life and profits remained unacknowledged in Britain until 1955, when the British Industrial Welfare Society published their pamphlet Factory Gardens. This short manifesto, co-written by an industrial welfare professional and a landscape architect served as a marketing initiative for the British landscape architecture profession.7 No equivalent publication appeared in the United States, although corporate landscaping had been discussed since the early twentieth century in industrial welfare, architectural and landscape publications and in statistical studies on conditions in industry compiled by the National Industrial Conference Board.8 More recently, historians of welfare capitalism, trades unions, urban historians and cultural and historical geographers have produced comparative studies of the landscaping of a limited number of industrial sites and corporate landscapes are discussed in relation to the politics of public health in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century and in histories of industrial architecture.9 Louise A. Mozingo gives us a scholarly and comprehensive account of post-Second World War office landscaping in her book Pastoral Capitalism: a History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes, but while she acknowledges that corporate landscapes originated with welfare capitalist factories of the early twentieth century and that the pastoral ideal originated in eighteenth-century Britain, she argues that the new landscapes of corporate work were an American invention of the post-war period.10

Introduction5 This book takes a revisionist position arguing that this landscape type should be understood within a much broader, contextual framework which positions the emergence of the corporate landscape in the early Industrial Revolution in Britain. The landscape type reached a high point in terms of scale, scope and design innovation in both nations at the turn of the nineteenth century and was then reinvigorated in Britain by wealthy American companies opening plants and offices in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. This book draws extensively on company and museum archives to examine works magazines and other promotional materials, board minutes, photographs, illustrations and landscape plans to understand how the landscapes were designed, how they were used and publicised and how they changed over time. The empirical evidence is underpinned by sources from a broad disciplinary base, drawing on areas of research within architectural, art, photographic, landscape and garden histories; cultural geography, social history, philosophy and social science to draw out the complexities of the origins, purposes and designs of corporate landscapes and how they were understood and regarded by those who used or visited them, or who read about them in company literature or the press. Although the main narrative of the book takes place in the period from the 1890s and focuses on the period between the wars, the scope of the book is broader in its timeframe, beginning from the early Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the idea of welfare capitalism and ending with the present-day experiments to invigorate offices and other workplaces with gardens. The gardens, parks and recreation grounds of Cadbury in Bournville, UK and those of the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio, USA (NCR), form the hub of the discussion for good reasons. These companies had a close business and professional relationship, exchanging visits and borrowing ideas on worker welfare and factory systems from each other. (This important connection has not, to my knowledge, so far been acknowledged.) Both companies were innovators in ideas and designs for factory landscapes. They have extensive and rich archives of printed material, unpublished documents, photographs, films and other ephemera, although these, as with the other company archives, have had to be used with care as they are, of course, partial. This book contributes new knowledge and new ways of thinking to areas of research within a number of disciplines: for landscape, architecture, design and garden historians and historical geographers researching the social and cultural functions and the psychological meanings of designed landscapes and gardens in modernism; to historians interested in the relationships between British and North American progressivism, industrial development and corporate culture; to social historians

6

The factory in a garden researching the culture of factories and the history of leisure in this period and to architects, landscape architects and conservationists working on post-industrial redevelopment. The book also contributes to current debates on the architecture and culture of the developing suburbs, as it shows how the landscaping of factories became a significant feature in promoting the ambiance and values of suburban development. The book should appeal to academics, professionals and to students as well as to those simply interested in the history and significance of gardens to our political, social and cultural landscape. The book will also be a catalyst for listing further lost or threatened industrial gardens and recreation grounds in the Historic England ‘Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of special historic interest in England’, and equivalent registers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Parks and Gardens UK, and the US National Register of Historic Places. It does not claim to have achieved a comprehensive documentation of factory gardens in Britain and America, but the Gazetteer at the end presents a list of relevant sites that have been discovered in the course of this research. Theoretical approaches The subject of this book is the impact of industry on the landscape in a modernising industrial world. In landscaping their factories and offices, corporate leaders were attempting to relieve what they regarded as the negative environmental, social and psychological effects of industrialisation and to create ideal open spaces within a structure of corporate power that reflected a modern industrial and social outlook. Theories that question the organisation of space, the making of place in the industrial landscape and the power relations that operate within these spaces and places help to elucidate the motives for making these landscapes and the effects on the workforce and on the reputation of industry. A useful starting point has been to look at the idea of utopian space or the organisation of space in an ideal world and society. Two of the best known and most influential utopian industrial sites were those created by Robert Owen at his mill in New Lanark, Scotland from 1800 and by the designer and utopian-socialist William Morris, who created an ‘ideal’ workplace at Merton Abbey in Surrey, England from 1881, sites that are discussed in Chapter 1. Owen provided country walks for his millworkers and Morris a garden for his textile workers, both believing that scenic beauty and nature would bring greater health and happiness to lives of labour. However, historians and sociologists have argued that for most utopianists such as Owen and Morris, utopia is an organised space and the garden or landscape contributes to social order,

Introduction7 or according to the philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, a ‘closed authoritarianism’.11 H. G. Wells understood this in 1905 in his book A Modern Utopia, when he revealed that in almost all utopias, gardens have been ­imagined as formal, as ‘symmetrical and perfect cultivations’ and that these controlled communal spaces discourage individuality and personal expression.12 It is no coincidence that two important texts were published close to the start of this period of study that imagined utopias, one in Britain and one in the USA, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890). In both books, the organisation of garden and park space represents systems of social organisation. In Morris’s England of 2002, informal garden space and imagery suggested a release of capitalist economic and political control and the collapse of the industrial system of mass production. In Bellamy’s Boston in 2000, the formal tree-lined boulevards and fountains that played in the public squares were symbolic of his highly regulated and almost crime-free communist society. A comparison of the landscape types in these books emphasises the paradoxical nature of gardens and parks with their connotations of both freedom and control and, as shown in subsequent chapters, the factory gardens and recreation grounds expressed just such oppositions. The themes and arguments of this book have also been inspired by historical and cultural geographers such as Stephen Daniels, Denis Cosgrove, David Harvey, David Matless and J. B. Jackson who have made pioneering studies of the interrelations between humans and the designed landscape, how environment can be manipulated to shape specific identities and behaviour and how different social groups respond to environments.13 These theories have been helpful in suggesting how to ‘read’ landscape and gardens as texts to draw out interpretations of the multifaceted social, cultural and political messages projected by and through these spaces, how they are received by the users and how their meanings have changed over time. Landscape theorists who read landscape as texts have drawn out the symbolic and ideological aspects of landscape, how space is organised according to changing ideas and human social and cultural relations, and how landscape and the memory or nostalgia for landscape has the ability to move us or even to redeem us.14 The multiple layers of ambiguous meanings in designed landscapes make them highly expressive of human relations and of personal and collective identities. As cultural geographer J. B. Jackson pointed out in his book The Necessity of Ruins and other Topics, ‘the significance of space in landscape terms … is that it makes the social order visible. Space, even a small plot of ground, identifies the occupant and gives him status and most important of all it establishes lasting relationships.’15

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The factory in a garden Borrowing these ideas, this research investigates the values contained within the corporate gardens and designed landscapes, from the personal values and motives of the individuals who made them, to the wider values and needs of the industrial society for whom they were made. By studying how the gardens and recreation grounds were used, who controls their use and how those who use them become part of a company’s promotional strategy, it is possible to make more objective judgements about their value from the perspective of both users and providers, and these two perspectives do not necessarily always coincide. The factory gardens and recreation grounds remained under the jurisdiction of factory regulations and the rules of the sports and social clubs, and they were therefore subject to the power structures of the factory at all levels, from ‘top down’ and from ‘bottom up’. All landscape is, in the words of landscape historian W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘an instrument of cultural power’ and in his book Landscape and Power he identifies how power relations work in the construction and use of the landscape by asking ‘not just what landscape “is” or “means” but what it does’.16 These power relations suggested in landscape are not one-sided, Mitchell argues, the power of the dominant classes over the dominated, but by looking at those who see or use the landscapes, it becomes clear that the landscapes have the potential to enhance the power of the dominated. To explore the power relationships between management and employees in their attitudes to, and uses of, the gardens and recreation grounds, it has been necessary to delve further into philosophies and sociologies of power. No study of factories can ignore Michel Foucault’s highly influential model of the Panopticon as a physical representation of the way that power operates in society. Borrowing from Jeremy Bentham’s prison system of the Panopticon, Foucault argued in Discipline and Punish that modern structures of power and social control are managed not by coercion but by surveillance and that power within factories, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions operates in the same way.17 In this and in his other discourses on power, Foucault argued that it is the ‘hidden’, non-coercive impositions of power that are ‘dressed up’ as social norms, that render people accepting of power and susceptible to its effects.18 Foucault’s theories can help to explain how the ideologies of factory gardens and recreation grounds were ‘sold’ to the workforce and to the public, and were largely accepted as positive. But they are unsatisfactory in that the power relations and structures found in the use and management of the gardens and recreation grounds are much more complex than Foucault’s theories would suggest. They do not explain any resistances to the industrial space (activities that took place in the gardens were not subject to the levels of surveillance of those inside the factory)

Introduction9 or how and why some workers gained power through the ways that these spaces were managed and used. Therefore it has been ­necessary to consult alternative theories that explore power within social space in order to suggest that outdoor spaces such as gardens and recreation grounds might offer more physical and metaphorical ‘breathing space’ for workers who are subject to control at work. Henri Lefebvre has argued that although the production of space is a means of control in a capitalist system, the space he calls ‘social space’ has no boundaries, but represents the practices of all societies. Space, says Lefebvre, is present in all the intersections of social, economic and political life. Resistance to Foucault’s collusion of knowledge and power is possible if individuals and groups generate or produce spaces to constitute and legitimise themselves.19 These ideas have been helpful in understanding the effects of the gardens and the extent to which the workforce ‘sees through’ the spaces that are made for them and also in the ways in which some employees appropriated the spaces for their own needs. The sociologist Steven Lukes is more overtly critical of Foucault. In the extended edition of his book Power. A Radical View, first published in 1974, Lukes argues strongly against Foucault’s kind of power that he calls a ‘power of seduction’, or the use of power to ‘secure willing compliance’.20 Lukes argues that even within situations where individuals are subject to control, sometimes they comply with control and sometimes they do not, and in any case, it should be recognised that some cultural ideals introduced by powerful individuals are a force for good. Individuals, he argues, have ‘multiple and conflicting interests’ that are not necessarily dictated by class or experience. Their responses to power will vary and will often depend on their personal pursuit of happiness and survival.21 The theories of Lefebvre and Lukes have therefore informed this exploration of the gardens and recreation grounds from a number of dimensions to judge the spaces between them, a range of motivations for making them and responses to them that are not straightforward or consistent. To regard them as part of a power struggle between capitalists and workers is too simplistic. The prospect Gardens and recreation grounds are designed objects and spaces and design is concerned with practices and processes that necessarily interlink; in the words of John A. Walker, from his book, Design History and the History of Design: Design … occurs at the intersection or mediation between different spheres, that is between art and industry, creativity and commerce, manufacturers

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The factory in a garden and consumers. It is concerned with style and utility, material artefacts and human desires, the realms of the ideological, the political and the economic.22

In this study I analyse corporate landscapes as designed artefacts, the ideologies and values that shaped their design and making, and how they were used and received. I also consider how the landscapes were mediated through photographs, illustrations, film and texts reproduced in guidebooks, postcards and the press. This study is therefore a history of the object and the image, which begins and ends with a chronological history, but the main discussion presents a thematic structure focusing on the period from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War to examine the factory gardens and recreation grounds from different perspectives. In the first chapter, ‘The pleasant manufactory’, I chart the origin of the factory garden movement in the early Industrial Revolution to its zenith in the period between the wars. From the early years of the factory system in the late eighteenth century, when paternalistic industrialists built their works in rural landscapes or as part of a model industrial village or town, they experimented with ways of improving the aesthetic, social and cultural life of factories and the health and morality of factory workers. By the 1930s, industrial welfare was no longer driven by paternalism but seen as an essential strategy to a modern industrial outlook. In Chapter 2, ‘From model factory to modern factory’, I focus on the links between corporate landscapes and social and health reform, urban planning, public parks and civic improvement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, I introduce the major case studies discussed throughout the book: the Cadbury Chocolate factory in Bournville, UK; the National Cash Register Company factory, ‘The Cash’, in Dayton, Ohio, and Shredded Wheat and Spirella Corsets, companies that had factories in both nations. In making their gardens and recreation grounds industrialists contributed significantly to recreation space provision although being privately owned and managed, they were subject to specific design considerations and rules of use. In Chapter 3, ‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’ I examine the history and symbolism of gardens and gardening ideals to draw out the motivations and values that inspired industrialists to make gardens and recreation parks at factories. Employers attempted to ‘seduce’ their employees and their consumers, particularly women, with the powerful cultural metaphors of gardens and flowers, some placing flowers in the works’ offices and even on the factory floor. The union of gardens and factories was a form of social engineering to manipulate employees and to promote industrial capitalism as healthy, respectable,

Introduction11 responsible and sustainable; therefore the garden and park became agencies of control. In Chapter 4, ‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’ I discuss the recreational uses of corporate gardens and parks from the late nineteenth century until the Second World War. In this period, the factory grounds supported opportunities for sports, music, dancing and gardening that in some districts would not have been so readily accessible to working people, particularly to women and to young people. These activities were shaped by middle-class attitudes to ‘rational’ and ‘respectable’ recreation. Here the discussion begins to question whether the factory workers appreciated the ‘gift’ of gardens and parks, or regarded them as patronising and controlling. In Chapter 5, ‘Designing the company Arcadia’ I discuss factory gardens and parks made in the 1920s and 1930s from the perspective of the landscape architects who designed them, including the grounds of the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio, where the scale and sophistication of the gardens and parks were astonishing and unprecedented. The NCR and Cadbury parks were not just functionalist landscapes, for as well as creating efficient spaces for organised sports, they were designed to provide a refuge from the daily rituals and routines of modern life. Their landscape architects succeeded in projecting local and national landscape identities through design, thus creating spaces that heightened employees’ sense of belonging to the region and to the community. In Chapter 6, ‘The most beautiful factory in the world’: the power of the garden image’, I take a fresh perspective on the factory gardens by delving into the extensive collections of lantern slides and ephemera in company archives. These images reveal how photographs, illustrations and films of the gardens and parks give considerable insight, through their unique form of communication, into the attitudes of the management to the workforce in the period and to companies’ promotional strategies. In Chapter 7, ‘Factory gardens and parks: profit or perks?’ I consider a variety of responses to corporate landscapes, from industrialists, employees and commentators, from the early twentieth century to the 1950s to examine whether the gardens and parks were as good as the industrialists claimed in improving the lives of workers and therefore profits. Or was their true purpose to profit by enhancing the corporate image? I test these ideas in Chapter 8, ‘From factory gardens to “connected gardens”’, where I discuss the evolution of the garden factory model into  the corporate campus and park of the post-war era, when new suburban or rural office developments were customarily landscaped. I conclude this chapter with a contemporary perspective by exploring

12

The factory in a garden the ways in which twenty-first-century employers such as Vodafone and Google are thinking along the lines of their eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury counterparts when it comes to the benefits of green space at work. A select gazetteer, ‘Corporate gardens and parks c.1750–2015’ completes the book. Notes  1 The local identity of some companies remains important to their workforce, for example the Boots Company, which has been manufacturing in Nottingham, England, since 1885, is still a major employer in the city.  2 Darley, G. Factory (London, 2003). Darley suggests that Lombe’s factory in Derby (1717– 19) was probably the first mechanised factory in the world, p. 104.  3 Pevsner, N. History of Building Types (London, 1997), pp. 282–6.  4 See Schäfer, A. R. American Progressives and German Social Reform, 1875–1920 (Stuttgart, 2000). Schäfer argues that before the First World War, German social thought and reform helped to shape the American Reform Movement.  5 See Clare Hickman’s Therapeutic Landscapes. A History of Hospital Gardens since 1800 (Manchester, 2013).  6 Gilman, N. P. A Dividend to Labor: A Study of Employer’s Welfare Institutions (New York, 1899); Meakin, B. Model Factories: Ideal Conditions of Labour and Housing (London, 1905); Price G. M. The Modern Factory: Safety, Sanitation and Welfare (New York and London,  1914); Tolman, W. H. Social Engineering (New York, 1905); Tarbell, I. M. New Ideals in Business. An Account of their Practice and their Effects upon Men and Profits (New York, 1916); Boettiger, L. A. Employee Welfare Work: a Critical and Historical Study (New York, 1923).  7 Youngman, G. P. and Lord Verulam, Factory Gardens (London, 1955).  8 Morell and Nicols, Landscape Architects Landscape Architecture (Minneapolis 1911) and National Industrial Conference Board, What Employers are doing for Employees: a Survey of Voluntary Activities for Improvement of Working Conditions in American Business Concerns (New York, 1936).  9 Some examples are; Smith, C., Child, J. and Rowlinson, M. Re-Shaping Work: The Cadbury Experience (Cambridge, 1990); Buder, S. Pullman: an Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning 1880–1939 (New York and Oxford, 1967); Gater, S. and Vincent, D. Factory in a Garden: Wedgwood from Etruria to Barlaston, the Transitional Years (Keele, 1988); Long, V. The Rise and Fall of the Healthy Factory. The Politics of Industrial Health in Britain, 1914–60 (London and New York, 2011); Darley, Factory. 10 Mozingo, Louise A. Pastoral Capitalism: a History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes, (Cambridge, MA, 2011), pp. 2–9. 11 Lefebvre, H. The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991); Burrell, G. and Dale, K. ‘Utopiary: Utopias, Gardens and Organisation’, in Parker, M. (ed.) Utopia and Organization (Oxford, 2002), pp. 106–27. Burrell and Dale borrow Lefebvre’s quote from Harvey, D. Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 182. 12 Wells, H. G. A Modern Utopia (London, 1952), pp. 317; p. 130. 13 See for example Cosgrove, D. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (London, 1984); Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S. (eds), The Iconography of Landscape (Cambridge, 1988);

Introduction13 Matless, D. Landscape and Englishness (London, 2001); Jackson, J. B. The Necessity for Ruins and other Topics (Amherst, 1980). See also Wylie, J. Landscape (London, 2007). 14 See for example Harwood, E., Williamson, T., Leslie, M. and Dixon-Hunt, J. ‘Whither Garden History?’ Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 27:2 (April–June 2007), 91–112; Corner. J. (ed.), Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (New York, 1999); Dixon Hunt, J. Greater Perfections. The Practice of Garden Theory (London, 2000); Wrede, S. and Adams W.H. Denatured Visions. Landscape and Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1991); Treib, Settings and Stray Paths: Writings on Landscapes and Gardens (London and New York, 2005); Andrews, M. Landscape and Western Art (Oxford, 1999). 15 Jackson, The Necessity for Ruins, p. 115. Jackson acknowledges Yi-Fu Tuan as the source of this idea. Tuan, Y-F. Space and Place (London, 1977). 16 W. J. T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago, 1995), p. 1. 17 Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (London, 1991), pp. 200–8. 18 See Lukes, S. Power. A Radical View 2nd revised edn. (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 91. 19 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 416. 20 Lukes, Power, pp. 98, 106. 21 Ibid., pp. 145–50. 22 John A. Walker, Design History and the History of Design (London, Pluto Press, 1989), p. ix.

‘The pleasant manufactory’

1  ✧  ‘The pleasant manufactory’

L

and prints showing early manufactories towering over rivers or nestled into valleys, announce the gradual but momentous shift taking place in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and in the USA some fifty years later, from agrarian to industrial economies (see Plate 1). Yet these images are only a small step away from the landscape paintings of Claude Lorrain, or an early Turner, where the Arcadian or the sublime beauty of nature embraces civilisation and dominates the senses. Images of early manufactories are arresting not only for their aesthetic and symbolic values, but also for what they do not tell us about the reality of life in these early factories – twelve or more hours of wearisome work, for men, women and children, in unventilated and often unsafe spaces. They do remind us, however, that most early factories were built in the countryside or on the edge of towns where operatives might have enjoyed their daily recreation on the walk to work, or in the factory yard at lunchtime on a fine day if the wind blew the smoke away from them. Workers employed and living in one of the model factory villages or towns emerging in England in the late eighteenth century and in the USA in the early nineteenth century, might have enjoyed cleaner air and the opportunity to supplement the family diet with fresh vegetables. These paternalistic self-contained communities, mostly designed with good quality architecture around a landscape plan that included gardens or allotments, offered working and living conditions above and beyond those driven by legislation (Figure 1.1). As industrial towns grew rapidly in England in the early nineteenth century, factories and housing jostled for space and clean air in green open space became a luxury for urban mill workers. In America, early industrialists attempted initially to avoid the poor conditions of British factories, but as industrialisation accelerated following the end of the Civil War in 1865, little attention was given to architectural or landscape a n d sc a p e p ai n t i n g s

‘The pleasant manufactory’15

1.1  View of Humphreysville (later Seymour), Connecticut, as it was in 1812. This model mill village was named after General David Humphreys who built the first large woollen mill in the United States here in 1806.

aesthetics in the rapid and ad hoc expansion of industrial sites. This began to change in both nations towards the end of the century, partly aided by the coming of electricity to industry, which made it easier for industrialists to relocate factories from urban centres to the more spacious suburbs and gave more flexibility to design.1 Companies now had more space for beautifying their factories and the landscaping of new industrial buildings in some areas became essential to the aesthetic coexistence of residential and industrial development or the acceptance of a factory in a rural setting. By the end of the nineteenth century, paternalistic industrialists not building company towns or villages attempted to provide model conditions in their works for both altruistic and commercial reasons. Many corporate leaders, sociologists, welfare professionals, architects, landscape architects and engineers believed that high quality recreational space contributed to efficient, productive and respectable institutions, well regarded by consumers, where workers would be motivated, and even proud to work. An attractive factory was also thought to attract female workers who were in greater demand and in shorter supply towards the end of the century. In landscaping their factories, entrepreneurs in the early twentieth century were in some respects returning

16

The factory in a garden to the more Arcadian landscapes of the early Industrial Revolution, or ­recreating an imagined domestic ‘idyll’ of an earlier industrial community. Rural factories and model industrial communities provided the foundations on which the twentieth-century ‘Factory Garden Movement’ was established and flourished. But by the new century, factory landscaping was no longer driven by paternalism but by pragmatism. Landscapes of the early Industrial Revolution When the first large, mechanised factories were built in England, most had ‘natural advantages’ as they occupied rural landscapes or were built as extensions to farmhouses or sited next to the owner’s country house.2 Developers often exploited the aesthetic and dramatic possibilities presented by the necessity for fast-flowing water. Some of the earliest powered water mills, such as the Lombe Brothers’ silk mill, built in the early 1720s along the banks of the River Derwent, near Derby, or the Darbys’ iron mills at Coalbrookdale situated in a deep river gorge, look picturesque, even sublime, in prints and drawings, although those qualities were exploited for artistic and no doubt promotional effect. Unlike most factory owners of the later nineteenth century, who chose to live at some distance and out of sight from the smoke and labour at their factory, the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century entrepreneur often displayed his enterprise proudly as a significant part of his estate.3 The landscape architect Humphry Repton made much of the picturesque qualities of Armley Mill in his re-design of Benjamin Gott’s mill near his county seat, Armley House. Repton flattered Benjamin Gott by featuring his flagship mill in the ‘after’ view in the Red Book of 1810 where the imposing building presented an ‘eye catcher’ backdrop to the water meadows, while up the hill sat Gott’s country seat, Armley House.4 Sir Richard Arkwright, in building his second mill, Masson, from 1783, embellished it with Palladian windows and a cupola and shortly afterwards, commissioned a gothic-revival country house just across the river from the mill.5 The mill cannot be seen from the house, but it is clear from walking around the gardens today, that views of the manufactory from the river walk were designed to impress on visitors Arkwright’s dual position as country gentleman and entrepreneur. Earlier industrialists found some more unusual advantages in the close proximity of the factory to their country house. In 1746, the Quaker industrialist William Champion moved his works from the centre of Bristol to Warmley in Gloucestershire and built a zinc-smelting factory next to his Palladian residence. In the gardens he made around Warmley House from 1746 to 1769, Champion recycled by-products of the zinc smelting processes that he had invented and patented, to provide

‘The pleasant manufactory’17 unusual colours, patterns and textures to his summerhouse, garden wall and grotto.6 The whole complex is an ‘industrial utopia’ for the plan clearly indicates that his house, the factory and the pleasure gardens are integrated, while the lake performs the dual functions of ornamenting the garden and supplying water to the works. Originally the water was circulated from the factory back to the lake via the grotto, forming a cascade, an allusion to Italianate landscape gardens with their sensory water features, to which the landowning elite aspired in this period. The startling statue of Neptune, also partly constructed from clinker waste from the factory, towers over the lake and provides the essential, if somewhat crude statement of classical mythology to the garden (Figure 1.2). It seems likely that Champion made his garden features to impress clients as well as family and friends, as the house, factory and garden are so clearly unified, functionally and aesthetically. We know little about the experiences and feelings of employees at these early factories, but as most of the workforce came from rural areas in the early history of factory production it is unlikely that the physical setting had much influence on their choice of workplace (where they had a choice). However, the buildings in their sheer scale must have been impressive, or indeed oppressive. Precedents for factory buildings

1.2  A huge statue of Neptune, partly constructed from waste from William Champion’s factory in the middle of the eighteenth century, still looms over the grounds of his house.

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The factory in a garden ranged from the austerity of prisons and orphanages, often similar in terms of organisation and management,7 to the landed estate or royal palace, but all these models communicated a clear message to the workforce that they were establishments that employed strict rules and hierarchies.8 Between 1780 and 1850, when factories in Britain were more commonly built in towns,9 landscaping tended to be reserved for the manufacturer’s private house, which was often situated in the countryside far from the overcrowding and pollution of the industrial town. In a study of conditions in Manchester in 1844, the French economist Léon Faucher observed that the merchants and manufacturers lived in detached villas in the midst of gardens and parks in the country. ‘The rich man’, he wrote, ‘spreads his couch amidst the beauties of the surrounding country and abandons the town to the operatives, publicans, mendicants, thieves and prostitutes’.10 Reformers blamed the loss of rural values and healthy environments for the ill health and misery of the factory workers and the countryside is frequently a metaphor in literature for human happiness and dignity, the place where God resides.11 Factories were not exclusively in the country or the town but were often situated just outside towns, as were the Turton Mills, near Bolton in the mid-1800s, owned by the liberal Quaker brothers Edmund and  Henry Ashworth. The journalist William Cooke Taylor’s account of his visit to the mills in 1842, though idealised (he supported factory  owners against their critics), suggested that some mill owners were at pains to beautify the factory with planting. Having dismissed the quantity of smoke in the valley as ‘pleasing and picturesque’, he described the mill, built at the bottom of the ravine, just under the owner’s residence: Fruit trees, unprotected by fence, railing or palisade, are trained against the main wall of the building, and in the season the ripe fruit hangs temptingly within reach of every operative who goes in or out of the mill. There is not an instance of even a cherry having been plucked, though the young piecers and cleaners must pass them five or six times a day.12

Cooke Taylor fails to acknowledge the punishment that might have ensued should an operative have been caught stealing the fruit, but this is clearly an attempt by the Ashworths to make the factory environment more attractive. Aesthetic beauty, scenic views and the exploitation of industrial byproducts for gardens all became factors in the design of the industrial landscape, but more for the benefit of the corporate image than for the employee. However, at some of those works that became known

‘The pleasant manufactory’19 as ‘model factories’, the surrounding landscape and factory gardens ­provided space where employers could test their theories on the benefits of fresh air and exercise on their hapless workforce. Paternalism and philanthropy at the model factory The idea of the model factory emerged at the end of the eighteenth century and evolved through the nineteenth to improve conditions in industry and to meet a growing perception of the importance of environment to the image of a company. The concept became fully articulated by 1900, but in its evolution, a definition of a model factory was never fixed, as conditions varied according to the general economic and technical knowledge of the time and to changing legislation on industrial conditions.13 From the start of the modern factory system and even before, employers experimented with ways of increasing production through a consideration of the needs of their workforce.14 No doubt a combination of philanthropy and commercial considerations inspired better than average conditions in factories and there are a number of well-known examples of ‘enlightened’ patrons and employers, who in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, ran industrial communities that might be considered model by the standards of the day. Samuel Greg, at his factory at Quarry Bank Mill, founded in 1784 southwest of Manchester, fed his apprentices on fresh produce that they grew in the garden of the Apprentice House, gave them rudimentary education and built cottages for his workers with good-sized gardens where they could grow their own vegetables (Figure 1.3). However, conditions were far from ideal; discipline was strict, the working day was twelve to thirteen hours and when the Ten Hours Movement campaigned for shorter hours, Samuel’s son, Robert Hyde Greg, opposed it.15 Other industrialists went to great lengths to build architecturally or socially innovative industrial communities such as Jean-Baptiste André Godin’s foundry at Guise in France, which he based on the principles of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier (1840s), or Roberts Owen’s mills at New Lanark.16 (The familistère at Guise, modelled on Fourier’s theory of a communal building, the phalanstère, influenced later industrial communities such as Pullman discussed in the next section.) For many aspiring industrialists, the most urgent problem in establishing their factories was how to attract labour (often in limited supply), and once they had established a workforce, how to assert control over people used to the less rigid systems of agricultural labour and, particularly for American employers, how to socialise and Americanise newly arrived immigrants.

20

The factory in a garden

1.3  The Apprentice House garden today at Quarry Bank Mill, near Manchester (1784), now owned by the National Trust. The factory children worked here in the summer after their twelve-hour day in the factory.

These were urgent issues for Robert Owen, who, after taking over the management of the New Lanark mills in Scotland from 1800, took radical measures to recruit labour (many were orphans) and to get the best out of his undisciplined workers, many of whom were brought up in rural surroundings dependent on tight social groups and years of tradition. Owen reduced working hours to ten and three quarters, a short working day by the standards of the time and provided education, unemployment benefit, allotment gardens and picturesque ‘walks’ along the banks of the River Clyde (Plate 2). Owen’s systems, one of the most innovative being an emphasis on music and dance at the factory inside and outside, were based on his theories of human character and behaviour that he outlined in his book, A New View of Society or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character and the Application of the Principle to Practice (1813–14). Owen compared his workers to living machines, which needed just as much care as the machines in the factory. People’s characters he argued, are not innate, but are shaped by their environment.17 So successful were Owen’s methods in running a factory and publicising his methods that visitors flocked to see it, including the Russian Tsar.18 New Lanark, with its shorter working hours, education and recreation spaces, was model by the standards of the day.

‘The pleasant manufactory’21 The Americans, who industrialised later than the British, tried, i­ nitially relatively successfully, to avoid the overcrowding and poor conditions in British industry and debated fiercely the question of how to drive profitable companies while maintaining the health and moral well-being of the workforce.19 Thomas Jefferson believed that a solution lay in building small-scale manufactories within a traditional agrarian environment and regarded his nail factory at his estate at Monticello in the 1790s as integral to the plantation’s economy.20 Other industrialists experimented with building model industrial towns. Jefferson’s friend, Colonel David Humphreys had toured European factories and seeing a need for reform, set out to establish a model mill and mill village in the country at Humphreysville (now Seymour) in the first decade of 1800s (see Figure 1.1) and attempted, through paternalism, to shape its social order.21 According to Margaret Crawford, historian of planned communities, Humphreys created ‘the first system of industrial labor management in America’,22 but she does not point out that a very similar ideology of management systems was taking shape concurrently in Scotland. There are striking similarities between Humphreysville and New Lanark in that both men employed the ‘carrot and stick’ systems of rewards and punishment, and in the layout and management of the village they emphasised fresh air and open space. Humphreys, like Owen provided housing with gardens and he organised community theatricals. Both men made military style drill compulsory for the factory boys but Humphreys went further and established a private militia. Conditions at Humphreysville, although highly authoritarian, were considered by contemporaries to be ‘model’ by the standards of the day. Despite the apparent success of Owen’s methods and systems at New Lanark, and an increasingly vociferous reform movement, conditions in factories worsened. The factory ‘hell’ and industrial unrest of early nineteenth-century Britain is notorious.23 Calls for reform that began in the late eighteenth century culminated in the passing of the first of the Factory Acts in 1802, which set standards of ventilation, sanitation, hours of work and compulsory education in working hours for children. These rules only applied to large factories and there was widespread evasion of the Acts, but also plenty of scope for factory owners wishing to exemplify, to create model conditions that exceeded the requirements of the Acts. British historian J. T. Ward provides a number of examples in his volumes, The Factory System, including a mill in Bradford run by a Mr John Wood, who employed 600, mostly girls. Wood provided education and a doctor and he allocated an hour for dinner followed by recreation in the factory yard (Figure 1.4). In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a paternalistic approach in factories was common and certain provisions for workers, such as education, were almost commonplace.24

22

The factory in a garden

1.4  ‘The Dinner Hour, Wigan’, 1874, by Eyre Crowe. An idealised view of factory girls making the most of the factory yard in their lunch hour in the early 1870s.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the factory was just one of many institutions going through a period of reform that was affecting all towns and cities. A combination of benevolence and a desire to create stable and respectable urban environments and increase affluence drove industrialists to promote and fund civic amenities such as libraries and parks, town halls and public health, and often it was this group that pioneered reform. However, unsanitary conditions and ill health prevailed in industrial towns. Overcrowded and squalid conditions in Bradford, Yorkshire inspired Titus Salt to build a new factory and factory village, Saltaire in the neighbouring countryside from 1851.25 Historians frequently applaud Salt and his architects Lockwood and Mawson for creating the most comprehensive and successful model industrial village of the time, which unified factory, village and park.26 Based on the theory that environment could shape morality and behaviour, Saltaire was a turning point in the evolution of the model factory and factory village. This was due to the design and amenities of the state-of-the-art factory and for the attention to detail of the site’s plan, as well as the quantity and quality of the buildings and amenities supplied for the workers’ use. These shaped and controlled all the social and cultural activities of the workers’ lives, from washing and bathing, to education, recreation and entertainment.

‘The pleasant manufactory’23 The architecturally splendid Italianate mill, a ‘palace of industry’ and celebrated as ‘the largest and best contrived of factories’,27 was one of the first industrial buildings to be illustrated in the highly regarded architectural journal, The Builder. The factory workers, though paid no more than average, had a sickness insurance scheme to which the company contributed, a dining hall and annual works outings to the seaside or other destinations, including Salt’s mansion. As well as model conditions in the factory, the village where most of the operatives lived supplied all needs: houses, shops, baths, school, institute, hospital, eleven acres of park, allotments and a Congregational church (Figure 1.5). Salt exerted complete social and cultural control of his workforce by establishing an integrated industrial site, ‘a capitalist republic with a benevolent dictator’, according to historian R. J. Morris.28 His methods worked from his point of view, for there was little industrial unrest at the factory and only two brief strikes in the first thirty years of the mill’s life.29 However, as industrialisation accelerated in America and industrialists built model company towns, it became clear that exceptional environmental design and welfare provision did not prevent industrial unrest. Historians agree that conditions in the factories and factory villages in America were better than in Great Britain in the earlier part of the

1.5  Salt’s Mill at Saltaire today overlooking the village allotments. The village houses had no gardens, but allotments were part of the original plan for the village.

24

The factory in a garden American Industrial Revolution, but had deteriorated by the last quarter of the nineteenth century.30 American industrialists had different considerations in attracting and managing their workforce, due to the scale of the country, a relative lack of urban centres and a labour force that consisted increasingly of immigrant groups often hostile to each other. It was, therefore, more common than in England for manufacturers to provide housing from the start.31 Entrepreneurs regarded the creation of company towns as a solution to social exploitation and degradation of the landscape, although the reality expressed the inherent tensions of capitalist production. From the 1790s, large mills were established in Massachusetts, the most renowned being those at Lowell (from 1813), which was regarded as a model company town by visitors including Charles Dickens, who visited in 1841. Dickens found the factory girls at Lowell, many of them farmers’ daughters, healthy and cheerful and marvelled to see them attending evening lectures and classes, playing the piano supplied by the boarding houses, and reading books from the town’s library.32 They seemed to acknowledge the value of nature to the quality of life, for one edition of their monthly magazine, The Lowell Offering, included an editorial on plants and flowers in the mill, symbols of home, hope and chastity perhaps.33 Engravings of the textile town of Lowell, although idealised, suggest that landscaping and tree-planting contributed to the aura of order and respectability that was deemed necessary to persuade the fathers of the mill girls that their virtue would remain intact. Despite these ‘model’ conditions, hours were long and discipline was strict.34 Margaret Crawford has argued that Lowell was never designed as a model company town as it had no ‘conceptual order’ and that the girls’ extra work activities were organised on their own initiative and supported by the church rather than by corporate philanthropy.35 If Lowell was not a model factory town, conditions there might be considered to be model, but even these did not prevent industrial unrest, for in 1834 the Lowell girls went on strike against a wage cut. The American Industrial Revolution was still in its early stages by 1860,36 and most factories were small scale, but after the Civil War, industrialisation was rapid (between 1860 and 1900, industrial production increased in value from $200 million a year to $2,000 million) and by 1894, American industry was producing twice as much as British industry.37 Businesses amalgamated to create much larger industrial units and as industry grew so social problems spread, with industrial unrest and often violence. In the 1880s and 1890s, strikes were frequent with over 24,000 industrial disputes between 1880 and 1900 and between 1902 and 1904 alone, 180 union men were killed, 1,600 injured and over 15,000 were arrested in the course of strikes.38 The infamous strike

‘The pleasant manufactory’25 at the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894 is significant because it took place at a company that was considered to be a model employer. George Pullman, in an attempt to use design and authoritarian paternalism to prevent industrial unrest, built an initially much praised model factory and town outside Chicago from 1881, but the scheme ended in failure and derision for the manufacturer. The landscaping of Pullman, Illinois George Pullman, the creator of the Pullman sleeping car, championed the idea in the USA of employing a professional landscape architect to  beautify a factory when he began to plan his company town outside  Chicago in 1880. Most likely inspired by a visit to Saltaire in England in 1878,39 he appointed an architect, Solon S. Berman and a landscape architect, Nathan F. Barrett (the same duo who had remodelled his house and garden) to integrate the factory and town into a complete functional and aesthetic whole. It was the first time in American history that an architect and landscape designer collaborated on laying out a whole town. The Boston Herald described the town in August 1881 as ‘a professional dream come true’ and the combination of design skills undoubtedly contributed to the aesthetic and symbolic impact of the site.40 The landscaping of Pullman set some important precedents in the idea of factory landscaping but the town became both a model and a warning in the USA and in Europe for how good design had to be combined with fair social practices to contribute to business success. In plan, Pullman town is not unlike Saltaire, with its grid pattern of rectangular blocks and the factory situated on one side, slightly separated from the village and surrounded by open space (Pullman was built on the edge of Lake Calumet).41 The layout of Pullman, however, was more sophisticated, with some resemblance to the Beaux Arts ideal of town planning, exported from Paris and gaining popularity in the USA, giving grand spatial vistas and axial boulevards. Pullman also offered desirable facilities for residents and visitors, including the Arcade Building with theatre, library, post office and bank, and the Hotel Florence, named after Pullman’s favourite daughter. Both factories were located next to the railway line (and the canal in the case of Saltaire) for practical reasons and for promotional ones, for those travelling past could marvel at the impressive structures. An artificial lake in front of the factory building, bounded by a drive lined with trees and shrubs, gave even greater status to the Pullman plant and suggested a country house set in an English landscape garden.42 Pullman, like Champion at Warmley and later industrialists, exploited the functional

26

The factory in a garden

1.6  Looking south towards Lake Vista with the factory Administration Building (c.1890) on the left. Hotel Florence, the Arcade Building and the train station are in the distance (c.1895).

as well as the aesthetic potential of their water supply, for Lake Vista was as the cooling pond for the great steam engine (Figure 1.6). The level of sophistication of the landscaping at Pullman and the suggestion of a pleasure garden in the area around the factory makes the scheme innovative in the evolution of the factory garden. An informal sweep of parkland bounded by roads and intersected with footpaths connected the factory to the town and beyond the hotel lay a formal garden or small park (Figure 1.7). The lushly planted Arcade Park and traffic islands were a fine example of the power of landscaping and planting to create soft and sensuous effects within a juxtaposition of formal layout with naturalistic planting. One journalist from the Mercantile & Financial Times arriving by train in 1895 described the view as ‘beautiful beyond description and without a parallel in any industrial centre in America or the world’. He applauded the ‘white graveled walks and grassy lawns, studded with green shrubbery and set here and there with beds of bright hued flowers’.43 All this was made possible by the six acres of nursery garden and greenhouse that supplied plants for the town landscapes and for the residents.44 Visitors

‘The pleasant manufactory’27

1.7  View of Pullman Park from the second floor of the Arcade Building looking north. Hotel Florence, the firehouse and the factory water tower are in the background (c.1890).

from around the world flocked to see Pullman and as far away as Prague it was known as the ‘World’s Most Perfect Town’.45 The Pullman workers were also well supplied with sports grounds, although these were placed out of sight of the factory beyond the town on fifteen acres of ground on the banks of Lake Calumet and on an artificial island. The facilities there were excellent by the standards of the day and the grounds became a popular sporting venue for national as well as local competitors.46 Pullman provided his workers with seemingly abundant welfare programmes including accident insurance, medical treatment, education, athletic clubs, a company band and social clubs.47 But Pullman was not a popular man for the workforce had no control over the management of the town or the amenities. They bitterly resented the ways that their domestic and social, as well as their working, lives were overseen and there were no means for them to communicate complaints to their employer.48 By all accounts the town hosts, Mr and Mrs Doty, employed by Pullman to look after visitors, were also warranted to spy on the employees and enforce the rules with the penalty of dismissal and expulsion from the town for misdemeanours. A drastic wage cut fuelled the strike of 1894 when the generous landscapes provided plenty of space

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The factory in a garden for strikers to assemble. Utopia turned to dystopia as the federal troops were called in to take control, thirteen people died, fifty-three were seriously injured and 700 freight cars burned.49 After the strike, poor industrial relations continued. Algie M. Simmons (who wrote a study of personnel practices) visited Pullman in the late 1890s, and reported: ‘nowhere have I seen such concentrated hatred against an employer’. More than a third of the workforce chose  to live outside the town because they resented the rules and wished to buy their own homes or rent from another landlord.50 In 1907, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the Pullman Company to sell all the n ­ on-industrial property in the town.51 The town of Pullman is largely preserved (it is now a National Historic Landmark), but the area around the factory is derelict and the lake filled in. The Historic Pullman Foundation is battling to preserve what is left of the landscapes, which remain relatively intact, although without their former glory. Factory utopias in Britain As American industry grappled with increasing social unrest, British industry had recovered from the worst of the social problems brought by industrialisation and the relationship between capital and labour was relatively stable. Experiments and theories in industrial organisation were reaching a consensus on methods of factory organisation and the concept of the model factory evolved into more than just basic educational and recreational facilities. The historian F. M. L. Thompson has argued that by the 1850s more substantial and expensive forms of paternalism were common in larger firms, including reading rooms or libraries, occasionally bathhouses and later in the century, gymnasia and works canteens. Larger factories were becoming complete social institutions, often a focal point for a community providing music and other clubs and social events.52 The Utopian socialist, designer and manufacturer William Morris became a champion of the model factory and an inspiration for factory gardens when he published an article ‘A Factory as it Might Be’ in Justice Magazine in 1884, partly inspired by his printing and dyeing works at Merton Abbey. Morris described his welfare provisions, ideal by the standards of the day, where employees enjoyed a wholesome environment, including a pretty garden by the stream, allotments and other recreation and education opportunities. Borrowing largely from Ruskin, Morris was characteristically contradictory, arguing that a factory should stand in gardens ‘as beautiful (climate apart) as those of Alcinoüs, which should be for beauty’s sake, not for profit’. Morris did not like to mention any commercial motive in nurturing his garden at Merton Abbey, unlike

‘The pleasant manufactory’29 his more pragmatic disciples, industrialists, planners, politicians and other reformers who sought to improve working conditions. Morris’s article was subsequently published as a pamphlet and as his readership was broad and his reputation wide, it is likely that enlightened entrepreneurs building factories in the late nineteenth century were aware of his arguments and ironically he might have unwittingly contributed to a greater public acceptance of the factory system. Within a decade of his article being published, larger factories began to add significant amenities, such as the works’ sports and recreation ground, and at some works, a pleasure ground made a pleasant space for those who wished to walk, rest or eat lunch outside. Some employers made exercise compulsory for the youngest workers and provided allotments for employees’ children. From 1878, the Cadbury Brothers, George and Richard, inspired by some of the most influential social reformers of the age and by their Quaker values, which encouraged enterprise and wealth accumulation for the benefit of social reform,53 pioneered these types of landscapes. They created the most celebrated model factory in Britain where the welfare of their workforce was paramount.54 The Cadburys, closely followed by a fellow Quaker, Seebohm Rowntree in York and other reforming industrialists such as William Lever (later Lord Leverhulme) at Port Sunlight, were masters of benevolent manipulation or paternalism, and their works at Bournville ­embodied the epitome of a model factory. Although George Cadbury built a model village adjacent to the factory, his genius as philanthropist  and developer was ensure that the village and factory were independent. Bournville village was not a factory village in the true sense because it was managed separately from the factory and less than half of the residents worked at the chocolate factory which it had its own amenities. William Hesketh Lever’s village Port Sunlight, built in the 1890s near Liverpool for his employees at the Sunlight Soap factory was an integrated industrial site because all the residents of the village either worked or had associations with the factory. Port Sunlight, planned by the architect William Owen, became a highly influential factory village and one of the most visited, including by many of the industrialists whose factory gardens and parks are discussed in the following chapters. Outdoor amenities were similar to those at Pullman, although on a smaller scale, and the design of housing, community buildings and landscape was initially based on the Arts and Crafts ideal of an English village landscape. The picturesque village offered a football ground, rifle range, tennis courts, bowling green and allotment gardens and the villagers could relax in a small informal park.55 By 1919, the company provided a 120-acre recreation ground and an outdoor swimming

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The factory in a garden pool.56 Lawns, trees and flowerbeds linked the grand classical façade of the works offices to the village houses in an incongruous juxtaposition, in a landscape scheme that lacked the dramatic harmony of the Pullman landscape.57 Although Port Sunlight and Pullman were built initially to different design models, on the lines of Arts and Crafts and Beaux Arts respectively, they were very similar in the way they were organised and managed.58 Both communities had to conform to strict rules, although Lord Leverhulme’s more paternalistic rather than authoritarian approach and the consistent success of the company meant that his workforce was more stable and their attitude to their employer largely compliant. However, Port Sunlight residents had to conform to the rules and gardening, for example, was almost compulsory. The village offered copious garden plots in large allotments which could be rented for a small fee. These lay within the blocks of housing enabling surveillance from nosey neighbours. Residents tried, initially, to make the large gardens at the front of the houses their own, but a preference for chicken runs, dustbins or drying washing there did not comply with the aesthetic or social standards of the estate office. The authorities banned the erection of fences and all the village landscaping was taken over by the gardeners of the company landscaping department, who planted lawns, flowerbeds and trees to create a uniform look.59 The houses obscured the messier, utilitarian allotments (where chickens, but not pigs were allowed), so that the picturesque order of the scene would not be disturbed. Cadbury, Rowntree and Sunlight Soap were all examples of light industries exploiting an insatiable demand for packaged and affordable commodities in a growing consumer market at the turn of the nineteenth century. To attract a high quality and stable workforce and to promote good industrial and public relations, model employers built welldesigned buildings, provided high quality recreational educational and other amenities, including gardens and parks, paid higher than average wages, and increasingly offered other benefits such as pensions and sometimes a form of profit sharing. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it was seen to be good practice to promote a high moral tone at work to attract and keep the best workers. Some, such as Seebohm Rowntree believed that the workplace had an even more beneficial influence on the character of the working classes than the church and was as important as schools in shaping the characters of youth.60 As demand for high quality female employees increased, and supply waned, the need for respectability in the workplace to attract the best workers was an important factor61 and this became even more important during the First World War when companies were recruiting in competition with munitions factories that tended to pay high wages.62

‘The pleasant manufactory’31 With more light industries needing employees, particularly in foods  and engineering, which tended to involve boring repetitive work,  women workers looking for a job between school and marriage were seen as desirable, partly for their malleability due to social and  political inequalities and because they were cheaper. For many women and their husbands and fathers, work was seen as inferior to domestic life and simply a preparation for marriage; therefore, by the early twentieth century, for most women, life in employment was short. Women were also sometimes put off work by trade unions that tended to be particularly hostile to women in skilled or semiskilled jobs.63 To attract the best female workers, therefore, companies boosted their reputations with attractive buildings and gardens, plenty of social and cultural life, separate entrances for men and women, staggered working hours and by employing a female welfare or social manager. Ross McKibbin has shown how some companies in the early twentieth century, seeking more female employees in the growing numbers of light industries, used ‘art’ to attract the choosy female worker. Girls and their parents were drawn to companies with ‘taste’, for that attribute, they thought, brought with it respectability and class.64 It was not uncommon to see works of art, curtains and other domestic luxuries including pot plants and vases of flowers in dining rooms and rest rooms at factories employing a large proportion of women.65 Flowerbeds and shrubs around the factory buildings, such as the elaborate bedding displays at Sears Roebuck & Co. in Chicago,66 added further suggestions of beauty and femininity. By the early twentieth century a more politicised working population, both male and female,67 with increasing expectations of upward social mobility and a general presumption of better standards and conditions at work was driving industrialists to provide attractive workplaces with good pay and conditions.68 By this time, the workforce, particularly in America, was less amenable to being patronised by a benevolent father figure and factory design and management began to be organised into fully fledged professional systems. Welfare capitalism and the modern factory By 1920 the idea of a modern factory was no longer defined by a paternalistic concern for the welfare of the workforce, cared for and overseen by a benevolent father figure, but as a professional social and economic system with close worker involvement, and organised by professional management systems. Historians agree that American industrialists were at the forefront of this pioneering work.69

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The factory in a garden After a period of rapid industrialisation in the late nineteenth and  early twentieth centuries, conditions in some American factories and towns had become reminiscent of Dickens’s England: crowded, filthy, with dangerous areas peopled by impoverished, ill-nourished and unhealthy industrial workers.70 While the nation grew wealthier, industrial workers’ lives remained insecure with many suffering low wages, and there was little recourse to welfare. Yet alongside some appalling conditions, industrialisation was creating a period of unprecedented economic prosperity, which provided the conditions for reform.71 In industry, reform took the form of ‘welfare capitalism’, thought by employers to be the best way to prevent labour unrest.72 Some historians have argued that a prevention of unionisation was the underlying motivation of welfare capitalism and many companies sponsored ‘company unions’ to discourage trade union membership.73 This is too simplistic a view, however, since many employers with active welfare programmes supported unions, including Cadbury, where the directors actively encouraged their workers to join trade unions.74 Welfare capitalism was motivated by a need to improve relations between employer and employee and to socialise workers, to promote stability, loyalty and therefore profit.75 Reforms included improving workspaces and conditions, extending recreational facilities, profit sharing, life insurance and pension schemes, and many companies gave responsibility for running the amenities to employees, allowing them a semblance of control over their working lives in an attempt to maintain stability.76 The range of schemes for welfare was so diverse that a US government study in 1916 defined it as ‘anything for the comfort and improvement, intellectual or social, of the employee, over and above wages paid, which is not a necessity of the industry nor required by law’.77 The National Cash Register Company (NCR), the ‘pioneer firm in industrial betterment’ according to welfare historian Budgett Meakin,78 was one of the first companies to set up a welfare department, driven by an Owenite-type belief in the value of an attractive environment to industrial efficiency. In the mid-1890s, following the return of a faulty consignment of cash registers to the plant, the president of the NCR, John H. Patterson decided that poor efficiency was due to dissatisfied workers so, to improve matters, he landscaped the factory and provided incentives for local residents to beautify the neighbourhood and introduced new management systems and a welfare programme. In outlining his principles for business for his biographer two years before he died, Patterson said: ‘Treat people well and they will treat you well … They (employees) will give you their best if they think you are giving them your best … It pays to do good; it pays to help them [the workers] to help themselves in every moral and physical way.’79 The

‘The pleasant manufactory’33 slogan ‘It Pays’ appeared on signs all around the factory, to reinforce the message.80 After the strike in 1901 in which the welfare programme played a small role (since the officious welfare secretary was sacked), Patterson opened a new labour department that has been called the first modern personnel department in American industry as it handled labour issues such as safety and grievances as well as welfare. By 1915 many large firms had opened such departments, those of US Steel (from 1911) and the Ford Motor Company (from 1914) being two of the best known,81 and companies competed in the elaboration of the amenities they offered. In Britain the professionalisation of welfare arrived during and just after the end of the First World War, which marked a turning point in industrialists’ thinking about the value of management systems. Companies that had already developed professional welfare systems were influential, notably Cadbury. Following more than a decade as managing director of the company (from 1899), during which he took a great personal interest in company welfare, Edward Cadbury published his Experiments in Industrial Organisation (London, 1912) and the book became a highly regarded source on corporate welfare in the early twentieth century. Cadbury explained how the firm’s policies towards the management and welfare of their workers were essential factors in the company’s successes. It would be wrong to suggest that welfare in factories was the norm between the wars because, on the whole, working conditions were poor in both nations.82 However, welfare was extensive across all kinds of industries and was therefore a significant force for change.83 Good welfare provision was regarded as part of a modern industrial outlook and by the 1930s many companies were using modern architecture and design not only to enhance their welfare provision but also to promote it. The Boots Company in Nottingham, for example,, chose the architect Owen Williams to design a state-of-the art glass and concrete factory building inspired by European modernism. Boots hailed their building, D10, opened in 1933 as ‘a Model and Modern factory’.84 To be fully modern, companies needed not only well-designed factory buildings, but also space for recreation and Boots provided all of these. As suggested by The Architects’ Journal of Wednesday 13 January 1932, in a number dedicated to factories, even in a period of economic stress, sports grounds remained one of the pre-requisites for the ‘modern’ factory: No factory today can be considered up to date unless it is equipped with dining-rooms. Most reasonably large factories require rest rooms, clinics, research laboratories, and libraries as well, while many of the largest provide gymnasia, swimming pools, concert halls and sports club grounds and buildings.85

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The factory in a garden Conclusion From the early years of the Industrial Revolution, paternalistic employers began to provide vegetable gardens and recreation space for their employees to improve their health and motivation, for recruitment, retention, stability and promotion. By the end of the nineteenth century, factory gardens and recreation grounds had become integral to employee welfare provision at some model factories, but by the 1920s, they signified a modern, healthy and stable industrial community built on mutual trust and respect between employer and employee. Chapter 2 looks in more detail at some of the modern factories developing their gardens and sports grounds in the years before and after the First World War. Gardens and recreation at factories appeared alongside wider reform movements to improve access to green space in urban areas. Recreational amenities that were originally considered to be luxuries, became more common and even expected in industrial life. Notes  1 Nye, D. E. Electrifying America. Social Meanings of a New Technology 1880–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 196.  2 Darley, Factory, p. 21.  3 Long, D. ‘Gardens of Industrial Revolutionaries 1740–1810’ (MA, University of Buckingham 2013), p. 25.  4 Daniels, S. ‘Landscaping for a Manufacturer. Humphry Repton’s Commission for Benjamin Gott at Armley, 1809–10’, Journal of Historical Geography 7:4 (October 1981), 379–88.  5 Jones, Industrial Architecture In Britain 1750–1930 (London, 1985), pp. 24–6.  6 Long, D. ‘Warmley. A Brass Works Landscape 1748–1768’, Avon Gardens Trust Journal 8 (2015), 10–31.  7 Pollard, S. The Genesis of Modern Management. A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain (Aldershot, 1993), p. 161.  8 Ibid.  9 Morris, R. J. ‘The Industrial Town’, in Waller, P. (ed.), The English Urban Landscape (Oxford, 2000), p. 181. 10 Faucher, quoted in Perkin, H. The Origins of Modern English Society (London, New York, 2002), p. 173. 11 Jones, E. ‘The Factory Town’, in The Battle-Day, and Other Poems (London, 1855), p. 82, quoted in Ward, J. T. The Factory System and Society (2 vols, Newton Abbott, 1970), p. 33. 12 Cooke Taylor, W. Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire 2nd edn (1842) quoted in ibid., p. 63. 13 Price, Modern Factory, p. 69. 14 Ibid., p. 290. 15 Nixon, N. and Hill, J. Mill Life at Styal (Altrincham, 1986).

‘The pleasant manufactory’35 16 Darley, Factory, pp. 45–51, 67–9. 17 Pevsner, History of Building Types, p. 278. 18 Ibid. 19 Crawford, M. Building the Working Man’s Paradise: the Design of American Company Towns (London, 1995), pp. 11–12. 20 See Bender, T. Towards and Urban Vision (Baltimore and London, 1982), p. 23. 21 Crawford, Building, p. 16. 22 Ibid. 23 See Ward, The Factory System; Thompson, F. M. L. The Rise of Respectable Society. A Social History of Victorian Britain 1830–1900 (London, 1988). 24 Joyce, P. Work, Society and Politics, the Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Aldershot, 1991), p. 170. 25 Styles, J. Titus Salt and Saltaire (Saltaire, 1990), pp. 10–12. 26 Holroyd, A. Saltaire and its Founder (Saltaire, 2000). 27 James, J. History of Worsted Manufacture in England (London, 1857), pp. 467, 469 in Jones, Industrial Architecture, p. 96. 28 Morris R. J. ‘The Industrial Town’, in Waller, English Urban Landscape, p. 197. 29 Styles, Titus Salt, p. 20. 30 Nye, D. E. America as Second Creation (Cambridge MA, 2003), pp. 116–46. 31 Pevsner, History of Building Types, p. 280. 32 Simmons, J. C. Star Spangled Eden: 19th Century America Through the Eyes of Dickens, Wilde, Frances Trollope, Frank Harris and Other British Travellers (New York, 2000), pp. 104–5. 33 Boettiger, Employee Welfare Work, p. 119. 34 Cochran, T. C. and Miller, W. The Age of Enterprise. A Social History of Industrial America (New York, 1965), p. 21. 35 Crawford, Building, p. 25. 36 Although there were already substantial industrial towns like Pittsburgh, which in the 1830s was described by travellers as dirty and smoky. Pevsner, History of Building Types, p. 281. 37 Jeansonne, G. and Luhrssen, D. ‘A Time of Paradox’. America Since 1890 (New York, Toronto and Oxford, 2006), p. xxii. 38 Wynn, Progressivism, p. 7. 39 See Adelman, W. Touring Pullman. A Study in Contemporary Paternalism (Chicago, 1977), p. 1. 40 Buder, S. Pullman: an Experiment, p. 61. 41 Crawford, Building, p. 37. 42 Pearson, A. M. ‘Historic Pullman’s Other Architect: Nathan Franklin Barrett’, Illinois Heritage (2005), 20–5. 43 Ibid. 44 Doty, Mrs D. The Town of Pullman. Its Growth with Brief Accounts of its Industries (Pullman, 1893), p. 94. 45 Pearson, ‘Historic Pullman’s other architect: Nathan Franklin Barrett’, Illinois Heritage (2005), 25.

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The factory in a garden 46 Ibid. 47 Crawford, Building, p. 37. 48 Biggs, L. The Rational Factory. Architecture, Technology and Work in the Age of America’s Mass Production (Baltimore and London, 1996), p. 65 and Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 3. 49 Jeansonne and Luhrssen, ‘A Time of Paradox’, p. xxii. 50 Brandes, S. D. American Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1940 (Chicago, 1976), p. 139. 51 Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 45. 52 Thompson, F. M. L. The Rise of Respectable Society, p. 213. 53 Cadbury, D. Chocolate Wars. From Cadbury to Kraft: 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry (London, 2010), p. 3. 54 This point is supported by the frequency with which Bournville is mentioned in all the original sources. 55 Plan of Port Sunlight, 1909, PSVT.SV. 56 Lever Bros Ltd. Employees Handbook (Port Sunlight, 1930s?), Bodleian Library, M05. E04191. 57 Lever Brothers. The Story of Port Sunlight (Port Sunlight, 1953). 58 See Rees, A. ‘Nineteenth Century Planned Industrial Communities and the Role of Aesthetics in Spatial Practices: the Visual Ideologies of Pullman and Port Sunlight’, Journal of Cultural Geography 29:2 (2012), 185–214. 59 George, W. L. Labour and Housing at Port Sunlight (London, 1909). 60 Meakin, Model Factories, pp. 33–4. 61 McKibbin, R. Classes and Cultures, England 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), p. 111. 62 Spain, A. A Taste of Ovaltine. The Official Story (2002), p. 23. 63 McKibbin, Classes, p. 111. 64 Ibid., p. 244. 65 An article on women in industry in Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management in April 1930, suggested that ‘the better type of girl’ now preferred factory work to office work following improvements in conditions in factories (pp. 21–2). 66 Nimmons, G. C. ‘Modern Industrial Plants’, part VII, Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s Plant, Chicago’, Architectural Record 45:6 (June 1919), 506–25. 67 In Britain, women over 30 were enfranchised in 1918 and in 1928 were awarded the same voting rights as men. Some American states had granted the suffrage to women at the end of the nineteenth century, although this was made nationwide in 1920. Trade union membership increased rapidly during and after the First World War. See Beard, M. A Short History of the American Labor Movement (New York, 1920), p. 151. 68 Stevenson, J. British Society 1914–45 (London, 1984); Thompson, Rise of Respectable Society. 69 See for example Fitzgerald, R. British Labour Management and Industrial Welfare 1846– 1939 (London, New York, Sydney, 1988), p. 7; Bucknell, L. H. Industrial Architecture (London, 1935), p. 67 and Jacoby, S. M. Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions and the Transformation of Work in American Industry 1900–1945 (New York, 1985), p. 49. 70 Wynn, N. A. Progressivism to Prosperity: World War 1 and American Society (New York and London, 1986), pp. 4–5. 71 Cochran, T. C. Social Change in Industrial Society: Twentieth Century America (London, 1972), p. 126.

‘The pleasant manufactory’37 72 John Patterson of the NCR confided to his landscape architect J. C. Olmsted in 1906 that he had instituted the men’s dining hall at the factory ‘largely to keep the men from going to cheap restaurants down town where they had too much socialistic and incendiary talk’. Olmsted memorandum 6 December 1906, LC.MD.OAR, Series B Reel 20. 73 Cochran and Miller, The Age of Enterprise, p. 246. 74 Dellheim, C. ‘The creation of a company culture. Cadbury 1861–1931’, The American Historical Review 92:1 (February 1987), 13–44. Patterson’s view of unions was more ambivalent – see Nelson, D. ‘The New Factory System and the Unions: the National Cash Register Company Dispute of 1901’, Labor History 15:2 (1974), 163–78. 75 Hareven, T. K. Family Time and Industrial Time. The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge, 1982), p. 39. 76 Jones, Limits of Liberty; see also Jeansonne and Luhrssen, ‘A Time of Paradox’, p. 113. 77 ‘Welfare Work for Employees in Industrial Establishments in the United States’, US Bureau of Labour Statistics Bulletin 250 (1919), 8, quoted in Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy, p. 49. 78 Meakin, B. Model Factories, p. 52. 79 Crowther, S. John H. Patterson. Pioneer in Industrial Welfare (New York, 1923), p. 194. It is likely that Patterson’s wife influenced his zeal for reform. She came from a prominent New England family, and as Buenker, John D. et al. have pointed out, a large percentage of progressive reformers had a New England background. Buenker, J. D. et al. Progressivism (Cambridge MA, 1977), p. 7. 80 Sir Adrian Cadbury remembers his father, Laurence, recalling with amusement these signs and other motivational slogans posted inside and outside at the NCR factory. 81 Between 1912 and 1925 the US Steel Corporation spent over $158 million on its welfare programme to provide playgrounds, schools, clubs, gardens, safety features, accident relief payments and pensions. ‘United States Steel Corporation Welfare Expenditures, Jan 1st 1912–Dec 31st 1925’, Bulletin No. 11, United States Steel Corporation (Dec 1925) in Biggs, The Rational Factory, 66. Henry Ford introduced a minimum wage, a shorter working week, profit sharing and sports facilities, but he used architecture, not distinctive landscaping to distinguish his factories. See Hareven, Family Time, 38. 82 Fitzgerald, British Labour Management, p. 208. 83 Ibid., p. 186. 84 Promotional leaflet, BC A85/7. 85 ‘Opportunity’, The Architects’ Journal 35 (1932).

From model factory to modern factory 2  ✧  From model factory to modern factory

S

the ‘Factory Gate’ films of the popular company Mitchell and Kenyon, showing men, women and children streaming in and out of industrial works in the north of England at the turn of the nineteenth century are a potent reminder that most urban factory landscapes tended to be ad hoc accumulations of undistinguished buildings with little or no attention given to architecture or landscape aesthetics and outdoor recreational space.1 But as factories multiplied in suburban areas, pioneering employers took advantage of spare land and natural topographies to lead alternative ways of thinking about the industrial landscape. They needed to appease grumbling suburbanites opposed to the potential blight of ugly factories in their Shangri-La, and at the same time they wished to recruit the most ‘respectable’ and hard-working employees from the neighbourhood and surrounding areas and keep them loyal and healthy. A ‘Factory in a Garden’ seemed an astute panacea. Landscape or garden architects and nurserymen ‘beautified’ factory buildings with planting and landscaped the grounds for open-air rest, refreshment and exercise. They made pleasure gardens, bowling greens and tennis courts and, at the larger works, provided acres of land for ball and other sports. As their businesses thrived, some entrepreneurs such as the Cadburys in Bournville, UK and John Patterson of the NCR in Dayton, Ohio purchased additional land, some for housing or for new factory buildings, and some for pleasure gardens, allotments or sports fields. These companies went to very great lengths to maintain their gardens and parks by employing a large gardening staff (Cadbury had fifty gardeners and groundsmen in the 1930s) and building glasshouses to supply plants and flowers for the factory inside and out. Model employers with large establishments became environmental mentors for the neighbourhood, providing allotments for the workforce and their children, offering classes in gardening, donating seeds, and selling plants and flowers from the company greenhouses. cenes from

From model factory to modern factory39 Initiatives to make gardens and parks at factories were a part of the wider public health and urban planning reforms taking place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and in this chapter I discuss the significant roles played by industrialists in driving forward and funding environmental reform. The First World War and its aftermath catalysed the importance of healthy, high quality environments to industrial stability and progress, and the ‘Factory Garden Movement’ accelerated in the 1920s, inspired by a need to attract and to satisfy a more independent and demanding workforce and by a growing belief of the value of an attractive environment to health and well-being, as well as to the corporate image and brand. Gardens, parks and health In Britain from the 1880s onwards, there was a sense that society was changing, and fears of degeneracy and physical deterioration fuelled debates about public health and morality.2 Public health reform had been an issue since the early nineteenth century, encouraged by advocates such as Edwin Chadwick, but in the last quarter of the century reformers looked increasingly to improved urban design and planning to solve the nation’s health problems. The work of physician Benjamin Ward Richardson was significant in health reform and in connecting health to environment. In his book Hygeia: A City of Health (1876) he imagined a ‘model’ city with wide streets planted with trees, shrubs and evergreens, houses with gardens and all the public buildings surrounded with generous garden space. Ward Richardson was among those who inspired William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890) and as Clare Hickman has observed, Morris’s recommendation that children should live in tents outside in the summer, reflected the ‘new open-air philosophy’ and the value of gardens and exercise to children that was gathering pace at the time.3 Reformers in the late nineteenth century in both Britain and the USA attributed environmental influences as well as heredity to delinquent behaviour among working-class youth.4 In the nineteenth century, temperance reformers regarded the family allotment as a suitable diversion to temptation and the village of Bournville famously had no pub, but was well supplied with green space and ‘dry’ social activities. By the 1880s, the focus of moral panic had shifted to youth seen loitering in the streets with ‘temptations of all kinds to draw them into folly and dissipation’. Again, outdoor play and exercise was the panacea. One pamphlet Parks and Playgrounds for the People, published in 1885, recommended that no one should live more than a mile from a recreation ground.5 While this was an unobtainable ideal particularly in suburban areas, between 1885 and 1914, more public parks

40

The factory in a garden were opened than at any other time6 and in America, the activities in the growing number of ‘reform parks’, became increasingly structured and controlled.7 The American reform park was designed as a place for organised play with an emphasis on community activities and to encourage an expression of American values and respectable behaviour. It was common for park-goers to be separated by age and gender for some activities. The beginning of the new century saw increasing discussion in social and welfare reform, and in the press, about the value of exercise in the open air and sunlight, as the threat of tuberculosis cast its shadow, causing one British death in every eight in the first decade of the twentieth century.8 Gardening as a hobby joined activities such as walking and bicycling as an ideal form of recreation to be enjoyed in the suburbs.9 By the 1920s, a ‘cult of the open air’ across all classes encouraged by ‘progressive’ social thought and health reform, saw a growing passion for hiking and organised sports.10 Social policy encouraged public recreation in open spaces to create fit, responsible, law-abiding citizens. At the same time, social research drew more attention to the stultifying effects of factory work and the benefits of leisure to productivity and so it made economic sense for industrialists to encourage social, recreational and educational activities within the factory and its grounds where the workers’ leisure time could be more easily supervised. As Vicky Long has argued, following the First World War when health in the munitions factories became an urgent issue, ‘the factory lay at the heart of a broadlybased health movement’.11 An attractive environment and opportunities for sports and recreation was said to promote employee physiological and psychological health. However, as Long points out, there was a danger that the ideal of a healthy factory only served to mask the real hazards of unhealthy working practices and production methods and products causing illness, which most employers did not address.12 Urban reform and factory landscapes into the twentieth century The belief that natural beauty, outdoor space and fresh air were desirable attributes for cities and towns and for the health and well-being of citizens shaped strategies to make more open space accessible to urban dwellers. Urban cultural life was becoming more varied for a growing, affluent middle class looking for diversions and entertainments and attractive parks provided space for healthy, pleasurable recreation and social visibility. Members of the working classes too were lobbying for clean open space. Reformers and philanthropists, many of whom were industrialists, supported their campaigns in the ardent belief that properly managed and controlled parks would encourage respectable behaviour, keep people out of the pub or saloon and improve ­physical and

From model factory to modern factory41 mental health. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, public health policies and public demand for sports in both nations hastened the emergence of modern recreation parks increasingly in working-class areas, designed to incorporate sports facilities as well as pleasure gardens.13 At the same time, industrialists, who, with the nobility (in Britain), were frequently the patrons of the new urban parks, began to more directly shape the health, well-being and character of their employees by providing open space at their factories that was directly under their control and thereby improve their chances of economic success. Initiatives to beautify factories were embodied in the City Beautiful and the Garden City Movements, which began to focus attention on the importance of coordinated urban planning. Although their design ideals differed, the City Beautiful and Garden City Movements’ common aim was to create high-status, respectable communities through beauty in architecture and urban design. The City Beautiful Movement in the USA, initially associated with the celebrated designs for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago by the architect Daniel Burnham and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, quickly spread throughout the nation. In the years before the First World War, organisations such as the American Civic Association, founded in 1904, and numerous local civic initiatives, took up City Beautiful ideals and promoted the idea of beauty through landscaping in towns and cities. By the early 1900s, the movement was in full swing in both nations, but by this time, the Garden City Movement, now burgeoning in England and spreading rapidly to the USA, represented by its flagship Letchworth Garden City, produced some alternative ideas for urban spatial planning. These included some creative thinking on the relationship between housing and industry and the aesthetics of the industrial landscape. The Garden City Movement, inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s book, Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) (revised in 1902 as Garden Cities of Tomorrow) demanded that access for everyone to open space in towns and cities was not just an ideal, but should be central to urban and suburban planning policy. In garden cities, nature would play a part in the healing of the ills caused by industrialisation and open space and recreation would improve the health of the workforce. Howard advised that the hub of every new city would be formed by a public park and that factories should be built around the periphery, close enough to reach on foot or by bicycle, but far enough to prevent the nuisance of noise and the harmful effects of smoke. An attractive industrial zone close to the town meant that factories could be physically and symbolically part of the domestic and social life of the town, but in a defined area (Figure 2.1). Allotments sited on the edge of the city near

42

The factory in a garden

2.1  Advertisement for Welwyn Garden City in Punch magazine, December 1920, which idealises the working environment in the town.

the factories could provide healthy and productive recreation after work, as well as at weekends. At Letchworth Garden City, factory landscaping became an integral part of Howard’s vision and at Welwyn Garden City, some companies

From model factory to modern factory43

2.2  Waterworks at Letchworth Garden City with exuberant planting in a formal design around a pond and fountain, 1920s.

including Shredded Wheat took landscaping seriously. Louis de Soissons, the architect of Welwyn Garden City who also oversaw the landscaping, designed basic hard landscaping and tree planting into his plans for the sectional factories at Welwyn, but at some of the larger factories like Shredded Wheat, he designed a more sophisticated landscape. Factory landscaping was by no means solely the preserve of large companies, for at Letchworth, even the small waterworks plant sported an effulgent landscaped garden by about 1920 (Figure 2.2). Pleasant factory gardens were of course the exception rather than the rule. The garden city pioneer Charles Purdom pointed out that the surroundings of the factories at Letchworth were ‘anything but pleasant. Untidiness is common, grass is usually left uncut, and there is created a feeling of carelessness and inefficiency which cannot fail to have a psychological effect.’14 It would be the Spirella Corset Company in Letchworth, discussed in this chapter, whose factory would redeem the city’s reputation for attractive industrial landscaping. In the USA too, most companies showed little interest in landscaping their factory buildings, and those building company towns, tended to isolate their plant from housing.15 The Pullman debacle had confirmed to those already sceptical that an overly paternalistic control over the workers’ domestic as well as their working lives could end in

44

The factory in a garden disaster and even the landscaping had been ridiculed as symbolic of ‘the old country-landlord system’.16 One company, US Steel, did not provide parks and recreation grounds or other amenities at their Gary, Indiana plant. Instead, they established an independent development company and sold housing lots to outsiders as well as to their own workers, but it became a bleak and haphazard industrial site.17 A significant number of companies did, however, endorse the value of landscape design as well as good quality architecture to the complete industrial landscape. Progressive industrialists such as Titus Salt, William Lever, George Cadbury and John Patterson, together with urban planning and design initiatives such as City Beautiful and the Garden City Movement, had paved the way. Factory landscapes in the 1920s and 1930s While the Garden City Movement continued to influence urban planning on both continents, Howard’s garden city model did not endure and instead, suburban development accelerated through the 1920s and 1930s, often along roads as ‘ribbon developments’ or arranged as estates or ‘garden suburbs’. In America, ‘new’ non-paternalistic planned industrial communities seemed to be the best solution and many of these were modelled on the garden city but without Howard’s more radical proposals such as cooperatives and self-sufficiency.18 From the late 1920s, factories were frequently built along or near suburban arterial routes, such as in London, the Great West Road, Western Avenue, Eastern Avenue and the North Circular Road.19 These new roads provided convenient and spacious sites for American companies establishing in England including Hoover and Firestone.20 To sweeten the impact of growing numbers of light industries, factory buildings of the 1930s began to look less functionalist and more symbolic of a magical, mythological world of mass consumption primed by advertising. Architects embellished them with fancy façades and added social clubs, sports pavilions and even indoor and outdoor swimming pools to encourage employees to imbibe ‘respectable’ company culture and a team spirit. Lawns, trees and flowerbeds contributed to the cheerful impression and homelike atmosphere. The British architect Thomas Wallis of Wallis, Gilbert & Partners designed many of these ‘fancy’ factories. Wallis had a personal preference for factory gardens for their humanising influence and commercial benefit.21 For the approach to the Hoover factory, designed in the popular ‘moderne’ style that combined functional modernism with a touch of Hollywood glamour, Wallis designed a sunburst motif to be filled with plants, to echo the decoratively assertive and colourful glazed panel above the door (Figure 2.3).

From model factory to modern factory45

2.3  A photograph of the Perivale factory taken from The Hoover Annual of 1964. Architect Thomas Wallis designed the ‘sunburst’ planting scheme.

These bright and clean and factories impressed J. B. Priestley on his travels around England in the early 1930s, but he was also somewhat incredulous as to their real function: These decorative little buildings, all glass and concrete and chromium plate, seem to my barbaric mind to be merely playing at being factories. You could go up to any one of the charming little fellows, I feel, and safely order an icecream [sic] or select a few picture postcards. But as for industry, real industry with double entry and bills of lading, I cannot believe them capable of it.22

The factories clearly had the desired advertising effect, although the decorative façades and gardens of the celebrated factories favoured the white-collar workers whose offices faced the main roads while the bluecollar workers were consigned to invisibility at the rear of the building.23 In the 1920s and 1930s, welfare facilities such as dining halls, social clubs and recreation grounds were more commonly provided at factories, inspired partly by organisations campaigning for better welfare provision at work, such as the Industrial Welfare Society (IWS) in the UK and the National Civic Federation in the USA.24 In the UK, some companies modelled themselves on the renowned garden factory, Cadbury at Bournville. One of these was Montague Burton who built a model factory for his tailoring business in Worsley in Lancashire and named the

46

The factory in a garden site Burtonville. He chose Thomas Wallis’s practice to design the factory (opened in 1938) owing to their reputation for prestige buildings, and perhaps because Wallis was an advocate of gardens. This state-of-theart factory was air conditioned and provided piped music to alleviate boredom on the factory floor. More than half the total site was given over to sports fields (slightly encroached upon in 1966 when a new canteen was built) and the owner promoted the family spirit.25 Industrial Welfare, the journal of the IWS, and their pamphlets, Recreation in Industry. A Guide to Existing Facilities (1938) and Factory Gardens (1955), reveal that a steady stream of companies opened gardens and recreation grounds throughout the 1920s and 1930s and the practice had become common at large establishments by the 1950s. These commonly provided football, cricket, tennis and bowls and often putting and golf, with a sports pavilion for changing, refreshments and entertainments and some of these grounds included rest areas planted with shrubs and flowers.26 Many companies had their administration building or social centre professionally landscaped and planted and some provided roof gardens for rest breaks during working hours. The flat roof became one of the signatures of modernist architecture and architects designed roof gardens as part of an aesthetic and functional whole. Some saw roof gardens as vital to high-density urban developments. Frank Lloyd Wright incorporated rooftop conservatories and terraces for employees and guests into the design of his highly influential administration building for the Larkin Company in Buffalo, New York (1904),27 and he designed roof gardens for his Chicago and New York skyscraper projects in the 1920s. The Unilever building in Rotterdam, designed by H. F. Mertens (1930) had a large, paved garden on the flat roof with raised ornamental flowerbeds of the kind that Frank Lloyd Wright and the arch-modernist Le Corbusier might have deplored.28 Articles in the IWS publications concerning recreation are mostly about sport (their book Recreation in Industry does not mention gardens) but discussions of pleasure gardens and recreation grounds at factories in their journal (at least nineteen articles or mentions between 1918 and 1939) reveal that the society valued such spaces at factories and encouraged them. One designed for the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd at Govan in Scotland in the early 1920s by Commander Coote, a member of the IWS, incorporates numerous activities including a pavilion and formal gardens, perhaps too many in a relatively small space. However, the plan represents the IWS ideal in the number and variety of outdoor activities for employees and their children.29 In the USA, the increasing numbers of industrialists who commissioned the Olmsted firm to landscape their buildings (see Gazetteer) is an indication of demand for aesthetics and welfare facilities. The firm

From model factory to modern factory47 had already proved their professional worth in designing the grounds for the Solvay Process Company (Soda-Ash) in Syracuse New York (1901–2) with suitable plants to withstand pollution. Plans for the administration grounds suggest a sizeable landscaped park with extensive lawns, trees and shrubs with tennis courts, a guild hall and women’s dormitory and with a planting plan ‘specially qualified to withstand the adverse circumstances incident to the injurious gases from the factory’.30 From the 1930s, as new technology companies opened out-of-town facilities to optimise their research capabilities, they employed architecture and landscape professionals to help attract a university-educated workforce and to assuage the resistance of local residents. In employing the Olmsted Brothers to landscape the AT & T Bell Laboratories at Summit, New Jersey in 1930, the president exploited the Olmsted’s prestige as principle landscapists to legitimise the development.31 In 1934 a survey of 233 firms carried out by the National Industrial Conference Board and Purdue University to study industrial relations activities in the Great Depression confirmed a reduction of social and recreational activities due to lack of funds, but with the exception of athletic activities which ‘were fairly well maintained, and employee clubs and company gardens were generally continued’.32 In 1938, once the Depression was easing and before war would impose yet another national crisis, recreation was put firmly back on the agenda with the founding of the Society of Recreation Workers of America (later the American Recreation Society) to raise standards. Recreation was seen as a vital factor in the upkeep of worker morale and health and in 1941 the Industrial Recreation Association was founded to oversee and extend worker recreation programmes. In Britain and America between the wars, a corporate garden and park movement became firmly established, recreation grounds for sport were provided for employees in increasing numbers and the contribution of industry to the demand for sports provision was significant. In America, companies increasingly embraced landscape as well as architectural design in planning their new manufacturing and research facilities. In Britain, discussions on corporate gardens and recreation grounds began to appear more regularly in pamphlets and in professional journals, and their value to industry was at last formally acknowledged in 1955 with the IWS publication Factory Gardens.33 In both nations, sports at larger factories became the norm after the Second World War. Factory garden pioneers The factory gardens and parks introduced in the following sections were constructed by pioneering industrialists from the 1890s to the

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The factory in a garden beginning of the 1930s to improve the environment for employee health, motivation and to enhance the corporate image. The Cadbury Brothers of the chocolate firm at Bournville, near Birmingham and John Patterson of the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio were key  players who set a standard of landscaping by which future ‘model’ and ‘modern’ factories were judged and they pioneered the idea of providing gardens or parks attached to the factory itself, not as part of a company town or village. At these factories, employees could enjoy pleasure gardens, sizeable sports grounds and allotments, including garden space designated for women and vegetable gardens for children of both sexes. The two other companies discussed, the American Shredded Wheat and the Spirella Corset Company also became renowned for their elaborate landscaping and facilities for outdoor recreation and they exemplify companies with pleasure gardens that consisted not exclusively areas of lawns adjacent to the factory, but sometimes made on the factory roof. The making of recreation and garden spaces at factories ran broadly parallel in Britain and America although after 1900, American firms opening plants in Britain such as the Spirella Corset Company, the Natural Food Company (Shredded Wheat) and Heinz were prominent in the Factory Garden and Park Movement, which perhaps reflected their relative wealth as much as their commitment to gardens and parks. The British at this time did not have a fully fledged landscape profession to champion the cause of industrial landscapes, so it was down to the personal commitment of client, architect or engineer to landscape the factory. The Cadbury Chocolate Factory, Bournville, Worcestershire In 1879, George and Richard Cadbury moved their works from the centre of Birmingham to a new rural site of 14½ acres to the south-west of the city, on the banks of the Bourn stream with a station and canal nearby.34 From the start, the brothers tried hard to contain, or cover up, the effects of industrial development on the environment by emphasising their conservational approach to the site and providing recreational space for their employees. They named the site Bournville, preserved a cottage there – Bournbrook Cottage, known as Mrs Duffield’s Cottage – which for a few years remained within the works premises, and built housing nearby in the nostalgic image of a traditional village, with gardens, greens and other community amenities. The brothers were aware of the sensitivities of suburban development and of the potential harm to the company’s image of environmental damage. At least one local complained that the factory was polluting the Bourn Brook.35

From model factory to modern factory49

2.4  Postcard of the ‘Girls’ Playground’ at the Cadbury factory, 1905. This was the first outdoor space provided for the female employees, before the purchase of the grounds of Bournbrook Hall. The ‘Girls’ Baths’, opened in 1904, overlooks the playground.

The first factory buildings were relatively undistinguished architecturally. Early reports and images show more interest in the green space around the factory, which included a sports ground for the men, and a small playground with swings for the women – ‘a cultivated garden for rest and recreation’36 (Figure 2.4). In 1895, seventeen years after the initial foundation, the brothers bought the neighbouring estate, Bournbrook Hall, giving them a perfect opportunity to situate the factory in an Arcadian setting. The acquisition of this eighteenth-century villa and its garden was a popular move.37 This new land provided the factory with 26 acres of recreation space for men and women, which was a much larger proportion of open space to buildings. By 1902 the architect, Henry Bedford-Tyler (1871–1915) had built a pavilion overlooking the Men’s Recreation Ground, an eclectic ‘Tudorbethan’ turreted fairy-tale ‘castle’, and a picturesque wooden bridge over Bournville Lane, connected the Men’s to the Girls’ Grounds, as the former gardens of Bournbrook Hall became known (Figure 2.5).38 These structures gave a sense of drama to the factory approach and provided additional safe access for the more sporting, theatrical and social events for which the Girls’ Grounds became renowned. For twelve years, the firm lodged female workers in Bournbrook Hall and provided a private access to the grounds by means of a tunnel built under the road from the girls’ playground and they added a sports

50

The factory in a garden

2.5  Postcard of the Men’s Pavilion at Cadbury with Bournbrook Hall to the right, 1905–7.

pavilion and cycle shed. (In the 1920s, when the new dining block was completed, a second tunnel to the grounds was constructed. The tunnels are still there, but not used.) By this time, the firm was beginning to build more architecturally distinguished buildings that added to the cultural capital of the site, like the men’s pavilion and the state-of-the-art indoor swimming bath for the girls, designed by the firm’s architect, George Lewin and opened in 1904.39 In 1907, the firm employed a Quaker firm of garden architects, Cheals of Crawley to modernise the Girls’ Grounds. After 1919, the recreational facilities at Bournville were boosted by yet another purchase of land, some one hundred acres at Rowheath, half a mile south of the factory. And to commemorate their centenary in 1931, the firm opened a formal garden with pool and fountain between the terrace of the new diningroom block (completed in 1927) and the Men’s Recreation Ground. The Cadbury grounds even today provide a pleasant green setting for the factory and offices and symbolically identify the workforce and their needs as the main focus of interest when arriving at the plant. The other factories of the Cadbury firm at home and abroad also had gardens including those of the Moreton Factory (which also had a lily pond)40 and Fry, the firm taken over by Cadbury in 1919. The Cheals firm were also responsible for the landscaping at Fry at Somerton, near Bristol. We return to the Cadbury factory grounds in the following chapters where their designs, how they were used for recreation, and their modes of representation in publicity materials are examined in more detail.

From model factory to modern factory51 The National Cash Register Company (NCR), Dayton, Ohio The success of the Cadburys in creating a factory Arcadia was matched in the USA by John H. Patterson. The industrialists’ mutual admiration began as early as 1902, when the young George Cadbury went to Dayton to study the NCR’s welfare methods and the professional relationship lasted until Patterson’s death in 1922 when three copies of Edward Cadbury’s book, Experiments in Industrial Organisation were found in his library. It is, therefore, no coincidence that these companies made some of the most celebrated corporate landscapes. As his empire grew from the early 1890s, Patterson built a modern ‘daylight’ factory on the edge of Dayton with windows from floor to ceiling, the latest in safety conscious machinery and the best welfare facilities money could buy, such as bathrooms and rest rooms for the women. Business was booming when, in the mid-1890s, the return of a valuable order of cash registers from England, found to be faulty, inspired Patterson to think of new measures to improve production and motivation. In October 1895, Patterson called in from Boston the most famous landscape architects in the USA, the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot (who later designed the grounds of the Solvay Process Company and Bell Laboratories discussed) to beautify the factory and is neighbourhood, a run-down suburb known as Slidertown.41 The Olmsted firm was a good choice since their patriarch, Frederick Law Olmsted, by now an old man (he died in 1903), believed passionately in the moral value of gardens but thought that a design of the Pullman type had been too prescriptive and controlling, imposing ‘ugly and monotonous geometric patterns on nature’.42 John Patterson was typical of progressive industrialists at this time, many of whom were ardent supporters of the City Beautiful Movement and interested in social reform through housing development and access to open space. He travelled abroad extensively and visited leading manufacturers including at least one visit to Port Sunlight in 1899 where he made a speech at the horticultural show.43 By 1918 he was a member of the American Civic Association, The National Civic Federation, the Civic Forum and the School Gardens Association44 and he and his officers gave regular lectures locally and nationally on subjects such as civics and the benefits of gardens, illustrated by his example at the NCR and the city of Dayton. However, Patterson was also vastly ambitious and a zealot, not only in building a profitable corporation, but in setting an example to the world in such matters as welfare and health to improve people’s lives and enrich themselves, but above all to make them more efficient, kept in perfect shape and under control. John Patterson epitomised the extreme position of the body as a machine, he gave his workforce distilled water to drink, started

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The factory in a garden the working day with calisthenics for ten minutes in each office and ­compelled senior management to accompany him on horseback for early morning rides. He promoted his company parks as aids to health, not to pleasure.45 His treatment of his own body was no less than fanatical for as an experiment he fasted for thirty days and drank only water, a regime from which his health never fully recovered. His motives were not those of a philanthropist, for his slogan, ‘It Pays’, emphasised the economic motivations of his measures (Figure 2.6). With the benefit of the Olmsted’s advice, Patterson renamed the area ‘South Park’, provided incentives and advice to local people on how to beautify their homes with gardens and began to provide facilities for his workforce at a level of sophistication that was rare at factories at the time. These included a ‘Boys’ Garden’, an insurance association, a medical department, baths, a dining area and rest rooms, library and

2.6  Lantern slide from the NCR ‘Factory Lecture’ (early 1900s) linking the benefits of welfare, particularly access to green space, to profit. The slogan ‘It Pays’ was posted all around the factory.

From model factory to modern factory53 reading room, Sunday school, choral societies, musical groups, a theatre, a ­kindergarten and a number of other clubs. John Patterson’s solution to the local Slidertown youth who had been running wild and breaking the factory windows, was to engage them physically with the environment through gardening with strict supervision in his flagship ‘Boys’ Gardens’. In the opinion of Patterson and other reformers, ‘The farm is the best school in the world’, and the garden plot was the closest model to the farm in a suburban environment. John Patterson regarded his Boys’ Gardens as a role model and catalyst to the Schools Gardens Movement developing in America, possibly with some justification. The Association of Schools Gardens invited him to make one of the two keynote speeches following the Schools Gardens Festival Concert in the Carnegie Hall on 7 July 1916 and Patterson used slides and a motion picture from the NCR to illustrate his speech.46 Patterson also opened Girls’ Gardens and the Cadburys, Rowntrees and Lever at Port Sunlight also had gardens for both sexes. All gardeners were supplied with free seed and manure on condition of ‘proper’ gardening practices. In the years that followed, the NCR recreation grounds were provided with a landscaped lake with island, open air gym, tennis courts and athletic field for the women (the Women’s Club), all naturalistically landscaped. Not content with these amenities, the company added a grandstand with swimming tank underneath, a baseball diamond, football field and running track and men’s outdoor gymnasium.47 I return to the NCR grounds in Chapters 3 and 4 where their designs and how they were used are discussed in more detail. Chapter 5 discusses the Olmsted’s designs for the extensive Hills and Dales country park, begun in 1905 and for the Old River Park, from 1937, to examine the extent to which the landscape architects succeeded in creating a sense of place through design. In Chapter 6 I explore the significance of the NCR gardens and parks in promotional imagery and Chapter 7 considers the relative values of these recreation spaces to employer and employee. The Natural Food Company (Wheat) Niagara Falls and Welwyn Garden City Mr Henry Perky founded the Natural Food Company (which became the Shredded Wheat Co. in 1913) in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1894 and soon afterwards he moved the factory to Worcester. By 1895, the company was expanding fast and attracted by the power at Niagara Falls and by the marketing opportunities presented by this popular and dramatic natural wonder, Perky decided to move to the new industrial area. He chose a prestigious site of ten acres on Buffalo Avenue, in the

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The factory in a garden best residential district overlooking the Falls, far from the industrial area. The locals were horrified. To restrain local opposition to his plans, he announced his intention to build ‘a show factory – a temple of cleanliness to house the purest and cleanest of foods’.48 The reputation of the NCR factory had already spread across the nation, for the Niagara Falls Gazette proclaimed that the ‘ famous features’ of the NCR factory at Dayton would be reproduced and the coming development would be like a: Crowning triumph for Niagara Falls, It sounds like a dream, Reads Like a Fairy Tale, Seems too good to be true $10,000,000 company decides to locate here.49

Perky chose the Norcross Brothers, a prominent firm of Boston builders to design and build the factory, which he called the ‘Palace of Light’ and the first shredded wheat biscuit was baked there in May 1901 (Figure 2.7). The ‘daylight’ factory, of modern steel frame construction costing over $2,000,000, was fully air-conditioned and the large windows gave an unobstructed view of the Niagara River and other adjacent land purchased to prevent interference from other companies.50 The reputable Olmsted firm, which for some years had been working on much of the

2.7  The Shredded Wheat Factory, overlooking the Niagara River, with attractive landscaping, and views from the roof terrace to the top of the Niagara Falls, c.1910

From model factory to modern factory55 residential and park land at Niagara Falls, was the obvious choice to landscape the grounds. In March 1901, Perky wrote to them, seeking advice on landscaping a domestic science school and a club, adjacent or near to the factory. Following a visit soon afterwards, the Olmsteds provided plans and a written grading and planting specification. In July, John Charles Olmsted met with Perky to discuss the landscaping of the factory and of his own residence, but Olmsted’s memorandum following the visit suggests that Perky was too busy to give the project his full attention.51 The grading plans for the factory in the Olmsted Archive dated March and April 1902, together with illustrations of the factory, suggest, however, that the landscaping, of ten acres, was carried out to the Olmsteds’ specifications.52 Extensive lawns planted with trees and shrubs were bounded by a curving drive that prolonged the approach to the impressive factory entrance. The landscape was designed for both active and passive recreation for it included sports grounds, a children’s playground open to the public, allotments and seating in quieter areas.53 Photographs, illustrations and contemporary accounts suggest that the grounds as well as the factory buildings were essential to the corporate image, designed to impress, to reassure and to symbolise a link between healthy eating, model working conditions and social reform. To reinforce the message, Perky boasted that his factory, which he named the Natural Food Conservatory, ‘provided a beautiful place for employees work in … probably the most rational scheme of social and moral betterment that may be found in any factory in this country’.54 One visitor to the factory in 1906, a Mr Joseph Newton Hallock, recorded his impressions in The Christian Work and Evangelist magazine. A ‘high-speed’ elevator took him to the roof of the factory, where he enjoyed the ‘pure invigorating air from over the Niagara rapids’. He described the view of ‘beautiful lawns’ and the ‘pure atmosphere between the great factory and the wide river’55 that was managed by the company Landscape Department. The Olmsteds’ influence on the Natural Food Company extended beyond the landscape design. Perky had visited the NCR where the landscapes and gardening practices had been shaped by the Olmsted firm and he head-hunted one of the NCR managing engineers, Edward A. Deeds.56 According to the NCR welfare secretary, Lena Harvey Tracy, who subsequently visited the Natural Food Conservatory, Perky copied all the NCR welfare ideas to the tune of $90,000.57 This included presenting the factory as a model of good gardening practice in the neighbourhood and the Natural Food Company’s gardening publications were almost ­identical to those at the NCR. The Shredded Wheat Company, which was phenomenally successful, soon opened further plants; one on the Canadian side of the Falls,  in Erie Ave, Ontario, one in Oakland, California and one in

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The factory in a garden Welwyn Garden City, UK, which, like Niagara Falls, was a new town in an attractive e­ nvironment and based on forward-looking principles. The Shredded Wheat factory at Welwyn (1925) was very similar to the plant at Niagara Falls in its visual impact and amenities, although the architect, Louis de Soissons had been more adventurous than the Norcross Brothers in his use of architectural language and metaphor. Both factories were distinguished by a sweeping drive up to the front door, in the image of a country house, but de Soissons had mixed his metaphors, for the entrance drive at the Welwyn factory resembled the approach to an American mansion or ranch. Visitors arriving at the factory would drive or walk through the Folly Arch and sweep up a tree-lined avenue, passing the football field, cricket pitch and tennis courts on their left before arriving at the grand entrance embellished with lush plantings of shrubs. De Soissons, a proto-modernist, also exploited the soaring aesthetics of American and Canadian grain silos to produce a heroic building that proclaimed function and advertised its product. De Soissons’ Canadian origins and his Paris education might have contributed to the design of the building for it is possible that he had read Le Corbusier’s Vers une Architecture published in Paris in 1923, in which the author celebrates the architectonics of grain silos58 (Figure 2.8). The white-tiled cladding, large windows and landscaping also contributed to this image. Newspaper reports at the time described the building as a palace of crystal in reverence to that great 1851 icon of industrial prowess. They

2.8  An idealised Shredded Wheat factory, Welwyn Garden City, 1920s. A chauffeur-driven elite car signifies a high-class establishment.

From model factory to modern factory57 marvelled at the huge walls of glass held together by slender white-tiled columns of concrete.59 There are no records other than photographs and illustrations of the landscaping, but it was almost certainly designed by de Soissons who oversaw all the landscaping of Welwyn with the help of the local Digswell nurseries who supplied plants, planting plans and labour to the public and no doubt also to the many private areas of Welwyn.60 The factory landscape, with its tree-lined drive, became a vital component in the Shredded Wheat advertising. I discuss an example in Chapter 5 where I consider the representation of corporate landscapes in corporate identity and publicity. The facilities and amenities for staff for rest and recreation were very similar to those at Niagara Falls and included sports grounds and gardens (including three hard tennis courts), a visitors’ room in colonial style with potted plants very much in evidence, and staff recreation and dining rooms (a free midday meal was available to all). Within three years, the factory had become a popular destination for visitors with 12,000–15,000 visiting per year, although these were tiny numbers by comparison with the Niagara Falls plant. The Spirella Corset Factory, Letchworth Garden City The Spirella Corset Company was founded in a town centre factory in Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 1904 to manufacture corsets made on the new ‘spiral stay’ principle (a wire construction instead of the traditional bone stay) a system that due to the flexibility, comfort and durability of the stay, ‘revolutionised’ the corset industry. (An estimated forty million corsets were produced in the USA alone in the early 1900s.)61 From the start, the company had a strong welfare policy and each employee belonged to the Spirella Welfare Association, which provided educational and recreations facilities. There was no garden at the factory, but indoor physical training was popular and the employees could take advantage of one of the several parks in Meadville for company sports. The company moved to Niagara Falls between 1911 and 1917, where a small plant already existed (built in 1908) and where the founder, W. W. Kincaid, kept a model farm (a small operation remained in Meadville until 1929). Niagara Falls had become a popular industrial area since the power from the falls had been harnessed and the Spirella Company took advantage of its reputation and built a large model factory on the New York side of the Falls and another on the Canadian side. A report on the Canadian factory in the Daily Record of 9 March 1911 suggests that the building was attractively landscaped with lawns, flowers and shrubs, ‘thus making it one of the most beautiful spots in the city’.62

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The factory in a garden In 1910, the Spirella Company opened a British operation in Letchworth Garden City, UK, initially in a small and undistinguished factory, but within two years a new factory, which became known as ‘Castle Corset’ was built close to the centre of the town (1912–22). By the early 1930s or possibly earlier, the company opened its own sports ground nearby. The choice of site was unusual to the overall conception of the Garden City since the industrial area had been planned on the edge of the city near the railway line, but the Corporation must have been persuaded by the ambitions of the company to build a factory of distinction in a very prominent position. The architect was Cecil Hignett, who designed the factory in Edwardian freestyle and the design was also informed by the latest ideas on the ‘Daylight Factory’ being developed in the USA. The building had large double-height windows similar to its sister factory at Niagara Falls in the USA, which was being built at the same time. (The Letchworth Factory is now listed, Grade II.) The top floor of the building included a magnificent ballroom with a sprung dance floor (still there and available for hire) with doors onto a substantial roof garden. Additional amenities included a dining hall, library, baths, health centre and the 9-acre sports ground complete with pavilion.63 Illustrations in the Spirella Silver Jubilee brochure of 1910–35 show large and dignified interiors, including the front entrance hall furnished with cane chairs and a large flowing plant on the table, not unlike the lobby of a luxury hotel.64 By 1935, visitors were received in elegant salons embellished with palms and flowering plants and customers were fitted in modern rooms with tubular steel furniture. The factory was placed to make the most of the landscape, for the building was set back from the road and an elaborate Renaissance-style garden provided an elegant setting for the factory (Figure 2.9). No records have yet been found to reveal the designer of the Spirella gardens but it could have been Hignett himself, or his office, for there is a relationship in layout and proportion to the design of the building, in accordance with the principles of Renaissance architectural and landscape design. Initially, the formality of the planting and the hard landscaping emphasised the classical aspects of the building, but by the 1940s, the ivy that had been allowed to grow all over the building had softened the hard profile and brought out the building’s English vernacular, more picturesque aspect. The U-shaped factory with imposing hipped roofs, huge arched windows and formal garden was much celebrated by the company and by the Garden City Corporation for which it symbolised the success of combining industry with ideal residential conditions. The company adopted the Cadbury slogan of ‘The Factory in a Garden’ in their publicity material and a postcard of 1920 proclaimed, ‘Not a country house,

From model factory to modern factory59

2.9  Spirella Corset Factory, Letchworth Garden City, c.1922.

but a corset factory’. The building in its formal garden distinguished the factory above all others in the area and probably all factories already known by the workforce, many of whom came from surrounding villages. On the company’s twenty-first birthday in 1931, the garden played a central role, becoming a key symbol of the company’s success.65 The founder, Mr Kincaid, now old and frail, came over from the USA to preside over the unveiling of the new fountain, attended by 1,000 guests. Flags from around the world bedecked the factory building and guests were served tea in a huge marquee and in the dining room. In the evening, floodlights and festoons of coloured lights illuminated the factory. A replica of the fountain was presented to Mr Moore, the first managing director of the British company.66 Conclusion: factories and the value of gardens It could be argued that industrial landscaping and recreation were part of an anaesthetising process to pacify and control an increasingly politically aware workforce and therefore were part of a reactionary dogma to slow down or halt modernity. An alternative view might be that they represented a modern progressive industrial outlook, an attempt to avoid the exploitations of the past and an awareness of the importance of image to corporate success and civic improvement. As Charles Mulford Robinson expressed it in 1904, ‘the factory itself, now vine-covered and gardensurrounded [was] less to be dreaded’.67

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The factory in a garden It was very common in the early twentieth century for thinking about the future to be shaped by contradictions; on the one hand to produce revolutionary, forward-thinking solutions while on the other, nurturing a nostalgic vision of the past. Henry Ford is a good example, with his celebrated Model-T, the first car to be built on an automated production line and his creation of Greenfield Village, his nostalgic celebration of a rural past. The motives for landscaping were multi-dimensional and therefore ambiguously traditional and modern at the same time in attempting to create a union of industry and nature. They were also ambiguous in their mixed motives of altruism, control and personal gain. Therefore responses to these landscapes are particularly interesting, for while there is evidence that good design promoted a stable and contented workforce in some plants, other evidence exists of discontented and suspicious factory workers who resented good design and conditions, regarding them as veneers to encourage passivity or as a cover-up for alternative benefits like higher wages.68 There is therefore a clash between a management that considered itself increasingly modern in the way the factory was organised and a workforce trying to play a greater role in the commercial benefits of modernity. Environmental determinism applied to urban design for worker control does not necessarily make for contented workers. I return to these points in Chapter 7 where I discuss employees’ responses to the corporate landscapes. Chapter 3 looks more closely at the idea of the garden itself to ask why the symbolic attributes of gardens and parks were thought to be so beneficial in moulding the model employee. Notes  1 For example, ‘Workers leaving Haslam’s Ltd, Colne’, a Lancashire cotton factory in 1900, filmed by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon before the 1903 Employment of Children Act. This genre of film which came with captive audiences willing to pay to see themselves on camera, originated in the Lumière Brothers’ factory exit films made at Lyons in the 1890s.  2 Harris, J. Private Lives Public Spirit: a Social History of Britain 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1993), p. 33 and Atkins, J. B. National Physical Training: An Open Debate (London, 1904).  3 Hickman, C. Therapeutic Landscapes. A History of English Hospital Gardens since 1800 (Manchester, 2013).  4 Macleod, D. I. The Age of the Child: Children in America 1890–1920 (New York, 1998), p. 24.  5 Bailey, P. Leisure and Class in Victorian England. Rational Recreation and the Context for Control 1830–1885 (London, 1987), pp. 16–27.  6 Jordan, H. ‘Public Parks, 1885–1914’, Garden History 22:1 (1994), 85–113.  7 Cranz, ‘“Reform Parks” in the United States (1900–1930)’, in Mosser, M. and Teyssot, G. The History of Garden Design. The Western Tradition from the Renaissance to the Present Day (London, 2000).

From model factory to modern factory61  8 Bryder, L. Below the Magic Mountain: a Social History of Tuberculosis in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford, 1988), p. 11 in Worpole, K. Here Comes the Sun: Architecture and Public Space in Twentieth Century European Culture (London 2000), p. 49.  9 Stilgoe, Borderland, p. 260. 10 Worpole, Here Comes the Sun, p. 88. 11 Long, The Rise and Fall of the Healthy Factory, pp. 207–11. 12 Ibid. 13 Pedersen, S. and Mandler, P. After the Victorians: Private Conscience and Public Duty in Modern Britain (London, 1994), p. 3; Conway, H. People’s Parks: the Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain (Cambridge, 1991); Conway, H. ‘Everyday Landscapes: Public Parks from 1930 to 2000’, Garden History 28:1 (2000), 117–34; Cranz, G. ‘Reform Parks’. 14 Purdom, C. B. The Building of Satellite Towns: A Contribution to the Study of Town Development and Regional Planning (London, 1949), p. 129. 15 Crawford, Building, p. 85. 16 Buder, Pullman, quoted in Crawford, Building, p. 43. 17 Mohl, R. A. and Betten, N. ‘The Failure of Industrial City Planning: Gary Indiana, 1906– 10’, American Institute of Planners Journal (July 1972), 206–15, in Crawford Building, p. 44. 18 Crawford, Building, pp. 75–6. 19 Harwood, E. and Saint. A. London (London, 1991), p. 222. 20 For an account of the Sanderson factory built from 1929, see ‘A Modern Factory’, Industrial Welfare XV (April 1933), 18–21, UW.MRC. 21 Skinner, J. S. Form and Fancy: Factories and Factory Buildings by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners 1916–1939 (Liverpool, 1997), p. 22. 22 Priestley, J. B. English Journey (London, 1934), p. 4. 23 Harwood and Saint, London, p. 231. 24 For details of IWS membership in c.1936, including the Cadburys’ see UW.MRC, MSS HF/1/e. 25 Skinner, Form and Fancy, pp. 214–22. 26 Industrial Welfare, first published in November 1918 as the Boys’ and Industrial Welfare Journal. Renamed Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management in 1929. 27 The conservatories contained palms, ferns, vines and aquatic plants. See Quinan, J. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact (Chicago, 2006), pp. 108, 150, 157. 28 Bucknell, Industrial Architecture, p. 43. 29 IWS, ‘Proposed Layout of Recreation Ground of the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co Ltd Govan, Designed by Commander Coote of the Industrial Welfare Society’, Journal of Industrial Welfare III:2 (February 1921), 63, UW.MRC. 30 Solvay Process Co., FLO.NHS, plans 00077, 77–5; 77–11; 77–12. 31 Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism, p. 56. 32 National Industrial Conference Board, ‘What Employers are Doing for Employees’, Studies 221 (New York, 1936), 5–21, quoted in Anderson, J. M. Industrial Recreation. A Guide to its Organization and Administration (New York, Toronto and London, 1955), pp. 62–3. 33 Verulam and Youngman, Factory Gardens and Mills, E. D. The Modern Factory (London, 1951). Republished as Mills, E. D. Factory Building (London, 1967). This version has

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The factory in a garden a separate chapter on landscaping for industry written by Susan Jellicoe. In 1964, an ­e xhibition ‘Industry and Landscape’ was held at the Institute of Landscape Architects. 34 I have written about Cadbury in a previous publication: Chance, H. ‘The Angel in the Garden Suburb. Arcadian Allegory in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, Bournville 1880– 1939’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 27:3 (2007), 197–216. 35 Cadbury, G. ‘A Great Housing Experiment’, The Municipal Journal 10 (22 March 1901), p. 208, quoted in Hoffman, J. M. ‘Imaging the Industrial Village: Architecture, Art, and Visual Culture in the Garden Community of Bournville, England’ (PhD Yale, 1993), 21. 36 Cadbury, E. Experiments in Industrial Organisation (London, 1912), pp. 221–2. 37 One employee, W. Pickard remembered the enthusiasm that greeted the acquisition of Bournbrook Hall and its land in 1895. ‘Personal Reminiscences’, CB, 000 003270. 38 The bridge was taken down in the 1970s. 39 See ‘The Girls Baths’, BWM 4:1 (November 1905), 5–8, CB. Swimming pools at factories were rare although bathhouses common in philanthropic plants. The Cadbury men had an open-air bath at the far side of their grounds. 40 ‘Cadbury’s Factory in a Garden at Moreton’, CB, 030 000041. 41 The Olmsted Firm underwent several name changes after Frederick Law’s retirement in 1895 – F. L. Olmsted and Co. 1889–93; Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot 1893–97; F. L. & J. C. Olmsted 1897–98; Olmsted Brothers 1898–1961. See Klaus, S. L. ‘All in the Family: The Olmsted Office and the Business of Landscape Architecture’, Landscape Journal 16:1 (1997), 80–95. John Charles was largely responsible for the NCR work, but in July 1904, when Patterson’s landscaping ambitions began to extend to the land beyond the factory and to his own garden, he requested that both brothers should visit the site. 42 Buder, Pullman, p. 71. 43 Progress, the Port Sunlight journal, 1899, p. 35. 44 ‘List of New York clubs and associations to which Mr John Patterson belongs’, NCR.DH. 45 Allyn, S. C. My Half Century with NCR (New York, 1968), pp. 16, 26. 46 Schools Gardens Festival Concert programme, 7 July 1916. NCR.DH. 47 FLO.NHS, 00280. Plan 280–122. See also ‘Athletic Field to be Enlarged’, The NCR. XVII:4 (September 1904), p. 181, NCR.DH. 48 Cahn, W. Out of the Cracker Barrel; the Nabisco Story, from Animal Crackers to Zuzus (New York, 1969), pp. 207–23. 49 Irwin, W. The New Niagara. Tourism, Technology and the Landscape of Niagara Falls 1776– 1917 (Pennsylvania, 1996), p. 188. 50 Ibid., p. 22. 51 LC.MD.OAR, Series B Correspondence files. 52 FLO.NHS, 00066, Perky, Henry D.; Niagara Falls; New York; 07 Private Estate & Homesteads; 8 PLANS (1901–1902). 53 Irwin, The New Niagara, p. 193. 54 Ibid., pp. 188, 198. 55 Hallock, J. N. The Christian Work and Evangelist (24 November 1906), p. 673, KA. 56 Cahn, Out of the Cracker Barrel, p. 214. 57 Tracy, L. H. How my Heart Sang. The Story of Pioneer Welfare Work (New York, Richard R. Smith, 1950), p. 155. Tracy quotes from a letter from the Eastman Kodak Company which also credits the NCR as a role model in welfare, p. 156.

From model factory to modern factory63 58 The book was first published in English in 1927 as Towards a New Architecture (London). 59 Filler, R. A History of Welwyn Garden City (Chichester, 1986), p. 131. 60 Digswell Nurseries, Welwyn, Board, Committee and General Meetings minutes, register of members, share ledger (1921–50), HL. D/EFfB45. 61 Meadville Tribune (11 March 1987). 62 ‘The Spirella Co.’, Daily Record (9 March 1911) Historic Niagara, Digital Collections, Niagara Falls Public Library, www.nflibrary.ca/nfplindex/results.asp (accessed 26 June 2006). 63 Silver Jubilee 1910–1935, FGCHM, 466.7. 64 Ibid., p. 44. 65 See ‘Notes of the Month’, Threads IV:41 (July 1931), 79–81 and The Spirella Magazine 21st Birthday Souvenir Number I:6 (June 1931), FGCHM. 66 See film ‘A British Industry’s Coming of Age’, produced for the 21st anniversary of Spirella in 1931, FGCHM, 762 (762.1; 762.2; 762.3). 67 Robinson, C. M. Modern Civic Art (London, 1998), p. 252. 68 Stilgoe, J. R. Borderland: the Origins of the American Suburb 1820–1939 (New Haven, CT and London, 1988), p. 252; see also Marchand, R. Creating the Corporate Soul. The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998).

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’ 3  ✧  ‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’

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previous chapters, we have seen how cosmetic and recreational landscapes had become features of many model and modern factories by the early years of the twentieth century in connection with modern employee welfare systems and improvements to the urban and suburban environments. We now consider the powerful cultural, symbolic and metaphorical meanings of gardens and parks and the ways in which they ‘engineered’ particular feelings, ideas, modes of behaviour and well-being among employees and consumers. Gardens and landscaping had at times been employed for these means since the beginning of the factory system, but by the end of the century, landscaping at factories was becoming more sophisticated in terms of design and amenity. In America from the 1880s and to a lesser extent in Britain from the 1900s, the expertise of professional landscapists with specialist design and horticultural knowledge made it possible to enhance the beauty, function and symbolic value of the available space with the ultimate aims of increasing productivity and profit. At the end of the chapter we see how, with these objectives in mind, Cadbury and the NCR increased their social and cultural capital through landscape design. n the

Why do gardens matter? Why do gardens and parks matter and why are they thought to be so be good for us? For Quakers George Cadbury and Joseph Rowntree, the very act of sowing and harvesting exercised the body and brought light to the soul, revolutionising both the physical and moral condition.1 These questions have been debated throughout history and, more recently, cultural and garden historians, anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers have advanced theories about the relationship between humans, land and landscape and the ways in which we have defined ourselves in the visual, material and literary arts through our rural past and relationship

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’65 with nature.2 Another approach adopted by cultural geographers, to analyse the deeper ideological structures in landscape, was taken up in the 1980s and 1990s by garden historians, who joined landscape historians and cultural geographers in their search for a more conceptual and contextual approach to gardens and other designed landscapes. They enriched late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century theories on the values of gardens by presenting ideas about garden and landscape design that encompass not only an ethical but also a broader philosophical approach which took into account sociological, psychological and ecological data on the value of gardens and the environment.3 Garden historians have argued that the problematical dialectic between art and nature in garden theory and practice produces a conceptual confusion.4 John Dixon Hunt has suggested that it is vital to combine a conceptual approach to gardens and designed landscapes with practical knowledge, in order to find the principles that shape the practice.5 Revisiting ideas about the relationship between gardens and the human condition he suggests that gardens and parks are types of landscapes that define both the individual and the more universal concerns and preoccupations of humankind. Borrowing from theories developed in cultural geography, Hunt concludes that landscape architecture is about place-making, the shaping of an environment that is a ‘central human activity’ and is ‘arguably a matrix of man’s and woman’s ambitions, instincts and desires’.6 This seems to me to be a more realistic and helpful approach to understanding designed landscapes, than one that attempts to construct an overall theory or philosophy of gardens. Other writers who have attempted philosophical and historical analyses of gardens have agreed that gardens can be seen as a metaphor for the human condition, for they are made up of plants that live, grow and die just like us. Mara Miller has suggested that the garden is a metaphor for an ideal human life, for relations between human beings, the state or the community. A garden is always an act of hope, for humans care for plants which have the potential to bring us aesthetic pleasure, but they also represent human caring because we try to control our physical surroundings to make them better.7 A garden is not simply a metaphor for, and a route to, the wholesome life, as Ruskin and other Christian moralists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries concluded, but is a framed landscape which encompasses wider ideological and symbolic meanings of our relationship with nature, and therefore becomes a conceptual metaphor for fundamental human actions and beliefs. It is chiefly the garden’s dependence on nature, our source of life and ­sustenance that makes it so central to life and therefore central to the good life. A survey conducted in Britain by Mass Observation in the early 1940s supports the suggestion that most adults of all classes valued,

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The factory in a garden even ‘treasured’ their gardens, and for those with greater economic need, garden space was regarded as an extra source of food from vegetables and livestock, as well as for rest and retreat. These conclusions are hardly surprising considering it was wartime, but the survey was designed to contribute to housing policy after the war and the respondents’ expressions of their love of gardens suggested pleasure as well as need.8 Gardens matter to many people because they represent and provide spaces that provide sustenance for the body, mind and spirit, and places that define and succour some of the fundamentals of human experience and need. Industrialists seized these beliefs and through garden and landscape design and a programme of outdoor activities, exploited the physical, aesthetic, mythical and symbolic positives of the idea of a garden or park, to shape their image and to influence, and to an extent to control, their employees. The factory garden for status: shaping the image of a community By the end of the nineteenth century, gardens and parks at factories were playing an increasingly important role in providing healthy recreation for factory and office workers and in moulding the physical and symbolic image of a company and its community in a variety of subtle ways. Some industrialists such as Titus Salt and William Lever laid out parks near their factories, to frame or shape the image of the company, while others like Pullman, Cadbury, Messrs Sears and Roebuck and the presidents of the NCR, Spirella and the Natural Food Company (Shredded Wheat) went further and placed their factory and offices within or beside a landscaped park or garden. Factories resembling palaces or country houses suggested associations with an aristocratic lineage and a stable, deferential society, and avoided possible negative associations of the workhouse, prison or asylum. The factory presented as a high-class country estate or manor house that not only looked impressive, but also cared for the workforce on a feudal model, as a community with common goals and familial relationships (Figure. 3.1). As the domestic servant class sought employment in factories after the First World War, the feudal model might have been reassuring to some, but oppressive to others.9 From at least the mid-seventeenth century, with the development of avenue gardens in Britain with grandiose lines of trees stretching several miles into the distance, the landowner had expressed ownership and status through garden design, not only of his immediate territory, but also of the possibility of the unlimited territory beyond. As Mara Miller has shown, grand gardens are the ultimate expression of wealth because having constructed and planted them at great expense the landowner is required to check the march of nature and maintain them daily.10 In the

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’67

3.1  The Horlicks factory in a country estate (Postcard. Racine, Wisconsin, USA, c.1914).

same way that landowners in the eighteenth century employed both architect and landscape architect to design their house and grounds, so a number of nineteenth- and twentieth- century industrialists employed both professionals to create a high-status environment that met their aspirations. Pullman, at his coach works in Illinois, the Cadbury brothers in Bournville, William Lever at Port Sunlight and John Patterson at the NCR were pioneers in this respect since they devoted a large proportion of their estates to landscaping and they all employed landscape architects to design their factory grounds or villages to create aesthetically and socially innovative workplaces. These ambitious men ensured their estates were very visible, both physically, as they were designed for a large variety of recreational purposes and were often made to exploit the best views from the railway, road or canal, and metaphorically, as they were also conspicuous in the ways in which they were presented through company literature and advertising. Above all, the landscapes were designed to impress and to persuade the local suburban or rural workforce, and potential shareholders and customers, that a factory need not be a blot on the landscape, but a positive economic, social and even aesthetic benefit to the neighbourhood. Towards the turn of the nineteenth century, the need for industrialists to create stable communities became even more urgent. As the worker became more independent through greater educational and political involvement, and could now enjoy more fun and fulfilment in the growing leisure industry, so the possibilities of personal freedom seemed

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The factory in a garden more attainable and work more like a necessary evil. This growing sense of human individuality, solidarity and dislike of authority became increasingly ill-adapted to authoritarian workplaces and production line processes.11 The negative aspects of factory work could be countered by a dynamic work culture, which helped to make working life tolerable.12 The encouragement of personal friendships, community spirit and familial loyalty were strengthened by the possibilities afforded by the space and the plants in the garden. Group photographs and a large variety of recreational activities and company events including carnivals and other musical and dramatic performances became possible in the gardens. These are discussed in Chapter 4 where I consider the ways in which the recreation grounds were used and in Chapter 6 where I analyse corporate promotional images. If personal freedom and a dislike of the mechanised production line began to threaten industrial progress and stability, the factory owners had to employ subtle strategies to make their factories more appealing to their workforce. This is where techniques of social engineering came in, where good design and attractive amenities and systems were adopted to increase the desirability of the factory. The factory had to look more attractive, clean and homely and more morally respectable. In some areas, these factors were considered particularly important in attracting the female worker who was favoured in the growing numbers of light industries.13 The factory garden, religion and family values Although religious faith was a driving force in the making of factory gardens it was not exclusively so, because some of the key supporters of gardens at factories and in factory villages, including John Patterson, were not particularly religious: ‘he interpreted his religion by his business’.14 A significant number were devout Christians and the non-conformists, most notably Quakers like the Cadburys, Frys and Rowntrees played a leading part in the factory garden movement. (A number of Quakers also built paternalistic company towns in the USA.)15 Quakers had traditionally been committed gardeners, regarding gardening as a ‘needful’ and ‘useful’ activity.16 For Quakers and other non-conformists, gardens and gardening played a prominent role in social reform for they represented the antithesis of drunkenness and debauchery. (A high proportion of the members of the temperance movement were non-conformists.)17 They had to be the ‘right’ kind of gardens, though, for gardens had long been associated not only with religious morality but also with illicit freedoms and pleasures. Those who fought against temperance believed that society should ‘recognise the psychological aspect of amusement’

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’69 that was found in the private pleasure gardens enjoyed in the eighteenth century, but closed down by puritans in the 1820s.18 For the Cadburys, Rowntrees and John Patterson and his heirs – some of the most committed patrons of gardens – their own private gardens were the respectable kind and they opened them as supplementary space for their employees’ use, and for other social projects outside their business life. (They were also the patrons of considerable tracts of land for public parks in their local regions.)19 It was commonplace for the industrialist to ‘sustain[ing] the mythology of the family’ by inviting his employees to his house on special occasions, especially in the summer when the garden could accommodate large numbers.20 Company magazines regularly reported on house parties and outdoor events like garden parties or picnics put on for the workforce. George Cadbury, who devoted a high proportion of his spare time to social projects, built a barn near the lake at his home, the Manor House, and invited poor children from Birmingham to experience the virtues of fresh air, swimming, sports and teas.21 When John Patterson went to Europe for an extended visit, he opened his private gardens to his workforce.22 The garden and ideals of home Through the nineteenth century, the garden came to represent ideals of home, homeliness, domesticity, virtue and health and, towards the end of the century, respectability – particularly female respectability. The sources of these ideas are found in utopian and religious ideals of home and family as the environment where virtue and Christian values were nurtured, with the mother as the ‘angel in the house’ and the father as provider. This was the era of the growth of the middle-class garden and a burgeoning interest in all things horticultural. The suburban garden, enclosed and private, became an extension of the home and a social space and retreat for the family.23 As Andrew Griffin has argued, suburban gardens were ‘green retreats … bowers and oases in a desert of brick and mortar … They survive under siege.’24 Lynne Hapgood has suggested that in the period 1880–1925, the popularity of ‘garden romances’ written by women (for example Elizabeth von Armin’s Elizabeth and her German Garden, 1898), suggested that the suburban garden had a particular resonance for women, for their gardens were: symbols that harnessed and democratised pastoral, picturesque, sublime and Romantic view[s] of nature … they acted simultaneously as a connection to the myths of the Golden Age and a reassurance that the lost domain had been restored, as reminders of childhood memories and promises of a

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The factory in a garden new future. In both their actual and symbolic existence gardens embodied (en-natured) and feminised the suburban new.25

Women used gardens to ‘negotiate’ their identities, their roles as wives and mothers but at the same time gardens had the potential to emancipate and empower. Middle-class women, of course, had greater access to private gardens, but working-class women in their desire for gardens made the same symbolic connections to them.26 The values represented through garden beauty, horticulture and the benefits of fresh air were extended into public space through recreational facilities in industrial villages and in the public park movement27and by the 1880s were articulated by reformers in relation to the workplace too.28 The US Steel Corporation connected gardens to health, morality and a happy home at their mining villages in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, where garden plots were provided next to the miners’ houses: Gardens and beautiful lawns help to make homes. A home means more than a mere shelter from the elements. The beauty of the gardens and lawns exert a refining influence on the family, which shows inside of the house and in the behavior of the members of the family toward each other. Home aids in the perfection of family life … in the making of a garden the members of the family are brought out into the open air and sunshine. This is especially beneficial to those who work in mines and mills.29

Plants and planting styles around the factory buildings tended to reflect the prevailing gardening and elite artistic tastes to symbolise domestic values and to induce pride and familial loyalty in the workforce. Climbing or creeping plants covered many factory buildings in both Britain and the USA around 1900, which had the effect of ‘naturalising’ them into their surroundings, evoking the picturesque country houses of ancient families. The sensual and bewitching form of ivy was often used in Aesthetic Movement design and in popular literature to arouse feelings of mystery, atmosphere and suspense.30 Listing a number of firms who moved out to the edge of towns and cities, including Cadbury at Bournville, Rowntree at York, Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight, Clarks of Street, and Chivers of Histon near Cambridge, Budgett Meakin argued in his 1905 book Model Factories: The ideal factory has some pretensions to taste in design, if not in extravagant ornament; it is to a great extent creeper-clad, and is surrounded by lawns and shrubs. Its windows are adorned with carefully tended pot flowers. The pride of the ‘hands’, and the whole place bears a home-like and ‘cared-for’ look, indicative of the conditions of labour inside.31

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’71

3.2  Postcard of the United Shoe Machinery Co. Beverly, Massachusetts, which suggests that climbing plants softened the factory buildings, c.1920.

By the 1930s modernism had done away with climbing plants on new buildings and factories such as Bata and Hoover, with their clean lines, glass and white concrete, were framed with lawns, shrubs and bedding plants that denoted respectability and status. These had modern standards of cleanliness and ventilation, much like modernist and moderne housing and public buildings such as sanatoria built in this period, to promote a healthy working population. Gardens, respectability and the female employee Gardens and parks represented and encouraged a high moral outlook on life32 by their associations with virtue and with art, and it has been suggested that even the design of planting schemes in parks may have been influenced by particular ideas about morality and nature.33 Factory gardens ‘feminised’ the workplace and protected and promoted the virtue of the female employees, particularly in those works providing women-only gardens. These spaces paralleled the many examples in art and literature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries representing the enclosed garden as a nurturing and safe domestic space, in which women were protected from the public, particularly the male gaze.34 It was also fairly common in the nineteenth century for gardens to be provided exclusively for women in public places. Some time between 1859 and 1885, a place for ladies to promenade away from male attention was made in the garden of the Great Northern

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The factory in a garden Hotel in Peterborough,35 and a ‘sitting room for ladies’ was built beside the main entrance to Fountain Gardens in Paisley, Scotland (1868).36 The NCR in Dayton, Ohio was one such company with significant landscaping, where the female workforce was promoted as respectable (‘the only factory in town in which the girls are known to be ladies’),37 although according to Daniel Nelson, historians have tended to exaggerate that factor since only one-sixth of the workforce at the NCR was made up of women.38 The Cadburys at Bournville, the Rowntrees in York, Sears Roebuck in Chicago, the Spirella Corset Company at Letchworth Garden City and Ovaltine in King’s Langley all had elaborate gardens, and they employed a high proportion of women (Figures 3.3, 3.4). Some, including Cadbury, Rowntree and Heinz in Pittsburgh had women-only gardens (in 1899, the Cadburys employed 1,900 women, 600 men and 200 clerks)39 with gendered features such as a lily pond, trellises and pergola at Cadbury, a ‘nook’ with rambling roses at Rowntree and a dancing pavilion at Heinz. Cadbury, Rowntree and the NCR also provided allotments for girls. While many firms including Cadbury and Rowntree (Quaker firms), Boots, Raleigh and John Player would only employ unmarried women, for they believed a married woman’s place was in the home, Spirella preferred older married women as they needed less training,40 and perhaps this American company had a more enlightened approach to the female workforce. This might partly explain why Spirella invested in a formal Italianate garden, designed to impress the more mature, discerning

3.3  The Sears Roebuck & Co. plant, Chicago. Photographs suggest that architecture and topography of the formal gardens shown in this postcard were no exaggeration.

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’73

3.4  Architect’s drawing of the Ovaltine factory, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, with suggested landscape scheme, c. 1919. A 1930s aerial photograph shows a small classical rotunda in the gardens, which also offered tennis, croquet and bowling.

woman and why this garden, as well as their private gardens, featured so prominently in their promotional materials. The Spirella garden imitated the symmetry and structure of an Italian Renaissance garden, a style that had undergone another revival in the grand gardens of Edwardian England.41 The central and dominant feature of the garden in front of the main façade was a raised quatrefoil pond (not unlike Harold Peto’s Italianate pond at Buscot Park, Oxfordshire) with an urn at each quadrant and in the centre, an athletic water nymph brandished two jets of water into the air (Figure. 3.5). The rest of the garden was laid out in a symmetrical relationship to the pond and defined by formal beds with topiary pyramids marking the corners of the formal design. A large lawned area on two levels lay between the road and the pond, framed by symmetrical turf steps on either side, suggesting an amphitheatre, another classical allusion. The Spirella factory had private garden spaces as well as public. A picture in the Spirella Silver Jubilee 1910–1935 reveals that an area probably to the side or rear of the building was regarded as ‘A Quiet Corner’ where their employees could retreat away from the public gaze. Photographs suggest that the roof garden was a favourite destination for the female employees at Spirella but it must also have been used for company events since it was accessed from the ballroom. The importance of the garden to the Spirella company image, particularly their attitude to their female employees, is highlighted by an

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The factory in a garden

3.5  The formal garden and fountain at the Spirella Factory, Letchworth Garden City, 1932. The amphitheatre can be seen in the background.

illustration in The Spirella Magazine of August 1932. A full-page drawing to accompany the words of a popular song ‘An Old Garden’, and captioned ‘A Peep into OUR [sic] Old Garden’, shows a man and woman dressed in eighteenth-century costume, courting in the Spirella gardens. The waterspouts from the fountain advertise ‘Annual Conference and Reunion August 1932’.42 The formal garden is evoking not only the aristocratic way of life but also a chivalrous attitude of respect and protection to the female employees with the suggestion that Castle Corset is a safe place to work and its product desirable to respectable and high-class ladies. Pleasure gardens and women-only gardens suggested a feminine identity and offered some privacy, at the same time reinforcing gender stereotypes. However, a strategy to tempt women workers with gardens was less evident in some regions. In Nottingham in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries, for example, none of the three major new firms, John Player, Raleigh and Boots, had pleasure gardens, even though John Player and Boots employed a high number of women and Raleigh significant numbers. This might be surprising, particularly for Boots, as Jesse Boot was an admirer of the Cadburys and Rowntrees.43 However, unlike Birmingham, which had industrialised predominantly through the metal trades dominated by men, the textile town of Nottingham had traditionally employed large numbers of women, therefore female employment was the norm in the city.44

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’75 The Nottingham firms tempted the best kinds of female employees through good welfare schemes run by women, but these did not include gardens. This could be for a number of reasons. First, additional incentives to attract female employees were not considered necessary, as there was no shortage. Second, two of the companies, Boots and Raleigh were located in, or near, the city centre so space could have been an issue. Third, the owners of the companies did not have a personal interest in gardens, unlike the Cadburys, for example. However, when the Boots Company moved to the new site at Beeston on the edge of the city in the early 1930s (acquired in 1927 where their now famous ‘D10’ factory opened in 1933), the area was gradually landscaped with lawns, trees and shrubs.45 Their new canteen and continuation school (D31 Building) built in 1938 was to have included a park to the east, but it was not landscaped beyond facilities for sports until the making of the recent Millennium Sculpture Garden.46 It seems that both John Player and Raleigh considered making gardens or a park for their employees. A plan of c.1938 to redevelop the pavilion at the John Player Recreation Ground includes a charming cloister-style garden, and a hand-drawn sketch annotated ‘Raleigh Factory’ appears to be a plan to transform the Raleigh Coach Road recreation ground into a park, to include a swimming pool and rustic bridges. These gardens did not materialise, which suggests that either they were not a priority, or that the Second World War scuppered their plans.47 Floral factories Flowers have traditionally symbolised virtue, particularly devout female virtue and their placement in interior spaces has been associated with home and domesticity. (There are exceptions, for flowers can also sometimes symbolise toxicity or sexuality.) In paintings and photographs of the domestic interior, flowers are frequently placed to add beauty, but they also connote caring personal relationships.48 The growing and exchange of flowers in communities can be an important expression of shared experience and of mutual respect, or love. The flowers that decorated the mill interiors at Lowell were placed to feminise and domesticate the workshops. Photographs of some factory interiors taken from the 1890s to the 1930s show a profusion of flowers and pot plants, brought in from the works greenhouses and placed in hanging baskets and in pots and vases to beautify the offices, libraries and rest rooms, but even, at some works, the factory floor. At Cadbury in 1932–33, 9,000 flowering and foliage plants, vases of flowers and hanging baskets were brought in to decorate offices and public areas of the factory, including visitor’s tea tables – 200 sites in all. The floral metaphor was all encompassing, for on average about eighty vases were

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The factory in a garden filled with fresh flowers every Monday, with more supplied for VIP visits and parties, and when there were special celebrations such as the New Year party. Six hundred plants and seventy vases featured at the New Year Party in 1932. At Rowntree in York, large hanging log baskets filled with plants, perhaps made in the gardeners’ workshops, can be seen in photographs of the factory floor. Most of the plants and flowers were produced from seed or from cuttings in the firm’s greenhouses, which also supplied shrubs and bedding plants for the gardens and window boxes. The NCR had at least one greenhouse (the gardener lobbied for more, but without success) and at Rowntree, the elegant octagonal conservatory that ornamented the grounds nurtured exotic plants including cocoa and provided an inspirational space for horticultural lectures. By the 1900s, large potted palms were particularly popular in reception areas, creating the relaxed ‘palm court’ atmosphere of a hotel or restaurant, thus symbolically denying the true, utilitarian function of the building (Figure 3.6). Flowers and plants were also frequently used to decorate formal photographs. A picture in the Wonders of Niagara booklet, in which life at the Shredded Wheat factory is prominent, shows the Employees’ Choral Society surrounded by pots and buckets of plants and flowers. Among the Cadburys’ new glasshouses, built in the 1920s, were specialist hothouses for palms and carnations. The carnations were grown partly for female employees who, when they left to get married, were

3.6  The reception hall at the Shredded Wheat factory, Niagara Falls, c.1910

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’77 presented with a flower and a Bible, symbols of bounty and Christian virtue.49 (The Cadburys believed that the married woman’s place was in the home). The factory at Bournville, inside and out, was literally garlanded in flowers. A correspondent in the Bournville Works Magazine, March 1934, wrote passionately about the spring display of crocuses in Bournville Lane: ‘It is almost unbelievable – yes, and even unbearable – in its beauty. Bournville is robed in splendour.’50 The gardeners at Cadbury were selling bedding plants from the greenhouses as recently as the 1980s.51 Gardens and place-making at Cadbury, Bournville and at the NCR, Dayton The Cadbury Brothers at Bournville and John Patterson and his heirs at the NCR in Dayton, Ohio were particularly adept design strategists for they constructed their industrial sites with a strong sense of place and time using high quality designed landscapes to create high-status, stable and permanent working environments. They epitomised the gentrification of a factory using landscaping and planting to increase the desirability and respectability of the site, reflecting the owner’s moral and cultural aspirations and suggesting that their workers shared them. The factory landscapes played a key role in projecting a strong sense of responsibility for the health and well-being of their workforce and, more specifically, to protect and provide opportunities for their female employees. Here, I discuss the Cadbury and NCR gardens laid out adjacent to the factories. In Chapter 5 I consider their more substantial sports and recreation parks developed from the 1910s to the 1930s, as they realised their ambitions to provide some of the best corporate recreational facilities that money could buy. When John Patterson of the NCR began to plan is factory, he is likely to have had the Pullman example in mind, one that characterised a failed attempt to design an industrial environment to shape a company’s image. The Pullman landscaping was very public, contrived and self-conscious and the controlled design reflected the high levels of surveillance that the workforce was subjected to.52 Patterson’s preference for a softer, more informal, landscape for the factory environs could have been a deliberate attempt to avoid another Pullman, although it was not successful in preventing labour unrest in itself since the company suffered a major strike in 1901. The early landscapes at the NCR were ambiguous because they were not only contrived to improve the reputation of the factory as a highstatus and respectable institution through beauty but also to motivate the workforce to work more efficiently and to ‘tame’ the local youths with gardening discipline and shape them up as potential employees. Patterson’s choice of the Olmsted firm was typical of his outlook and ambition. He had seen the work of Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons

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The factory in a garden at the Chicago World’s Colombian Exposition in 1893 (John Charles, Frederick’s son and the young Frederick, his stepson, had both worked on this project) and knew their formidable reputation. The brothers’ partnership was eleven years old in 1906, (their father retired in 1895) but John Charles already had twenty-three years’ experience in the firm (his stepbrother, Frederick had left college four years previously). John Charles had also been appointed the first President of the American Society of Landscape Architects on its foundation in 1899 and both brothers were active in the American Civic Association, which was dedicated to improving the environment and promoting beauty, particularly in the making of urban, country and then state parks, and in the beautifying of cities through design and planting.53 Olmsted had also already been involved in several major park projects, such as the Seattle and Chicago Park systems from 1903, so Patterson could be confident that this was the man for the job. (The Olmsteds and their associates eventually designed a complete park system for Dayton.) The arrangements and plans for the landscaping of the factory reveal the merits of employing a landscape firm of considerable reputation and experience which, with some relatively simple but creative ideas transformed the factory and its environs. Letters and memoranda now in the Library of Congress in Washington reveal the Olmsteds’ sensitive handling of a demanding client, their attention to detail and their favoured style of informal planting contained within a structured plan (Figure 3.7). One of the first requirements was to create a view of the factory along the whole length of Main Street by planting a strip of ornamental ground between the north and south rows of buildings.54 At the same time, Patterson wanted ideas to disguise ugly or utilitarian buildings adjacent to the factory. Adopting an Olmsted signature style of the rustic picturesque, John Charles placed a decorative latticework arch at the entrance to the stable. On this and on neighbouring houses and fences he planted ornamental and climbing plants, including honeysuckle, japonica, virginia creeper and other ornamental vines. Fences considered ugly were removed and advertisements taken away from telegraph poles and fences. A plan of 9 January 1896 shows how the informal planting was offset by structure. The entire factory complex was to be surrounded by lawns, and trees were to be planted at regular intervals in wide pavements along all the roadways around the factory and surrounding houses.55 Another plan dated 13 March 1896, showing flower and shrub planting around the factory buildings, completed a scheme that within a few years had transformed the site from an ad hoc and unplanned industrial landscape into a more orderly, respectable and aesthetic site.56 The Olmsteds continued to work for the firm, which was growing rapidly, employing 3,400 men and 600 women by November 1904. They

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’79

3.7  View of the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio (c.1905) landscaped from the 1890s by the Olmsted Brothers who kept existing trees and softened the buildings with lawns and shrubs.

made several visits in 1904 and 1905 to advise on landscaping the land to the south of the factory to make it look more like a landscaped park, with lake and extensive planting of trees and shrubs including American elm, white willows, rosemary willows, elder, spirea, briar and prairie roses.57 They also provided a new, formal design for the Boys’ Gardens, to make them larger and more attractive, and paths were widened.58 The landscape architects understood how historicist, high-class references in design could enhance a company’s reputation, for the boys’ vegetable garden was transformed from functional allotment to Renaissance-style potager (Figure 3.8). Design was also used specifically to improve the women’s areas to add a domestic touch and sense of privacy to their dormitory and dining room. The Olmsteds achieved their aspiration for a pergola, for a fine drawing in the Olmsted archive and subsequent photographs show a substantial vine-clad structure connecting the two buildings.59 Amenities for women were enhanced with the addition of an outdoor gymnasium and changing rooms, tennis courts and, for men, an athletic field with running

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The factory in a garden

3.8  NCR lantern slide ‘Boys’ Gardens’, 1898 designed by the Olmsted Brothers.

track. In 1907, the Olmsteds designed an ‘English Garden’, for the office workers, but more for effect than use as its formal structure was meant to be enjoyed from the office windows above. The garden, more Dutch than English in style, included an ornamental fountain that in winter would form an ice sculpture, and evergreen shrubs at each corner for additional year-long interest. For the workforce’s pleasure the Olmsteds wished to soften the garden into something more informal, more English Arts and Crafts, for they suggested to Patterson that the addition of shade trees and perhaps a pergola might provide ‘a lounging place where the men of the office could smoke in warm weather after luncheon’.60 It appears that this never happened and in any case, the life of this garden was short because by 1911 a new convention hall had swept it away.61 In 1895, the same year that Patterson embarked on landscaping his factory, the Cadburys, who had provided some garden and ­recreation space for employees from the early 1880s, seized their opportunity to realise the potential for gardens to domesticate their factory and raise its status as a respectable, family concern on a grander scale. Their office buildings, in quaint ‘Tudorbethan’ style surrounded by flowerbeds, with the trellised works entrances nearby, already gave a cosy, domestic sense of place.

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’81 (The trellis was a favourite feature of the private Arts and Crafts garden for it was usually constructed using local materials, added spatial variety to a site and provided space for attractive climbing plants.) The purchase of the neighbouring Bournbrook estate in 1895 enabled the Cadbury Brothers to provide a new and larger pleasure garden and recreation ground for their ‘girls’ and improved sports facilities for the men (Plate 3). The layout and design of the gardens for women at Cadbury, known as the Girls’ Grounds, and the buildings there were particularly successful in contributing to the image of a high-status, respectable, yet caring company. The Grounds were extensive, very private, but above all they imbued a sense of history and continuity to the industrial site. The proximity of the Bournbrook estate to the factory was serendipitous for the distinctive Palladian house was clearly visible from the road approaching the factory from the south (see Figure 2.6). The gardens were spacious and already mature with lawns, parkland and a variety of trees and the estate had the added advantage of a sizeable kitchen garden with glasshouses, outbuildings and a water supply.62 The 1840 tithe map shows the hall standing in a garden to the north and kitchen garden to the south surrounded by lawns with a serpentine path leading to a pond overlooked by a summerhouse, or pavilion. The grounds were partly landscaped, but the high proportion of marsh and other low-lying land suggests that the land could have been neglected for some years. Perhaps it had followed the pattern of neglect of so many eighteenth-century landscapes found by John Julius Loudon as he travelled the English countryside in the 1820s and 1830s.63 By the time the Cadburys acquired it, however, the garden had been restored according to Loudon’s recommendations, and given more variety with a sequence of spaces created by new planting, including a belt of conifers leading to a shallow valley where the pond had been, with the summerhouse still there as the focal point. (The garden seen in the 1882 OS map is almost identical in layout to Loudon’s villa garden illustrated in The Suburban Gardener.)64 A conservatory had been added to the house, and the family’s needs supplied by a kitchen garden, with water supply, several glasshouses, orchards, paddocks and stables. Although considerably larger than Loudon’s villa, Bournbrook Hall had everything ‘that is essential to happiness, in the garden, park, and demesne of the most extensive country residence’.65 The Cadburys invested in the historic grounds over the next twenty years in accordance with their vision of a respectable and model factory where everyone was part of an extended family. Like the Men’s Pavilion, the rustic gymnasium and cycle shed built for the women were not utilitarian structures, but designed to be in keeping with the garden idyll of a country house or suburban villa (Figure 3.9).66

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The factory in a garden

3.9  Cadbury girls’ gymnasium built in rustic style, c.1920.

The garden architects Cheals of Crawley improved the Girls’ Grounds from 1907 adopting the fashionable Arts and Crafts style of the day that was influenced by the Italian Renaissance.67 Designed to impress, the grounds displayed all the attributes of a high-status, upper-class garden including a pergola, lily pond, tennis courts and pavilions. The Hall and most of the stables were demolished (now surplus to requirements due to an increasingly available local workforce and improved public transport). The old summerhouse, which had been often used as a photo spot, but which, by now, must have seemed old-fashioned or quaint, was taken down and a new pergola and steps performed a triple function of defining the entrance to the garden from the factory, providing a refuge from which to view the landscape and a stage for theatrical ­performances. Cheals also altered the former stables of Bournbrook Hall to form a sequence of garden buildings against the kitchen garden wall, a brick pavilion or arbour surmounted by a weathervane and a small loggia, or viewing shelter overlooking the grass tennis court (Figures 3.10 and 3.11). Below the tennis court where the house had been Cheals continued the Italianate flavour with a formal sunken garden and lily pond (the cellars of the demolished house made a convenient hole), surrounded by hedging and seats, and accessed by steps with cannonballs on plinths.68 The pond water came from the same source that supplied the factory (an idea that goes back to the Warmley gardens in the eighteenth century and repeated in many factory gardens)69 (Figure 3.12).

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’83

3.10  Plan for the garden buildings and landscaping for the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury (c.1907) by Cheals of Crawley, Garden Architects.

3.11  A carefully composed photograph of tennis in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, c.1910. Pavilions converted from the old stables of Bournbrook Hall overlook the court.

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The factory in a garden

3.12  The lily pond in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, Bournville.

The kitchen garden of the old Hall continued to supply flowers for the factory and fruit for the workforce, but the facilities for the Gardening Department and the company’s horticultural ambitions were greatly enhanced in the early 1920s by the addition of a large potting shed and tool store (later a mess room was added) followed by a set of brand new glasshouses. Messenger & Co. Ltd, of Loughborough, ‘specialist horticultural builders, hot water engineers and iron founders’ replaced the Victorian greenhouses. The plans show six greenhouses, including a large palm house and a carnation house, with the addition of numerous cold frames. In the early 1930s, the Cadburys made a new formal garden on the Men’s Recreation Ground below the steps up to the terrace of the new dining hall, built in the 1920s. The English vernacular of the Girls’ Grounds was replaced by a modern, functional space that reflected the more utilitarian architecture. Tradition was not abandoned, however, because the design is a pared-down form of a formal garden with Italianate fountain.70 As an acknowledgement of appreciation for all the benefits given to the workforce over the years, the employees presented a statue for the fountain, of the goddess Terpsichore. As the muse of dance, song and drama, Terpischore represents the theatrical potential of gardens so actively promoted by the Cadburys, but she also expresses the sensual spirit of gardens that they wished to suppress. Alan Shrimpton,

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’85 who was for many years Director of the Bournville Village Trust, believes that the Cadbury workforce commissioned the statue as a mischievous joke at the expense of their chaste Quaker employers.71 The statue is brazenly nude – quite a contrast to the image of the virtuous female worker, all dressed in white (Figure 3.13).

3.13  The Centenary Fountain at Cadbury, Bournville. The statue of the Goddess Terpsichore, by the Birmingham sculptor William Bloye, was a gift to the firm from grateful (and perhaps gleeful) employees in 1933.

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The factory in a garden Conclusion Factory landscapes served a variety of different functions in the shaping of the company identity, both for the consumer and for the factory worker. They gave the factories social and cultural capital, aesthetically and symbolically and they also assisted in creating a sense of place, suggesting a clean, orderly, homely and healthy community. The gardens for women and the flowers in the factory expressed messages of ­respectability, female virtue and domesticity. This social engineering project was designed to motivate employees, promote stability and induce a sense of loyalty to the company. However, gardens are not only redemptive spaces but can also be places of hard labour, coercion or temptation and corporate gardens, designed for the production and consumption of leisure and pleasure, were subject to, and symbolic of, corporate power. Some employees resented the paternalism they represented and some resisted the expectations that the garden imposed on them. The making of gardens and recreation spaces at factories also contributed to the power of the brand in the wider realm. Together with vernacular or historicist architectural styles for the factory buildings, landscaping was employed as a means to divert the workforce and the public from the commercial and utilitarian functions of the factory site, while at the same time landscape and nature connected consumers to the dual, if paradoxical values of ‘authenticity’ and modernity that sustained early twentieth-century consumer culture.72 The garden metaphor as a perfect space is therefore problematic. This analysis of factory gardens, an unusual garden type, has revealed that the conclusion of a recent philosophical study of gardens is perhaps closer to Ruskin’s romanticised approach to gardens than we might think. In his book, David Cooper takes up the question of the virtues of gardens and gardening, by asking the question: how do gardens engage with people’s lives and contribute to their living well?73 He charts the long tradition of associating gardens with the virtues and the good life that shifted in the late eighteenth century when gardening became associated with morality, with responsible citizenship and an antidote to temptation, to more recent analyses in psychology and sociology that have produced empirical evidence that gardens are good for our health and well-being. But, Cooper argues, none of these theories address the fundamental question as to why certain garden practices ‘invite’ or ‘bring on’ the exercise of virtues. Cooper suggests that this can only happen with a proper understanding and appreciation of gardens: in simple terms he says, to grow a good squash, you must know how to do it and this imposes a structure on life and brings on a kind of humility and

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’87 hope. In defending this argument, Cooper quotes Iris Murdoch who saw a garden as a ‘Selfless respect for reality’.74 For Cooper then, the garden is an ‘epiphany’ of a certain relation between human creative activity and ‘the mysterious ground’ of the world in which human beings act, a symbol in the Romantic sense of the relation between the source of the world and ourselves.75 This helps to explain some of the reasons why industrialists made their gardens – because they liked them and they thought their workforce would be happy and gratified to have such spaces. However, this study challenges Cooper’s conclusion that the garden is an epiphany, and shows that his interpretation is indeed Romantic. For gardens that are made to influence others as factory gardens were, may be motivated partly by the desire to donate, or to provide the epiphany experience for those who might need it or appreciate it during their working day, an antidote to the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah manufactory’. But because the provision of a factory garden is not wholly a selfless act, because it is also a manipulation of others for the benefit of a business, then a garden is more ambiguous in these circumstances. Gardens are made to offer an epiphany experience, but if they are places where the user is controlled in some way, the users do not have the autonomy to choose how to use the space; they have no control over it and so it cannot be their epiphany. Similarly, the ideal of a garden in Utopia is problematic since gardens in Utopia, like those in Edward Bellamy’s Boston in the year 2000,76 or the landscapes in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World77 are symbols of social control.78 In this chapter I have examined the ways in which the spatial, symbolic and metaphorical attributes of gardens and parks were exploited as a means of social engineering, but an analysis of the reasons for making these spaces and their effects cannot be complete without an examination of the way gardens were used, which is the subject of the next chapter. While the gardens and recreation grounds represented symbolically the ideas of status, health and respectability, they were made with specific activities in mind and so a discussion of the types of activity and how they were conducted, by whom, and how frequently, is necessary to fully understand the extent of the time and expense that was devoted to gardens, gardening and other outdoor recreations at the factory and to try to assess their effects. Notes  1 Meacham, S. Regaining Paradise: Englishness and the Early Garden City Movement (New Haven, CT and London, 1999), p. 16.  2 See, for example, Wolschke-Bulmahn, J. ‘Ethics and Morality. Questions in the History of Garden and Landscape Design: A Preliminary Essay’, Journal of Garden History 14:3 (1994),

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The factory in a garden 140–6; Williams, R. The Country and the City (London, 1985); Marx L. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America New York (New York, 1964); Brown, J. The Pursuit of Paradise. A Social History of Gardens and Gardening (London, 1999), Dixon Hunt, J. ‘The Garden as Cultural Object’, in Wrede and Adams, Denatured Visions.  3 See Francis, M. and Hester, R. T. The Meaning of Gardens (Cambridge, MA and London, 1990) and Dixon Hunt, J. (ed.), A Cultural History of Gardens in the Modern Age (London, 2013), pp. xi–xiii, 1–11.  4 Elkins, J. ‘On the Conceptual Analysis of Gardens’, Journal of Garden History 13:4 (Winter 1993), 189–98 and Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections.  5 Ibid.  6 Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections, p. 216 and Dixon Hunt, A Cultural History.  7 Miller, M. The Garden as an Art (Albany, 1993), pp. 25–33.  8 Mass Observation, ‘An Enquiry into People’s Homes’ File Report 1654 (London, 1943) pp. 16–17, Mass Observation Online; Adam Matthew Digital Online Resource, www.amdigital.co.uk/collections/Mass-Observation-Online/ (accessed 4 October 2010).  9 See Sackville-West, V. The Edwardians (London, 1930). 10 Miller, The Garden, p. 56. 11 Harris, Private Lives, p. 135–49. 12 McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. 129. 13 Historians disagree about the proportion of British women in full-time work. Harris, Private Lives, p. 129, argues that after 1900, the proportion gradually rose, but McKibbin, in Classes and Cultures says that the female proportion of the total workforce hardly changed in the first half of the twentieth century (p. 111). However, the type of work changed as more women were employed in light industries, offices and retail. In America, according to Kleinberg, the numbers of women who worked in factories rose from 18 per cent in 1870 to 24 per cent in 1920. Kleinberg, S. J. Women in the United States 1830–1945 (New Brunswick, 1999), pp. 114–15. 14 Memorial pamphlet to John Patterson, p. 44. Ian Ormerod archive. Andrew Undershaft, the industrialist in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara (1905) who built a village for his workforce, is an example of pragmatism, not religion driving philanthropy. 15 Garner, J. S. The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age (New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 8–9. 16 Thomas, K. Man and the Natural World, p. 237, in Hackett Fischer, D. Albion’s Seed. Four British Folkways in America (Oxford, New York, 1989), pp. 554–5. Thomas points out that the Society of Friends produced ‘a quite disproportionate number of botanists, plantcollectors and nurserymen’. 17 Harrison, B. H. Drink and the Victorians. The Temperance Question in England 1815–1872 (Keele, 1994), p. 167. 18 Pendered, A. M. ‘The Psychology of Amusement in its Relation to Temperance’, Socialist Review (June 1909), 285–91 in ibid., p. 380. 19 See, for example, Bromhead, J. ‘George Cadbury’s Contribution to Sport’, The Sports Historian 20:1 (May 2000), 97–117; Marks, W. George Cadbury Junior 1878–1954 (Birmingham, no date); Joseph Rowntree Village Trust, One Man’s Vision. The Story of the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust (London, 1954). 20 Joyce, Work, Society and Politics, p. 185. 21 Gardiner, A. G. The Life of George Cadbury (London, 1923), p. 128.

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’89 22 ‘Enjoy Far Hills Hospitality’, NCR XVII: (August 1904), p. 137, NCR.DH. 23 Ruskin frequently wrote about the value of gardens and he was particularly seduced by the idea of the Virgin Mary in her Hortus Conclusus. In Sesame and Lilies (1866) he suggested that women thrive in the enclosed world of the garden, while men are more suited to public life. 24 Griffin, A. ‘The Interior Garden and John Stuart Mill’, in Knoepflmacher, U. C. and Tennyson, G. B. (eds), Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977), p. 171. 25 Hapgood, L. Margins of Desire. The Suburbs in Fiction and Culture, 1880–1925 (Manchester and New York, 2005), p. 111. 26 Ibid., p. 95. Hapgood refers to Charles Booth’s interviews conducted in the 1890s in which the working classes aspired to houses with back gardens. 27 See Olmsted, F. L. Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns (Manchester, NH, 1970), p. 76. 28 Morris, W. ‘A Factory as it Might Be’ (Nottingham, 1995; first published in Justice, April/ May 1894). 29 US Steel, ‘Bulletin of Safety, Sanitation and Welfare’ No. 5, December 1914, quoted in Alenen, A. ‘Immigrant Gardens on a Mining Frontier’, in Francis and Hester, The Meaning of Gardens, pp. 160–5; see also Mandell, N. The Corporation as Family (Chapel Hill, NC and London, 2002), p. 87. 30 See, for example, the popular sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret by Elizabeth Braddon (1862) a best-selling novel throughout the second half of the nineteenth century where the ivy-clad walls around Audley Court are symbolic of the unfolding drama. 31 Meakin, Model Factories, p. 73. 32 Le Bas, E. ‘The Making of a Socialist Arcadia: Arboriculture and Horticulture in the London Borough of Bermondsey after the Great War’, Garden History 27:2 (Winter 1999), 219–37. 33 Young, T. ‘Trees, the Park and Moral Order: the Significance of Golden Gate Park’s first Plantings’, Journal of Garden History 14:3 (1994), 158–70. 34 Alfrey, N., Daniels, S. and Postle, M. Art of the Garden (London, 2004). 35 Davidson, B. A. ‘The Gardens of the Great Northern Hotel, Peterborough Cambridge’ in Way, T. (ed.). Picturing Paradise: Studies in Eighteenth to Twentieth Century Gardens and Garden Design (Cambridge, 2003), p. 26. 36 Inaugural Ceremonies in Honour of the Opening of Fountain Gardens, Paisley (Paisley, 1868). 37 Meakin, Model Factories, p. 59. 38 Nelson, D. Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison, WI, 1980), p. 17. 39 Gilman, A Dividend to Labor, p. 191. 40 Miller, M. Letchworth. The First Garden City (Chichester, 1989), p. 117. 41 Waymark, J. Modern Garden Design. Innovation Since 1900 (London, 2003), p. 10. 42 The Spirella Magazine XX1:8 (August 1932), 116–17, FGCHM. 43 Chapman, S. Jesse Boot of Boots the Chemists. A Study in Business History (London, 1973), pp. 170–1. 44 Beckett, J. (ed.), A Centenary History of Nottingham (Manchester, 1997), p. 532. Beckett points out that traditionally, about two-fifths of Nottingham’s workforce had been women.

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The factory in a garden 45 See, for example, the photograph on the inside front cover of the company magazine The Beacon 15:4 (October 1938), bc. 46 ‘Notes on D31 building’ (unpublished), bc. 47 The Raleigh plan is undated and there is no explanation as to why it is in the Rowntree collection, BI.RC, R/DL/DunDunollie/1–2. 48 Alfrey et al., ‘Art of the Garden’. 49 ‘Celebrations – Visit to Factory in a Garden’, Glasgow Evening Times (Monday, 22 June 1931) This practice continued at Cadbury at least until the 1980s, although by this time it was a single flower and no Bible. 50 ‘Crocuses’, XXXII:3 (March 1934), 86, CB. 51 Former employee, now working as a librarian at the Birmingham Central Library. 52 Adelman, Touring Pullman, 13. 53 Young, T. ‘Social Reform Through Parks: the American Civic Associations’ Program for a Better America’, Journal of Historical Geography 22:4 (1996), 460–71. 54 J. C. Olmsted Memoranda, 25 October 1895, LC.MD.OAR, Series E, Reel 20. 55 03 Subdivisions & Suburban Communities. Plan of NCR Co’s Works 280–1, FLO.NHS. 56 Ibid., 280–2, Planting Plan. 57 Plans of NCR Works: 00280 Subdivisions & Suburban Communities, FLO.NHS, Plan no: 280–122. See also The NCR (September 1904), NCR.DH. The 1937 plan of the NCR estate gives further information on landscaping before the making of Old River Park in the late 1930s, FLO.NHS, Plan no: 280–163, 30 August 1937. 58 Letter from Olmsted Brothers to NCR Building Committee, 1 August 1905, LC.MD.OAR, Series B Reel 20. 59 Plans of NCR Co.’s Works: 00280 Subdivisions & Suburban Communities, FLO.NHS, Plan no: 280–112, 15 September 1904. 60 Letter 1 March 1907, LC.MD.OAR, Series B, Reel 20. 61 Letters between Colonel Deeds and Olmsted Brothers June and July 1911, LC.MD.OAR, Series B, Reel 20. 62 Bournbrook Hall’s most recent tenant had been William Martin who completed the Birmingham School of Art after J. H. Chamberlain’s death. 63 See Eliott, B. Victorian Gardens (London, 1986). 64 Illustrated in Creese, ‘Imagination in the Suburb’, p. 50. 65 Loudon, J. C. The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion (1838) in ibid., p. 50. 66 The pavilion, later extended into a gymnasium was designed by Baylis and Inman, ‘Rustic and Rockery Workers’ of Birmingham, The cycle shed was designed by the firm’s architect, George Lewin. 67 See Ottewill, D. Edwardian Gardens (New York and London, 1989) and Jennings, A. Edwardian Gardens (London, 2005), p. 20. 68 Cheals of Crawley (Garden Architects) Plan. ‘Cadbury Bros Bournville Girls’ Recreation Ground Plan and Details of Proposed Alterations to Stables etc. (no date), CB, Cadbury drawing no: 3260; Cadbury Engineers’ Office Drawing of Girls’ Grounds dated 1911, CB, Cadbury drawing no: 3574EAT. These two drawings suggest that the Engineers’ Office also had input into the design of the Girls’ Grounds. 69 There are other examples of water features in factory gardens that were supplied by the factory waste. At Boden’s net factory in Derby a courtyard garden of raised bed of shrubs

‘The Factory in a Garden’/‘The Garden in a Factory’91 and flowers sported a fountain powered by water from the factory boilers and the pond was warm enough to grow water lilies. See Meakin, Model Factories, 77. 70 ‘Employees Gift to the Firm’, BWM 8:XXI (August 1933), 232–38, CB. 71 Interview with Alan Shrimpton, former archivist of the Bournville Village Trust, 26 November 2009. 72 Outka, E. Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism and the Commodified Authentic (Oxford and New York, 2009), pp. 32–46. 73 Cooper, D. A. A Philosophy of Gardens (Oxford, 2006), p. 20. 74 Ibid., p. 96. 75 Ibid., p. 150. 76 Bellamy, E. Looking Backward (London, 1888). 77 Huxley, E. Brave New World (London, 1955). 78 Chance, H. ‘“Consulting the Genius of the Plant”, Uniting the machine and the garden in Utopia’. Unpublished paper given at Utopias and Modernism: Convergences in the Arts, University of Birmingham, 23–24 April 2010.

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’ 4  ✧  ‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’: factory landscapes, leisure and the model employee

O

evening in the summer of 1933, an employee of the Spirella Corset Company in Letchworth Garden City called in on the company sports ground to see what was going on. On a previous visit in the spring, the grounds had been disappointingly quiet, but this time the thwack and thud of cricket and tennis balls and the sound of dance music coming from the pavilion evoked the sights and sounds of an English summer Arcadia. ‘These summer evenings are delightful’, wrote the employee, ‘FGW’ in the company journal, ‘[with the grounds] populated by a happy throng … and the setting with its surrounding foliage of chestnut, oak, elm and poplar is enough to draw anyone’.1 Recreation grounds like these at Spirella for company sports, music and dancing outside working hours, were typical of the leisure facilities provided by employers committed to worker welfare by the 1930s. The landscapes at Spirella were some of the best in UK and US industry, for as well as the nine acres laid out for hockey, cricket, football and tennis a short distance from the factory, the company also boasted a formal pleasure garden and a roof garden for their employees’ use. Gardens were just one of many amenities offered at Spirella to attract and sustain the model employee, underlined by the company principle, ‘happy healthy workers are the world’s best.’2 Previous chapters have considered how the beauty of nature and good landscaping and the activities made possible by the factory gardens and recreation grounds were believed to provide spiritual, physical and mental antidotes to factory work and were exploited for the social and cultural betterment of employees in the form of social engineering. I now turn to the ways in which recreational, as well as educational opportunities at the workplace, such as music, dancing, theatre and horticulture, became more widespread as part of a sport and leisure ‘revolution’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The range and variety ne warm

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’93 of indoor and outdoor recreational opportunities varied considerably owing to the physical and economic scale of the enterprise, the corporate welfare strategy and the level of interest in gardens and gardening of its patron. But just how significant was industry’s contribution to this social transformation? How popular were the recreational activities: were they optional and affordable and did women and young workers receive the same opportunities as male employees? The most popular outdoor activities and the ones that needed the most space were of course sports, and sports grounds were more common at factories than pleasure grounds. I have argued elsewhere that industry’s contribution to opportunities for the enjoyment of ball games and athletics, particularly for women, was more significant than previously been acknowledged.3 I focus here on the non-sporting activities in the factory gardens, including music, dancing, theatre, fêtes, pageants and allotment gardening to judge the value of these recreational and educational activities to employees, many of whom could enjoy similar activities in pubs, public allotments and social clubs in the growing suburbs. The Cadburys and John Patterson of the NCR, for example, provided outdoor recreational opportunities in the 1890s and 1910s that were unprecedented in the variety of spatial planning and aesthetic and recreational opportunity. In some respects, despite the gender segregation in the gardens and allotments, the treatment by these companies of their female and child employees was progressive by the industrial standards and, in some ways by the social standards, of the day. Even by the 1930s, factories like Cadbury and the NCR were still considered to be objects of wonder and awe. Open spaces and rational recreation The appearance of recreation grounds and gardens at some factories that gathered momentum after 1880 mostly paralleled the objectives of diverse voluntary and municipal initiatives that had campaigned for, and provided access to, open spaces, more attractive cities and better leisure facilities since the mid-nineteenth century in Britain, and the later nineteenth century in North America. Mobilised from many quarters, from national and local government, the medical profession, education, the church, philanthropy, the civic movement and later from professionals like psychologists, planners and landscape architects, the general agreement was that industrialisation and urbanisation had sapped the strength and moral fibre of the working man and woman and their children and that programmes of recreation in well-provisioned clubs, community centres, parks and sports grounds were essential to shape the human body and mind to meet the demands of a modern industrial world.4

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The factory in a garden As the working day shortened and incomes rose, private individuals successfully profited from a desire for enjoyable and varied public entertainments. The privately owned Sunny Vale Pleasure Gardens at Calderdale, Halifax opened by entrepreneur Joseph Bunce in 1883, attracted 100,000 visitors each year. Visitors could enjoy boating, a maze, a helter-skelter, open-air dancing, concerts, a miniature railway, roller skating, donkey rides and a tearoom.5 Crowds can be seen enjoying the park in a film of 1901 made by the popular filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon.6 Leisure activities in the factory gardens were organised and supervised within the orbit of ‘Rational Recreation’, a theory and practice that was a catalyst to the public spaces and other reform movements, ‘to forge more effective behavioural constraints in leisure’.7 Reformers recognised that industrialisation had put pressure on public space and many believed that a lack of open and other community space had driven people into the pubs or saloons and other institutions regarded as profane. The new public parks with ample space for sport, for example, would encourage the ‘right’ kind of recreation, rational and respectable, and avoid the kinds of pleasure gardens of the type so popular in eighteeenth-century England, such as Vauxhall and Cremorne that by the early nineteenth century had become associated with loose behaviour. As the writer of an 1847 guide to Birkenhead suggested: ‘It has justly been observed that in the same proportion as sources of innocent amusement and healthy recreations are provided for a people in the same proportion do they become virtuous and happy.’8 The leisure revolution Historians agree that a revolution in sport and leisure took place from the 1870s among all classes, but it was particularly noticeable in working-­ class culture where formerly participation was limited due to low income and opportunity. In Britain, leisure time for the factory worker had been slightly improved after the introduction of the Ten Hours Act in 1847 (although a considerable number of factory owners flouted the rules), followed by the Saturday half day in the 1870s, although many workers including those in service worked many more hours. New forms of recreation became available to working and lower-middle classes, including music hall, association football and seaside holidays and, by the 1890s, leisure had been institutionalised though advertising and consumer capitalism to create what we now know as the ‘leisure industry’.9 Kathy Peiss, in her study of working-class women’s leisure in New York at the turn of the century explores the seduction and consumption of new types of commercialised and popular pleasure palaces such as dance

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’95 halls, amusement parks and movie-theatres that concerned middle-class reformers tried to discourage, by providing more ‘respectable’ forms of entertainment.10 In the first two decades of the twentieth century, rising wages and shorter working hours excited expectations and demands for leisure facilities among urban dwellers. In Britain, real wages rose by about 30 per cent between 1913 and 1938 and by 1920 the working week had been reduced in some trades to 48 hours for women and young people, and to about 47 hours by 1938.11 By 1935, in chocolate making and metalwork, for example, the working week had been reduced to 47 hours and a 43 or 45 hour week was common. The 1937 Factory Act made the legal maximum 60 hours 55½ hours in textiles and 48 hours for women and young people. By 1920, the majority of factories closed at lunchtime on Saturday and by the 1930s, a five-day week was usual. By the turn of the century many workers had up to one week’s paid holiday per year and with the Holiday With Pay Act in 1938, about half of all manual workers in the UK had paid holidays. At Cadbury in the 1920s, workers had between three days and eight days paid holiday per year depending on length of service and a worker had to stay in employment for five years to gain eight days. In the USA the working day had been shortened to ten hours in 1890, and just under 55 hours a week in 1910, a measure which effectively doubled leisure time from the previous fifty years. By 1940 the working day was reduced to eight hours and five days per week and for the first time, workers’ leisure time exceeded work time. By this time, leisure time had more than tripled in one hundred years and until the Depression average wages had risen steadily.12 Galen Cranz sums up the 1930s as the decade with ‘the shorter work week, long weekends, daylight-saving time, improved automobiles and road systems, earlier retirement ages and longer lives and people had more time outside work and sleep as ever before’.13 Where the Industrial Revolution had largely separated work and leisure, changing working and living conditions had also increased leisure opportunities in times of full employment and stable pay. But like other social structures, leisure also was subject to reforming measures, which attempted to influence the choices of the working classes by providing ‘rational’ recreations that were disciplined, respectable and conducive to health, and social and mental betterment. In the mining communities of the north-east of England from 1820 to 1914, there was a ‘massive’ expansion in the number of facilities for leisure activities from the late 1860s, bringing a leisure revolution in the miners’ lives, largely organised from within the communities and within the spirit of rational, respectable recreation. The early 1900s saw a significant expansion of leisure facilities in these communities including

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The factory in a garden ballrooms and theatres for visiting theatrical groups and later for silent films. By 1914, the town of Ashington had five theatres and picture halls. Music was important in the lives of the miners from at least the 1820s with bands and choral singing an integral part of village life, but later in the century, opportunities for participation were greatly enhanced with new performance spaces such as community halls and parks.14 According to Helen Meller, in her study of life in Bristol in the second half of the nineteenth century ‘Music was central to life’ in the community.15 Dancing, which had always been popular became an ‘all consuming passion’ by the first decade of the twentieth century. Ballroom dancing, once the preserve of the upper classes, became a craze in the 1890s, followed by tango-mania in 1911–13, the foxtrot in 1914 and American ragtime after the war. Dance halls were common and companies, churches and clubs held dances wherever space was available, although they tended to be very strictly controlled in places that considered themselves respectable.16 When Milton Hershey built his model industrial town in Pennsylvania from 1903, a dance and entertainment hall, lit by electricity generated at the factory, was the first building to go up in his new park. In an era when electricity was scarce in rural areas, dance night must have been spectacular.17 As well as dance halls, the most popular leisure facilities for the urban working classes were the music hall, and later the picture house, and the pub or saloon. In America, saloons provided social centres and free meeting places and were often the only public places providing refuge from busy streets,18 but in large towns or cities, ‘cheap amusements’ were common or widespread.19 The pious and the zealous feared that working men and women enjoyed leisure too much, particularly drinking and sports.20 They claimed that music halls, dance halls and amusement parks encouraged promiscuity and that too much leisure time was spent on the street.21 In Britain, reformers attempted to close music halls, censor them or encourage more respectable activities, although by the 1890s, music halls had reformed themselves, not for moralistic reasons but commercial ones.22 In America, reformers campaigned for a more respectable use of free time, but with limited success in large cities where the quantity of entertainments and degree of enthusiasm was against them.23 It was in these contexts that leisure opportunities like music, dancing and theatre took place in factories, including in the grounds. To secure the success of recreation clubs and societies, most establishments allowed employees to run them. However, a member of management would often sit on committees, and within the boundaries of the workplace, employees lacked the freedoms that they might have had in their own institutions outside work, like the friendly societies, community centres, pubs and saloons.

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’97 Amateur theatre featured strongly in the leisure revolution, particularly in Britain and became popular in working-class communities with drama groups flourishing by the early twentieth century in clubs and community centres.24 Dramatic societies had appeared by the late 1880s in the mining communities of north-east England, with a broad, though rational repertoire.25 Amateur theatre became even more popular in Britain in the 1930s despite the advent of the cinema, with nearly 40,000 drama societies in 1936.26 People in towns, villages and suburbs all participated, encouraged by the Women’s Institutes and now also by a more liberal Church. To compete, or to meet local demand, many companies, such as Huntley and Palmers Biscuit Factory in Reading, UK, supported company dramatic societies with readings and performances taking place in the company dining rooms, welfare association building or an assembly hall. At the Spirella Company in Meadville, Pennsylvania, drama and music were among the many activities employees could choose from in their association hall (the factory had no garden space as it was in the centre of town, but used the local parks for recreation). Gardening and horticulture A popular activity of the leisure revolution that tends to be overlooked, but one that became a favourite among blue-collar workers as well as the more privileged classes, was gardening. Between the wars gardening became, more than ever, a social and practical activity through the burgeoning horticultural clubs and societies.27 Four million new gardens were established, about 70 per cent of gardeners were manual workers (by 1949), and horticultural and gardening clubs were among the largest in the new estates.28 This was partly due to a greater accessibility as most new suburban houses were built with large gardens, although flat dwellers were dependent on nearby allotments. Reformers viewed nature and outdoor exercise as the obvious panacea to urban life and work, because in their opinion gardening supplemented the family diet and budget with fresh fruit and vegetables, provided satisfying and healthy work, and elevated the mental and moral fibre of the workpeople. The Gardener’s Chronicle in 1912 reported a speech made by the President of the Scottish Horticulture Society in which he claimed: It is largely to horticulture that we must look as the great ameliorating and refining agent which will raise to a higher moral plane the masses of our fellows who are, perforce, compelled at present to live under conditions which are not only a menace to public health but a disgrace to our ­civilization and which are rapidly deteriorating the race.29

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The factory in a garden The encouragement of gardening and access to open space was a vital part of social reform, for temperance and the strengthening of character as well as for sustenance and health.30 Recreation at factories By the 1890s in Britain, when the first of the factory pleasure gardens began to appear, the types of recreational activities like music, dancing, theatre, fêtes and horticultural shows that took place in the gardens would not have seemed unusual to the workforce since many urban people, but by no means all, now had access to a public park or garden, and some had an allotment. Music and theatre culture was very lively through the music hall, working men’s club, other clubs and societies and the pub. Nor would the idea of cultural activities at work have seemed unusual to everyone, since from at least the 1840s in Britain, participation in music and drama was possible at some factories and was very common in larger industrial communities like the mining villages of North-East England.31 At New Lanark in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Robert Owen introduced dancing, singing and recitation at the New Institution for the Formation of Character and the village school.32 However, employees working at model factories, and visitors to them, were surprised to see the scale and relative sophistication of the spaces made available for these activities, not simply the company dining hall or the works yard, but ballrooms at some works as well as outdoor spaces like a designed formal garden in the case of the Spirella Corset Company at Letchworth and Ovaltine at King’s Langley, or acres of beautiful gardens and woodland, in the case of Cadbury and the NCR. For the women employees especially, the easily accessible facilities and amenities were unusual, for despite increasing participation of women in public life, many cultural activities and social spaces were still dominated by men.33 Recreational activities for women in public parks and gymnasia were only just becoming available at the end of the nineteenth century,34 so the industrialists who provided facilities for women in the 1890s were in the forefront of their emancipation through recreation. For teenage workers, recreation and play at the factory filled an important gap between school and adulthood before social centres for recreation became available to them. (No doubt the drill exercises and allotment gardening for youths also assisted in maintaining discipline.) For the male worker too, the availability of park or garden space during the working day would have been a relative luxury. For him, the emphasis at the factory was on space for physical activity rather than gentle exercise and aesthetic pleasure, but there was still plenty of space for informal lounging on the playing fields should that be desired.

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’99 However, cultural activities organised at factories like theatre and dancing, were not popular with all classes of employee, for only ­‘respectable’ forms were allowed. Some employees felt patronised by ‘do-­ gooding’, particularly when they felt compelled to join in. Lena Harvey Tracy, the infamous welfare secretary at the NCR at the turn of the nineteenth century, was not popular with many of the women employees. Although welfare at the factory did not cause the strike of 1901, Tracy lost her position following the dispute to appease the female workforce.35 Segregation of the sexes in the factory garden spaces would not have been particularly popular either, even though gender specific activities and chaperoning were common, but by the 1920s, informal meetings with the opposite sex were becoming more acceptable. Spatial segregation of the sexes was less of a feature of the company parks after the First World War except in the obvious situations like team sports and changing rooms. Healthy rest and play in the factory gardens Evidence from photographs suggests that the factory gardens provided space for the aesthetic enjoyment of nature and a sanctuary for rest and refreshment during the working day, although realistically the rest periods of ten, or sometimes fifteen minutes, morning and afternoon that were offered in the better factories would allow for little other than a visit to the lavatory and a quick drink. Photographs of the Bata factory at East Tilbury show the workers sitting on benches outside the factory where tea was served during their ten-minute break,36 and at Cadbury, Rowntree and Spirella, female workers can be seen sitting in their gardens during their rest periods, although we cannot rely on the ‘truth’ of these images (Figure. 4.1). Roof gardens also appeared to be popular places of retreat. Welfare expert Budgett Meakin, recommended making use of the roof for recreation by having them flat with glass paving shaded by awning, These, he advised, were particularly valuable when dining rooms might open onto them. Meakin described an Arcadian roof garden at the Heinz factory in Pittsburgh, which had separate ‘walks’ for men and women, 170 × 100 feet each, with flowerbeds, plants in pots, fountains and creepers on the walls.37 During the lunch hour, employees could escape the daily monotony by dancing to the organ played in the garden music pavilion, a decorative little building topped by a finial38 (Figure 4.2). The Shredded Wheat factory at Niagara Falls, where the workers had two rest periods of fifteen minutes per day, had a viewing deck on the roof of the factory from which to see the upper Falls. However, there is no evidence that the workforce had access to this for all the reports

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The factory in a garden

4.1  Spirella employees resting by the fountain in the gardens to the front of the factory, 1930s.

4.2  The Heinz roof garden for women, c.1900. The men had their own garden on another section of roof.

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’101 suggest that it was the highlight of the famous Shredded Wheat visitor experience and may have also been reserved for the management. The Cadbury, Rowntree and NCR factories all had segregated spaces where gender-specific activities were offered. The Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, part pleasure garden and part recreation ground included tennis courts for the women, and swings and the ‘giant stride’ for the younger girls. The giant stride was common in parks in the late nineteenth century. It looked like a maypole but each child would run around it hanging on to a rope or chain and with enough speed, it was possible to ‘fly’. After 1904, the pergola in the NCR women’s area domesticated and added ‘taste’ to the space. Gardeners at the Rowntree factory in York tried to create a private feminine ‘nook’ for the women workers with roses and ivy tumbling over trees and trellis, but without much success for male voyeurs passing on the train that bounded the garden imposed on the female ‘idyll’ (Figure. 4.3). Photographs are likely to exaggerate the amount of time spent in the gardens, which in any case was dependent on clement weather. Pictures showing the Cadbury ‘Angels’ in their recreation ground suggest that the women and girls had plenty of leisure, but the grounds would have been several minutes’ walk from the workrooms. Realistically therefore, a visit was possible only at lunchtime. Even the lunch hour was barely enough

4.3  Rowntree employees in the Girls’ Garden, under observation, 1907. The Rowntree ‘Nook’ did not provide as much privacy as the Girls’ Grounds at Bournville.

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The factory in a garden time to eat a meal and go in the Girls’ Grounds, although the booklet A Factory and Recreation produced by Cadbury claimed; ‘The hope that the girls would take advantage of the gardens instead of remaining in the dining rooms during the dinner-hour has been fully realized.’39 It is likely that enjoyment of the Girls’ Grounds took place mostly on fine days and so the benefits of the gardens for relaxation have probably been embellished (Plate 4). In just the same way, the benefits of parks for working people were overstated, because even after the introduction of the five-and-a-half day week in the 1870s, for most of the year use for those in employment was only possible, or desirable, on summer evenings and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The Mass Observation study of 1943, found that park use appeared to change little in the first three decades of the twentieth century and that ‘although parks were liked by the majority of people, they do not use them to an appreciable extent except for the occasional stroll in the evenings, or on Sunday. But they like them for their children.’40 The gentler activities for rest and exercise in the factory gardens therefore paralleled those that took place in the public parks by the turn of the century, where recreation, except on special occasions like park openings tended to be ‘rather sober’.41 Users of the NCR parks had to follow strict rules of behaviour and at the Men’s Recreation Ground at Cadbury, the published ‘Rules of Use’ confirms that the activities allowed there were ‘rational’ because these popular pursuits were banned: pigeon shooting, horse racing, coursing, dog racing, nor any games or sports in which competition shall take place for monetary prizes, nor shall any intoxicating liquor be sold or bought there.42

The factory garden Arcadia: music, dancing and drama The cultural activities provided in the factory grounds met the strict criteria of respectability demanded by reformers. The Cadbury Music Society was founded in 1902 and a full-time Director of Music appointed by the firm in 1908 when the 185 members put on seven public concerts (inside and out) with an average attendance of 1,200. (Although membership of the society was small in a workforce of approximately 6,000, the concerts were generally very popular.) The Cadbury workforce continued to be encouraged in their enjoyment of music, for a leaflet inserted into the Bournville Works Magazine in May 1934 announced three forthcoming summer concerts, two evening concerts at the Rowheath grounds and one midday concert in the Girls’ Grounds.43 Open-air concerts were by no means a novelty in working-class life and were known to draw the crowds, because from the latter part of the nineteenth century, concerts

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’103 could be enjoyed in public parks on summer weekday evenings and, on Sundays, events that were designed to be morally improving.44 Evidence of musical activities at other works is relatively limited but many companies boasted a brass band to entertain at company and community events. We know that the Shredded Wheat plant at Niagara Falls had a musical association, a concert band and a choral society but it is not known whether they performed outside.45 At the Welwyn works, the Wheat Pipe Band was famous in the town for they often performed at outdoor events in the garden city wearing uniforms supplied by the company. At International Harvester in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the company ‘playground’ included a bandstand, which suggests that musical entertainments were central to company life. The Bata Company in the 1930s also had music, at the very least a dance band, which played open-air concerts on the sports ground in June of 1934 and probably at other times.46 The company brass band and dance bands were frequently in demand for the growing popularity of dancing at the factory. Music and dancing at factories are said to have originated at New Lanark with Robert Owen’s educational experiments47 (see Plate 2) and ballrooms were known at a handful of factories in the first half of the nineteenth century, but organised dancing became common at factories from the first decade of the twentieth century. Dancing at factories, including at Heinz, was encouraged not only for fun but also as another form of exercise for women and children. The theory that dancing was good for physical and mental health had developed at the end of the nineteenth century partly from research in the new academic disciplines of psychology and physiology.48 The theories of Stanley Hall, a psychologist, and neurologist George M. Beard, particularly those on the importance of play in the open air and dancing were highly influential, even ‘inestimable’ in the movement for recreation in both Britain and America in the first decade of the twentieth century.49 Stanley Hall argued that exercise must be vigorous, regular and wholesome and that discrete exercises for girls should focus on gymnastics and dancing.50 This explains why male factory workers around 1900 performed ‘drill’ style exercises on the grounds, while female workers exercised to orderly rhythmic routines, and why women were encouraged to dance in the dinner hour. Edward Cadbury in his book Experiments in Industrial Organisation (1912) a partial and not very scientific contribution to the latest theories on industrial welfare, explained that the syllabus of the girl’s voluntary class for Morris exercises, included instruction in Morris dancing, folk songs and national dances. He also remarked (without giving specific evidence) that boys’ Morris dancing lessons were ‘very successful, and

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The factory in a garden their effects on the moral and physical development of the boys have been most marked’.51 It is impossible to gauge the popularity of outdoor dancing in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury in the early twentieth century, but it could be regarded as a relatively creative and open-minded policy, for dancing in controlled public spaces like parks, particularly open-air dancing, was not common at this time, at least in Britain. There is some evidence of dancing saloons in early parks including the Woolsorters Baths and Park at Bradford which had a dancing saloon in the 1850s,52 but these were indoor spaces and outdoor dancing in the parks seems to have been reserved for very special occasions like the park opening celebrations.53 However, dancing in parks would have been regulated in much the same way as in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury, where it was relatively restrained and segregated, when at some point between the wars, probably in the 1920s, visitors from the men’s side were invited to dance with the women54 (Figure. 4.4). Dancing at Cadbury was therefore organised for largely the same reasons as at Robert Owen’s New Lanark more than one hundred years earlier – for moral and physical improvement. By the 1900s in America, folk dancing had been introduced into the parks, a dance form considered to be more respectable than dance hall dancing and later, social dancing was introduced, perhaps to compete with the dance halls, but dancing took place mostly in the park dancing pavilion. Folk dancing was popular at Bournville for a short time in 1908 and was then revived in 1923 with the formation of a Folk Dance Society, which was soon ‘flourishing’. By the 1920s, the dance pavilions in the US parks, for which a small fee was charged and male and female chaperones provided, were very well attended.55 Perhaps the American dance pavilions inspired the idea of dancing in the pavilion at the Spirella Company in Letchworth that was discovered by the visitor to the sports ground that opened this chapter. But by the 1920s, American dance fever had hit Britain and dancing took place outside as well as in. Even at chaste Cadbury, spirited modern dances were taking place on the lawn at the Rowheath grounds accompanied by the works band for it was now acceptable for men and women to dance together in the works’ grounds.56 In the 1930s, the Bata pavilion had an outdoor dance platform, although the workforce was not always keen to dance on company premises. The Bata Record of 6 July 1934 reported that although open-air dancing was initially very popular, ‘apathy’ had now set in and interest had waned. By this time facilities at many factories for dancing were elaborate. Spirella at Letchworth and Ovaltine at King’s Langley had ballrooms with sprung floors so the dancing craze could be indulged in throughout the year.

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4.4  Dancing in the Girls’ Grounds at the Cadbury factory, 1920.

Gardens have at least since the Renaissance provided Arcadian space for theatre and performance57 but these spaces have largely been the preserve of the well off and the working classes had to make do with the village green or common. Although travelling players were occasionally seen in the public park, there is no evidence of formal open-air performances taking place in parks for the general public, although it is likely that this did happen from time to time. However, at Cadbury

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The factory in a garden outdoor theatre became at least an annual event in the first decade of the twentieth century. The company had an abundance of outdoor space for theatricals using the pergola terrace for some performances, and when larger audiences were expected they had the benefit of the natural amphitheatre in the Girls’ Grounds which could seat several thousand spectators. An audience of over 500 saw the first outdoor public performance of the Dramatic Society on 11 June 1913, a masque Cophetua by the poet John Drinkwater (1882–1937), who became well known for his historical dramas, and scenes from Twelfth Night.58 The NCR also had an amphitheatre at their Hills and Dales Club where the company chorus and orchestra entertained a crowd of almost 1,200 at the club opening on 27 July 1916.59 The NCR amphitheatre was perhaps inspired by the Cadbury example, although there were by this time a small number of wellknown private outdoor theatres. The industrialist Pierre S. Du Pont made one in his garden at Longwood, Pennsylvania, which was first used in 1914 and the private boy’s school, Bradfield, near Reading (UK) had a Greek theatre from 1890. Although these theatres were opened for public performances, audiences were likely to have been drawn from the more privileged. Open-air theatre at work was a novelty for factory workers in the early years of the twentieth century. Pageants, festivals or fêtes were also promoted at factories to reinforce company culture and a sense of place, and the larger factory gardens as well as the owners’ gardens provided space for these. Corporate rituals like feasts to celebrate important events in employers’ families such as birthdays, weddings or coming of age had been a fairly common feature of factory social life, but firms like Cadbury excelled at the quantity and variety of events initiated by, and performed by, the workforce.60 Pageants and masques were staged four times between 1908 and 1914 and fêtes sometimes more frequently, and the company celebrated important anniversaries in style.61 The Cadbury pageants and masques were undoubtedly a symptom of the ‘Pageantitis’ that ‘swept’ across England between 1905 and 1914 and spread to America. Deborah Sugg Ryan has shown that during these years at least forty pageants were staged in parks and other open spaces in towns and cities across Britain and more than 130 during the same period in the USA. She argues that pageants were expressions of the emergence of ‘popular modernism’ in which the idea of tradition was reinvented as an expression of the modern conditions of massleisure that crossed boundaries of gender and class.62 It is also likely, however, that these elaborate public spectacles, which mostly re-enacted past events and traditions, were expressions or reassertions of civic and national identity in a period of change in the years before the First

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’107 World War. The pageants and masques staged at Letchworth Garden City before 1914, in which workers from the Spirella factory participated, were designed to contribute to the new garden city sense of community, liberalism and the ‘spirit of the place’.63 One spectator, reporting in the Spirella house journal recalls the ‘delightful freedom’ engendered by the ‘beautiful … open air’ setting of the pageant and its potential to ‘break through prejudice and arouse from lethargy both our national and civic life’.64 The same spirit pervaded in the garden suburb Bedford Park, Chiswick (1875–81) where residents staged theatricals, tableaux and masques. As Walter Creese has argued, this love of role-playing was symbolic of affluence and leisure, but was also a protection against encroaching modernisation and modernism.65 Similar events took place at some of the US factories including celebrations of the Fourth of July to foster national spirit and social unity. The celebrations in 1900 at the NCR Company lasted a whole week ending in a procession to Far Hills, the home of their president John H. Patterson. The twenty-four-piece band led the procession, followed by, in order, the officers of the company, foreign delegates, district managers (each carrying an American flag), factory girls carrying red, white and blue umbrellas and, finally, factory workers wearing grey suits and broad-brimmed straw hats draped with the American flag.66 Pageants and other company events involved large numbers of employees and were likely to have crossed boundaries of class and position since all departments across the factories were invited to contribute. Horticulture in the factory gardens One of the best routes to reform was thought to be by example and a factory, set in a beautiful landscape, or at least surrounded by flowers and greenery, created a model environment for workers to improve ­themselves morally and educationally. Disraeli, in his novel Sybil published in 1845 set in an industrial village, made a point of the ‘beautiful gardens [of the village], which gave an impulse to the horticulture of the ­community’.67 Public parks performed the same function for elegant design and beautiful planting and not only lifted the spirits but taught the ­community about plants, good gardening practice and virtuous character traits. At the Spirella factory in Letchworth Garden City, an unusual horticultural success, the flowering after five years of the Saxifraga gigantea on the factory roof garden, was written up in the company magazine to celebrate the gardener’s achievement and to teach the merits of perseverance and patience.68 Gardening at Spirella also became a feature of business success.69 Many factories and factory villages had provided allotments for their workers from the early days of the factory system and continued

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The factory in a garden to meet the high demand for plots in the early 1900s. At Rowheath, the new grounds for the Cadbury workers opened in 1926, three acres were set aside for allotments and the NCR had separate allotment gardens for different age, gender and social groups. Factory horticultural clubs were some of the most popular (all of the case studies discussed had one), the annual flower show was a high point in the social calendar and company magazines regularly published advice or even directives on horticultural matters. The Bournville Works Magazine had a regular gardening column from its November 1902 first edition. The gardens advice given in the Bata Record was directed at householders who were under close surveillance by the company at least as far as their front gardens were concerned. In the same spirit of aesthetic and moral control as that of William Lever at Port Sunlight,70 the Bata management took control of the residents’ front gardens in Bata Avenue, the first street to be built and visible to those visiting the factory. The first gardening column in the Bata Record of 1934 makes it very clear that residents who have planted against the guidelines must turn over their front gardens to the compulsory lawn: The Housing Department is very appreciative of the charming way in which some occupants of the houses have laid out their front gardens with flower beds, and quite realise how hard it will come to them to have to conform with the rule that a lawn always must be sown in front of each house. Nevertheless, it is considered advisable that there should be uniformity in the interest of the estate as a whole. Roses will be grown later along the green verge and there will be opportunity for residents to plant privet hedges round their houses.71

The Bata estate was built to the style principles of modernism, which tended to favour lawns and rejected mixed floral displays except in discreet areas. To make up for the inconvenience, the firm would supply grass seed and sow the lawns for a small charge. The firm also stipulated two trees (a cherry and a rowan) per front garden, and when the houses were sold off in the 1980s, most of the new owners asked for the statutory trees in their front gardens to be cut down, symbolic of freedom at last.72 As at all the garden factories, at Bata those in charge promoted gardening. Mrs Schmidt, the wife of the Bata managing director, offered cash prizes in the village’s first gardening competition in July 1937. She and her husband (both keen gardeners) joined the sports and social manager and the head gardener to judge the competition.73 No doubt, the Bata residents were as keen on gardening as those on other working-class estates, but the competition must have been an opportunity for the management to keep an eye on those residents tempted to flout the rules.

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’109 Gardening for child workers had also been a feature of organisation in at least one model factory from the early nineteenth century. At Styal, near Manchester, the resident children were compelled to till the vegetable plot outside the ‘Apprentice House’ after their long day labouring in the mill followed by schoolwork. Towards the end of the nineteenth century gardening clubs for the younger factory workers were started in line with nationwide initiatives to teach children about gardening in community and school gardens.74 Girls’ and boys’ gardens were provided at Cadbury, Rowntree and the NCR. The Cadbury firm took over the boys’ gardening classes at Bournville from the Birmingham Education Committee in May 1912 and the Works Education Committee started a girls’ gardening class which suggests a commitment at the firm to gender equality (Figure 4.5). However, the allotments reinforced gender roles for the girls grew flowers for the home and the boys, the providers, mostly vegetables to augment the family budget, with annual awards to encourage competition. The evidence suggests that demand for allotment gardens exceeded supply.

4.5  The Girls’ Allotment Gardens near the Cadbury factory, Bournville, c.1910.

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The factory in a garden The merits of the more leisurely and aesthetic side of gardens and plants were also encouraged at the factories, either by well-organised landscape and planting in the vicinity of the factory and office buildings or by the addition of pleasure gardens. Landscape departments managed the grounds and at some factories these were manned by a large staff – the Cadbury Gardens Department had about 70 gardeners and groundsmen in the 1920s,75 50 in the 1930s76 and 59 in the 1950s, responsible for 110 acres of gardens and recreation grounds. The large Gardeners’ Department at Cadbury had a social life and culture of its own including a bowling team and occasional outings to horticultural shows.77 The smaller establishments employed at least one gardener, for example, Spirella in Letchworth. Facilities for gardening at some factories were elaborate, including glasshouses and cold frames, tool stores and staff rest and mess rooms. From the new greenhouses built at Cadbury in the 1920s, gardeners could supply the copious plants and flowers for the factory and office interiors described in Chapter 3 and like Rowntree, they grew cocoa. An article on ‘The Bournville Cocoa Tree’ in the Bournville Works Magazine, July 1936, acknowledges the firm’s debt to the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for his advice on growing the plant, which was by then thriving in the greenhouses.78 At some factories, including Cadbury, the NCR Company and the Natural Food Company in Niagara Falls, the factory was set up as a model of gardening and gardening practice in the local community. Advice was dispensed and incentives provided through articles on gardening in the company magazine, competitions for the best gardens, lectures on landscaping and plant catalogues and other factory publications of gardening advice. At the NCR, Patterson, with the support of John Charles Olmsted, his landscape architect, ensured that the local residents would follow his landscaping example (Figure. 4.6). He opened the Boys’ Gardens, started a local improvement association, offered cash prizes for the best gardens and arranged with local nurseries to supply plants and seeds at favourable prices. Taking advice from Olmsted, he made a slide lecture on how to plant a lawn and he ‘named and shamed’ those who refused to conform to improvements by photographing their ill-kept lawns and showing them in public.79 He filled the factory with flowers and palms and gave prizes for the best-kept gardens in South Park.80 The Boys’ Gardens designed by the Olmsteds and laid out in 1897 was Patterson’s flagship project and news of the boy gardeners and their achievements appeared frequently in NCR promotional materials (discussed further in Chapter 6). Although take-up was slow at first, cash incentives, a strict supervisor and, no doubt, parental pressure saw

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’111

4.6  John Charles Olmsted (centre) and John Patterson (right) in the rear porch of an NCR mechanic’s house, taken on 18 October 1898.

that the gardens were productive and Patterson and his supporters celebrated them as being among his most significant achievements. (By 1919, nearly 800 boys had been trained in the gardens.)81 To increase incentives and teach them management skills, the boys ran their own garden company, attended an annual formal dinner with prizes at the Officers’ Club and produced their own booklet about the gardens. Local children were also encouraged to garden at home. In September 1904, the company magazine, The NCR, announced that four local children had won a considerable treat – a trip to the St Louis World Fair for the best-kept window boxes and yards in South Park. Gender segregation was as important to the company outside as it was inside the factory. The Girls’ Garden, which was smaller than the boys’ and more elementary in design was sited further from the factory82 and the girl gardeners received far less publicity in the company magazine. However, Patterson, who became well known as a campaigner for gardens at schools before his death in 1922, was more active than most employers in providing gardening opportunities and fresh vegetables for his employees and their families. The male blue-collar workers had their own allotments and an Officers’ Club garden supplied produce for the officers’ dining room. To further encourage gardening among the workforce and other locals, the NCR produced several pamphlets of advice and plant

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The factory in a garden

4.7  Watching the ‘Landscape Lecture’ at the NCR Landscape Gardening School, Dayton, c.1900.

information and the Gardening Department sold bulbs, seeds and annuals at a nominal charge. Patterson set himself up as the district’s leading authority on gardens and landscapes and he toured the local Sunday schools, clubs and other improvements associations with lantern slide lectures on landscaping.83 In the spring months, a series of lectures on landscape gardening given at the factory was offered to all workers and local residents84 (Figure. 4.7). The Natural Food Company also very actively promoted the art of landscape gardening in Niagara, offering cash prizes for the best results in landscaping and planting to any resident of the city. This was undoubtedly inspired by the NCR, since the CEO, Colonel Deeds, had formerly worked in Dayton and Mr Perky the owner had inspected the NCR, and declared that when he returned to his factory he intended to adopt ‘everything that I have learned here that can be applied to our own situation’.85 The Natural Food Company Landscape Department supplied seed to the townspeople free of charge, helped to make gardens at

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’113 the local schools and awarded prizes to any resident of the city for the best examples of landscape gardening. The department also published several pamphlets including in 1902 a List of Trees Shrubs and Vines, suitable for sidewalk planting, Season of 1902–3 and Landscape Gardening. The latter, which begins with a quotation from English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon (1561–1626), gives planting, pruning and watering advice and lists the plants and seeds that the company provided free of charge, as well as advising on the available gardening prizes. Borrowing ideas from the Olmsteds, via the NCR, the Natural Food Company was attempting to improve public taste in gardening for the booklet illustrates good and bad planting schemes in front gardens, taken directly from the NCR ‘Landscape Gardening’ lecture. The preferred ‘artistic’ planting scheme, to ‘plant in masses, not isolated’; ‘avoid straight lines’, and preserve open lawn areas, was suggestive of styles promoted in the latest gardening magazines for suburban gardens, broadly the loose informal style of planting popularised by Frederick Law Olmsted and the advocates of the picturesque. The Natural Food Company’s booklet Landscape Gardening, although biased, indicates that some industrialists through the example of conscientious landscaping and gardening practices on the factory site and in the neighbourhood, contributed to urban change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: The interest in Civic Improvement [sic] is steadily growing and the work is being carried on in various cities with great success. The most striking example of the effectiveness of this work is the City of Dayton, Ohio, where a few years ago a large manufacturing concern [the NCR Company] took up the work of Civic Improvement and the existing conditions have been greatly changed and now various portions of that city resemble a garden spot.86

Historians have long acknowledged the importance of industrial villages as models for the Garden City Movement and thus for subsequent suburban planning policy. However, while research is developing on the role of municipalities in Britain and on their promotion of horticulture between the wars,87 the role of the factory itself and its landscape department in mentoring and promoting civic improvement has not been ­sufficiently acknowledged.88 Another important contribution of factory grounds to social policy and one that will form the subject of future research, is their role in food production in times of economic depression and in wartime. During the Great Depression in America, many companies made land available for ‘community gardens’ where employees or the unemployed could grow vegetables. The B. F. Goodrich Company in Ohio managed their ‘Akron Community Gardens, Inc.’ as a cooperative farm and, using a system

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The factory in a garden of mass production, gardeners provided for their families and avoided a dependence on charity. At his rural village industries, Henry Ford enforced vegetable gardening during the 1930s, and those who refused would be fired.89 During both world wars, food production and a fit and healthy workforce became essential to the war effort when supplies from abroad were limited and expensive. During the Second World War in Britain, the Ministry of Agriculture tried to persuade industries to turn any spare land over to food production to avoid imports and expensive and limited transportation. Sports pitches, or parts of them, and flower gardens were sacrificed, or companies turned over their spare land (some purchased before the war with an eye to future development) to market gardens. Factories that already had canteen gardens extended them, some companies built greenhouses and others raised pigs. At one firm the head gardener, now doing essential war work, was exempted from military service and at others, older men or pensioners often willingly gave their labour. Elsewhere members of the Civil Defence League were called in to help.90 Despite the official promotion of physical recreation for industrial workers during the war, a demand for land for food production resulted in a reduction of field sports at some firms during the war years, but to compensate, works clubs encouraged indoor sporting activities in the winter and non-field based sports such as swimming, cycling and hiking in the summer.91 Conclusion Images of their attractive landscaping, pleasure gardens and allotments (including well-kept gardens in neighbouring houses), and contented employees using the recreation grounds to the full were naturally exploited by publicity and public relations departments and can be seen in promotional material and to some extent in advertising. The booklet Cadbury at Work and Play, published in 1926, recorded a summer evening at the Rowheath grounds, which uses similar language and imagery as those chosen by the visitor to the Spirella recreation grounds mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Rowheath is a pleasant scene enough on a summer evening, when, flooded with sunshine, its fields are alive with play of all kinds, its lawns gay with dance and music and its gardens a peaceful resting place for workers with their families. It affords a sight which, as the counterpart of work, is eloquent of industry’s full meaning in the life of a people – and a sight which ever-makes [sic] reflective Bournville folk realize their good fortune in a location where fields and beauty are at hand.92

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’115 Where industrialisation had separated work and leisure, philanthropic and pragmatic industrialists sought to integrate them again in their attempt to make the working day less onerous, the environment more attractive, and the factory worker, healthier, more contented and loyal. Access to garden and park space during the working day was a relative luxury and particularly for those who wished to participate in sport or other cultural activities such as gardening at lunchtime, in the evenings and at weekends, the factory grounds provided more accessible and sometimes superior facilities to those outside the workplace.93 I revisit these points in Chapter 7 where I discuss the value of factory gardens to employees and employers in more detail. Chapter 5 looks in more depth at how the scope and variety of activities made available by the spaces of factory landscapes developed and changed into the 1920s and  1930s and beyond with the making of a new style of company ­recreation ground. Notes  1 ‘What I Think of our Sports Ground’, Threads VI:65 (July 1933), 96–7, FGCH.  2 Spirella Corset Company, Great Oaks (late 1940s?), FGCHM 100.  3 Chance, H. ‘Mobilising the Modern Industrial Landscape for Sports and leisure in the Early Twentieth Century’, International Journal of the History of Sport 29:11 (August 2012), 1600–25.  4 These included the American Physical Association, founded in 1885, the American Civic Association (1904), the Playground Association of America (1906) (refounded as the Playground and Recreation Association of America in 1911 and the National Recreation Association in 1930). In Britain, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association campaigned for more parks and playing fields and policy for these became more systematic with the Town Planning Act 1909. The National Playing Field Association was founded in 1925 to promote open space for sport.  5 Calderdale Council website, www.calderdale.gov.uk/leisure/localhistory/glimpse-past/ parks/sunnyvale.html (accessed 28 July 2015).  6 Trip to Sunny Vale Gardens, Hipperholme (1901), BFI National Archive, http://player.bfi. org.uk/film/watch-trip-to-sunny-vale-gardens-at-hipperholme-1901–1901/ (accessed 28 July 2015).  7 Bailey, Leisure and Class, p. 177, and Bailey, P. Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 21–6.  8 Conway, People’s Parks, p. 35.  9 Bailey, Leisure and Class, pp. 2–5. 10 Peiss, K. Cheap Amusements. Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986). 11 Jones, S. G. Sport, Politics and the Working Classes. Organised Labour and Sport in Inter-War Britain (Manchester, 1992), p. 44. 12 Anderson, Industrial Recreation, pp. 14–15.

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The factory in a garden 13 Cranz, G. The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America (Cambridge, MA, 1982), p. 106. See also Knapp, R. F. ‘Municipal Recreation: Background of an Era’, Parks and Recreation VII:8 (August 1972), 14–19, 44–52. 14 Metcalfe, A. Leisure and Recreation in a Victorian Mining Community: the Social Economy of leisure in North East England 1820–1914 (London and New York, 2006), pp. 24–8. 15 Meller, H. Leisure and the Changing City 1870–1914 (London, Henley and Boston, 1976), p. 219. 16 Roberts, E. A Woman’s Place. An Oral History of Working-Class Women 1890–1940 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 69–70. For the ‘Dancing Madness’ in early twentieth-century America, see Peiss, Cheap Amusements, chapter 4. 17 Whitenack, P. C. Hersheypark (Charleston, SC, 2006), p. 9. 18 Knapp, ‘Municipal Recreation’, 19. 19 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, chapter 7. 20 Harris, Private Lives, pp. 134–5. 21 Knapp, ‘Municipal Recreation’, 19. 22 Bailey, Leisure and Class, p. 154. 23 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, p. 8. 24 Stevenson, British Society, p. 417. 25 Metcalfe, Leisure and Recreation, p. 52. 26 Graves, R. and Hodge, A. The Long Weekend: a Social History of Great Britain 1918–1939 (London, 1940), p. 348. 27 Stevenson, British Society, p. 400. 28 McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. 196. 29 Gardeners’ Chronicle 51 (1912), p. 108, in Jordan, ‘Public Parks’, 86. 30 Biggs, The Rational Factory, p. 69. 31 Metcalfe, Leisure and Recreation, pp. 50–6. 32 See Davidson, L. ‘A Quest for Harmony. Music and Dancing at Robert Owen’s New Lanark Community’, Utopian Studies 21:2 (2010), 232–51. 33 Langhamer, C. ‘“A Public House is for all Classes, Men and Women Alike.” Women, Leisure and Drink in Second World War England’, Women’s History Review 12:3 (2003), 423–43. See also Rosenweig, R. Eight Hours for What we Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 44–6, 63. 34 Conway, People’s Parks, p. 191. 35 Nelson, ‘The New Factory System and the Unions’, 163–78. 36 ‘Playtime’, Bata Record 101 (15 May 1936), 1, BRRC. 37 Meakin, Model Factories, pp. 94–5. 38 Fairman, L. The Growth of a Great Industry (Pittsburgh, c.1900). The women on the Heinz factory roof are office, not shop-floor, workers but in another source the latter are seen to have access to the roof garden. Foster, D. and Kennedy, J. H.J. Heinz Company. Images of America. Worker’s Utopia (Charleston, 2006). 39 Cadbury The Factory and Recreation (Bournville, 1925), p. 19, CB. 40 ‘An Enquiry into People’s Homes’ File Report 1654 (1943), p. 25. 41 Conway, People’s Parks, p. 186.

‘Happy healthy workers are the world’s best’117 42 ‘Minute Book Indenture’ (n. d.), CB, 350 001804. 43 Cadbury, Bournville at Work and Play (1926) and Information for the use of Guides and Visitors (1926), CB. 44 Conway, People’s Parks, p. 202. 45 The Wonders of Niagara: Scenic and Industrial (Niagara, c.1905). 46 Bata Record (1 June 1934 and 7 September 1934), BRRC. 47 Davidson, ‘A Quest for Harmony’. 48 Gagen, E. A. ‘Making America Flesh: Physicality and Nationhood in Early Twentiethcentury Physical Education Reform’, Cultural Geographies 11 (2004), 417–42. 49 Ibid., p. 426. 50 Hall, S. Adolescence: its Psychology, and its Relation to Physiology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, 2 vols (New York, 1904). 51 Cadbury, Experiments, pp. 33–5. 52 Conway, People’s Parks, p. 54. 53 Ibid., p. 186. 54 Rogers, Cadbury (1931), p. 45. 55 Cranz, ‘Reform Parks’, pp. 466–8. 56 Bournville. An Invitation (1937), pp. 56–7, CB, 000 000024. 57 Graham, D. ‘Garden as Theater as Museum’, in Graham, D. Rock my Religion. Writings and Art Projects 1965–1990 (Cambridge, MA, 1993), pp. 286–307. 58 See Williams, I. A. The Firm of Cadbury (London, 1931), p. 180 and Bournville at Work and Play (Bournville, 1926), CB. 59 NCR News (August 1916), pp. 22–3, NCR.DH. 60 Joyce, Work, Society and Politics, pp. 179–85. 61 Williams, The Firm of Cadbury, p. 180. 62 Sugg Ryan, D. ‘“Pageantitis”: Frank Lascelles’ 1907 Oxford Historical Pageant, Visual Spectacle and Popular Memory’, Visual Culture in Britain 8:2 (2007), 63–82. 63 Miller, The Garden, pp. 88, 106–8. 64 Hunter, D. ‘Folk Drama’, Threads (4 April 1909), 78–81, FGCHM. 65 Creese, ‘Imagination in the Suburb’, p. 61. 66 Social Service 2:9 (September 1900), 14–19 in Brandes, American Welfare Capitalism, p. 79. 67 Quoted in Bailey, Leisure and Class, p. 55. 68 ‘The Stroller’s Shadow’, Threads. The Spirella House Journal IV:42 (August 1931), 100, FGCHM. 69 The Spirella Magazine XXI:10 (October 1932), 148–9, FGCHM. 70 At Port Sunlight, the residents paid the wages and costs of the large gardening staff, which was a much larger percentage of the workers’ incomes than they would have chosen to spend themselves. See Fishman, Urban Utopias, 60. 71 ‘Gardens of Bata Avenue’, Bata Record (14 September 1934), 5, BRRC. 72 Interview with Erik Allen, retired head gardener of the Bata Estate, 4 August 2007. 73 ‘Guineas for Gardens’, Bata Record (11 June 1937), 1, BRRC.

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The factory in a garden 74 See Lawson, L. City Bountiful a Century of Community Gardening in America (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2005). 75 Cadbury. ‘The Factory and Recreation’ (n.d. late 1920s?). 76 Bournville Personalities (1938), CB. 77 ‘In Praise of Gardeners’, BWM XXX:11 (November 1935), 393; BWM X:7 (July 1912), p. 211, CB. 78 BWM XXIV:7 (July 1936), 210–11, CB. 79 J. M. Good. The Work of Civic Improvement (no date), p. 12, NCR.DH. 80 Gilman, A Dividend to Labor, p. 230. 81 ‘C. C. Feicht Says’, NCR News VI:1 (July 1919), 36, NCR.DH. 82 ‘What Can a Girl Do’, NCR News 2:5 (November 1915), 11, NCR.DH. 83 Lawson, City Bountiful, pp. 104–6. 84 NCR, The Garden Book (Dayton, 1900s); NCR Nursery Book and Catalogue of Trees, Shrubs and Hardy Plants (Dayton, 1906), NCR.DH. 85 Perky, H. quoted in Tracy, How my Heart Sang, p. 155. 86 Landscape Gardening Department, Natural Food Company, Landscape Gardening, 1901. 87 Le Bas, E. ‘The Clinic, the Street and the Garden: Municipal Film-making in Britain between the Wars’, in Konstantarakos, M. Spaces in European Cinema (Bristol and Wilmington, 2000). 88 See Colvin, B. Land and Landscape (London, 1970). 89 Marchand. Corporate Soul, pp. 207–8. 90 Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management, xxiv:286 (January/February 1943), 13 and xxv:287 (April 1943), 46–7. 91 Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management xxiii:273 (December 1940), 181. 92 Cadbury, Cadbury at Work and Play (Bournville, 1926), p. 91. 93 See Chance, ‘Mobilising the Modern Industrial Landscape’ for a detailed discussion of sports in the workplace.

Designing the company Arcadia 5  ✧  Designing the company Arcadia

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ambitions of industrialists George Cadbury and John Patterson and their heirs did not stop with the land in the immediate vicinity of their factories. As their workforces grew, both men ploughed their profits into new parks for their employees and eventually for the wider community, and today they are remembered for their significant and lasting patronage of community parks and other open spaces. Rowheath Park, at Bournville (from 1921) and the Hills and Dales Park, the Old Barn Club and Old River Park, made for NCR employees between 1906 and 1939, are highly significant to the history of corporate landscapes in terms of their scale and the sophistication of their designs in a factory context.1 In this chapter I compare these parks to reveal diversities in the cultural, symbolic and stylistic approaches to landscape design in the two nations, including what it was possible to achieve in the suburban landscapes of Britain and the USA and in the beliefs, desires and expectations of the factory worker and his patriarch in what the landscape could provide for them. Cultural geographer Stephen Daniels in his book Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States explores how landscapes in different media have suggested national identities and he argues that the American West and the English landed estate are two of the predominant models for the symbolic landscapes of the two nations.2 These models are each present in the NCR and the  Cadbury company parks, but they were also modelled on landscapes of national identity that were developing from particular conditions of suburbanisation in Britain and the USA. Borrowing ideas from  Leo  Marx’s book The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America I consider the conflicting relationships between  industry and nature, technology and the garden in the context  of the  suburban factory park and garden to suggest how they h e la n d sc a p i n g

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The factory in a garden should be understood in the context of industrialisation before the Second World War.3 This choice of case studies does not claim that these parks were necessarily the best of their kind. The park at the Hershey Chocolate factory town in Pennsylvania was clearly another fine corporate landscape, although unlike most of the examples discussed here, it was opened from the start as a public park. However, these companies achieved high standards of landscaping for their workforces by employing high-profile landscape designers and they developed a professional relationship of mutual admiration. The park-making activities of the Cadburys and of John Patterson and his heirs, as leading industrialists of their day, give a sound indication of the best practice in park design for industrial welfare in this period. The landscape architecture profession and corporate landscaping By the turn of the nineteenth century, the newly emerging profession of landscape architect was already active in a small number of corporate landscape commissions. After 1900, the Olmsted Brothers in the USA and the Cheals Company in Britain were among the first of the landscape firms to acknowledge and seize the growing number of lucrative commissions for corporate landscaping in an industrial world that was recognising the value of recreation to worker health, satisfaction, retention and, therefore, productivity. The Olmsteds had been famous for several decades as innovators in park design in the USA after Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux designed Central Park in New York from 1857 to 1861, and for the designs of municipal parks for working-class neighbourhoods including the Chicago Park system, which included extensive facilities for sports and other forms of recreation. (The Olmsted firm became the nation’s leading landscape architects and town planners.)4 The Cheals firm designed at least fifteen public parks in England and Wales between 1885 and 1920, including in Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, Hove, Poole, Leeds, and Wrexham, and Acton and Stratford parks in London.5 Therefore a corporate park commission presented no difficulty in terms of understanding the modern requirements for recreation. Between 1900 and 1939, the Olmsted Brothers were involved in at least twenty commissions for factory landscaping including recreation grounds, and these were in addition to the numerous designs they did for railway companies, insurance, banks, water companies and corporate headquarters.6 Corporate commissions for the Cheals Nursery in the same decades were relatively few. They included the parks and gardens at Bournville (from 1906), Fry (from 1915), the Glaxo Laboratories (from

Designing the company Arcadia121 1936), and after the Second World War, the Paynes Chocolate Factory near Croydon.7 The landscape architect and town planner Thomas Mawson is well known for the parks and gardens he designed for the industrialist William Lever, First Viscount Leverhulme, including for Port Sunlight industrial village, and designs for the industrialist’s private garden at Thornton Manor nearby. Lord Leverhulme liked to entertain up to 2,000 members of his workforce in his gardens so Mawson made the garden paths extra wide, designed a lawn to accommodate a large marquee and with the British climate in mind, incorporated numerous shelters into his designs.8 More ambitiously, he made a plan for a water park at the Manor to provide swimming and boating facilities for Port Sunlight workers, but this never materialised.9 The design can be seen in Mawson’s book Civic Art published in 1911, in which he advises on the value of ‘good’ architecture and landscape architecture in promoting respectability and attracting the ‘right’ kind of people. Here he makes an unequivocal connection between class and the aesthetic beauty of gardens, recommending that for ‘certain’ trades such as furniture, clothing and foodstuffs, employing a ‘certain’ class of employee (by this he meant the upperworking and the middle classes) the factory and its suburb should be ‘a thing of beauty and a direct asset to their immediate neighbourhood’.10 Mawson did not design any other factory landscapes, but his espousal of gardens for ‘respectable’ factory workers reflects, in some respects progressive, and in others condescending and prejudiced, beliefs about the role and value of gardens and parks to factory workers. The remark is, as far as I can tell, the first instance in Britain of a designer, rather than a social theorist, recommending factory landscaping. In the USA, Charles Mulford Robinson, the American planning theorist and Professor of Civic Design at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign mentioned the value of beautifying suburban factories in his book Modern Civic Art, first published in 1904.11 The resplendent formal garden made in front of the new mail order company Sears Roebuck’s buildings in Chicago in 1906, designed by architect George Nimmons, is very likely to have been inspired by the Civic Art movement. By the time Mawson’s book was published, the Olmsted Brothers in the USA, a larger firm, had been involved in at least six corporate landscape projects and these would increase through the 1920s and 1930s.12 Therefore, the view among historians that the suburban corporate landscape was an American ‘invention’ of the post-Second World War period is misleading since such landscapes evolved between the wars and have important nineteenth-century precedents in both Europe and North America.13 The corporate landscape, or as Louise Mozingo deftly defines it, pastoral capitalism, not only evolved in this period,

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The factory in a garden but was also defined as a new type of modern recreation facility through expansion and modernisation that served the needs of all workers, male and female. Mozingo’s research focuses on the typically American smoothly landscaped campuses, estates and parks that sprang up as corporations moved their upper management to the suburbs and opened research facilities in the 1950s and 1960s (discussed in Chapter 8) and she acknowledges that there were precedents to these landscapes in nineteenth-century industry. However, the essential forms and functions of post-war office landscapes all emerged and were modelled in many respects on their industrial antecedents. It was no coincidence that in the same year that Civic Art was published, the landscape architecture firm of Morell and Nichols of Minneapolis published a book to promote the value of landscape architecture (and their business) that includes a section on the design and function of factory grounds, which ‘is everywhere receiving more and more attention’.14 Landscape architects were earlier to professionalise in the USA than in the UK. Morell and Nichols suggest in their pamphlet that America was leading the way in landscape architecture. In terms of the breadth and profile of their work, in the commercial as well as in civic commissions, in housing design, urban planning and the private sectors (offices, schools and factories, for example), this would be appear to be correct. Factory parks – ‘the machine in the garden’ Landscape architects like Thomas Mawson, the Olmsteds, and Morrell and Nicols were professionals skilled in communicating the value of their art to industrialist clients, especially the importance of aesthetics in an industrial landscape and the benefits of expert design in making the best of a site for advertising and for worker morale. Thomas Mawson had a long professional and personal relationship with William Lever. The letters from the Olmsted firm to their clients in the Library of Congress, Washington DC, a number of which are cited in this book, are testimony to their professional approach. Their knowledge of plants, including those that were pollutant-resistant, also gave landscape architects a particular expertise in those best suited to industrial conditions. Their business was to unify the oppositions of industry and the landscape, the machine and the garden. In English Romanticism, for example in the writings of Wordsworth, Carlyle and Ruskin, the machine and nature had been in opposition since the first large factories began to ‘blight’ the landscape, although in some British landscape art, the relationship between industrial production and the landscape is more ambiguous. J. M. W. Turner in his painting of 1844, Rain Steam and Speed, expressed a technological sublime

Designing the company Arcadia123 of beauty, turbulence and awe. Leo Marx has argued that in American Romanticism the contrast between the machine and nature was ‘the great issue’ of American culture. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and other writers initially defended the machine in the landscape as technology exalted. By the end of the nineteenth century, the machine represented the forces working against pastoralism, an onslaught on an American ideal,15 and landscaping for industry became an attempt to resolve the machine/nature conflict. In building company towns industrialists achieved a union of the machine and the garden where factory and village were unified in one architectural space to bring together the functional and the pastoral.16 The landscaping of factory buildings and creation of factory parks became an even more cogent resolution of the machine/garden opposition. Company towns and villages tended to be spaces of surveillance where workers’ domestic and social lives were scrutinised as part of the corporate machinery or systems. By contrast, the company parks that were developed from the 1910s to the 1930s were designed and managed to offer increasing opportunities and freedoms for the workforce without overt supervision. Rowheath Park, Bournville By 1920, the Cadbury workforce had grown to approximately 7,50017 and so in 1913, the firm acquired, with the Bournville Village Trust, the Rowheath Farm estate of about forty acres which lay a quarter of a mile from the factory and began to plan for a new park for their employees, their families and residents of Bournville village.18 Over the next few years the Cadburys increased the park to about 75 acres and by the late 1920s, the company had approximately 110 acres of land (including 26½ acres of allotments) for recreation, involving a staff of about seventy gardeners and groundsmen.19 In the spring of 1922 the experienced park designers, Cheals of Crawley were employed to produce plans. Cheals had remodelled the Girls’ Grounds fifteen years previously and had worked on a number of private commissions for the family20 (Figure 5.1). The first plan for the park suggests that initially, the sporting needs of employees were a priority, for the whole area was to be turned over to playing fields with the exception of a large area for allotments.21 Whether the Cheals influenced the design process or whether there was pressure from those in the firm with interests outside sports we do not know, but the revised plan dated 27 May 1924 that was subsequently adopted, makes a much more imaginative use of the space with sports grounds on the larger part of the land and a pleasure park across the road, to cater for more leisurely and horticultural tastes22 (Figure 5.2). No doubt there were economic reasons for engaging more than 100 factory employees

5.1  Map showing the location of Rowheath Park in relation to the factory and Bournville village (east).

5.2  Cadbury Engineers’ Office plan for the Garden Club at Rowheath, Bournville (27 May 1924), on the land to the south of the road.

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The factory in a garden to landscape the park, but the symbolism of worker involvement in the project cannot have gone unnoticed. The design resembled in many ways public parks that were made in Britain between the wars, with a clear division between areas for sport, play and relaxation, but there were no formal gardens (as at Mawson’s Stanley Park in Blackpool 1926).23 The playing fields were mostly confined to the northern half of the grounds (where a children’s playground was planned, but it was never carried out)24 and the more pastoral area to the south resembled a small country club. Known as the Garden Club, this area was defined by a large pavilion on one side overlooking an ornamental lake, ‘to which a number of fancy waterfowl give added beauty’.25 To satisfy the dancing craze of the 1920s, a dancing lawn was made in front of the pavilion, embraced by bandstands on each side from where lines of trees narrowing into an avenue led the eye towards the water. The bandstands doubled up as outdoor stages and were used for concerts, dances and theatre. An area for more gentle amusements, a putting course, clock golf and croquet lay beside the Garden Club lawn on one side, with cricket pitches for youths on the other. Two bowling greens overlooked the lake and for children, a shallow pool and extension of the lake formed a safe place for model boat-sailing. Photographs and illustrations and accounts of the park suggest that no expense was spared in planting and so it must have equalled or bettered any municipal park in attention to detail26 (Plate 5). The design of Rowheath Park was based on an eclectic mix of English landscape traditions. It echoed the English landscape garden style of sweeping swathes of grass and trees leading the eye towards focal points including a serpentine lake. However, unlike some eighteenth-century landscape gardens of a landed estate where villages that ‘spoilt’ the view were moved (Nuneham Courtney in Oxfordshire, for example) the view from the pavilion overlooked a ‘magnificent panorama’ of nearby Frankley Village, evoking the English village landscape ideal. The pavilion was given an encircling terrace for this purpose. Walter Creese, quoting from an article in The Studio magazine of 1901, has pointed out that this English vernacular landscape is characterised in popular memory and imagination by ‘the undulating nature of the land … ­coppices and bosky dells [with] a pretty winding stream’, which is the landscape type that shaped the design of Bournville Village and Letchworth Garden City.27 However, the creation of vistas using axial lines, including the view of the lake through an avenue of trees is suggestive of the more classical tradition of garden design of the type adopted by Louis de Soissons at Welwyn Garden City, while the footpaths gathered around the lake, the footbridge and the rolling ground planted with trees, shrubs and flowers is reminiscent of the Repton picturesque. A photograph published in

1  The Old Silk Mill, Derby by Thomas Doughty, 1830s or 1840s. The mill was more than 100 years old when Doughty captured its romantic, picturesque qualities.

2  A watercolour of New Lanark, Scotland, in 1818 illustrating the picturesque setting of the factory village, the village gardens, and the walks along the River Clyde. A group dances along the path in the bottom left of the picture.

3  Aerial view illustration of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory, Bournville, England, 1931. The Men’s Recreation Ground is centre left and the Girls’ Grounds in the foreground. Bournville village, which had its own park is behind.

4  Illustration of Greek dancing at Bournville, copied from a photograph, 1921.

5  An idealised view of Rowheath Park and pavilion at Cadbury, Bournville, c.1930.

6  ‘The Bean Crop’ at the NCR Boys’ Gardens, c.1900.

7  Aerial view Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ, 2008. The campus, designed by architect Eero Saarinen and landscape architect Hideo Sasaki, was completed in 1962.

8  Gateway House, ‘The Hanging Gardens of Basingstoke’ designed by Arup Associates and James Russell, 1974–76.

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5.3  Rowheath pavilion and flower borders, October 1936. 

1936 suggests a reference to one further favourite British gardening style, the Arts and Crafts garden, for an effulgent ‘Jekyllesque’ herbaceous border can be seen between the pavilion and bandstands, framing the garden club lawn (Figure 5.3). Cheals designed the park to suggest a variety of English landscapes, but miniaturised, removed to the suburbs and organised for function and for aesthetic appeal for a modern suburban society. The layout and amenities of the park reflected modern recreation theory and practice. Unlike the earlier Cadbury recreation grounds adjacent to the factory, there was no gender segregation of space, a reflection of the more relaxed attitudes to relations between the sexes in the postwar period. The design of the park was not, like the Girls’ Grounds, suggestive of a private landed estate, despite a ‘nod’ to that image. Rowheath was a functional, modern public recreational facility that was also aesthetically pleasing and which emphasised the value of fitness, play, entertainment and rest. The park was large enough to accommodate company events involving thousands of participants and spectators. In June 1931 about 15,000 people assembled for the centenary celebrations held on the Rowheath Grounds, and numbers were said to have swelled to 40,000 for the firework display.28 The well-designed and functional pavilion and, later, the remarkable lido that was added to the site in 1937, supplied the park with even greater opportunities.

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The factory in a garden By the 1920s, the Cadbury workforce and their families, and local residents who had access to Bournville and other local parks, had considerably better access to high-quality recreation grounds than many urban or suburban dwellers in the UK and they were clearly very popular. Sports historians Steve Beauchampé and Simon Inglis have pointed out that there were small towns in Britain with less.29 By the time the new grounds opened in 1924, half of the entire Cadbury workforce were members of company athletic clubs. The grounds accommodated 38 teams for rugby, 38 football, 35 tennis, 32 cricket, 28 bowls, 28 hockey and 25 netball, with additional clubs for cross-country, swimming and water polo. A typical Saturday saw up to 100 teams and 1,000 players on the grounds. The original grounds closer to the factory continued to be extensively and regularly used, particularly during the lunch hour. Originally, the Rowheath Grounds were confined to those connected to Bournville, but gradually access was opened to a broader audience. In 1923, married employees were allowed to bring a friend ‘who had come from a distance’ to see the grounds and it appears that gradually local residents from a wider compass were allowed in, for on weekends in the summer they joined members of the workforce for band concerts.30 Despite their ambitious commercial and housing developments on farmland outside Birmingham, the Cadburys were ingenious developers, for they will always be remembered as caretakers of the countryside and suburban space. Rowheath was only one of the many suburban and country parks donated by the Cadbury brothers in that area of Worcestershire and beyond and they made major contributions to Birmingham’s green belt.31 The Cadburys’ approach to development paralleled in many respects that of John Patterson of the NCR in Dayton who, having established his factory on the edge of the city, began to purchase more large tracts of land. Some of these he developed for housing, but other substantial areas were made into parks. The NCR Company parks: Hills and Dales, the Old Barn Club and Old River Park Like the Cadburys, John Patterson and subsequent chief executives of the NCR made recreation facilities for their employees that paralleled, in many respects, the kinds of recreation parks that were being developed in towns and cities across the nation. But by 1916, all NCR employees, and local residents could, on payment of a small subscription, enjoy types of outdoor spaces, sports and amusements that were generally inaccessible, or at least uncommon in their scale and scope, for most working-class people at the time. Like Rowheath, the NCR parks were suggestive of national identities in landscape design. While Rowheath

Designing the company Arcadia129 was based on an eclectic mix of English landscape traditions, the NCR parks were designed as a combination of the wilderness, frontier and pastoral ideals of American landscape, translated and interpreted in a suburban context. Following Patterson’s initial landscaping of the factory from the 1890s, which included the gardens, the sports grounds and the women’s recreation areas, he began to buy more land, and in 1906 (the same year that the NCR working day was reduced to nine hours)32 he obtained 513 acres of hilly terrain to the south of the factory. Once again he commissioned the Olmsted firm to convert some of the land as a country park for the officers of the company, and to lay out some as housing for company executives. (At one time, Patterson proposed a development of workers’ cottages, but this never materialised.)33 (Figure 5.4). Patterson also bought a farm (known as the truck garden) from where fresh fruit and vegetables could be supplied to the NCR workforce and a farmhouse, which in 1913 became the NCR Girls’ Club. This club was opened in 1915 for the local community on payment of a dollar, giving its members an affordable, modern county club which became known as the Old Barn Club 1919. (The clubhouse, which burned down

5.4  An illustrated map of Hills and Dales, c.1910. The NCR factory can be seen in the middle distance with the city of Dayton behind.

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The factory in a garden in the 1920s, was designed by Patterson’s favourite architect, Louis Lott, in the Swiss Chalet style of his home, Far Hills.) In May 1907 Patterson provided another country club, the Hills and Dales, for the officers of the company and by 1911 extended membership to department heads, supervisors and foremen of the company and their families. By 1913, the club became more democratic as all employees now enjoyed free membership and a committee of employees managed the club. (It is not known whether the committee included shop-floor workers.) It appears that from the early days of the park’s opening, any local resident if ‘well disposed’ was allowed to walk on the roads of the park on Saturdays and Sundays as well as other days of the week ‘according to the rules in the posted bulletins’, although this privilige was withdrawn from non-club members following damage to trees and other inappropriate behaviour. According to Patterson’s biographer, William Crowther, the industrialist had always intended to give some portion of the park to the city of Dayton which, in his view was not making sufficient allowance for green space.34 (According to the 1911 Olmsted plan for Dayton, the city only had 19 acres of parkland, 0.27% of the city’s area for a population of 100,000.) In 1918, the year after he had abdicated responsibility for the running of the company, Patterson deeded a large proportion of the Hills and Dales land, 284 acres, to the city of Dayton, promising to pay for the park’s upkeep for three years while the necessary funds were found, and the Hills and Dales Club was opened to the public. The city continued to employ the Olmsteds for further improvements and updates to the park’s facilities. The ample facilities added to the park during 1906–7 and 1910–18 reflected increasing demands for recreation, as well as Patterson’s personal and professional ambitions for high-quality social welfare, and the value to his business of employee recreation. (Patterson spent most of the years 1907–10 in Europe.) The Olmsteds designed roads and trails across the park to improve access, a golf course, a polo ground, playing fields and rustic camps with log cabin shelters and a small lake. Later they added tennis courts, a bowling green and running track and a children’s playground.35 The area began to resemble the Olmsted parks elsewhere in the USA, such as Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, designed from 1866 by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. Views were ‘improved’ with the addition of a pergola on the hill to the west and north of the golf clubhouse and to top it all, a shelter was added at Inspiration Point, a look-out camp with tall stone chimney. After the First World War, 150 trees were planted on the pergola site, one tree for each of the Dayton fallen, and the site was renamed ‘Victory Grove’. The three-sided log cabins, with stone fireplaces were available

Designing the company Arcadia131 for hire for one dollar, and included firewood, water and utensils. An NCR publication reminded campers that only ‘ladies and gentlemen’ who treated the privilege with respect were allowed to rent a cabin. They were an innovative idea, probably a unique leisure option for factory employees at the time for they were designed to imitate the experience of camping in the Adirondacks, a favourite holiday region for the wealthy, including the Patterson family. Patterson also loved cabins as they reminded him of his rural roots. As Simon Schama has suggested in his discussion of Thomas Cole’s painting of 1847 Home in the Woods, the ‘rustic wooden virtue’ of the log cabin in American tradition represented the pioneer’s occupation and taming of the wilderness, an ambivalent image of the ‘savage’ and the ‘social’ that Henry David Thoreau embedded into American culture with his cabin at Walden Pond.36 By 1918, when the city took over the park, the NCR workforce and club members had a multitude of opportunities at the Hills and Dales Club, some of which were gender specific. At their club, the women could take a shower bath, have a sleep-over, play the piano and the victrola, visit a small museum (shared with the men) and play board games. The men had the same kind of facilities, but instead of playing music, they were given a pool table and a ‘Paraphenalia Room’ (whatever that might have been).37 Joint activies included dancing (twice per week), outdoor dining, tennis, croquet, meetings, parties, picnics, musicals, Sunday afternoon band, choral, orchestera concerts and plays in an outdoor amphitheatre, moving pictures, the Adirondack camps, swings, rustic chairs, a children’s playgound with wading pool and ‘beautiful shade trees’. Athletics included golf, tennis, baseball, volleyball, quoits, basketball, bowling, croquet and brevet, with an annual Grand Field Day. The streetcar fare to get there was 10c. (approximately $1.50 today). Each department of the company were allocated a special ‘Department Day’ at the club, when their families would be encouraged to join them at the end of the day. Some of the amenities available to the NCR employees were very similar to those enjoyed by the Cadbury workforce, including an amphitheatre (in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury), extensive sporting facilities, space for dancing, music, theatre and company events, but the Cadbury workers’ park was smaller, more domestic and muted than those at the NCR. Although the Cadbury workers could experience the ‘great outdoors’ in country parks on the edge of Birmingham or in one of the company holiday homes or camps, the NCR employees had a substantial country park almost on their doorstep, with considerably more space. They could walk, ride and picnic in the forest and borrow a log cabin, to enjoy a simulated camping in the wilderness experience. It is likely that the Hills and Dales Park was unique for its time because access to a country club and park in easy reach of an industrial

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The factory in a garden suburb was virtually unheard of. Within a few years, the United States Shoe Machinery Co. in Beverly, Massachusetts had constructed a large country club for employees in 1910 for a membership fee of $2 per year.38 However, whether the Hills and Dales Park and Old Barn Club were unique in the first decade of the twentieth century or not, it was highly unusual for blue-collar workers to have free or low cost and easy access to rural but organised recreational facilities on this scale and to this sophistication of design and amenity, which would normally involve a high membership fee and admission charges. The Hills and Dales Park and the Old Barn Club with access to forest trails and log cabins, offered factory workers a version of the wilderness experience so beloved of many Americans in the early 1900s when a ‘wilderness cult’ gripped all classes of Americans.39 Partly caused by rapid urbanisation and the realisation that the frontier way of life was disappearing, Americans sought to reassert their differences and superiority to Europeans, their strength and individualism by keeping the idea of the wilderness alive, preserving wild places and recreating a primitive way of life. This spurred the ‘outdoor movement’ of hiking and camping in the wilderness assisted by the National Parks Service (founded 1916) as it organised the American landscape for leisure. The Olmsteds, in creating a tamed wilderness on the NCR’s doorstep, were ideal collaborators in this ideal for their father, together with Charles Eliot had long before recommended the preservation of wild spaces close to urban areas.40 The Olmsted brothers campaigned for, and designed, numerous recreation parks, but where they bordered the countryside, John Charles recommended that the ‘primary aim should be to secure and preserve for the use of the people as much as possible of these advantages of water and mountain views and of woodlands, well distributed and conveniently located’.41 This caused tensions with Patterson, for on several occasions, the Olmsteds had to tame his development ambitions, not always successfully. When Patterson returned from an extended stay in Europe in 1911, he continued to buy land and develop residential areas, despite the Olmsted Brothers’ warnings that too much development, including some of the recreation facilities, would spoil the character of the woods in the park. Olmsted interfered only very subtly with the natural beauty and distinctive topography and vegetation of the landscape that became Hills and Dales and the Old Barn Club, mainly making roads and paths for access and planting shrubs and trees (more than fifteen ‘carloads’ of shrubs between 1905 and 1907, according to the Dayton Herald of 13 July 1907). In their park designs, the Olmsteds, while drawing in some respects on English landscape traditions in their planting, created an ‘American picturesque’, adapting the existing distinctive topography

Designing the company Arcadia133 and vegetation with as little interference as possible and planting native species.42 The Olmsted style was to keep existing vegetation cut back and to plant a mixture of ‘understory’ trees and shrubs to increase variety and colour in the woods. Plantings included belts of evergreens on the western side of the park, an evergreen windbreak for the truck garden, a mixture of white pine, oak and birch, with hemlock and balsam fir under-planting. To make the natural landscape accessible and safe, they tamed the landscape with roads, trails, shelters and policing (Figure 5.5). The design and management of the NCR country parks, while alluding to an American wilderness, diluted a sense of the wild by securing and sanitising the landscape. At Hills and Dales, structures like the pergola and look-out shelter dictated modes of behaviour and taste to the consumer of the park. Despite the differences in topography and vegetation, perhaps the English park was not so unlike the American one after all, for they were both commoditised versions of their symbolic landscapes and designed for aspirant urban and suburban citizens, much like suburban housing.

5.5  ‘Nature’s Way of Planting’. Lantern slide of Hills and Dales showing a mix of tamed and wilder landscape, c.1910.

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The factory in a garden When the city took over the park in 1918, the only addition was the Patterson memorial monument, given by grateful employees and the city of Dayton following his death in 1922. Club membership, offering special privileges such as golf and tennis and club socials went up to $2 for women and $5 for men, later raised to $6 and $10.43 The city was proud of its park and the 1926 Plan called it ‘The playground of the people of Dayton’.44 In the Great Depression of the early 1930s, the Civil Works Adminstration under President Roosefelt’s New Deal invested in the park and roadway improvements, employing around 500 men. After Patterson’s death in 1922, the NCR took little interest in the Hills and Dales Park until 1935 when his son Frederick became Chair of the Dayton Public Works Relief Agency. A few years later, the company, once again, invested substantially in green space for their workforce. Old River Park In 1937, the new Chairman of the NCR, Colonel E. A. Deeds commissioned the Olmsted Brothers to design a new park on 140 acres of land to the south and south-west of the factory. Old River Park, opened to the workforce in 1938, was made with very similar objectives to Rowheath Park, to provide the best and most up-to-date facilities that private money could buy for a workforce that already had a reputation for having some of the best leisure and recreation facilities in the nation. The difference between Rowheath and Old River though was in the scale, topography, variety, sophistication and sense of exclusiveness, which might have astonished observers of industrial welfare from other nations. The design for the new park swept away all the existing landscaping made around the factory since the 1900s and replaced it with one of much greater scale and interest by creating a park of seamless variety and function. The use of space and of the natural features of the landscape was ingenious in that it enabled many amenities and functions in a design where the separate spaces seemed to flow seamlessly into one another. The most exciting feature, and the one which most created the simulated wilderness experience, was the large meandering oval lagoon that looped around the south-western half of the site, the only feature of the park that still survives. The preliminary plan for Old River Park of 21 December 1937 and its accompanying memorandum divided the land into five parts, allowing for an astonishing variety of activities within the space.45 On the land west of the factory was a parking area and covered gymnasium, a ball field for league games with grandstand and bleacher to accommodate 6,000 people, a practice ball field and a new school. To the south-west lay the athletic field for men and boys on a lower level, including a

Designing the company Arcadia135 clubhouse for 1,200 people. Further west, a meadow for girls and young children, hockey pitches and archery ranges covered most of the large island formed by the lagoon. This was overlooked by a concert pavilion on one side, for band concerts, pageants, moving pictures and other forms of entertainment and a sports pavilion on the other, with a wading pool for children, sand courts, a shelter and ‘comfort station’ nearby. Beside the concert pavilion a canoe basin made it possible for the concerts to be enjoyed from the water. On the island and around the lagoon were groves for picnics, rest and barbeques and on the north side, a lake, separated from the lagoon by an island reached by footbridges, offered another space for walking or picnicking. Each part of the park was visually and spatially unified within the meanderings of the lagoon, roads and paths, which contributed fluidity and informality to this varied landscape, while drawing each part together. The depth of the lagoon was about eight feet, deep enough for canoeing, boating, and outboard motor boating. A combination boathouse and bathhouse of 3,300 sq. ft. accommodated seventy-five canoes and on the second floor, enough showers and toilets for 400 people. The Olmsteds specified plenty of shelters located at various points along paths bordering the lagoon area to allow for wet, cold or hot weather and they included a swimming pool of 130  ×  50  ft in their plan near the lagoon, large enough for 600 swimmers. For its picturesque qualities and perhaps to bring further authencity and status to Old River, the landscape architects suggested a deer park, ‘if such use seems desirable’. To service all this, a garage shed and maintenance yard was situated in the area north of the lake and just below Patterson Boulevard. By the late 1930s, many of the workforce would have owned a car, therefore the park design included space for 300 cars near the factory and another car park for 210 cars was placed near the women and children’s area. A 1938 projected bird’s-eye view plan of the park produced by Olmsted Associates shows the factory situated not in a garden, but in a garden suburb and country park and playground46 (Figure 5.6). One member of the Olmsted staff produced some sensitive pencil visualisations of the lagoon, with people paddling along in their canoes, imagining they were Huckleberry Finn perhaps, or strolling over the footbridges (Figure 5.7). Perhaps these drawings were made for the initial or subsequent presentation of the plans to their client. When Mr Dawson and Mr Parker of Olmsted Brothers visited Dayton to discuss the plans in January 1938, Colonel Deeds, and the Vice-President Mr Allyn expressed great satisfaction with the plans and were ‘surprised that we were able to incorporate so many different features in the design’. The park offered so much, but Deeds’s decision to develop the park gradually is a clear indication that

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The factory in a garden

5.6  The Olmsted Brothers’ projected aerial view (detail) of the NCR Old River Park, 1938.

5.7  Drawing of the Old River lagoon by Mr Scholte of Olmsted Brothers.

Designing the company Arcadia137 expenditure on parks and gardens was not welcomed by all employees and could even be damaging to industrial relations. Deeds suggested that by doing the works in stages, there was less chance of agitators insisting that wages should be raised rather than funds spent on a park. Initially, therefore, the Board agreed to allocate $200,000 for work for 1938, to include the lagoon area from the bridge.47 Modifications to the original plan included the removal of the lagoon lake, replaced by a large oval pool, with a fountain in the centre and a cascade from the lagoon to provide water to the pool through a filtration system. This change removed some of the naturalism of the plan and gave a more modern look to the whole site. It is not clear how close the finished layout of the park was to the 1938 illustration; however, photographs of the building works suggest that all the major features were carried out, but not all at once. The swimming pool was eventually built under the leadership of Stanley Allyn, who was CEO of the company during 1957–62. According to Bill Anderson, President, then Chairman of the NCR from 1972 to 1984, it was the largest openair swimming pool in the USA.48 Aerial photos of 18 October 1954 show that the romance of the lagoon island had been spoilt by vehicular access and a large car park behind the picnic area. However, the adjacent suburb and parkland are both rich in trees, and the park and the naturalistic oval lagoon with picturesque bridges and islands and the log cabin shelters can clearly be seen. The landscape has not a straight line in sight. The lagoon meanders its way through the wooded landscape, widening and narrowing as it goes, creating variety in small creeks and inlets with plenty of grassy banks for picnicking boaters. As at Rowheath Park, a huge workforce, apparently all from the works, was involved in the park’s construction, which included the digging of the lagoon. They worked fast, for the park was opened on 3 June 1939, just three months before hostilities broke out in Europe. Boating cost 15c. per hour for members (25c. per hour for guests) and later, entry to the swimming pool cost 10c., which included a towel. Guests paid an entrance charge of 10c. per person (about the price of two loaves of bread) plus 35c. for use of the pool (or 25c. for children under 60 inches tall). Many recreational facilities had been closed down at factories following the Wall Street Crash, but only ten years later, the employees of the NCR were provided with state-of-the-art, low-cost amenities on their doorstep.49 Olmsted Associates appear to have indulged the far reaches of their imaginations and ideals in what a park should be, using some of the best ideas from American park designs to date that made allusions to a number of American landscape ideals. These included the scenic lagoon for boating and fishing, a cascade to add variety and naturalism to the

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The factory in a garden design (Jens Jensen had made cascades in his lagoon at Columbus Park in Chicago, 1915–20) and an area for music that could be enjoyed from land or water (another feature of Jensen’s design). Lagoons had been a feature of the Olmsted designs for the Chicago parks since Frederick Law the elder included one in his design for South Park (1871), fed by Lake Michigan, and the entire concept for the design for the Columbian World’s Exposition of 1893 was based on number of interconnected lagoons forming a central island to provide some peace and recuperation for visitors. The presence of a ‘rugged’ lagoon was suggestive of the American landscape, for example the wetlands of Illinois and Wisconsin,50 but they were not only romantic because they also functioned as a solution to drainage. The lagoon especially gives the Old River Park a particularly North American flavour, and it is unlike an English park in other respects. There are no flower borders or formal areas and although flowers were by no means excluded from parks in America, the aesthetic of wide open spaces interrupted with trees and shrubs in naturalistic groupings is a more direct reference to the pastoral landscape that features in so much American literature.51 The desire in park and garden design for an ‘American’ style as opposed to one borrowed from Europe can be seen in the work of a number of landscape architects, including the elder Olmsted. Despite his love of the English landscape, Olmsted used mostly native plants that were suited to the climate, soil and topography and he believed that a city park should look as much like the countryside as possible and should ideally present no evidence of the vicinity of the town.52 For some, an American style of gardening became a source of national pride and identity. Wilhelm Miller’s book, What England can Teach us About Gardening, published in 1911, contrary to the title’s suggestion, presents a manifesto for design and planting that is suited to the very different conditions in the USA. Miller calls for Americans to cast off the shackles of England’s garden heritage, however beautiful it is. When Americans stop imitating the English he concluded, ‘our country will have found itself’.53 Conclusion It is commonly said that modernist architecture and landscape became metaphors for the modern body: clean, vital, efficient, healthy, rational, moral, and that like the body, buildings should function efficiently like a machine. The parks discussed here were modern in that they served the more leisured societies of modern industrial nations in a rational way. However, they were not only functionalist landscapes, for as well as providing efficient spaces for organised sports, they were also designed

Designing the company Arcadia139 to provide a refuge from the daily rituals and routines of modern life, spaces to dream, to suspend time, to wander, as long as the rules were followed. The British workers could have almost imagined they were walking through a timeless English landscape and the Americans pretended they were pioneers in the wilderness or farmers in the pasture, but all were safe in the suburb. (The historian Simon Schama who lives in the USA has described his own suburb, close to the hills and forests, but within reach of the metropolis as ‘this suburban wilderness’).54 These landscapes were not ‘modernist’ in style, but suggested a fundamental change in the relationship between the garden and the machine that made them into landscapes expressing a modern industrial outlook. The Cadburys at Bournville and John Patterson at the NCR created a sense of place through their factory parks that symbolically combined technology, the natural and the pastoral so that nature and the machine became compatible. Although the parks were subject to regulations, they provided a variety of free or inexpensive facilities and opportunities that were easily accessible. In Chapter 6 I discuss the ways in which the relationship between the pastoral and the technological were reinforced through photography, illustration and film in corporate publicity material. Notes  1 I have discussed these parks in a previous publication: Chance, ‘Mobilising the Modern Industrial Landscape’.  2 Daniels, S. Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States (Cambridge, 1993), p. 3.  3 Marx, The Machine in the Garden.  4 Bender, Towards an Urban Vision, p. 175.  5 Benton, A. M. Cheals of Crawley: the Family Firm at Lowfield Nurseries 1860s–1960s (Uckfield, 2002).  6 Beveridge, C. E. Master List of Design Projects of the Olmsted Firm 1857–1950 (New York, 1987), pp. 265–73.  7 Benton, Cheals, pp. 207–8, 287.  8 Waymark, J. Thomas Mawson: Life, Gardens and Landscapes (London, 2009), p. 75.  9 Mawson, Civic Art, p. 196. 10 Ibid., pp. 219–20. 11 Robinson, Modern Civic Art. 12 Beveridge, Master List. 13 Barton, C. ‘Institutional and Corporate Landscapes’, in Tishler, W. H. American Landscape Architecture: Designers and Places (Washington DC, 1989), p. 151; and Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism, p. 2. 14 Morell and Nichols, ‘Landscape Architects’, Landscape Architecture (Minneapolis, 1911).

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The factory in a garden 15 Marx, The Machine in the Garden, p. 263. 16 Bucci, F. ‘Territories of Surveillance’, in Gregotti, V. (ed.), Company Towns Rassegna 70:II (1997), 65. 17 Numbers peaked at 10,000 in 1938. 18 ‘Rowheath Farm Estate’ BWM X1:12 (December 1913), p. 383, CB. 19 Cadbury, ‘The Factory and Recreation’ (n.d. late 1920s?) and Works Council Notes’ BWM  XV111:1 (January 1920), 3; and ‘Works Council Notes’ BWM XVIII:3 (March 1920), 72, CB. 20 ‘Garden club at Rowheath’, BWM XX:3 (March 1922), 66, CB. 21 ‘Rowheath Farm Estate, Bournville Recreation Ground. Layout as Proposed by J. Cheal & Sons Ltd’, dated 20 January 1921, CB, Cheal drawing no. 11725. 22 ‘Garden Club Rowheath Estate’, Cadbury Brothers Engineers Office, 27 May 1924, CB. The original Cheal plan is lost. 23 Conway, ‘Everyday Landscapes’, 120. 24 Interview with Alan Shrimpton, Bournville Village Trust Archivist, 26 November 2009. 25 Cadbury, ‘The Factory and Recreation’ (n.d. late 1920s?), p. 39. 26 The Works Council Notes recorded that up to November 1921, approximately 6,000 bulbs, 2,000 shrubs and 250 forest trees were planted at Rowheath and 2,000 fruit trees on the 287 allotments. BWM XX1:3 (March 1923), 92. CB (The Firm supplied four fruit trees per allotment plot for free.) 27 Whitehouse, J. H. ‘Bournville: a Study in Housing Reform’, The Studio (1901), 170–1, in Creese, The Search for Environment. 28 Cadbury, BWM XXIX:7 (July 1931), 163. 29 Beauchampé, S. and Inglis, S. Played in Birmingham: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play (Birmingham, 2006), p. 33. 30 Ibid., p. 38. 31 See for example Marks, W. Sixty Years of Planning: the Bournville Experiment (Bournville c.1930), CB; Marks, George Cadbury Junior, pp. 34–5. 32 ‘Company Adopts Nine-Hour Day’, World NCR 1:4 (June 1906), 5, NCR.DH. 33 The discussion of Hills and Dales park is indebted to Cairns, M. et al., Hills and Dales a Site History (Dayton, September 1991), NCR.DH. 34 Crowther, John H. Patterson, p. 9. 35 Olmsted Brothers report of meeting with John Patterson, 27 May 1912, LC.MD.OAR, Series E, Reel 257. 36 Schama, S. Landscape and Memory (London, 1995), p. 203. 37 NCR. ‘NCR Country Club Programme of Activities Season of 1916’. NCR archive. 38 Frankel and Fleisher in Anderson, Industrial Recreation, pp. 52–3. Roberta Park in her article on industrial recreation (‘Blending Business’) gives the subscription fee for the Athletic Association at United Shoe as $1. In 1913, the United Shoe Company published a manifesto for their recreation policy. Good Sport, Good Health, Good Work. 39 Nash, R. Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT and London, 1982), chapter 9. 40 Ibid., p. 155. 41 Olmsted, J. C. ‘A Comprehensive System of Parks and Parkways. Seattle’ (1903) Olmsted Brothers. History Link. Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, www.historylink.org (accessed 24 May 2010).

Designing the company Arcadia141 42 Tishler, American Landscape Architecture, p. 41. 43 See Harshman J. B. ‘Dayton’s Community Center Club’ The American City XV111:6 (June 1918), pp. 526–9, in Cairns Hills and Dales, p. 48. 44 Cairns, Hills and Dales, pp. 43–6. 45 FLO.NHS, File no. 280–106, Plan 183 and Olmsted Brothers ‘Descriptive memorandum to accompany Plan no. 183’, December 28 1937, LC.MD.OAR, Reel 257. 46 FLO.NHS, File no. 280z4–pt 1. 47 Olmsted Associates report of visit to Dayton, 5–7 January 1938, LC.MD.OAR, Reel 257. 48 Email correspondence with Bill Anderson, 22 July 2010. 49 ‘Old River’, Pastime 2:12 (n. d., 1938?), 1, NCR.DH. 50 Sniderman Bachrach, J. The City in a Garden: a Photographic History of Chicago Parks (Harrisonburg and Santa Fe, 2001), p. 17. 51 Marx, The Machine in the Garden. 52 Sutton, S. B. (ed.), Frederick Law Olmsted. Civilizing American Cities. Writings on City Landscapes (New York, 1997), p. 79. 53 Miller, W. What England can Teach us About Gardening (London, 1911), p. 343. 54 Schama, Landscape, p. 577.

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’ 6  ✧  ‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’: the power of the garden image

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art, film and literature depicting factory labour have tended to mythologise it, presenting either a polemical critique of man against the machine, for example  the films Metropolis (1927) and Modern Times (1940); Aldous Huxley’s Brave  New World (1932) and Upton Sinclair’s Flivver King (1937), or have represented the factory as the majestic expression of modernity and the factory worker as the noble pioneer of a modernist vision: the paintings and photographs of Charles Sheeler and Margaret Bourke-White and the murals of Diego Rivera. Sheeler’s paintings of factory buildings are monumental paeans to modernity; as Lindy Biggs has suggested, ‘he captured the growing belief in industry as the messiah for modern society and in the factory as its earthly representation’.1 Promotional images produced for advertising and for employee magazines constructed similar myths about factories and factory life. Lewis Hine’s photographs of factory workers commissioned by Western Electric in the 1920s for their company magazine are some of the more honest among thousands of corporate images produced in the early twentieth century because they captured some of the individual characters of the workers and emphasised the physical challenges of factory labour. However, the poetic beauty of Hine’s photographs perpetuated myths of the ‘heroic’ worker and idealised labour and management relations and working conditions.2 How did the landscapes and people using them represented in corporate promotional literature contribute to a utopianist portrayal of working conditions and labour as well as to myths about the commodities they produced? What approaches and methods of image-making did industrialists employ to exploit the symbolic, metaphorical and allegorical meanings of gardens, recreation grounds and plants, to present their enterprises as places of status, community, opportunity, health and hygiene and their products as authentic and modern? We know they arly

twentieth-century

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’143 were effective, because the advertising and packaging images from the early twentieth century of the companies discussed here are now iconic in the history of marketing and advertising, for it was largely through effective publicity that they became household names: Shredded Wheat, Cadbury’s Chocolate, NCR, Spirella and Ovaltine. Some of these images were made for external advertising and promotion. Others, such as those published in company magazines to illustrate articles on outings and sports, hobbies, educational topics and events in workers’ lives, promoted employee loyalty and pride and improvements to efficiency from within the company.3 The factory and office landscapes were visible in all areas of the marketing systems and promotional materials, including monthly company magazines, postcards, cigarette cards and reward cards, in souvenir guides, slide lectures and films, in the press and for point of sale and exhibition stands. Advertising through factory tours and public lectures also capitalised on the landscape as a means of reinforcing the brand and increasing the allure of their products.4 Many of the images represented company sporting activities, but these are not discussed here because their content and meaning are relatively unequivocal and they do not invite further interpretation in this study. Photographs and artwork also reinforced the gardens as gendered spaces and illustrated power relations in the factory. The images made before the First World War in particular represented social, economic and cultural dominance of class and gender and are therefore suggestive of relationships between management and workers and between employees. Superficially the images represent employees at ease in the gardens with a sense of belonging and so they reinforce myths about labour relations, adding significant value to marketing and branding strategy. Landscape imagery in corporate identity and advertising The extent to which companies exploited landscape and gardens imagery varied according to the acreage and quality of the landscaping and the personal ‘vision’ of the company’s founder or CEO. Cadbury and the NCR were unusual in the scale and variety of their landscapes and in producing illustrated literature that specifically celebrated the landscaping and the benefits of gardening. The Natural Food Company (NFC, later Shredded Wheat) in Niagara Falls published booklets giving gardening advice, but these were not illustrated. The NFC also published The Wonders of Niagara in which views of the factory building in its landscape and factory interiors were prominent (see Figure. 2.7). However, most companies committed to welfare published magazines that were to a greater or lesser extent illustrated with images of the factory and its

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The factory in a garden production and social activities, which frequently included the landscapes. The success of the gardens imagery as part of a promotional strategy depended on a sophisticated understanding of the value of gardens and nature metaphors in advertising and branding, and how best to exploit these in real and virtual forms. Developing advertising and marketing techniques from approximately 1850 onwards, changing technologies in photography, printing, transport, mass entertainment and the arrival of the moving image were shaping a shrewd awareness of the value of image and images in marketing and promotion. The huge success of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, when visitor numbers far exceeded expectations, was a defining point when industrialists understood that the consumption of culture and commerce were now united as one cultural and economic form.5 By the early twentieth century, advertisements increasingly linked commodities to social and cultural aspiration and desire and, in the USA, advertising had become a respectable and desirable profession.6 The entertainment and educational value of images was reflected in changing technologies that provided new ways of viewing them, most radically with the arrival of the moving picture in the early 1900s. New theoretical perspectives now sustained an understanding of the power of images in the media, as psychologists made tentative steps into marketing and advertising consultancy.7 Many commonly understood cultural forms and their meanings, from motherhood to holidays, were exploited for marketing purposes and nature was one form that was used extensively to promote messages of health, aesthetic beauty, cleanliness, love, freedom and authenticity, to name only a few. By 1900, successful industrialists understood that images were central to a promotional strategy and culture, not only in advertising, but also in the broader realms of the product and the brand. Images could stimulate memories and associations, educate and entertain, provide information and increase desire. The link between gardens and foods, for example, suggested health and cleanliness and a hygienic production environment. The idea of the landscape and garden as a metaphor of the good life at the turn of the nineteenth century was nothing unusual or new. Nature and landscape, imbued with ideological and mythical significance commonly connoted desirable conditions such as health, beauty and godliness through idealised images of flowers, sunlit landscapes and pictures of a mythologised rural past, and they appeared frequently on commercial forms and products from advertisements to Christmas cards. The significance of landscape imagery in art and literature has been thoroughly explored by academics who have pointed out that oppositions were frequently set up between industrial areas as centres of corruption and the ideal village as a site of good character

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’145 where the good life was assumed.8 Wild, uncontrolled, sublime nature was not useful to promotion and rarely seen in this form. The site of production was important so industrialists used images to counteract the ‘satanic mill’ image of industry and its institutions and to promote the healthy and clean qualities of their products. Perhaps the most persuasive evidence for the benefits of horticulture to sales is seen in the high visibility of gardens at world fairs and exhibitions. Kensington Gardens was found to be a suitably large and attractive enough site for the first of these in 1851. At subsequent fairs good landscape design became essential to a fair’s aesthetic and the Horticultural Hall was one of the most popular visitor destinations9 (Figure 6.1). The use of gardens for promotion at world fairs suggests that the relationship between commerce and nature was considered to be normal and by the 1930s, a number of firms highly valued horticulture and the aesthetic, and symbolic attributes of gardens as a means to add beauty and status to their identity. The editorial and pictorial content of the company magazines also suggested that gardens and gardening were popular subjects for their readership. By the 1930s, the popularity of gardens as indicated in the company magazines had been replaced to some extent by an interest in the wider countryside, as the fresh air and health movement promoted outdoor activities like cycling and hiking.10

6.1  At the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago in 1933, lawns, bedding and fountains at the approach to the Chrysler building would not have looked out of place at Versailles.

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The factory in a garden Flower images were abundant in late Victorian and Edwardian England in both popular and high culture and were associated with beauty, especially female beauty and virtue. The popularity of paintings of gardens and flowers in this period flourished with an emerging school of garden painting in England with the works of Frederick Walker, Helen Allingham and Alfred Parsons, who loved English gardens,11 and the many artists in the USA who painted American and European gardens, such as Ross Sterling Turner and Maria Oakey Dewing.12 The American Henry James was fascinated by the garden genre because for him ‘the English Flower Garden was the symbolic heart of the nation’ and he believed that artists like Parsons painted gardens in just the way Americans would like English gardens to look.13 James’s view of the English passion for flowers as ‘the most unanimous protest against the greyness of some of the conditions’14 was perhaps referring to the weather, but also could have implied an industry/nature opposition and certainly, the appearance of flowers, ­ gardens and country scenes in packaging and advertising by the 1890s, was partly designed to distance the commodity from its production.15 Images of flowers and fruits were translated onto packaging and to some extent in advertising and became agents of persuasion. A comparison of the fancy boxes of Rowntree chocolates produced in the 1880s and 1890s designed to attract the female consumer, shows that by 1895, sentimentalised flower images were more prevalent; garlanding figures, on women’s and children’s hats and in baskets, in cottage and other pastoral scenes, in close-up vignettes, with birds on sprays, in seasonal scenes.16 For processed foodstuffs, cereals, chocolate and tinned soup, the natural reference assisted in emphasising the origin and authenticity of the product and its benefit to health and energy and these also were aimed at women who were the chief food shoppers. Although paintings of gardens were made largely for middle- and upper-class markets, photographs of gardens also became popular across all classes. Family groups and portraits were frequently composed in the garden. For the working classes taking their own pictures or commissioning itinerant photographers, outdoor space was a necessity since indoor photography was expensive and required large windows and space.17 Popular and society magazines about gardens and gardening were liberally illustrated with photographs, and magazines like Country Life made the photograph of house and garden one of its key attractions.18 Images of gardens and people in gardens with their connotations of home, tradition and respectability reinforced a sense of place and belonging. For similar reasons, the factory gardens played an important role in employee portrait and group photography. Before the

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’147 commercialisation of flash photography in the 1920s, which made indoor shoots easier and therefore cheaper, the gardens and landscapes presented a considerable advantage to companies ‘well endowed’ with nature for they provided plenty of attractive space and natural light to represent the factory environment and the workforce, at rest, in play or in formal and informal groups. The landscape, with the office buildings behind, provided a far more attractive and resonant location for group photography than a factory yard. In 1912, the International Harvester Company in Milwaukee arranged for an employee portrait in the ‘playground’ outside the works. The factory and office building, crowned with the company name in huge letters, dominates the background. The photograph resembles a family group but multiplied many times, reinforcing the message of corporate unity and symbolising the owner’s benevolence to his workforce. The photograph also suggests a healthy environment due to the availability of outdoor space. But it is also an allusion to power, for the institution appears to rule over the workforce just as the patriarch commonly lorded over his wife and children in the traditional family portrait (Figure. 6.2). The image of the factory itself, embellished by its landscape, was frequently seen in promotional literature and sometimes in advertising and packaging. Since the early Industrial Revolution, engravings of factory buildings in a landscape, cultivated or otherwise, were often to be found in promotional literature or in the press and for souvenirs. By the 1900s illustrations of the landscaped factory and office buildings appeared on a greater range of promotional materials, often in colour and included

6.2  Noon scene on the McCormick International Harvester Milwaukee Works playground, Wisconsin, 1912. Here employees could listen to the band, play tennis or baseball, or relax on the grass.

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The factory in a garden

6.3  Cadbury advertisement, early 1930s. Employees dressed for hygiene in the factory look down over the Men’s Recreation Ground from the roof of the Girls’ Grounds pavilion.

factory souvenir guides, postcards and packaging and, in the case of the NCR Company, on their letterhead. The reality of the factory with its landscape and planting also became an advertisement as the best view was presented from the adjacent railway line, canal or at the entrance to the works, often with the name of the company spelt out in bedding plants (Figure 6.3). After the Second World War, a catalyst to improvements in aerial photography, corporate landscapes looked impressive from the air. The Shredded Wheat Company in the UK made one of the boldest uses of architectural and landscape imagery in advertising promotion, using commodified nostalgia to sell authenticity.19 The nostalgic image of the landscaped factory appeared on its packaging, advertisements and on show cards for window displays and exhibitions and this continued into the 1930s and beyond (Figure. 6.4). Even the company vehicles sported an elaborate and idealised birds-eye-view illustration of the factory across their flanks. The building gleams white against a ­background of green lawns and fields and the poplars lining the driveway are in full summer green. Behind the factory a steam train chugs past in what looks like an illustration from a children’s storybook (Figure. 6.5).

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’149

6.4  An advertisement for Shredded Wheat, c.1930, with an idealised view of the landscaping at their factory in Welwyn Garden City, UK.

6.5  The Shredded Wheat vehicle livery illustration suggests a rural location for the factory with an emphasis on sports.

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The factory in a garden These illustrations, also used for postcards, advertisements, on packaging and in promotional literature, reinforced the myth of the factory. A more objective impression of the factory can be seen in some of the black and white photographs of the same period revealing the approach to, and rear of, the factory to be almost shabby. Like the Shredded Wheat Company, the Cadbury Brothers used images of their factory copiously by the 1920s, with artwork, handcoloured and black and white photographs that were reproduced on some packaging (chocolate tins), in the company magazine and in their numerous brochures and postcards.20 The company made liberal use of images of the landscapes in the Bournville Works Magazine and in also in souvenir guides presented to factory visitors who came in increasing numbers from the early 1900s. Between 1900 and 1961, Cadbury published at least six versions of their visitor guide, The Factory in the Garden, and many other booklets describing and illustrating their social and sporting facilities. Like Shredded Wheat, the Cadbury illustrations are highly stylised, nostalgic and naive, but Cadbury tended to use many more photographs than artwork in their printed material, at times commissioning photographers with some considerable artistic mastery as well as competent designers, so that the communication value of their printed matter was very high and their gardens and landscapes shown off to best effect. Some of the images of the factories and their landscapes produced in promotional literature were specious. Some photographs in the Rowntree and Cadbury archives are retouched, or altered in the process of copying them for illustration to deceive the consumer, exaggerating the extent of the garden surroundings to support and promote the ‘garden factory’ ideal. This kind of image manipulation was far from unusual, but it shows the extent to which the image of the garden factory mattered to the companies, since they were prepared to massage the evidence to present an idealised view. The NCR and Cadbury photographic departments would tint black-and-white photographs and lantern slides, displaying the landscapes to best effect on the front cover of the company magazine, for example. The coloured lantern slides had another important role in the company’s marketing strategy, to present visual pleasure and information in their factory lectures. The factory tour, factory lecture and factory film The image of the factory in a garden was reinforced in print particularly in corporate literature and to some extent in packaging. Other promotional devices used at factories where the gardens played a vital role were factory tours, lectures and films. Their patrons regarded these as another form of

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’151 advertising and so it is surprising that these methods appear to have been marginalised or ignored in histories of marketing.21 Archival evidence suggests that tours and lectures and increasingly film, were considered to be key components of a marketing strategy, and for those who practised these methods most extensively and professionally, notably the larger companies like the Natural Food Company, Cadbury, Rowntree and the NCR, the landscapes were essential to their success. The corporate image and identity presented on factory visits were carefully controlled and although the visits took place in real time and space, company visitors departments managed them in very similar ways to art directing the photographs and illustrations. Photographs and later films were an important component of the factory tour, because some companies offered visitors a lecture or film as part of the tour, or they could take away brochures and postcards of the factory to reinforce the positive message. Very large numbers of people visited model factories including fellow industrialists and their representatives (often incognito), economists, philanthropists, sociologists, the press, royalty, politicians, reformers, social and amenity groups and other interested members of the public. Industrial sightseeing to factories and mills had been common since at least the middle of the nineteenth century and the spectacle of a remarkable feat of engineering like a tunnel was known to be a crowd puller. (Two million people visited the Thames Tunnel when it opened in 1843, for a charge of one penny.)22 By this time, an interest in national and international industrial prowess was being nourished by the popular spectacle of industrial world fairs. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the types of visitors who began to arrive in ever greater numbers were tourists and educational groups, now with more money, education, leisure and transport. By the early twentieth century companies began to organise the factory tour more professionally to create a complete ‘visitor experience’ and the experience could be recreated or replicated in film. The well-managed factory tour and lecture became part of the marketing and advertising revolution of the 1890s and early 1900s, closely followed by factory films. In an increasingly media-saturated and mobile society, endorsements of a brand through press reports, word of mouth and the distribution of factory guides, postcards, lectures and films all contributed to brand awareness. The professional factory tour for very large groups of visitors was likely to have been inspired by American initiatives in establishing professional departments that trained and managed teams of factory guides dedicated to looking after visitors. The factory landscapes were key elements in the visitor experience and claims to be the ‘Factory in a Garden’ (Cadbury, Spirella UK, Ovaltine) or ‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World/The World’s Finest Factory’ (Pullman, NFC and the NCR) would

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The factory in a garden not have been possible without the landscapes, which provided aesthetically attractive settings for the factory, and also exterior space where groups could be progressed around the grounds. Visitors were treated to an experience that Elizabeth Outka has termed the ‘­commodified authentic’ when consumers were connected to values that were paradoxically both traditional, in the ways the landscapes and buildings connected them to the past, and at the same time completely modern.23 George Pullman employed a full-time estate manager and his wife to work on public relations and one of their most important duties was to show visitors around the Pullman estate.24 The NFC at Niagara Falls was designed to impress both inside and out with its grand visitors’ reception hall, decked with palms, a roof garden overlooking the Falls and specially constructed balconies and aisles from which to view the production process. From the moment the factory opened its doors in 1901, the public were invited to come to the ‘world’s finest food factory’ open every day except Sunday with a free tour. Within a few years, the factory was receiving more than 100,000 visitors per year and in the honeymoon season as many as 500 couples per day visited.25 According to William Cahn, author of the company history, the guestbook reads like a Who’s Who of notables throughout the world.26 The NCR Visitors Department managed an exponential rise in visitor numbers at the turn of the century. Visitors per month had risen from 1800 in May 1898, to 2,500 in September 1902 and rose again to 9,252 in June, July and August of 1903, thus almost matching the numbers visiting the Natural Food Company, which had the additional attraction of the Niagara Falls.27 The Cadbury firm professionalised their factory tours at Bournville following a special board meeting to hear George Cadbury Jr’s report of his two-day visit to the NCR in October 1901. (Other visits by industrialists to the NCR at that time included Robert Winning and E. A. Deeds of the Natural Food Company (later the Shredded Wheat Company). Arnold Rowntree had visited in 1900 and William Tolman, reformer and expert in social welfare, visited in 1898, staying for 10 days.28 In September 1906 the Cadburys carefully stage-managed the factory tour for sixty journalists and their wives from across the nation, which resembled ambient theatre in which the gardens became the scenery and scenography. The journalists, some of whom had arrived from London by specially chartered train were first taken to admire Bournville Village and then escorted past the almshouses with ‘their pretty gardens’ and towards the factory through the Girls’ Grounds. The visitors enjoyed lavish hospitality including lunch and tea, and for those travelling home by train a special dinner was laid on. Not surprisingly, the visit had the desired effect for the journalists were ecstatic in their praise. In subsequent press

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’153 articles, pasted into a leather-bound book now in the Cadbury archive, the factory was called a ‘Beauty spot’, a ‘picturesque castle’ and a ‘country house’. From most of the windows one looks out on trees and gardens – there are gardens everywhere . . . The gardens were ablaze with flowers, the fruit trees (the apple and pear) still bearing their harvest, whilst the rich autumn tints on the creepers and foliage round the picturesque houses made a beautiful picture.29

Inspired by the NCR, Cadbury opened a visitor department in 1908, to manage the growing numbers of visitors whose tour included visits to the factory floor, the Girls’ Grounds, indoor recreations, Bournville Village as well as a cup of tea. After the new dining hall was constructed in the early 1920s, visitors were entertained in their own reception centre and tearoom. Factory tours, for VIPs and the general public became an almost daily feature of factory life. By 1932, the Cadbury firm employed a team of more than 150 specially trained factory guides with visitors numbering 150,000 per annum30 and at the end of the tour they could take away postcards and souvenir guides filled with photographs. (Visitor numbers peaked in 1938 with 163,000 visitors.)31 Lantern-slide lectures became part of the tour schedule at Cadbury and the NCR.32 John Patterson saw his factory lectures as a vital part of the company’s advertising strategy; ‘NCR advertising is teaching’, he proclaimed, believing that the lecture played a decisive part in advertising his entire institution, not just the product.33 ‘The Factory Lecture’ and ‘The Landscape Gardening Lecture’ reinforced the message and the brand already introduced on the tour, repetition in a different format being a tried and tested educational method. (By the mid-nineteenth century, the educational lecture using glass slides had become common in cities.)34 Patterson himself was involved in preparing the lectures, giving advice on how best to communicate with word and image.35 The NCR built up a magnificent collection of lantern slides to illustrate the lectures and opened special departments for preparing them.36 The Cadburys did the same, following the younger George’s visit to the NCR in 1901 where he had been given the ‘full treatment’ of tours and lectures by the visitor department there.37 By 1904, the NCR had created 10,000 slides and almost a third of these, approximately 3000, illustrated ‘landscape art’.38 The ‘Factory Lecture’ showed images of the Olmsted’s cosmetic landscaping and the Boys’ Gardens, alongside extensive images of the welfare provision within the factory, including social, educational and medical facilities. Lectures were given using a new technological development in image dissemination, the stereopticon projector, which displayed two and by 1900, three images at once.

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The factory in a garden The NCR must have been one of the first companies in the USA to use ‘moving pictures’ for promotional purposes because in 1902 or 1903 they employed one of the first film companies in the USA to produce films of the factory. The slides and films were used for giving lectures on site to the workforce and to visitors, and also were taken or loaned to numerous other sites at home and abroad by Mr Patterson himself and by a team of specially trained lecturers (twenty-eight people worked in the slide and lectures department), including to Britain’s Industrial Welfare Society. In April 1899, W. H. Lever and some of his company joined up to 300 others to hear the NCR ‘Factory Lecture’ in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York and shortly afterwards, Lever shared a platform with a representative from the NCR at the ‘Get Together’ Club in New York with his own lantern-slide lecture on Port Sunlight.39 These networking events clearly opened useful opportunities to meet likeminded industrialists and to share ideas on corporate welfare and new production methods and technologies. The following year Mr Patterson visited Port Sunlight and gave his lecture to the workforce there,40 and following a viewing of the NCR factory lecture, Seebohm Rowntree wrote to the company asking for advice on welfare schemes. It is not known how often the NCR factory lecture was given in Britain or elsewhere but a slide in the archive showing a packed house listening to one in Leeds Town Hall suggests that the company generated considerable interest abroad. Trade fair and exhibitions provided other opportunities for the factory lecture. At the St Louis World Fair in 1904, the factory lecture was one of the entertainments provided on the NCR stand and a 28 × 6 ft painting of the factory and its environs hanging on the back wall might have also impressed visitors to the stand. The NCR ‘Landscape Gardening Lecture’ and ‘ABC of Landscape Gardening’ promoted all the landscaping schemes around the factory and district and provided instruction in design and gardening techniques (see Figure 4.7). The script emphasises the role of the Olmsted firm together with advice from Professor Bailey of Cornell University, in transforming the landscape and teaching the members of the company and the neighbourhood about landscape gardening. The lecturer advised the audience to ‘avoid the unnatural Italian style’ of gardening (formal and European) and ‘stick to the natural’ (informal and American). The ‘before’ and ‘after’ image became a favourite illustrative device in the landscape lecture, for example, the Boys’ Garden before and after planting, or an untidy Dayton sidewalk next to the factory, scarred by scrub and advertising hoardings, followed by the same site laid to lawn and shrubs. These were reinforced with images showing the effects of the gardens on the neighbourhood youth and potential employees.

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’155 Significantly, the ‘before’ pictures are in black and white, which make the coloured ‘after’ pictures even more compelling and persuasive. The images and the way they were presented were meant to surprise and to confront or overturn the audience’s expectations. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many advertisers and filmmakers increasingly relied on ‘the unexpected’ (or ‘the shock factor’) to capture their audiences, and Patterson understood that better than many. The ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs as instruments of persuasion are likely, however, to have been suggested by the Olmsteds, for Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had ‘updated’ architect and landscape architect Humphry Repton’s original technique to promote their plan for Central Park, New York. In the early nineteenth century, Repton used before and after images in his Red Books to demonstrate to clients his proposed alterations to country estates. In the early twentieth century this became a favourite device among landscape architects and other reformers who used more extreme images of ‘ruin and redemption’ as tools of ­persuasion to ‘manipulate form and content to validate their social and political agendas’.41 Promotional films made at Cadbury, some for children, show extensive footage of the recreation grounds and the activities that took place there to reinforce the message of the ‘Factory in a Garden’.42 The film made in about 1921, Elsie and the Brown Bunny, based on Alice in Wonderland, tells the story of Elsie who is taken by the rabbit (male, wearing a waistcoat) to visit the chocolate factory and its grounds. The film turns the Cadbury grounds and factory into a wonderland of adventure although the ‘spell’ is broken as Elsie and her female guide chance upon a group of Cadbury girls in gymslips exercising on the pergola steps in the Girls’ Grounds. The film takes on a disciplined tone as the ‘Cadbury’s Angels’ march, military-style down the path to the saluting hero and heroine. In the film, the factory has a dual identity: it is both a storybook fantasy in which nature and gardens play a major role, and an efficient, healthy and respectable production facility. The consumer is drawn into a web of associations between nature, childhood innocence, the company, its products and employees. The motivational power of gardens imagery and the representation of childhood, gender and class In making images to communicate the values of a garden factory, industrialists and their photographers drew on symbolic, metaphorical and allegorical relationships between people and gardens to project their intended messages of status, respectability, health and virtue. A retrospective reading of the images and a comparison of images over

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The factory in a garden several decades, reveals a more complex relationship between worker and master in the period than the initial impression suggests, for the photographs are, to varying degrees, ambiguous. As Raphael Samuel has argued in his evaluation of photographs as evidence in h ­ istorical analysis, they tend to ‘construct an iconography of the national past’.43 Victorian photographs of industrialists and their workers tend to present the boss as benevolent, the male worker as heroic and the female as ‘robust’ and ‘respectable’.44 Superficially, photographs appear to represent reality in the way that paintings and illustrations do not. Theorists of photography, from the early years of its invention to the present day have been preoccupied with the question of the ‘truth’ of the photograph. Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida has suggested that photography is more like theatre than painting, a kind of ‘tableau vivant’. The ‘photographic referent’ is not the same as the referent in other forms of representation for there is a ‘real thing’ in front of the lens. However, in his analysis, Barthes does not take account of the role of the client, the art director, the photographer or the subject itself in controlling the photographic shoot and therefore the photograph’s meaning.45 Susan Sontag, by contrast, emphasised the role of the photographer in creating what she terms ‘Everyday life apotheosized’, or as ‘not as what is “really” there, but as what I “really” perceive’.46 In simple terms, Sontag meant that a photograph is not only an interpretation of life through the photographer’s eye and through the lens but also through the eye and interpretation of the audience. Photographs can be seductive and compelling artefacts, particularly when the researcher is seeking to find some ‘truths’ about the past, but despite some elements of fact and realism in photographs, the location of a lily pond, or the position of a pergola, for example, the photographer and others involved, the client, the art director, even the subject, have considerable power to manipulate the image. This is not to say that some ‘truths’ can never be found in a photograph, as Walter Benjamin very eloquently put it in his essay ‘Little History of Photography’: No matter how artful the photographer, no matter how carefully posed his subject, the beholder feels an irresistible compulsion to search such a picture for the tiny spark of contingency, the here and now, with which reality has, so to speak, seared through the image character of the photograph.47

This helps to explain why Lewis Hine’s ‘worker portraits’ taken on the shop floor, seem to have an emotional impact that is rare in promotional images of factory workers for Hine tried, partly successfully, to capture the  ‘reality’ of factory labour. By contrast, the locations for the photographs (discussed in this section), commissioned by Cadbury, Rowntree

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’157 and the NCR between c.1900 and c.1920 are the company gardens, which create a distance from factory labour. They are art directed to manipulate an image of factory life that is far removed from the reality of factory work. By the early twentieth century, photography was becoming increasingly popular and available, but it was relatively rare for blue-collar workers to see published images of themselves. The scarcity of pictures of the working class or underclass in magazines in the 1890s and 1910s was due, according to Richard Ohmann, to a reluctance to stress the reader’s unjust economic privilege for there was a ‘feeling that to look with the camera man inside tenements and factories would be to contaminate the flattering placement of readers in sites of beauty and dignity that was affected by the great majority of photographs’.48 Therefore, by creating pictorial photographs based on a genre of middle-class domestic life, companies implied a high-status worker ­ designed to flatter employees and also to reassure the consumer that life in the factory was really quite pleasant and the product genuine. Photographs of employees looking out of, or framed by, a window ­overlooking the garden was a genre often adopted in factory photoshoots. Images such as these were popular in the period as they ­suggested the possibility of redemption through gardens, a recurring theme in popular books such as Elizabeth Arnim’s Elizabeth and her German Garden (1898) and The Garden of a Commuter’s Wife by Mabel Osgood Wright (published in the USA in 1901).49 In the frontispiece of the latter book, the heroine gazes wistfully out of the window, but whereas this languid figure is clearly a woman of leisure, the photographs of the workers at their windows are so framed and posed to appear to be enjoying the benefit of the view while engaged in their working day or eating in the works dining hall. The photographs suggest through composition, pose and lighting and reinforced by the caption, that the worker is fortunate to have access to, and inspiration from, open space which are the luxuries of a pre-industrial past or a middle-class present. Photographs of the workers at rest, play or work in factory gardens and parks are numerous in some archives and the tone and message of the photographs depends on the specific values that the company placed on their gardens. The Cadbury and Rowntree publications and archive contain many images of women and girls in their own grounds, especially in the 1900s and 1910s, while the NCR places more emphasis on their Boys’ Gardens and the gardens of the workers who lived near the factory. From around 1900 to 1920, the spaces are clearly gendered (Figure 6.6). Women are mostly photographed passively enjoying the gardens, or doing gentle exercise or dancing, while the men and boys are being

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The factory in a garden

6.6  The ‘Cadbury’s Angels’ resting in the Girls’ Grounds at Bournville, c.1900. The girl reading a book reinforces the message of respectability and self-improvement in a high-status environment.

productive and active, playing sports, doing drill or gardening. By the 1920s and 1930s, more emphasis is given in all of the case studies to the men, women and their children mixing more informally in the less private parks that were made for the workforce and their families from the 1920s onwards. The strong gender differentials therefore were based on typical notions of masculinity and femininity that are reinforced by the garden or landscape setting. The images of children in the factory gardens reflect late nineteenth-century attitudes to childhood and these in turn are gender specific. The Cadbury and Rowntree photographs of their female workers are highly controlled, perhaps owing to Quaker values or simply because they copied each other’s photographic styles. (There was much professional contact between the rival firms.) Photographs taken at other firms, for example those of the women in the gardens of the Spirella Corset Company are also formally posed and controlled, but they lack the poetic allegory and nostalgia of the chocolate manufacturers’ images. Not all the subjects in photographs are controlled, however, or even in formal groups. In a photograph of some of the female workforce of the Jacobs factory taking the air on the factory roof, they are almost ‘larking about’ and some are looking directly at the photographer. A picture of

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’159

6.7  Women employees of the Ovaltine Factory at Kings’ Langley (c.1920) enjoying themselves in front of the camera.

some of the female Ovaltine workers in their garden is similarly informal (Figure 6.7). Many of the Cadbury photographs are striking in their use of powerful allegorical and metaphorical scenography and body language, which suggest that the photographer had some artistic knowledge and temperament. They create a romantic ideal of womanhood, innocent, compliant and content, which makes them effective from a marketing point of view. Methods of representation in these photographs were shaped by a number of factors, some of which have their origins in movements and styles of painting, and others deriving from customary practices of photographic portraiture. Gardens and gardens imagery containing the human figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were replete with symbolic and metaphorical messages, often about the relationship among man, woman and nature, many of which have ancient origins, some biblical. (Port Sunlight was referred to as ‘The Garden of Eden’.)50 The ideal of female virtue and domesticity was a favourite subject, often with the woman of the house in retreat in her garden and the garden itself symbolic of female beauty and submissiveness, an image that originates in the Virgin Mary’s ‘hortus conclusus’. The relationship between nature and female sexuality was another a common theme (Eve and Eden) disguised by some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and photographers using religious or classical narratives, or

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The factory in a garden

6.8  The most ‘poetic’ of the photographs of female Cadbury employees taken in the Girls’ Grounds, c.1915. The composition has a Pre-Raphaelite sensibility and the fountain is suggestive of virginal purity. The girls are not at ease in the landscape.

more overtly displayed in some Aesthetic and Art Nouveau paintings and illustrations. In the photographs of the ‘Cadbury Angels’, the white dresses and controlled poses, combined with the elegant formality of the garden with its symbol of purity and baptism (the water, pond and fountain), construct a compliant, respectable, even virginal image of the young female employees (Figure 6.8). This is clearly the image of the Cadbury girls that the company wished to project, but it would have been far removed from the reality of many of their employees’ lives. But neither the subject matter of the gardens images, nor their locations represent solely nostalgic visions of an idealised past, for some asserted the many opportunities afforded by the spaces of the gardens and recreation ground to the present. Some photographs suggest feminist ideals of bodily freedom, emancipation, and personal space, either in Arcadian scenes of women dancing or picnicking in gardens, or in photographs of middle- or upper-class women garden makers, such as those who were photographed in their gardens for gardening magazines published around the turn of the century.51 However, the photographs did not necessarily reflect the relationship between employer and employees, as we know that even in a popular company like Cadbury, relations were not always easy.52

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’161 The NCR images of the Boys’ Gardens There are relatively few photographs of female workers at the NCR enjoying the grounds in the early 1900s as Patterson the patriarch was more interested in promoting the ‘Boys’ Gardens’, and to a lesser extent the girls’ allotment garden that was created some years later. Over a period of about twelve years from 1898, the boy gardeners and their garden were photographed multiple times, to show off the munificence of the company, commitment to social welfare and the benefits of the gardens in NCR publications, the local and national press and in factory lectures and films. However, these photographs reveal ambiguities about the relationship between master and worker and as well as between adult and child. In most respects, the photographs of the boys on their plots at the NCR are in stark contrast to the, by then, familiar pictures of children labouring in factories, or crammed together in squalid streets. (Jacob Riis toured the country with his illustrated lectures until his death in 1914, including a visit to the NCR.)53 Boys are photographed working or posing in the NCR garden, under strict supervision. They appear to be clean, healthy and surrounded by the fruits of their labour, although some are barefoot (Plate 6). The extent of available space for the gardens is emphasised in other photographs by the careful framing of the boys at attention in their plot, frozen for the camera, ill at ease and selfconscious. Body positions and facial expressions are controlled and their white shirts look freshly laundered. The supervisor who appears in many photographs in his fedora hat, watches for any misdemeanour. To maintain discipline the company used the ‘carrot and stick’ method, allowing the boys to manage their own garden company and awarding numerous prizes for best garden and produce. Any boy who did not meet the standards of behaviour and attendance expected, lost his right to a plot. The company again used the ‘before and after’ technique to emphasise the redeeming power of gardening discipline, from juvenile delinquent to responsible citizen to model worker (Figures 6.9, 6.10, 6.11). The first photograph, captioned ‘Like Slidertown Boys’ claims the date of 1893, but the authenticity and date of this image is questionable. The word ‘Like’ in the caption suggests that these are not boys from the local neighbourhood, but a picture of scallywag boys sourced from elsewhere, or dressed up to illustrate the type of mischief-maker not welcome in the neighbourhood. The boys look streetwise and cheeky, their body language, facial expressions and clothing express individuality and yet there is a strong group identity and cohesion, a gang mentality. Most wear hats of varying styles, signifiers of maturity and status, but none is the deferent

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The factory in a garden

6.9  The boys were also subject to the ‘before’ and ‘after’ treatment. These are the Slidertown tearaways as they were in 1893.

6.10  A transformation after ‘treatment’ in the Boys’ Garden, c.1898.

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’163

6.11  ‘Boys’ Gardens Developed Good Men for the Factory’, c.1904.

cloth cap, and some even appear to be women’s hats, ­customised to fit in. In the next photograph, ‘Officers of the Boy’s Garden Company’ taken in about 1898, four boys with fresh ‘short back and sides’ haircuts, suited and tied and wearing cloth caps (signifiers of the working class), stand to attention in front of their orderly plots. Their peers and the supervisor are working in the background. The message is clear, for following ‘treatment’ in the gardens, these boys have been transformed from hooligans to honest, high-principled, young men and from the ‘underclass’ to the respectable working class. In the third photograph of about 1904, a group of around sixty men pose at the stately entrance to the company, all in suits, some in ties and most wearing headgear from cloth caps to boaters, perhaps signifying their rank. The message of the photograph, confirmed by the caption is unambiguous: ‘Boys’ Gardens Developed Good Men for the Factory’. Not all the boys who worked in the gardens went to work in the factory, but many did and the lessons they learned in the Boys’ Garden, hard work, team work, competition, managing accounts and contributing to the family economy, were all considered ideal training for the future NCR employee. No doubt the lessons of compliance and engagement with the

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The factory in a garden outdoors also taught in the Boys’ Garden, met with Patterson’s image of the ideal worker, a man willing to participate in healthy outdoor recreation and team sports. The photographs suggest, through ­composition and body language, a high level of control and supervision imposed on the boys in their free time out of school. It is ironic that progressive reformers believed that play should be encouraged for the middle-class child, while hard work in vocational education was the solution for working-class youth,54 although, this attitude began to change in the early twentieth century and playgrounds were built in working-class areas. These NCR photographs and the publications in which they appeared, including a special guide (the Boys’ Garden), made their approach to social engineering flagrantly visible. The authoritarian tone of the images obscures ‘truths’ within the attitudes and feelings of employees in receipt of welfare, although the mood of some of those in the photographs suggest the boys and men were not as compliant as the company demanded. One set of photographs in the NCR archive of the Boys’ Gardens are exceptional in tone and technique to the vast, dogmatic collection of imagery commissioned by the company. The rare colour autochromes taken by Arnold Genthe around 1911 represent a more pictorial, natural and generous picture of the boys working in the gardens and some boys smile meekly at the camera. Significantly, these images do not appear to have been reproduced extensively in NCR promotional materials. Changes in imagery in the 1920s and 1930s Although employees continued to be photographed in controlled environments, the late 1920s and 1930s saw a noticeable shift in the tone of the photographs and in the disposition of those represented, partly due to advances in camera technology which made more spontaneous image-making possible. The images also reflect more relaxed attitudes to male and female relationships after the First World War and suggest a less authoritarian attitude towards the workforce. In Figure 6.7 showing a group of female employees at the Ovaltine factory (c.1920), the women seem to have almost tumbled out onto the tennis lawn, and although they are partly posed, they appear to be teasing or disobeying the photographer and preoccupied with amusement and the enjoyment of their freedom. There is far more ‘truth’ in this photograph than in the Cadbury images of the 1910s, for the girls exhibit their individual personalities. In another photograph taken at Ovaltine, a group of women are crowded into a charabanc outside the factory, setting out for a company outing and this time there are two men among them, including the

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’165 driver. Again, there is artfulness to their expressions; they are all looking at the camera unselfconsciously and some are smiling. By this time, external space appears to be less tightly supervised and controlled and the women are more at their ease. There is also a dramatic contrast between the photographs of the Cadbury workforce in the gardens in the 1890s to just after the end of the First World War, and those enjoying their parks in the late 1920s and 1930s. The later photographs show men and women are mixing freely in the Rowheath pleasure grounds, not sedate single-sex waltzing as ten or twenty years before in the Girls’ Grounds, but throwing their limbs about, presumably to the sounds of jazz. (In all the case studies, photographs of the female and male workforce socialising in the gardens, or even communicating at all are absent until the 1920s.) The photographer has chosen his position on the pavilion roof, framed his shot, taken a light reading and decided on ‘the decisive moment’55 to press the shutter, but apart from programming his equipment and framing his shot, the photographer has little control over the subjects, who appear to be unaware of him. Another example of change is a photograph on the front cover of NCR News, April 1925 showing two women, posed, but with relative naturalness and abandon, beside the lagoon in the NCR’s Old River Park. They look much more independent and confident in themselves than their predecessors from twenty years before (Figure 6.12). Another photograph published on the October 1925 issue has a similar mood. The women are at ease in front of the camera and also by now perhaps influenced by their favourite films, for they seem to be striking film star poses. The women look glamorous, there is less d ­ eference to the photographer and this time they appear to have ­ownership of the landscape. By the 1920s, the camera, and film in general, was much more a part of people’s lives, they were easier to use and photographs were more affordable and treated with less reverence. The NCR and Cadbury were by this time inviting submissions of photographs from their workforce for publication in the company magazines.56 The archive of Letchworth Garden City has inherited a family album of photographs taken by the Spirella gardener of his daughters cheerfully posing on the factory roof garden in the 1930s. There is a level of authenticity in these images that is absent in photographs contrived by the factory management for publicity and promotional purposes. However, company photography changed between the wars, attempting to represent a more modern image of the industrial worker; one who now had more access to middle-class values and lifestyles, more of a stake in the capitalist process and more social and political power.

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The factory in a garden

6.12  The front cover of NCR News (April 1925).

Conclusion The company photographs and illustrations of the gardens and recreation grounds and those using them were made and published with an agenda, to promote the company and its products. These images communicated powerful messages about the value of the gardens and

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’167 recreation grounds to corporate and brand identity and the photographs give considerable insight, through their unique form of communication, into attitudes of the management to the workforce in the period. While the photographs provide valuable information about how the workforce used the gardens and recreation grounds, they do not assist us with information about the workforce’s attitudes to the recreation spaces, or how often they were used. The photographs are not a good reflection of the power within the workforce to make their own decisions about using the spaces, or how much they enjoyed them. However much the landscapes and their uses were celebrated in the promotional materials, the workforce always had the right of disinterest or veto. In Chapter 7 I consider the extent to which the workforce valued or benefited from the landscapes and discuss their role as instruments and enablers of power in the workplace. Notes  1 Biggs, The Rational Factory, p. 167.  2 Brown, E. H. The Corporate Eye. Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture (Baltimore, MD and London, 2005), pp. 129–46. See also Nye, D. E. Image Worlds. Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890–1930 (Cambridge, MA, 1985).  3 Yates, J. Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Baltimore, 1989), pp. 17, 77.  4 Outka, E. Consuming Traditions. Modernity, Modernism and the Commodified Authentic (Oxford and New York, 2009); Marchand, Corporate Soul, pp. 255–60.  5 See Richards, T. The Commodity Culture of Victorian England (London, 1991), pp. 17–18; Fox, S. The Mirror Makers: a History of American Advertising and its Creators (New York, 1984); Ohmann, R. Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets and Class at the Turn of the Century (London, New York, 1996).  6 Fox, The Mirror Makers, p. 41.  7 See Lynch, E. C. ‘Walter Dill Scott: Pioneer Industrial Psychologist’, Business History Review XLII:2 (Summer 1968), 149–70; Tadajewski, M. and Jones, B. (eds), The History of Marketing Thought (2 vols; Los Angeles, New York and London, 2008).  8 Waller, English Urban Landscape, pp. 11–12; Outka, Consuming Traditions.  9 See, for example, Classification and Rules: Department of Horticulture: with other information for intending exhibitors Worlds Columbian Exposition, Chicago USA (Chicago, 1893) and Official Book of the Fair: giving pre-Exposition Information 1932, 1933 of a Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago 1933 (Chicago, 1932–34), Hagley Library. 10 See Worpole, Here Comes the Sun. 11 Brown, Pursuit of Paradise and Alfrey, Art of the Garden. 12 ‘The Artist’s Garden. American Impressionism and the Garden Movement’ e­ xhibition at Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, 1887–1920, 3 October 2015 to 3 January 2016. 13 James, Henry, ‘Our Artists in Europe’, Harper’s Magazine 79 (June 1889), 55–65. in Alfrey, N. ‘On Garden Colour’, in Alfrey, Art of the Garden, p. 37.

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The factory in a garden 14 Ibid. 15 The Shell Company was particularly adept at suggesting in their advertising that their product gave access to fresh air and open countryside. Permanent exhibition of Shell advertising posters, 1920s and 1930s at Upton House, Banbury (National Trust). 16 BI.RC, HIR/9/8–14. 17 Preston, R. ‘“Hope You Will be Able to Recognise Us”: the Representation of Women and Gardens in Early Twentieth-century British Domestic “Real Photo” Postcards’, Women’s History Review 18:5 (November 2009), 781–800. 18 See Richardson, T. English Gardens of the Twentieth Century: from the Archives of ‘Country Life’ (London, 2005). 19 Outka, Consuming Traditions, pp. 7–9. 20 I have published elsewhere on the Cadbury promotional photographs. Chance, ‘The Angel in the Garden Suburb. 21 Tadajewski and Jones, History of Marketing Thought. 22 Flanders, J. Consuming Passions. Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (London, 2006), pp. 260–1. 23 Outka, Consuming Traditions, p. 4. 24 Adelman, Touring Pullman, pp. 26–7. 25 Irwin, The New Niagara, p. 201. 26 Cahn, Out of the Cracker Barrel, p. 215. 27 ‘1800 People Inspect the Model Factory’, NCR (June 1 1898),202; ‘Factory Visitors’, NCR (1 October 1902), 760 and ‘Nine Thousand Visitors’, NCR (1 September 1903), 509, NCR. DH. See also Tolman, Social Engineering. 28 ‘Prominent Visitors’, The NCR (15 October 1901), 444. NCR.DH. 29 ‘Visit of the Press to Bournville September 24 1906’, CB, 024 003225. 30 ‘The Story of the Visitors’ Department’, BWM XXXVII:5 (May 1939), 144–8, CB, 31 Hoffman, ‘Imaging the Industrial Village’, 91. 32 The Lantern Lecture Bureau at Cadbury loaned slides to social workers, clubs and societies and any other interested party. See Lantern Lecture Bureau, ‘The Bournville Lantern Slide Lectures’, insert in The Factory in a Garden (c.1932), CB. 33 ‘Advertising is Teaching’, The NCR XVII:1 (June 1904), 36, reprinted from an article by John Patterson in the Dayton Journal (21 May 1904), NCR.DH. 34 See Flanders, Consuming Passions, p. 266–71. 35 Typescript of notes, following meeting with Patterson to discuss the lectures (n.  d.), NCR DH. 36 Cook, E. W. Betterment, Individual, Social and Industrial (New York, 1906), p. 222. 37 Cadbury, ‘Special Meeting’ (8 November 1901), 149, CB, C301. 38 NCR, Art, Nature and the Factory (1904), NCR.DH. 39 ‘The Factory Lecture and its Results’, NCR (1 May 1899), 238, NCR.DH. 40 ‘Mr Patterson and Port Sunlight’, Progress, the Port Sunlight Monthly Journal 1:1 (October 1899), 35, PSVT.SV. 41 Davis, T. ‘The Bronx River Parkway and Photography as an Instrument of Landscape Reform’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 27:2 (April–June 2007), 113–41.

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’169 42 See the Cadbury films: July 26th 1911 British Medical Association visit to Bournville; Elsie and the Brown Bunny (c.1921); The Story of Bournville as Told by the Nightwatchman (1921), CB; The Bournville Story – a Film of The Factory in a Garden (1953). 43 Samuel, R. Theatres of Memory, Vol. 1 (London, New York, 1994), p. 323. 44 Ibid., p. 328. 45 Barthes, R. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (London, 2000), pp. 76–7. 46 Sontag, S. On Photography (London, 2008), pp. 90, 120. 47 Jennings, M. W., Doherty, B. and Levin, T. Y. (eds), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’ and other Writings on Media. Walter Benjamin (Cambridge, MA, 2008), p. 276. 48 Ohmann, Selling Culture, p. 238. 49 See Hapgood, Margins of Desire, pp. 103–5. 50 ‘Port Sunlight a Garden of Eden’, Progress 1:12 (September 1900), 498. 51 Richardson, English Gardens. 52 See Samuel, Theatres of Memory, Vol. I. 53 Pascal, J. Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer (Oxford, New York, 2005), p. 160. 54 Macleod, Age of the Child and Boone, T. Youth of Darkest England: Working Class Children at the Heart of Victorian Empire (London New York, 2005). 55 This phrase is synonymous with Henri Cartier-Bresson from his book The Decisive Moment (New York, 1952). 56 ‘Snapshots Wanted’, NCR News IX:4 (April 1923), 1, NCR.DH.

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks? 7  ✧  Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?

Kindergartens, nurses, Bathtubs, books and flowers, Anything but better pay, Or shorter working hours.1

T

trade union ‘Welfare Song’, popular in the early 1910s, suggested that welfare measures at factories including gardens for workers, were not a route to improved health and well-being, but simply a foil to better pay and conditions. These sentiments were not shared by all employees, some of whom found the factory grounds a welcome change from the production line. Dolly Green, who started work at the Cadbury factory aged 14 in 1937, described how she would go back to work refreshed after her lunchtime breaks relaxing in the Girls’ Grounds. ‘Oh yes, we used to go and sit by the pond … it was nice, it was quite pleasant that was.’2 A worker at the Spirella Corset factory in Letchworth Garden City who took pleasure in the natural beauty of her workplace expressed similar feelings.3 But did most employees, as the ‘Welfare Song’ suggested, resent the ‘soft power’ of welfare and would they have preferred costs of landscaping redirected into their wage packets and their working hours shortened? Was recreation just another means of regulating behaviour in the workplace and normalising surveillance in the Foucauldian sense?4 Did men and women respond differently to workplace gardens and parks and how did attitudes change over time? These questions are difficult to answer because sources on industrial welfare tend to discuss recreation generally, that is, all workplace social, educational and sporting activities, inside and outside. Sports and allotment gardening are sometimes discussed separately, but informal outdoor recreation is rarely mentioned. There were no systematic evaluations of recreation programmes in industry before the Second World h e c a u st i c

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?171 War in Britain, although a number of surveys were conducted in the USA. Jackson M. Anderson, a consultant in recreation for the American Association for Health and Director of Research for the National Industrial Recreation Association, pointed out that even by 1955, very few research instruments had been developed for the specific purpose of evaluating industrial recreation.5 Despite a lack of quantitative evidence, however, Anderson’s book and sources from other professionals with an interest in recreation, provide valuable, if not conclusive, evidence for the benefits to companies and employees of gardens and recreation, from the late nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth centuries. There are relatively few personal accounts of life at the factory in this period and employees’ perspectives of the gardens and recreation grounds at the workplace are elusive. Accounts that do exist, in fact or in fiction, pay more attention to the daily grind on the factory floor and to their relationship with employers, than to leisure time at work or the use of workplace recreational facilities.6 Therefore, for this discussion, I borrow from academic studies of worker and trade union reception to corporate welfare in the 1920s and 1930s and from early twentiethcentury commentators on industrial welfare. I have analysed some oral history from retired Cadbury blue-collar workers and their relatives and from white-collar workers at the Boots Company alongside the collections of personal reminiscences of the Cadbury workers in the factory archive and recollections from the Spirella workers at Letchworth Garden City to try to get closer to the workers’ experiences. Nostalgia, of course, tends to prejudice memories and deny the negatives, but notwithstanding this, the workers’ memories have produced supporting insights to understanding the extent to which gardens and parks empowered or disadvantaged employees. Welfare capitalism and outdoor recreation Scholars have disagreed about the value of welfare capitalism to health and job satisfaction of industrial workers and to business success, but more recent research studying employees’ perspectives has suggested that workers’ reception to welfare, particularly male, was often ambiguous, apathetic, suspicious or extremely negative.7 Sociologist Louis A. Boettiger, studying welfare facilities in factories in the USA in 1923 reached the same conclusions, arguing that in view of the ‘incongruous medley’ of employers’ motives for providing welfare facilities, it is not surprising that many employees were not hoodwinked by ‘model’ conditions at their workplaces, but recognised that they were being manipulated for greater productivity. He concluded that employees’ attitudes to

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The factory in a garden welfare work ranged from ‘intensely enthusiastic support to unmitigated hostility and even contempt’, and that it was the very variety of motives of employers, including health promotion, workforce control and undermining trade unions that engendered such extremes of attitude.8 Studies which take a similar approach to this book, looking at how space is organised and used in the workplace, have cast new light on employees’ attitudes to outdoor space and recreation at factories. In his inquiry into the General Electric Works in Schenectady, New York, and International Harvester McCormick Works in Chicago, in the early twentieth century, William Littmann concluded that far from improving relations between the blue-collar and the white-collar workers and senior management, the buildings and landscapes could sometimes increase resentment, particularly if welfare provision was seen to replace fair wages and job security.9 Nikki Mandell in her study of gendered spaces at factories including rest rooms and pleasure gardens for women and smoking rooms and sports grounds for men argues that a ‘feminization’ of factories promoting familial culture did not necessarily engender loyalty and prevent instability such as disputes and strikes, especially among men. The relatively low level of strikes in companies with extensive welfare programmes was due to the large proportion of female employees in these companies; women who were restricted in their ability to organise themselves through unions or other political activity.10 This then suggests a connection between gardens and corporate stability, since those companies who employed a large number of women tended to be well known for their factory landscapes. Employers with the most attractive, extensive and comprehensive recreation spaces and programmes at their factories, such as the founders of Cadbury, Rowntree, the NCR and Shredded Wheat believed passionately in the value to their business of gardens and recreation grounds and published their views widely.11 In his biography, with which he cooperated closely, Patterson extolled the value of the landscaping and recreation provision to profit,12 but he failed to mention that two years after the initial landscaping of the factory grounds and the opening of the Boys’ Gardens, employees came out on a four-day strike at the factory, and following another strike in 1901, the entire factory closed for eight weeks. According to Daniel Nelson, the 1901 strike was precipitated by the belligerence of an overbearing foreman to his workers and disputes with unions and it was wrongly believed that the welfare system was responsible for the strikes. However, a high-handed attitude to the workers encapsulated in the welfare systems might have exacerbated worker discontent.13 A former deaconess, Lena Harvey Tracy, whom Patterson had appointed to oversee company welfare, was overpunctilious in her duties.14 Her coercive techniques to participate in the

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?173 welfare programmes were unpopular and following the strike, she was not invited back.15 Clearly, welfare in itself, including the beautification of the factory and its surroundings and the bringing to heel of the local youth through gardening did not prevent industrial unrest if the workforce had a strong grievance, and welfare could worsen workers’ grievances. Following the second strike, industrial relations improved at the NCR. Welfare continued to be a prominent feature of factory life although in a slightly reduced form (headed by a man, and re-named ‘personnel’),16 but Patterson’s landscaping ambitions went from strength to strength. Patterson and the Cadburys at Bournville shared the same views on the value of gardening and an attractive environment. The initial landscaping of the chocolate factory and the building of Bournville Village by George and Richard Cadbury was based on the same principle of landscape determinism which the brothers handed down to their sons and heirs. George Cadbury regularly quoted statistics on the low infant  mortality rate in Bournville, which he attributed to the healthy environment.17 His eldest son Edward, managing director of the company from 1899 and chairman from 1937, emphasised the effectiveness of the educational and welfare measures in shaping factory social life and community spirit in his influential book Experiments in Industrial Organisation (1912). He argued that about a quarter of his workforce took advantage of the amenities, which improved their health and motivation, leading to better industrial relations, company stability and therefore profit.18 John Patterson owned several copies of Cadbury’s book and following a visit to Cadbury (probably some time between 1912 and 1914), when he claimed to be ‘more impressed than ever with the importance of welfare work in factories’, he ordered multiple copies for his executives with the directive that having read the book, they must submit to him a memorandum stating the five most important features that the Cadburys had introduced.19 The level of expenditure on education and welfare at Cadbury is a good indication of the importance that they attached to it. By 1905, the year that Cadbury launched Dairy Milk, 30 per cent of their expenditure was given to activities outside production.20 However, there is no data on the relative health and motivation of workers who participated in sport, or statistics on the numbers that used the grounds on a regular basis. According to the Cadburys and to John Patterson, there were more applicants than places for the allotments and gardening classes.21 However, the apparent popularity of gardening among the young does not n ­ ecessarily mean that they were willing. It was equally likely that the boys (and girls) were encouraged or coerced by their parents or employer, not least to contribute to the family food budget and to keep them off the streets.

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The factory in a garden There can be no doubt that the Cadburys and John Patterson and his heirs regarded their gardens and recreation grounds as essential components of their success, for they continued to augment their factory landscapes through the 1920s and 1930s with recreation parks, which were popular.22 The effects of their grounds reached far beyond their own workers’ lives. Both companies were famous for their gardens, parks and recreation grounds, and the motto ‘The Factory in a Garden’, which originated at Cadbury, was adopted as a marketing slogan by a number of companies, including Shredded Wheat, Spirella, and later, the authors of a history of the Wedgwood factory.23 The Cadbury firm became a role model for standards in employee recreation as well as for patronage of open spaces in Birmingham.24 The Bournville Estate became a model for the Garden City Movement, in which George Cadbury the elder was an active participant. John Patterson’s commitment to gardens and parks had a major impact on the ‘greening’ of Dayton and the accessibility of recreational space and some have claimed that his gardens initiatives inspired the nationwide school gardens movement.25 Industrial welfare professionals and independent observers of welfare in the early twentieth century agreed with the proprietors of ‘garden’ factories that gardens and recreation grounds brought positive benefits.26 Superficially, these sources are very persuasive as to the value of grounds and sport, mostly due to the number of examples of companies that provided them (in the case of Gilman and Meakin, from case studies from mainland Europe as well as from the USA and the UK.)27 William Tolman observed that planting around the factory and outdoor recreation was good for business, not only in improving worker health and morality, but also in portraying a positive identity of prosperity and responsibility.28 The authors appear to have visited a considerable number of sites, but there is a tendency to bias because much of the information was obtained from inquiries to the factories where information was likely to come from senior management and not from employees. The female commentators on welfare, Ida Tarbell and Dorothea Proud, were particularly interested in the value of gardening practices at factories giving us insights into the extent to which gardens and gardening were becoming popular at factories. Ida Tarbell a ‘muck-raking’ journalist of the Progressive Era, revealed puritanical and, from today’s perspective, sexist views in connecting worker morality and gardens. She had seen women transformed from ‘slatterns’ to decent women and men who had given up the saloon in order to tend their flower beds: ‘Light, sun, order and beauty are as powerful preventatives of evil as darkness, disorder and ugliness are incentives to evil.’29

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?175 For Tarbell, initiatives to beautify the factory came not only from those in charge, but were also prompted by the workers themselves. I have seen scores of gay little gardens, window boxes, grottoes which operatives had made in moments of leisure and to which they gave loving care. Sometimes in the big mills they are in corners so remote that they lie undiscovered by superintendents for half a season. I remember one such in the big plate mills near Vandergrift Pennsylvania … [where mill workers] had used these rest periods in beautifying a corner for themselves … [including] a merry little fountain in the centre.30

Tarbell argued that the men would not have done this had it not been for the fine example of the vine-clad factory and the encouragement of the superintendent who kept a conservatory from where he distributed seeds and plants to the workers. She claimed that the NCR set the best example of good practice in beautifying the factory and she referred to a study by the American Museum of Safety, asking factory owners who had improved their factory in these respects whether their measures had increased the efficiency of the workers and 75 per cent were convinced that it had. Tarbell concluded that the value of good landscaping to the workers amounted to more than just efficiency; through the example of landscape, the operatives were getting education, satisfaction and a sense of self-worth.31 Dorothea Proud’s book,32 published in 1916, was the most comprehensive expression in the UK by that date of the value of welfare work, which was growing into a popular profession for women.33  Proud had already become a dominant figure in the Welfare Workers’ Association founded in the UK in 1913 (renamed the Institute of Industrial Welfare Work in 1924) and following the publication of her book, she worked for the Welfare Department of the Ministry of Munitions set up to improve conditions in factories for the hundreds of thousands of women who joined the factory workforce. The war was a catalyst to the improvement of welfare measures in industry and this attempt to ‘humanise’ and ‘feminise’ factories, particularly for women and young people, became an important factor in garden-making at factories in the 1920s and 1930s. Proud’s book confirms that among employers, ‘there is a tendency to consider [a factory garden] a desirable, if not a necessary, adjunct to a modern factory’ and that there were more examples of gardens at factories than those known to the general public.34 She writes at some length about sports and recreation at factories and is very specific as to the value of gardens to aesthetic and bodily refreshment and for growing vegetables, although she had misgivings about companies’ dishonesty where gardens seemed to have more value in promotion and advertising than in improving the quality of life for employees. In her research into company recreation clubs,

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The factory in a garden Proud raised concerns where employers took a disproportionate control over the management and finances of their recreation clubs, and observed that in one club, ‘very little was done for the girls’. From her observations she recommends that recreation clubs were best managed by the employees themselves, or in collaboration with a social secretary.35 All the writers on industrial welfare agreed that welfare measures worked best when the employees had control of the welfare programmes and when welfare measures did not replace fair wages and a respectful approach to the workforce. Tolman was the only one writing before the First World War who suggested that welfare was not always popular or cost-effective. Quoting from letters sent by employers, he gave examples of welfare schemes that had been unpopular with workers and therefore abandoned. It is significant, however, that of all the welfare measures Tolman discussed, it was the provision of pleasant and sanitary working conditions at factories that he thought the best indicator of a respectful attitude of employer to employee. Tolman suggested that although some measures might be unsuccessful, the landscaping and planting of factories would always play a significant role in the improvement of conditions in industry. The value of factory gardens and parks according to welfare institutions The British Industrial Welfare Society pamphlet, Recreation in Industry, noted in 1938 that very little statistical information had been collected in Britain on industrial recreation.36 The society’s support for company gardens and recreation parks came from the qualitative evidence of their membership and from other companies with outdoor recreational facilities, which they used to promote the idea of gardens and parks at factories. In contrast, in the USA, surveys on industrial recreation had been conducted by government departments since the 1910s, initially by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and later by the National Industrial Conference Board.37 One ‘limited’ survey of sports recreation conducted in the 1930s in Britain is quoted in Anderson’s Industrial Recreation which concluded that of the eighty-eight firms surveyed, seventy-five of them had their own sports grounds, mostly with pavilions, and that on average about a quarter of employees were members of the firms’ sports clubs. The survey pointed out that many smaller firms also provided sport and physical training classes including companies employing a large proportion of women. In the opinion of the Industrial Welfare Society (IWS), the popularity and increasing provision of industrial sport facilities spoke for itself

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?177 for all these facts ‘indicate that industry is making a very substantial contribution to the leisure problem’.38 The society acknowledged that access to fresh air and exercise was good for profits, but that, by this date, the provision of facilities was due to demand and to a lack of provision for sport by the developers of the rapidly growing suburbs. Companies with recreation, the society believed, were fulfilling a public need. The IWS endorsed the views expressed by writers on welfare that sport was good for public health and the development of moral fibre and good character, but the tone and type of language used in discussing the value of welfare had changed. Earlier sources emphasised the need to reform the morality of the working classes (keeping them from the degradation of sloth, crime and alcohol) but by the 1930s, a modern social project of good sportsmanship and citizenship was the aim. The implication was that now the worker was a participant in society, not a servant to it. There is no conclusive evidence in the IWS sources on the value of informal rest and recreation in factory pleasure gardens and the enjoyment derived from open space and attractive environments. However, the language used to describe them (including a description of a party on the roof of a Sheffield factory and a photograph of factory women dancing by a lake) and the plans and photographs that illustrate them, confirms that the IWS valued gardens as an ideal at factories, and promoted such spaces. By the 1950s, the IWS recognised that not only could it promote gardens and parks at factories, but it could also offer practical and design advice and professional expertise. In 1955, the society published a booklet, Factory Gardens, suggesting that gardens and sports grounds had become a natural right for factory workers and not a gift of paternalism. From the 1930s and particularly by the 1950s, the landscape architecture profession in Britain was seizing opportunities to design for industry, a field of work in which the equivalent profession in America had been active from at least the early 1900s.39 British landscape architects also promoted their expertise as designers with specialist horticultural knowledge, for Factory Gardens included a list of plants that withstood the levels of pollution expected in industry. Factory Gardens was written collaboratively by a landscape architect G. P. Youngman, who already had ‘considerable experience’ designing industrial gardens,40 and Lord Verulam, Chairman of Enfield Rolling Mills and ‘a crusader for the improvement of the place of work’.41 Using the Cadbury gardens as an example, the authors extolled the virtues of gardens for social reform as well as economic benefit to companies.42 Here then, reform raises its head again, but there is a change in attitude as to the value of factory gardens. This was the first acknowledgement that employees might simply like to relax, rather than improve

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The factory in a garden themselves. They could sit in the open air ‘for a smoke or a talk before going back to work after lunch on fine days … some need quiet, shelter and a little privacy; others will want to watch the more energetic playing games or kick a football’. The pamphlet also praised the value of factory gardens in projecting British industry as proud and prestigious, for in the opinion of the authors, foreign companies had done more to make workplaces more attractive.43 In America, some evidence had emerged between the wars on the benefits of allotment gardening at factories. J. M. Anderson, in his book Industrial Recreation (like Factory Gardens published in 1955), summarised surveys conducted between 1913 and 1936 revealing that recreation was ‘highly valued’ among at least half of employers of large operations.44 One survey of 101 firms conducted in 1921 to gather information specifically about industrial recreation for women, concluded that firms were encouraging sports and other forms of recreation ‘to the fullest extent’ and that bowls, basketball and tennis were the most popular games for women, with volleyball becoming more popular.45 The author also noted that many firms believed it essential that employees should manage their own recreational activities. A more comprehensive survey, conducted in 1936 by the National Industrial Conference Board, questioned 2,452 companies across the USA, representing 4,502,608 employees. Nearly half of the firms reported provision of athletic programmes, but ‘a considerable number of such programs’ had been discontinued during the Depression. However, the report concluded; ‘Evidently gardens, which were reported by 293 companies, played an important part in weathering the Depression.’46 It is likely that the gardens to which the report referred were allotment, or ‘community’ gardens, because many companies provided land for vegetable plots to provide sustenance during hard times, as in wartime. During the Depression then, gardens were viewed as valuable, or even a necessity. Even those who might have viewed factory gardens as frivolous ornaments or superficial status-enhancers could see their potential as providers of social needs. Anderson does not give any evaluation of these figures in terms of benefit to employees or employers. However, Louis A. Boettiger’s much earlier account of welfare work (1923) confirmed that statistical results had provided information regarding the relationship between welfare work and annual rate of labour turnover, rate of production and other factors in industrial efficiency, which indicated that there was a correlation between welfare work and profit.47 All the writers on welfare agreed that sport and informal outdoor recreation at factories had multiple benefits, from helping to ‘cement’ good relations among staff, as well as between staff and management, to

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?179 reducing stress and contributing to health and motivation, to retention of staff. All these factors contributed to industrial stability, productivity and therefore to profit, but to have any chance of success, recreation programmes had to be operated under certain conditions, most importantly, the control of the welfare programme must lie with the workforce itself. Other factors that contributed to the success of company recreation programmes were the location of a factory, the price of land, the size of the town or suburb where the factory was situated, and the distance of the factory from the workers’ homes. If, for example, the factory dominated a small town, or was established in a newly developed suburb, there was often a need for recreation facilities and so factory recreation filled a social need, but on the condition that friends and relations also had access to the facilities. If, however, the factory was located in a larger wellestablished town, where recreation parks already existed and many of the workers lived at some distance from the factory, the company recreation might be less popular in favour of local amenities outside the workplace.48 There is compelling evidence from sources already examined that sport and allotment gardening enjoyed widespread success in British and American industry. There is less evidence to suggest that more informal outdoor recreation, time out in rest breaks or at lunchtime, was also popular. However, indications at to the popularity of recreation does not indicate its effects. Historian Vicky Long has argued that far from improving workers’ health, welfare schemes at factories actually served to preserve poor working conditions and retard progress towards an adequate national health service because they created an illusion that the health of the nation’s workforce was well provided for. The reality, Long reminds us, was that conditions at many factories remained very poor.49 However, this argument should not undermine the potential benefits that individual employees or groups with access to recreation facilities at work, might have enjoyed. The value of factory gardens and recreation grounds according to the workforce A number of the sources on recreation so far examined express concern that participation in recreation programmes tended to be dominated by white-collar workers and that many blue-collar workers resisted attempts to socialise them and involve them in ‘improving activities’.50 The author of the IWS publication Recreation in Industry (1938) confirmed that industrial recreation schemes were sometimes criticised for being too narrow in membership.51 This is not surprising, since club members usually had to pay annual fees and because office staff often dominated club committees. Furthermore, many activities were deliberately middle-class in tone,

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The factory in a garden so some blue-collar workers resented them and did not like to fraternise outside their social group.52 At most factories, attractive landscaping and planting favoured the office, not the factory buildings (the English Garden at the NCR for example) and at some, the use of the gardens was allocated according to social class or rank. At Cadbury in 1923, only forewomen and employees with over ten years’ service could apply to use the Girls’ Grounds on Sunday afternoons. By 1931 the grounds were opened to other women, but only those with five or more years’ service were eligible.53 Men were finally admitted to the Girls’ Grounds on a limited basis from around the late 1950s on condition of good behaviour.54 At worst, within some recreation schemes there was overt discrimination against certain social groups, for their class, gender, ethnicity or colour. William Littmann has revealed in his extensive study of General Electric and International Harvester that the recreation spaces at the firms were segregated and that they became the preserve of white, skilled men.55 Littmann concluded that the General Electric management had difficulty persuading semi-skilled workers to use the clubhouse, for they preferred to socialise away from the factory.56 Nikki Mandell, quoting from Whiting Williams, who worked undercover on factory shop floors and published his investigations in 1920, concluded that although firms with welfare programmes tended to generate more stable and contented workers, they did not feel part of a mutual enterprise and therefore did not necessarily develop a sense of respect or confidence in their employer. And when high-quality amenities were coupled with lower than average wages, or unfair wage practices like piece rates were enforced, or employers or supervisors were unpopular, welfare was often resented or hated. ‘The effect of a lot of nice welfare near-luxuries can be canceled in an instant by one growly pay-master; for he hands out the necessity of life.’57 Between the wars, participation in sport was a condition of employment at some plants, including a number in the Glasgow area,58 despite warnings from welfare professionals that compulsion was unpopular and had a negative impact on participation. At Spirella in Meadville, Pennsylvania, employees had 10 cents deducted from their wage package for the amenities and any additional cost was borne by the company, although it is not known how many actually used the facilities. At Bata Town in East Tilbury, UK, membership of the sports club was compulsory by 1937 and employees had one penny per week deducted from their wages for the privilege, with the result that the club was one of the largest in the district.59 However, a number of comments made in the company magazine about lack of interest, or disappointing numbers participating in some sporting or social events, suggests that the compulsion to join in was not always popular, or that the villagers went elsewhere for their leisure activities.60

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?181 At some companies, membership of sports clubs was lower than expected and even the numbers participating in some organised team games were disappointing to employers. At General Electric in Schenectady, New York, only 545 workers participated in the company baseball league in 1924, which was less than 3 per cent of the 19,000 employed at the factory. (By way of contrast, tennis, which was popular largely with the office staff, was played by five times that number of workers in that same year.)61 At the Boots Company in Nottingham, there are few statistics on numbers who used the sports facilities, but of the 1,270 warehouse staff in 1936, only a fifth were members of the athletic club.62 Union-sponsored recreation was often more popular.63 Anderson argued that in the USA by the 1920s, and more especially after 1940, trades unions, who had resisted company welfare schemes as they undermined their power and authority, were organising their own recreation schemes both in response to, and in competition with company programmes. Some companies with strong welfare schemes had been slow to unionise (Patterson at the NCR had initially resisted unionism but after the strike in 1899, he signed contracts with more than twenty unions),64 but when a union entered an industry, it commonly took over the management of recreation and increased participation.65 In other firms like Cadbury where union membership was encouraged,66 the unions did not take over the welfare programmes, which were managed by Works Councils. In some companies, membership of sports clubs was relatively high, with often as many as a quarter of the workforce participating, although numbers fluctuated. Sport can be a great social leveller and sports teams tended to be organised within different shops or departments, so it is possible that some factory sports clubs were less class-conscious than the educational ones and some sports are separated by gender naturally. Some firms tried to ensure that the management of clubs and societies was as democratic as possible. At Cadbury the Works Councils, which had overall responsibility for the sports and social clubs, comprised 50 per cent management and 50 per cent factory workers and their sporting and social club membership was drawn from a wide cross-section of the workforce, although at least one member of the senior management tended to sit on the committees.67 By participating in sports teams and sitting on the committee of sports clubs, employees could gain positions of responsibility and respect. Mick Tomlinson, who worked at Raleigh in Nottingham for fifty years and played cricket and football, table tennis and badminton, was clearly proud of his achievements which shaped his life: ‘I was captain, secretary, I was into everything … I virtually lived at Coach Road, where the sports ground was. I brought my family up there, more or less!’68

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The factory in a garden Mr K. D. Dibsdall, an employee of Vauxhall Motors, writing for the September 1927 issue of Industrial Welfare, expresses his gratitude for the ‘enjoyment and support’ he derives from his firm’s recreation club and 10½ acre ground, all of which is managed by employees. In Dibsdall’s view, multiple advantages could be gained from participation in team sports and club membership, including comradeship, contentment and satisfaction, management experience and training (to run the club), leadership and sportsmanship, fellowship with management who participated in club activities, and preferment and promotion.69 As at Vauxhall, elected committees of employees ran the three athletic clubs at Cadbury (Men’s, Girls’ and Youths’) and the senior management was only represented on the governing bodies of the men’s and girls’ clubs. This democratic system of organisation seemed to work up to a point. Edward Cadbury tells us that at the end of 1911, 1,300 employees were members of the athletics clubs and that five football teams played 120 matches in the season. However, this meant that less than a quarter of the total workforce of 6,182 took advantage of the sports facilities, partly no doubt due to the cost (at this date, the men paid 3s. per year and the girls 2s.). About half of the club members were women, but considering the majority of employees were female at this time (by 1918 numbers had evened up) a smaller proportion of women workers participated and mainly the ‘younger girls’. Membership of the athletics clubs at Cadbury was most popular in the 1920s, when the numbers of men working for the company peaked to approximately half the workforce. By 1926, numbers participating in sports would seem to have increased, for the men’s club had 2,000 members and girls about 1,000 members out of a total workforce of 10,000.70 Nearly one-third of workers participating in sports at Cadbury in the mid-1920s was a high proportion and an indication of their popularity. The Bournville youths also participated in sports and athletics programmes and according to Edward Cadbury their mental and physical health was visibly improved by the exercise. However, this is not surprising, because for the young workers, physical exercise was compulsory.71 So far, my discussion of worker reception to the recreation grounds has focused on sporting activities at factories. How popular were the pleasure gardens and general landscaping? For some employees like Dolly Green who enjoyed working in an attractive environment and liked to relax in the Girls’ Grounds at Cadbury in her lunch break, the gardens and factory lawns, flowers and shrubs, tended to lift the spirits and gave some release and freedom from the monotony of the factory floor and supervision from her overseers. For others, according to Littmann, a beautiful landscaped factory with elegant buildings symbolised unwelcome

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?183 power and control of the employer over their workers’ lives. At some firms, workers were insulted when the attractive landscaping and impressive architecture was limited to the office buildings, while the shop structures remained ugly and utilitarian.72 Littmann has suggested that elegant buildings and gardens at factories could even have the effect of increasing militancy among the workforce, and that large open areas at factories like avenues designed as impressive approaches to the factory, provided ideal symbolic, as well as physical, space for discontented workers to occupy during disputes.73 Eugene Debs and G. W. Howard of the American Railway Union used the renowned Pullman Playground (sports ground) to speak to a crowd during the Pullman strike on 14 May 1894.74 There is no data on the relationship between industrial disputes and levels of welfare, but good welfare policies did not prevent strikes at factories.75 It could be argued, however, that there was a link between attractive factory landscaping and industrial stability because landscaping tended to be a feature of companies that employed a high proportion of women and promoted a ‘family’ atmosphere and strikes were less common at these companies.76 However, gardens and flowers did not produce stability because, with a few exceptions, women tended not to be militant and rarely went on strike for higher wages and conditions because their working lives were generally shorter than men’s and they were politically disadvantaged.77 Attractive landscaping alone did not prevent strikes or increase profits, but gardens and parks augmented a company’s reputation and improved the quality of working life for some. Firms with plenty of garden space at least gave the worker a choice to rest outside on a garden bench in pleasant surroundings, stroll along garden paths or play a game of tennis, bowls or croquet at lunchtime, for gardens of any size for walking or games, unless a public park was nearby, were luxuries for factory workers.78 There are some accounts from employees of appreciation, even delight in the gardens and grounds, although they should be interpreted with caution as they are found within company collections or works magazines. Fanny Price, who moved to the suburbs from Birmingham to work at the factory, wrote in the Cadbury book of personal reminiscences of the ‘real joy’ and ‘delight’ to be able to sit out in the sunshine ‘in what was our first garden, and we appreciated it to the full’.79 At Spirella in Letchworth, a former employee recalled her pleasure when the factory grounds and environs were in full bloom, or ‘flood’: It was lovely, Letchworth was. We used to walk to where the pond is by the Spirella by the railway, we used to climb over that fence and the field there used to be all lovely totty grass, bee orchids along there, lovely wild

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The factory in a garden flowers. When the Spirella was in full flood before the war the grounds and ­everything were so lovely.80

The Letchworth Book of Reminiscences suggests that locals aspired to work for Spirella and employees there considered themselves fortunate. There were many positive aspects to working at Spirella including the courtesy and consideration shown to the staff and factory grounds appeared to be one of them. As one female worker remarked: ‘At 21, I went to Spirella and stayed there for 21 years. It was a wonderful and lovely place to work for.’81 Shredded Wheat at Welwyn Garden City was another popular factory with good landscaping and sports facilities and over 1,000 people applied for the 100 jobs available when it opened. However, the amenities were only one of the benefits on offer, since the company  also  paid  higher wages and offered perks like free or subsidised meals (wages at Shredded Wheat were 25 per cent higher than other firms in the area). The management of Shredded Wheat had a more liberal attitude to leisure than most; one of the axioms of Mr Bryce, the Managing Director, was ‘loaf as much as you like, so long as you do your job’.82 Company literature and photographs suggest that the lunch hour and tea breaks were ideal times to read an improving book, sit in the sunshine or take a quick turn around the company grounds, but it should not be assumed that rest periods at work were always taken, or that many workers spent them in the factory gardens and grounds. A research project by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology (NIIP) that looked into how workers spent their rest times revealed that very few workers spent them outside.83 Of the 547 factories surveyed, 61.5 per cent of workers spent their rest periods in the workroom, 2.2 per cent in the workroom or outside; 9 per cent in the workroom or canteen; 2.9 per cent in the workroom, canteen or outside; 20.2 per cent in the canteen; and only 2.2 per cent outside. These figures suggest therefore that accessibility to outdoor space for rest and fresh air had a limited impact on working life.84 Nor did the outdoor recreational amenities necessarily improve workers’ quality of life, because factory social life was not dependent on organised activities and would have been cultivated in much more informal circumstances. The culture of a workplace was centred on informal relationships forged not through organised social activities, but through the day-to-day rituals of banter,  gossip and horseplay.85 Employees were more likely to spend their breaks going to the lavatory, or the canteen for a snack or a cigarette, or to stay in the workroom to catch up on the latest news. In many trades, gambling and discussions of sport were the pastimes of choice,  at  least for men.86 The popularity of gambling at work is

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?185 indicated by the Cadbury management, which, ever watchful of their employees’ morality, banned what they regarded as this illicit activity on the Men’s Recreation Ground.87 Even those employees who worked for companies with a good record of welfare and employer/employee respect like Cadbury, did not always wish to be ‘tied to the apron strings’ of the company through their choices of leisure activities. Alan Shrimpton’s father, who worked at Cadbury for fifty-one years, refused to live in Bournville Village as he did not wish to fraternise with management and ‘lick their boots’, even though he felt it an honour to work for the company.88 Dolly Green, who we met at the beginning of this chapter enjoying her lunch breaks in the Girls’ Grounds, never joined a Cadbury sports or social club during her forty-seven years with the company, preferring to spend her leisure time outside the firm as a member, and then an organiser, of a local Girl Guides group. Even though she was proud of working at Cadbury for its local and international reputation, because the company gave her job security and because she firmly believed that the Cadburys were ‘good people … very kind’, she felt that she needed to be free of her workplace outside working hours. She firmly believed that her lack of participation in company life, affected her chance of promotion, for she remained on the factory floor, only being promoted to the offices a few years before retirement.89 The popularity of recreational amenities provided at factories therefore varied. Even allotments were not universally popular. At the General Electric Schenactady plant, the workers’ gardens were abandoned in the 1920s as they preferred to dig their own gardens.90 The success of gardens and recreation grounds was usually dependent on fair wages and conditions, job security and the level of control exerted by the employer over the worker’s personal and political activities. For many, higher wages were more important than welfare and the tenminute rest periods were unpopular for those on piecework.91 Informal, spontaneous activity, out of sight of the foreman or woman is likely to have been a better antidote to the physical and mental restrictions of work, than organised or supervised activity in the factory grounds, for discipline was strict in most factories. At the more exceptional factories with large pleasure gardens, like Cadbury, it was possible to find some unrestricted personal space that offered some ‘resources for solitude’, which, as Anderson has indicated, fulfilled a human need.92 And at many firms, the sports clubs empowered some employees, like Mr  Dibsdall at Vauxhall, who could take responsibility for managing teams or leagues or join committees. As S. Philips has suggested in relation to the Boots Company Athletic Club: ‘The greatest success [of the Club] was the opportunity for rank and file workers to take control over an aspect of their working lives.’93

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The factory in a garden Conclusion A Foucauldian approach to the power relations represented in the way the gardens and recreation grounds were ‘sold’ to the workforce and to the public might suggest that they were landscape versions of the Panopticon, where the workers were under surveillance, and where hidden impositions of power were ‘dressed up’ as social norms, rendering the workforce accepting of power and susceptible to its effects. But the power relations and structures between labour and capital and between men and women in the use and management of the gardens and recreation grounds are much more complex than Foucault’s theories would suggest because they do not explain how and why some employees resisted power by not using them at all and how others gained power through the ways they used and managed these spaces. Theories by social scientists such as Henri Lefebvre and Stephen Lukes have elucidated these more ambiguous power relations in the  factory grounds by showing how power operates in society from the ‘bottom up’ as well as ‘top down’, for power can be found in the spaces between dominant power structures.94 Some employees resented the grounds for their representation of insidious corporate power, their disingenuousness, their veneer of respectability and, in some cases, for replacing fair wages. But for other employees the gardens and recreation grounds contributed to a better quality of life at work, a private space to rest, a release of pent-up energy, or even a space to protest. Some gained power and status and enjoyment through managing sports clubs and other societies, and others benefited from the availability of allotments and gardening advice. Arguably, of all the welfare amenities at factories, the gardens and parks were the places where workers had the most freedom and could exercise their individuality, because people could choose how to use them, subject to some restrictions like noise and alcohol. The parks and gardens were subject to rules of use, but less regulated or hierarchical in the way that the clubs and societies would have been, and in that respect they could be seen as neutral, more democratic spaces, common ground where everyone was equal and an individual in the community of the factory. Corporate landscapes were designed for their potential to improve working life and they became powerful symbols of ideal conditions in industry. But despite all attempts to resolve working conditions through landscaping, the paradox of the garden with its mixed messages – a space both liberating and controlling – emphasises the difficulties of presenting gardens as ‘an ideal’ in social and welfare reform. In William Littman’s view, the value of factory gardens to industry is seen more clearly in their contribution to profitability through public relations, rather than

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?187 in an increase in the job satisfaction of the workforce. ‘This vision of the factory as a garden and playground helped ease the consciences of whitecollar Americans about industrial labour and allowed them to embrace the consumer ethic with less doubt and contrition.’95 This a persuasive argument since, with the exception of the Pullman Company, all the factories that had substantial gardens and parks, like Cadbury, Rowntree, Spirella and the NCR, are still mythologised as factory Arcadias today. Notes   1 Extract from ‘Welfare Song’ (to the tune of ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’). Originally published in Masses about 1913. This version was published in Shoe Workers Journal 15 (February 1914). See Zahavi. G. Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism: the Shoe Workers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson 1890–1950 (Chicago, 1988).   2 Interview with Dolly Green at The Quadrangle, the Bournville Village Trust almshouses, 30 November 2009.   3 Maddren, M. (ed.), Letchworth Recollections (Baldock, 1995).   4 Foucault, Discipline and Punish.   5 Industrial Recreation, p. 247.   6 For example Roberts, Woman’s Place.   7 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience: the Architecture and Landscape of Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1930’, International Labor and Working-Class History 53 (Spring 1998), 88–114, 110 fn. 5; Long, Healthy Factory, pp. 80–1; Mandell, The Corporation.   8 Boettiger, Employee Welfare Work, p. 268.   9 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience’. 10 Mandell, The Corporation, p. 129. 11 For example Crowther, John H. Patterson; NCR, Art, Nature; NCR, Welfare Work, NCR.DH; Cadbury, Experiments; Cadbury, The Factory and Recreation and Cadbury, Bournville at Work and Play, CB. 12 Crowther, John H. Patterson, p. 206. Patterson did not quote statistics, but Lena Harvey Tracey, Welfare Director of the NCR from 1897 to 1901 told a group of visitors that following the introduction of the welfare programme, the factory output increased by 10 per cent, Tracy, How My Heart Sang, p. 154. 13 Nelson, ‘The New Factory System’, 167–8. 14 For Tracy’s account of her career at the NCR, see Tracy, How my Heart Sang. 15 Nelson, ‘The New Factory System’, 176. 16 Ibid. 17 The infant mortality rate in Birmingham for the four years ending 1905 was 134.7 per 1,000 and in Bournville 72.5 per 1,000. The Daily Chronicle (26 September 1906), ‘Visit of the Press to Bournville, September 24 1906’, CB, 024 003225. 18 Cadbury, Experiments, p. 221. 19 Printed insert from Patterson to his officers in Sir Adrian Cadbury’s copy of Edward’s book. 20 Beauchampé and Inglis, Played in Birmingham, p. 31.

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The factory in a garden 21 Cadbury Experiments, p. 41 and ‘Landscape Gardening Lecture’ typescript, NCR.DH. 22 In 1941, the NCR had approximately 18,000 employees. During that season, there were 165,000 visits to the Old River Park during the year. NCR ‘B Company Report’ (1941) Ian Ormerod archive. 23 Gater and Vincent, The Factory in a Garden, p. 64. A poem written by an anonymous worker at the factory began ‘Our factory’s in a garden …’ 24 Bromhead, ‘George Cadbury’s Contribution to Sport’. 25 This claim was made by Isaac F. Marcosson in Wherever Men Trade. The Romance of the Cash Register (New York, 1945), p. 277, quoted in ‘History of the Boys’ and Girls’ Gardens’ press report by the News Office of the NCR, 15 March 1945. Patterson was the keynote speaker at the School Garden Festival of the School Garden Association of America in Carnegie Hall New York, on 7 July 1916, NCR.DH, Festival Programme. 26 See Soltow, M. J. and Gravell, S. Worker Benefits. Industrial Welfare in America 1900–1935. An Annotated Bibliography (Metuchen, NJ and London, 1983). 27 Gilman, Dividend to Labour; Meakin, Model Factories. 28 Tolman, Social Engineering, 327. See also the opinion of the treasurer of the Waltham Watch Co. in Massachusetts on the benefits of landscaping to the morality of the workpeople in Gilman, Dividend to Labour. 29 Tarbell, New Ideals in Business, pp. 26–7. 30 Ibid., p. 22. 31 Ibid., pp. 25–6. 32 Proud, E. D. Welfare Work. Employers’ Experiments for Improving Working Conditions in Factories (London, 1916). 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., pp. 213–14. 35 Ibid., pp. 108–9, 177–88. 36 IWS, Recreation in Industry (London, 1938), p. 6. 37 Anderson, Industrial Recreation. 38 Ibid., 7. 39 See Walker, ‘Commercial Gardens’ and ‘Industrial Gardens’, Landscape and Garden III:4 (Winter 1936), 230–3. 40 Youngman’s obituary in The Guardian Friday 17 June 2005 suggests that his professional career ‘took off ’ following the Second World War. 41 Verulam and Youngman, Factory Gardens. 42 Ibid., p. 3. 43 Ibid., p. 13. 44 Anderson, Industrial Recreation, pp. 30–4. 45 Shaper, Dorothy. ‘Industrial Recreation for Women’, American Physical Education Review 27:3 (1922), 103–13 quoted in Anderson, Industrial Recreation, pp. 55–6. 46 Ibid., p. 63. 47 Boettiger, Employee Welfare Work. 48 IWS, Recreation, 8 UW.MRC.

Factory gardens and parks: profits or perks?189 49 Long, V. ‘Industrial Homes, Domestic Factories: the Convergence of Public and Private Space in Interwar Britain’ Journal of British Studies 50 (April 2011), 434–64. 50 See the last chapter of Tolman, Social Engineering. 51 IWS, Recreation, 8, UW.MRC. 52 Tolman, Social Engineering, 356. See also Hareven, Family Time, p. 63. 53 ‘Works Council Notes’, BWM XXIV:5 (May 1923), 149 and BWM XXIX:3 (March 1931), 68, CB. 54 BWM LIX:8 (August 1961), 301. 55 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience’, 88–114. 56 Ibid., 103. 57 Williams, W. What’s on the Worker’s Mind. From One who put on Overalls to Find Out in Mandell, The Corporation, 128. See also Roberts, A Woman’s Place, 47, for attitudes of employee to employer. 58 Jones, Sport. 59 ‘This is the Firm they Want to Run for Us’, Bata Record 169 (9 September 1937), 2, BRRC. 60 ‘Open Air Dances’, Bata Record 5 (22 June 1934), 4, and ‘There is no Room for Apathy’, Bata Record 8 (6 July 1934), 3, BRRC. 61 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience’, 103–4. 62 Philips, ‘Industrial Welfare’, 186. 63 Anderson, Industrial Recreation, pp. 53–4, 67. The organised labour movement in America also sponsored recreation outside industry, by promoting improved municipal recreation nationwide. Anderson also discussed the role of the YMCA in the USA which saw that in many companies, employees were not consulted about the recreational facilities so to counter this, Industrial YMCAs were established all over America (p. 47). 64 Mandell, The Corporation, p. 2. 65 Anderson, Industrial Recreation, pp. 53–4. 66 Dellheim, ‘The Creation of a Company Culture’, pp. 13–44. 67 Ibid., p. 29. 68 Waltham, J. ‘Golden Years of Two Wheels’, Nottingham Evening Post (4 October 1991), p. 6. Nottinghamshire Archives, DDRN 7/2/22–36. 69 Dibsdall, K. D. ‘A Worker’s View of Recreation’, Industrial Welfare (September 1927), 14–15. 70 Cadbury, The Factory and Recreation and Bournville at Work and Play, CB. 71 See Cadbury, Experiments, p. 230. 72 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience’, pp. 105–6. 73 Ibid. 74 Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 17. 75 See for example Mandell, The Corporation, p. 128. 76 For example, William Lever faced one major strike in 1920, which did not escalate into a larger sympathy strike, in contrast to Pullman. Rowan argues that this is because Lever successfully created, in part, a company image based on the ideals of the middle-class family. See Rees, ‘Nineteenth Century Planned Industrial Communities’, quoting from Rowan, J. D. ‘Imagining Corporate Culture: The Industrial Paternalism of William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight, 1888–1925 (PhD, Louisiana State University, 2003), 198.

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The factory in a garden 77 Roberts, A Woman’s Place. 78 Proud, Welfare Work, p. 213. See also Margaret Willes, The Gardens of the British Working Class (London, 2014). 79 ‘Personal Reminiscences’, CB, 003270. 80 Maddren, Letchworth Recollections, p. 158. 81 Ibid., pp. 89–91. 82 Article by Mr Pearkes Withers in the Daily Mail (10 August, 1928) Cereal Partners (Nestlé). 83 The NIIP was founded in 1921. According to their pamphlet, The Human Factor in Industry (London, c.1930) the focus was in studying and advising on rest pauses and layout of factory, ventilation, illumination and so on. Recreation is not mentioned in the pamphlet. 84 National Institute of Industrial Psychology, Rest-Pauses and Refreshments in Industry (London, 1939), p. 17. 85 McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. 129. 86 Harris, Private Lives, p. 139. 87 ‘Men’s Recreation Ground Minute Book’ 1897–1906, CB, 350 001804. 88 Interview with Alan Shrimpton, retired Director of Bournville Village Trust, 25 November 2009. His grandfather, father and many members of his mother’s family worked for Cadbury. 89 Dolly Green (2009). 90 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience’, 103. 91 Schenectady Works Annual Report for 1924, Schenectady Museum, Swope Papers, FF601, #1. 92 Ibid., p. 104. 93 Anderson, Industrial Recreation, p. 30. 94 Philips, ‘Industrial Welfare’, 194. 95 Lefebvre, The Production of Space; Lukes, Power. 96 Littman, ‘Designing Obedience’, 109.

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’ 8  ✧  From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’

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the ample grounds of tech giant Google’s headquarters at Mountain View in Silicon Valley, watching employees playing volleyball and working on their laptops among raised vegetable beds, it seems that little has changed, for the corporate overlords of the twenty-first century acknowledge that access to green space and things to do in it during the working day is good for business. However, the new tech sector with their young, ambitious workforce and plenty of spare cash, are making corporate space, inside and out, even more creative, with ‘chill-out’, ‘play’ and ‘craft’ spaces now common in the workplace. Bean-bags scattered on lawns, ping pong, ball courts, vegetable gardens and running tracks provide relief from the physical and mental fatigue of working within the dominion of the virtual world, much like corporate gardens and recreation grounds in the twentieth century provided a release for workers tied to the ‘tyranny’ of the production line or typing pool. Office landscapes such as Google’s with cycle paths and raised vegetable beds have received plenty of publicity, but how many of their billions of consumers globally would consider the conditions in which Google employers work as a good reason for choosing their product? Probably relatively few, although in this fiercely competitive world of global capitalism, a sense of place through landscaping is seen increasingly as an essential component of corporate success, for recruiting and keeping the brightest and the best and in shaping corporate identity. I have argued in this book that the corporate gardens and parks movement originated in Britain’s early Industrial Revolution, before moving across the Atlantic and maturing in the USA, and was then ‘sold back’ to Britain between the wars as increasing numbers of American companies opened plants here.1 The ‘garden factories’ of the first three decades of the twentieth century in both nations provided models for good landscaping and garden design for recreation, and aesthetic impact al k i n g t h r o u g h

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The factory in a garden for post-Second World War corporate suburban developments. From the 1950s until the end of the century, American architects and landscape architects were driving innovation in designing for corporate clients in terms of volume and variety of designs, while in Britain differing economic and social conditions shaped some alternative strategies for designing office space. In the twenty-first century, led by the American technology sector, we are witnessing a refreshed approach to corporate landscaping, which, in some respects is closer ideologically to early twentieth-century factory landscapes than to post-war office landscapes. Providing gardens and physical exercise in the workplace has been, and continues to be, a response to the rapidity of technological change where nature’s redeeming powers become an antidote first to the machine age and then to the digital age and the corporate lives they construct. Corporate landscapes, a dialogue between nations In the Industrial Revolution, designed landscapes became central to ideologies and functions of factory villages such as Robert Owen’s community at New Lanark in Scotland (from 1800) and later company villages and towns including the highly influential Saltaire in England (from 1851). American industrialists, such as George Pullman and Milton Hershey, looked to these earlier communities in creating innovative industrial space.2 In the early twentieth century, the Cadburys and John Patterson of the NCR, were arguably the most successful entrepreneurs to use landscaping to create a sense of place, high-status community spaces expressing respectable family and community values. Good judgement and serendipity contributed to their achievements, for they purchased attractive landscapes near to their factories, and blended them in to the historic environment as if they had always been there. As cultural geographer Edward Relf has suggested, ‘An authentic sense of place is above all that of being inside and belonging to (your) place both as an individual and as a member of the community and to know this without reflecting upon it.’3 Patrons and designers of corporate landscapes looked to historical precedent, an authentic place, with all the attributes of a respectable community. In making their estates, they were place-making, creating their factories in the image of a country estate to express their ownership of the environment, and by association, of their workforce. To reinforce a sense of place, they used photography and illustration that largely idealised the industrial environment and mythologised the workplace by building narratives connecting past, present and future. In doing so, they were shaping the social and cultural as well as the economic lives

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’193 of their employees. The gardens and sports grounds offered freedoms and opportunities that might not have been so accessible or affordable to working people elsewhere. Cadbury was a highly successful company, growing from a small family concern to becoming the twenty-fourth largest manufacturing company in Britain between 1879 and 19314 and the NCR was a Microsoft of its day, commanding 95 per cent of the world cash register market by 1917.5 Although consumers might not associate Cadbury with gardens and parks today, these landscapes helped to shape the company ethos and emotional attachment behind the public outcry against their take-over by the American company Kraft early in 2010 and the closure of the Somerdale factory in 2011.6 By the early twentieth century, as the USA was overtaking the UK as the leading industrial nation, Americans continued to arrive in Europe in large numbers to study European political, economic and social systems and, increasingly, British industrialists travelled to America to observe innovations in manufacturing, marketing and welfare systems.7 In 1902, Alfred Mosely and representatives from the leading trades unions in the UK (Mosely Industrial Commission) spent three months touring factories in the USA to study industrial conditions. The Commission commended American industry, particularly the NCR, for the sophistication of their machinery, and for high-quality welfare, including ‘plenty of breathing space’.8 In the same year, George Cadbury the younger visited the NCR and on his return, the firm improved their public relations and promotional strategies and set up an employee ‘Suggestions Scheme’ modelled on the one at the NCR. Eleven years later, the Cadburys again decided they could learn from the Americans and Laurence Cadbury, George’s younger brother, went to the USA for a year (in 1913), dividing his time between travelling and working at the NCR.9 Members of the Industrial Welfare Society and other groups also made tours of the USA to study industrial methods there. Following their second tour in 1930, one member commended American industrialists for considering ’the human element [to be] equally important as [sic] the machine element’.10 So, despite the already well-developed welfare systems already in place in Britain, it was judged that more could be learned from the American system. Historian Daniel Rogers has argued that in the late nineteenth century when America was looking to Europe for cultural and economic renewal in so many quarters, including planning and architecture, in one distinctive area of public investment, the development of suburban parks and public inner city playgrounds, the USA was leading the way.11 In the first four decades of the twentieth century, American landscape architects who had professionalised earlier than in the UK, became proactive in designing recreation parks and gardens for corporate clients

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The factory in a garden due to the many opportunities open to them. The Olmsted firm alone designed almost fifty corporate sites in the 1920s and 1930s. American consumer goods and power companies began to establish themselves in large estates where the designed landscape was, from the start, an integral and essential part of their corporate ethos and identity.12 While distinctive corporate landscapes had appeared in Britain by the 1920s, such as the approximately 126 acres of gardens and parks at the Cadbury factory estate (not including Bournville Village parks), the practice of designing a complete landscape scheme for a new corporate works or office became a characteristic feature of American corporate design between the wars. Highly successful American consumer goods companies opening plants in the south of England just before, and following, the First World War commissioned architects to integrate buildings and landscape into signature designs. The buildings and landscapes of companies such as Spirella (from 1912); Shredded Wheat (1925); Hoover and Firestone (1930s), received considerable publicity. The British author J. B. Priestley described these factories in his book English Journey, remarking that the influence of America was seen everywhere by the 1930s.13 Following the Second World War, factory gardens and parks evolved into the types of suburban office campuses, estates and parks that characterised corporate landscapes of the late and post-industrial periods.14 These pastoral corporate landscapes, as Louise Mozingo has argued, became material expressions of post-war capitalism and corporate hegemony: ‘separatist enclave[s] of corporate management in the suburbs’ that spawned the car-dependent, homogeneity of the developing suburbs, a cause of the decline of urban centres as capital and personnel were drained from their heart.15 The starkly different economic conditions in the USA and Britain after the Second World War placed America firmly at the forefront of corporate development, including the construction of landscapes of substantial scale and innovation, a condition that arguably continues to this day. As Europe and its allies struggled to rebuild socially and economically, the USA ‘basked in prosperity’. The nation reigned supreme in world trade, finance and investment, with an economy that had grown by 50 per cent during the war and continued to grow,16 and unlike the UK, where industry, agriculture and house building competed for space, America was space-rich. In concept and purpose, the office landscapes of the post-war period were similar to the factory and office landscapes of the first half of the twentieth century, but as companies moved offices and research facilities to the suburbs after the war, the ideals and principles of modernism were appropriated as expressions of modernity and corporate capital.

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’195 ‘Industrial Versailles’: into the 1950s and 1960s From the end of the Second World War and into the 1960s, companies invested heavily in high-status sites, because they were good for business, particularly for employee recruitment, retention and motivation.17 Research laboratories were deliberately sited to distance them ‘geographically, organizationally and intellectually from the rest of the corporation’ and to imitate university campuses to appeal to their highly qualified staff.18 At this time the clear typological distinctions in corporate landscapes emerged and modernism’s ‘International Style’ contributed to some ‘heroic’, now iconic, corporate sites. Landscape design for corporate campuses, estates and parks was partly determined by the necessity for car parking, which some American designers were adept at incorporating into their schemes’ artistic conception. However, while steel and plate-glass office buildings in landscaped parks came to symbolise the economic prowess of corporate America, modernist landscape design in the form of abstraction or the use of geometric shapes, with a few notable exceptions, such as at the General Motors Technical Centre at Detroit (1950–56), had surprisingly little impact on the corporate environment in this period.19 In Britain, for economic, spatial, legislative and planning reasons, newly built suburban corporate parks or estates did not become a significant part of the British corporate environment until the 1980s. Some companies, instead of building afresh, had purchased historic private estates to create status corporate headquarters. For example in 1958, IBM bought the eighteenth century Hursley estate in Hampshire, England and during the subsequent years, to 1963, developed new buildings on the land. The company still uses the house, which contains a computing museum. By the 1960s, with the shorter thirty-five or forty-hour week now common, the workforce had more recreation time and recreational activities were expanding.20 The Second World War had intensified the perceived value of industrial sports to the nations’ health and to reconstruction, and as unionism grew in the 1940s and 1950s, companies organised increasingly sophisticated welfare schemes to undermine it. (In America, membership of the National Industrial Recreation Association grew from 11 in 1941 to over 900 in 1957.)21 In the 1950s, company parks and sports grounds such as those at the NCR and Cadbury were thriving and strongly promoted.22 Sports grounds were provided for the larger newly built factories and some companies invested in improvements to their landscapes.23 At the gleaming new rural or suburban corporate campuses and estates, sports facilities of a middle-class variety for the white-collar workers included grounds for softball, bowling and tennis.

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The factory in a garden It was advantageous for companies to keep their employees on site for their leisure time but for many workplaces, amenities were a necessity for recruitment and retention. The Connecticut General Life Insurance Company in Bloomfield provided ‘an unprecedented range of amenities’ to attract female clerical staff when they moved to the country, including an ice-skating pond, bowling alleys, lawn games, picnic grounds and barbeque pits.24 While these sound lavish, it could be argued that the activities provided for the Cadbury ‘girls’ in the early twentieth century was not dissimilar in range and scope, although different in type according to the social conditions of the time. At the brand new Bell Labs facility at Holmdel, New Jersey, designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen with landscape by Hideo Sasaki and completed in 1962, new clubs were founded as the workforce grew (Plate 7). Employees could play on the softball diamond that lay behind the building and walk or cycle on the elliptical roadways and their linking spurs, and by the late 1960s, the craze for jogging had hit Holmdel. A gardening club, which held an annual flower show, sponsored planting on the site.25 One aerial view of the facility, taken some time before the early 1980s shows a serpentine path winding through woodland just beyond the road boundary. Reminiscent of the ‘wilderness’ seen in early eighteenth-century classical landscapes, could this have been a subtle attempt by Sasaki to broaden the landscape’s cultural symbolism and to encourage Bell Labs employees to enjoy the great outdoors? Saarinen’s palace of steel and glass, the reflecting pool, fountain and acres of landscaped grounds are aesthetically thrilling. The site is a gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art where architecture and landscape unite as an expression of corporate power. The design, surely deliberately, works best from the air, as if some powerful extra-terrestrial mother-ship has conquered the territory. But despite the futuristic imagery, the geometrical ellipses of the roadways, and the modern function of the lake which supplied the building’s air conditioning coolant, the landscape, like much modern design, is also rooted in the past. It is essentially classical, with strong axes, a reflecting pool, and a water tower eye-catcher, with informal swathes of trees and rolling swards beyond. Critics have compared Bell Labs to the isolated grandeur of a Renaissance chateau, and argued that despite the design ‘tour de force’, the building was not fit for purpose, providing little space for informal encounters and the views could only be enjoyed from the corridors or the restaurant, not from labs or offices.26 The design does appear to subsume the social and spatial needs of the employees, for the landscape lacked social and intimate space, with outside seating where employees could meet or rest in private. This was partly resolved when the building was later extended

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’197 to include an elaborate winter tropical garden overlooked by bridges and walkways. However pleasant for employees, this modern ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ appeared to have been made as much for bluster, as amenity. The glazed winter garden, or garden atrium was another development in corporate landscape design pioneered in the USA from the late 1960s to produce healthier and more humane buildings and to express corporate success. Atria allowed employees to enjoy gardens during inclement weather and were also status symbols owing to their high construction and maintenance costs. Their success depended on effective hydroponic techniques for indoor plants, which one source suggests were developed by German chemical firm Bayer after the war,27 choosing the right plants for semi-tropical conditions and getting the temperature right. Initially, a conflict between the comforts of office workers and the temperature needs of plants caused a number of atrium projects to fail. At the Ford Foundation offices, around 1967, architects Roche and Dinkerloo with landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the twelve-storey high garden court to imitate an exotic, floral woodland, but within five years, most of the plants had died. A lowering of the temperature and a new planting scheme solved the problem. Encouraged by developments abroad, a glazed atrium was included in the designs for the headquarters of bankers Coutts & Co. in the Strand, London in 1979, the first scheme of its kind in the UK according to Landscape Design journal. Not wishing to take any chances, suitable sub-tropical trees were imported and acclimatised for two years before installation. The evolution of roof gardens for corporate clients has also been attributed to American architects, although European architects also designed them in the 1930s, for example the roof garden at the Unilever Works, Rotterdam by H. F. Mertens, 1930. Frank Lloyd Wright was a pioneer between the wars, but in the 1970s and 1980s, as damp proofing technologies improved, roof gardens became more adventurous in scale and design. Science and sociology were also factors, as research studies began to acclaim the benefits of planting to oxygen supplies in cities and the physical, psychological and sociological effects of green spaces on health and well-being.28 The roof terrace gardens at Gateway House in Basingstoke (now Mountbatten House), designed by Arup Associates in 1974–76 for paper manufacturer Wiggins Teape, were influenced by American institutional roof gardens of the 1960s (see Plate 8). Landscape consultant James Russell, was briefed to make the roof terraces ‘romantic rather than formal’ to encourage employees to use them, and he created a luxuriant planting scheme for the building that became known as ‘The Hanging Gardens of Basingstoke’. With landscape maintenance estimated at £10,000 per annum, the client placed a high value

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The factory in a garden on their employees’ well-being as well as their reputation. The project won many awards and the building and gardens are listed Grade II by Historic England.29 While American landscape architects and garden designers were regularly employed to landscape corporate campuses, estates, parks, roof gardens and atria through the 1950s and 1960s, British landscapists designing for industry in a growing economy were preoccupied with industrial parks, and large industrial facilities such as cement works, reservoirs and power stations.30 They became more vocal in persuading clients that good landscaping would enhance the desirability of industrial sites to locals, employees and consumers.31 While it had become the norm to beautify the welfare buildings at a large factory and provide sporting facilities, and some landscape architects took commissions from industry, even by the 1970s in the UK, employing a landscape architect to improve new office buildings still seemed to be an enlightened approach to development.32 This was partly to do with fewer opportunities, for differences in the economic development of the two nations, and in planning laws, which were much stricter in the UK than in the USA, meant that signature corporate sites were less common in Britain in this period. Glassmakers Pilkington, however, in commissioning architect Maxwell Fry to design their new headquarters at St Helens in the north of England from 1956, aimed to exploit good design to express and shape their vision and their product. Fry’s resplendent new campus, on which he collaborated with landscape and interior designers and artists, was designed and built concurrently with Bell Labs in America. It highlights some alternative approaches to corporate design in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when British designers attempted to avoid what they regarded as the bombastic and commercial nature of American corporate behemoths and ‘isolated intrusion[s]’ that would not, in their view, benefit the local community33 (Figure 8.1). In designing Pilkington’s new offices on the 16-acre site, Maxwell Fry refused to acknowledge a debt to the design by architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and landscape architects Joanna Diman and Isamu Noguchi, for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (completed in 1957), a site that according to Louise Mozingo, had redefined the corporate estate in America.34 Fry had spent some time at Harvard University, so is likely to have been aware of developments in corporate architecture and landscape, but he disliked the detachment and isolation of many American corporate sites. He emphasised instead the ‘civic’ nature of his office design, situated just beside the factory on the edge of the town because his client wished the company to remain integrated into the community. Fry’s, like Saarinen’s Bell Labs is a status modernist

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8.1  The Pilkington Headquarters, St Helens, designed by Maxwell Fry and Peter Youngman.

design, but while Saarinen’s was monolithic, Fry’s final design, although a scaled-down version of the original, maintained a more intimate campus-like collection of buildings and landscapes. His initial design emphasised the social and aesthetic needs of employees, and ensured that both blue and white-collar workers, as well as townspeople, could benefit from the extensive recreational and cultural amenities. Fry orchestrated the buildings and grounds with a three-acre lake (a water supply for the works) and added a concrete bridge over the lake to connect the offices to the factory nearby. Fry’s ambitious social project of multiple recreational facilities for the site was significantly downscaled in 1958 when his client decided to commission landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe to extend the existing recreation grounds nearby. However, Fry appointed landscape architect Peter Youngman to landscape the site and together they provided employees with plenty of opportunities to enjoy the lake, gardens and woodlands from both inside and out. (Youngman, who had published Factory Gardens a few years previously, designed planting schemes that echoed his profession’s dislike of too much ‘floweriness’ in this period, which was associated with ‘bad’, pre-modernist, taste.)35 A variety of hard and soft landscaping, including courtyards with seating, a covered

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The factory in a garden walkway linking the museum block to the lakeside block, and steps down to the lake, sinuous lakeside paths, fountain and gardens, determine the aesthetic, sensory and spatial experience of a site of satisfyingly human scale. It is easy to be beguiled by contemporary images of this prestigious design, but despite the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968, which began to prohibit dark smoke emissions from factories, even by the 1970s, St Helens remained enveloped by a pall of smoke from the Pilkington factory. Many of its residents, the majority of them part of the corporate ‘family’, were not entirely seduced by the Arcadian symbolism of their status headquarters.36 Economic change and landscape pluralism in the corporate environment: 1970s and 1980s Global, economic and social change heralded the gradual decline, even demise, of amenities for sporting and other social activities in factories and the loss of the factory gardens and recreation grounds. After the war, as business and competition intensified, garden and recreation land was lost to new development and demand for car parking space. By the 1970s, with an increasing diversity and accessibility of leisure attractions outside the workplace, a less culturally and socially homogenous workforce began to seek their recreation elsewhere. Sports clubs remained active at many workplaces and continue to be, but numbers participating were falling. Workplace gyms are very popular, however, including a new one in the Men’s Pavilion at Cadbury, now open to the public. From the 1980s, as industry had to deal with increasing competition from abroad, including take-overs and mergers, the luxuries of space and surplus funds for employee recreation were no longer available. At Shredded Wheat in Welwyn Garden City for example (which became Nabisco in 1928), much of the land in front of the factory had been lost when a second set of silos was built in 1939. The remaining grounds were re-landscaped but these also were sacrificed when the  factory was extended in the late 1950s. By this time, buildings covered the entire site and the silos became obscured from the road. After a series of mergers and take-overs in the 1980s and 1990s, the social and sporting facilities gradually bowed to the entertainments and clubs that were increasingly available in the town. Company sport continued on neighbouring grounds, but the club eventually closed in about 2000.37 The iconic building, listed by Historic England as a site  of  special architectural interest was finally closed in 2008 and all that is left of the landscaping now is a row of poplars on the perimeter of the site.38

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’201 The prestigious landscaping at the Niagara Falls Shredded Wheat Factory also succumbed to development, but unlike the Welwyn factory, which is due to be reborn as a hotel and shops in a green public space, the ‘Palace of Light’ in Niagara could not be saved. Following the building’s closure in 1956, it became a research facility for Union Carbide and later a community college, but in 1976, no further purpose could be found for the building, and despite a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, it was demolished. The Cadbury’s Girls’ Grounds is one of the few original factory gardens to survive. Following the company’s take-over by Schweppes in 1969, the girls’ gymnasium became a social club for pensioners, but the Cadbury Club continued to be popular in the late 1970s and still exists today. The Girls’ Grounds, which are now open to the public, are little used except by dog-walkers and occasionally by employees in the summer. The pond is now derelict and signs of substance abuse in the park cast a melancholy atmosphere. The once magnificent Rowheath Park was sold in the 1980s, due to the company’s financial difficulties. Following objections from locals, the Bournville Village Trust and the City Council purchased the grounds, some of which were developed for housing while the rest was kept for recreation grounds. The lido, which had been replaced in 1977,39 was demolished in 1987. At the NCR, the Boy’s Gardens had been given up to factory extensions, probably as early as the 1920s, and falling visitor numbers and a decline in business finally brought an end to Old River Park in the early 1990s. (The huge swimming pool, once the pride of the company, had been filled in some time earlier.)40 Patterson’s legacy lives on, however, in Hills and Dales, which is still a public park. Recreational activities at office sites as well as at factories also began to decline in number, but also to diversify to meet the sporting fashions of the day. At the Bell Labs facilities in the early 1970s, employee activities were still promoted, including ski clubs, bicycle clubs, golf tournaments and bowling, and by the 1980s, according to a Bell Labs promotional video, ‘it seemed that everyone was jogging, or exercising’.41 Perhaps the company was clinging to past mythologies of a corporate family because one former employee remembers that despite crazes for cycling and jogging, recreational activities were already declining in the 1970s and by the 1980s, were very limited.42 At the same time as organised club and field sports at offices declined, developing postmodern theories within landscape, architectural and urban design, as well as a burgeoning environmental movement, had focused designers’ minds on how employees’ quality of life and sense of place could be improved by more varied landscapes that reflected history, topography and ecology of the site. Cultural

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The factory in a garden geographers, sociologists and environmental psychologists provided designers with a framework for understanding the importance of the emotional bonds and sense of identity in the places we inhabit as being essential to our well-being and feeling of belonging.43 Maxwell Fry had attempted to incorporate similar ideas in his design for Pilkington in the late 1950s, but by the early 1980s, concepts such as ‘inclusive design’ and ‘place-making’ in architecture and landscape design emphasised human need and attempted to foster community life and a sense of place. At the same time, corporate landscapes began to offer luxuries such as sculpture gardens,44 or expensive atria with indoor gardens, many constructed at banks and other service institutions, and these came to symbolise the rise of a buoyant service economy in the 1980s. A large glazed atrium formed the hub of the world headquarters for Codex, designed by architects Koetter, Kim and Associates and landscape architect Laurie Olin, in the early 1980s on the site of a horse farm in rural Massachusetts. Fred Koetter and Susie Kim based their concept on a combination of Roman villa and village square or town common, to encourage community and public life, or ‘urbanity without urbanism’ and they designed a variety of low-rise buildings within a landscape sensitive to its vernacular. The large, exotically planted atrium formed the hub of the building, linking it to the surrounding landscape. Corporate life met country life as employees enjoyed a grand view of the horse track and stables from the company dining room and terrace, a concept reminiscent of the ‘ferme ornee’ estate of the eighteenth century. Employees and the public could take refuge in lakeside pavilions, or walk around the landscape.45 It seems that the local community was not taken in by the hyperbolic symbolism of the design because they protested about the site’s imposition on their landscape.46 Architects and landscape architects also received many commissions  to design speculative developments of offices for multiple corporate occupants in the 1970s and 1980s in the form of office parks, business, or research parks. This type of corporate landscape, which had been a common feature in the American suburbs from the early 1950s, appeared in Britain from the 1970s, but escalated following the 1987 deregulation of the zoning laws.47 In the same way that landscaping had been a panacea to the building of factories in suburban areas in early twentieth century, the ‘shock’ of these new, often large-scale developments was alleviated to some extent by landscape design. Many business, science and research parks became generic, often anodyne spaces  with little amenity for meaningful leisure and privacy out of doors, and detached from the local community.48 As poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts have observed, shrubs and flowers at

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’203 business parks ‘don’t just decorate perimeters, they read like spreadsheets’ for business park landscapes are, in their view, little more than corporate conceits.49 However, some more imaginative and community-focused business parks with high-quality landscapes were constructed in Britain in the 1980s, notably Stockley Park near Heathrow Airport, and Capability Green, named after the eponymous landscape architect of the eighteenth century, Sir Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. Stockley Park, a project that reclaimed a derelict and contaminated 350 acre (140 hectare) site, is distinguished by the large proportion of community space in relation to business space, including public parkland, an equestrian centre, a golf course and sports grounds, and by the quality of its landscaping, with woodland covering one-fifth of the area (a local authority requirement).50 The built areas have an urban, almost continental feel, with their variety of spaces, including outdoor seating areas and pavement cafés. Capability Green, despite its name, is modelled more on a classical Italian garden than a Brownian landscape garden and like Stockley Park, offers a variety of landscape spaces, public and more private. In Capability Green, employees can seek sanctuary in the small gardens between the buildings where trellising and seating contribute to a feeling of intimacy.51 One employee who works there today claims that the garden areas near her office ‘substantially’ improve the quality of her working life (Figure 8.2).

8.2  Plan of Capability Green, 2007 by Thorpe Architecture. Architect Bruce Gilbreth developed the original masterplan for the site from 1985.

204

The factory in a garden Corporate landscaping of the 1970s and 1980s provided attractive amenities for aspirant clients and their employers in a climate of increasing globalisation. Although workplace sports clubs and societies had declined ‘dramatically’ by the 1980s, some office parks and company headquarters continued to provide limited outdoor sports facilities, opened gyms, or created walks through their landscapes where office workers could go jogging, or rest outside at lunchtime. As the twentieth century drew to a close, a new generation of technology companies began to look for ways to attract and retain young, ambitious, employees and the design of corporate space began to respond to the digital environment. The connected garden: corporate landscapes of the digital age By the beginning of the new millennium, the turnover and profits of the high-tech sector had overtaken other business sectors in all industrialised countries. In 1999 Microsoft was worth as much in real terms as the top twenty-five companies combined had been twenty years earlier.52 As employees now spent a high proportion of their working time in virtual space, companies and their employees took a fresh look at how spatial design could counteract the stresses of twenty-first-century working life in the infinite spaces of global capitalism and the internet. Today’s corporate landscapes in some respects try to disguise the grand narratives of corporate power, which were formerly trumpeted with elite cultural symbolism such as sweeping lawns, dramatic water features and sculptures in the landscape. Instead, corporate landscape design is now focused more on employees’ cognitive, emotional and experiential needs, providing a greater variety of both social and private space and opportunities to engage physically with the environment. The concepts of the ‘social democratic workplace’, or ‘socially responsive office’, include a renewed emphasis on improving physical and mental health in the workplace. Flexible working practices and ‘green’ initiatives such as improving biodiversity and urban gardening are driving these changes in corporate landscape design, and there is now a more relaxed approach to office work and space.53 Gardens and outdoor activities are designed to connect employees to the benefits of nature, encourage healthy eating and promote a spirit of community both within the office and outside, much as they did in the early twentieth century.54 At the same time, architects and landscape architects are competing to win one of those prestigious certifications for sustainable buildings; the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) or the Leadership for Energy in Environmental Design (LEED) assessments.

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’205 Companies stand to gain from healthy and satisfied employees, and a more dynamic social environment, and employees can benefit equally by an improvement to the quality of their working life. Again, the Americans have led the way by promoting the ‘socially responsive office’ and ‘connected’ office landscape to stimulate the experiential qualities of space, and create potential for physical and haptic experience through the craft of gardening and a sensory and aesthetic engagement with plants and wildlife. Some companies such as Google have created private and domestic garden spaces designed to distance employees from a corporate environment, often using retro or nostalgic references where employees can find refuge in memories and feel a sense of privacy and autonomy. A popular place at the Google offices in central London is the rooftop ‘Secret Garden’, with its allusions to children’s literature and childhood pleasures, where employees can feel the breeze and hear the sounds of the city around them, but in a place of privacy and proximity to plant life (Figure 8.3). Like many companies, Google is encouraging gardening as a healthy and sociable activity by providing vegetable boxes or raised beds where employees can engage with the soil and living things during the working day. Employees of other companies have requested vegetable gardens, similar to Google’s, although the initial enthusiasm for gardening among the ‘tech’ workers has, perhaps predictably, already tailed off.55 At the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, the carefully tended vegetable boxes outside the reception building are cultivated by the landscape

8.3  ‘Secret garden’ on the roof terrace of Google office, Central St Giles, London.

206

The factory in a garden

8.4  Secluded seating among vegetable gardens at the Googleplex, Mountain View

department, but the spaces within them, populated with seating and tables, are enjoyed by ‘Googlers’ for resting or working on their laptops within a symbolism of plenty in an epicurean environment (Figure 8.4). At the Vodafone campus near Newbury, UK, informal engagement with the grounds is encouraged in the summer with beanbags scattered across lawns allowing employees the flexibility of private or social space. If they wish to get right away from their screens, they can walk or run on the perimeter track or find a moment of contemplation in the Memorial Garden. These initiatives are now supported by extensive evidence suggesting that access to the outdoors and connection to nature in gardens is good for us, including in urban environments of small nature spaces. Collectively, these studies argue that access to ‘natural’ environments, or even just looking at indoor plants or views of green space from the window, improves cognitive functioning, reduces mental fatigue, increases social interaction, provides opportunities for reflection, reduces stress and improves health. Health benefits include reducing the likelihood of coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, depression and anxiety, and increased longevity.56 Research on the benefits of green space in the workplace originates in the 1980s, but is still relatively limited and focuses on the impacts of office gardens on stress.57 Claims in the architectural and business press that office gardens induce general

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’207 well-being among employees and enhance creative thinking have yet to be verified through systematic research. Susan Herrington and others have argued that the sensory qualities of landscapes in nature can trigger positive sensations, feelings, memories or emotions. She suggests that, ‘It is our visceral interactions with the world that form our ideas about it.’58 These are constructed, Herrington argues, through what neuroscientist Antonio Domasio has termed ‘the somatic self’, where cognition is not a phenomenon exclusive to our brain but to our bodies. Cultural geographer Nigel Thrift has termed this sense of being in the world, the ‘onflow’, or ‘aliveness’ of the everyday.59 Sociologist Barbara Humberstone, who studies the bodily sensations of outdoor exercise has argued: ‘Our senses affect our emotions and co-­construct our perceptions of well-being.’60 This tells us that the experience of being out of doors and moving through space can bring a sense of pleasure and well-being. At Vodafone, near Newbury, UK, the accessibility of a running track around the perimeter of the site offers employees the opportunity both for physical activity in the open air, and time to themselves. This connectedness between the body, the outside and ‘aliveness’ was apparent during a visit to the Nomura Bank garden in London in 2014, famous for its roof-top vegetable garden.61 On a hot summer’s day, the roof terrace was filled with people enjoying the view, lounging, chatting and resting. Tessa Palmer, one of women working on the switchboard who tends the vegetable garden in the lunch hour and is a keen gardener at home, said that the garden had made a world of difference to the quality of her working life; she did not need the gym, and when she was in the garden she did not think about anything else, she just liked being outside, looking at, touching and smelling the plants and digging her fingers into the soil. While she gardened, she enjoyed the sensations of the place, the sounds, the smells, the breeze or wind touching her skin, and the combination of private space and social space that the garden gave her. While she gardened, the bankers would chat to her, finding common bonds through gardening, seeking her expert advice on gardening practices and enjoying the alternative space and culture. It is symbolic perhaps that the Nomura garden is tended by service staff, not executives, who are unlikely to want to get their hands dirty, although from time to time, some of them lend a hand. This kind of qualitative evidence gives insights into a wide range of possible benefits derived from access to office gardens and will form the basis of future research. Conclusion The domesticated corporate garden of the early twentieth century industrial age has been reaffirmed in the digital age. As companies strive to be

208

The factory in a garden socially responsible and sustainable, workplace gardens are promoted as sites for self-improvement. They are designed to nurture employees, to create a ‘home-from-home’ where the craft of gardening connects them to nature, to better health and well-being through a physical interaction with the environment. Corporate landscape design has become a key factor in the promotion of responsible capitalism and at the same time, these landscapes play a vital role in the greening of our cities and suburbs and in embedding the principle that access to open green space is a human right. It is for these reasons that office gardens and designed landscapes appear superficially to be utopianist spaces, offering connections to the garden ideals discussed in Chapter 3, and to opportunities for better health and well-being discussed in the following chapters. However, the promotion of green space at the workplace should be approached objectively and critically by both employees and the consumers of the products they make or manage. The ‘socially responsive workplace’ with attractive gardens or designed landscapes has its benefits, but the boundaries between work and leisure and work and home are increasingly blurred as companies offer spaces that encourage employees to spend more time at the office. Anecdotal evidence from employees using company gardens from the early twentieth century to the present does suggest that they are appreciated for aesthetic pleasure, variety, exercise, privacy, craft and social connection and that they empower employees, giving them freedom to move from their desks to the outdoors. Others have suggested that the very dominance of sophisticated design and ‘gimmicky’ amenities at the office are unnerving in their intent to ‘engineer’ the ideal working environment and the ‘perfect’ employee, and they choose to find their leisure outside the workplace. The conception of gardens and designed landscapes as ‘epiphanies’ is therefore problematic in a corporate environment for the employer as well as the employee, because there is a danger that an enhanced reputation gained through good landscape design could be a cover for unethical working practices. For example, despite all the positive publicity about the high-quality spaces at Google in Mountain View, California, reports of the company’s inequitable wage policies, unethical investments and effects on property values have tainted their reputation. Office gardens and parks may offer a better quality of life in the workplace, but attitudes towards them will depend on trust between employer and employee, and consumer and brand. Some might suspect that these ideal offices only serve to divert our unease about the power of these tech giants as they shape the social and economic future. The history of landscape architecture in the twentieth century, although a growing area of study, deserves even greater critical attention.

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’209 As the impacts of population growth and climate change put more stress on urban and suburban space, the ‘greening’ of our cities with designed landscapes is becoming more visible in people’s experience, imaginations and aspirations.62 In the past, landscape design has been marginalised in favour of architecture (evidenced by the difficulty of discovering the name of the landscape architect on some corporate projects and the loss of landscape plans for corporate sites) but now landscape has become the hub of new developments. In their plans for a new campus for Google at Mountain View, designers Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels have used landscape as the core, the skin and the cloak of their design, within and around which ‘Googlers’ and the local community will work, walk, shop and socialise. In London the project to build a ‘garden bridge’ over the Thames designed by Heatherwick and landscape designer Dan Pearson, is an attempt to bring more green space into the city in imaginative ways. Some Londoners and visitors will feel empowered by a new green ‘lung’ in the city. For others, the garden bridge is simply a vanity project, and yet another expression of corporate power through urban design from those wealthy corporates that will contribute to its funding, as they now do for so many ‘public’ spaces. In the context of this study, it is interesting that the garden bridge will be as much corporate as public space, with high levels of surveillance, rules of use and a closure of the bridge to the public one day per month for corporate events. The bridge illustrates

8.5  Design for new Google headquarters at Mountain View by Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick.

210

The factory in a garden those same tensions between freedom and control that are contained within corporate landscapes. This study of corporate space through the ‘lens’ of landscape casts a fresh light on the social and architectural histories of industry and of suburban development and offers new interpretations of the ways that designed landscapes shape social and power relations in the workplace. This book has focused on analysis of some key case studies and more research is needed. Readers will find many important sites are omitted, including corporate landscapes in mainland Europe and further afield. The gazetteer that follows fills some of the gaps and others will become subjects for further research to provide a more complete documentation of corporate landscapes and their histories. Notes  1 As mentioned in the Introduction, other European countries, particularly Germany, Sweden and France, are likely to have been party to discussions about the value of gardens and recreation grounds at factories.  2 Adelman, Touring Pullman, p. 1; d’Antonio, M. Hershey, Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire and Utopian Dreams (New York and London, 2006), p. 65.  3 Relf, E. ‘Place and Placelessness’ (London, 1976) p. 65.  4 Hannah, Leslie, The Rise of the Corporate Economy (London, 1979), p. 120 in Dellheim, ‘Creation of a Company Culture’, 21.  5 NCR, ‘1923–1951 The Accounting Machine Era’, in Celebrating the Future, 1884–1984 (Dayton, 1984).  6 The snack foods branch of Kraft, of which Cadbury is now a brand, was renamed Mondele¯z International in 2011.  7 Rogers, Atlantic Crossings.  8 Reports of the Mosely Commission to the USA October–December 1902 (1903).  9 ‘A Quarter of a Century’s Survey. Mr Edward Cadbury’s Address at the New Year Party’, Bournville Works Magazine XXII:3 (March 1924), 73–6, Cadbury archives, Bournville; and interview with Sir Adrian Cadbury, Laurence’s son, on 17 April 2009. 10 ‘Editorial’ (January 1930), 1. 11 Rogers, Atlantic Crossings, p. 31–2. 12 Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism, p. 52. 13 Priestley, English Journey, p. 4. 14 Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism, pp. 12–13. 15 Ibid., p. 220. 16 Frieden, J. A. Global Capitalism its Rise and Fall in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2006), p. 261. 17 For a detailed analysis of reasons for companies moving to the suburbs post war, see ‘Should Management Move to the Country’, Fortune (December 1952), 142–3, 164, 166, 168, 170. 18 Knowles, S. G. and Leslie, S. W. ‘“Industrial Versailles” Eero Saarinen’s corporate campuses for G.M, I.B.M. and A.T. & T.’, Isis 99:1 (March 2001), 1–33.

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’211 19 Designed by architect Eero Saarinen and landscape architect Thomas Church assisted by Edward A. Eichstedt. See General Motors Corp. Where Today Meets Tomorrow. General Motors Technical Center (Detroit, 1960s). 20 Rotunno. N. A. ‘The Design of Recreation Grounds for Different Requirements’, in Tandy, C. R. V. Landscape and Human Life (Amsterdam, 1966), pp. 44–52. 21 Fones-Wolf, E. ‘Industrial Recreation, the Second World War, and the Revival of Welfare Capitalism, 1934–1960’, Business History Review 60:2 (Summer 1986), 232–57, p. 251. 22 NCR, The Bell Heard Round the World film (Wilding Picture Productions Inc., New York, c.1950). 23 In the 1950s, Guinness at Park Royal, London, commissioned Geoffrey Jellicoe to remodel their grounds. 24 ‘A Dramatic New Office Building’, Fortune 56:3 (September 1957), 164–6, in Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism, p. 113. 25 ‘Come Work at Bell Labs’ recruiting video for Bell Laboratories, late 1970s? www.youtube. com/watch?v=ZHBHEWyZ1Xw; and ‘Holmdel Twentieth Anniversary’ Bell Laboratories (1982). Produced by the Holmdel Art Studio. Available on YouTube courtesy of the AT&T Archives and History Center, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPq_ZyOvbsg (accessed 28 October 2015). 26 Knowles and Leslie, ‘Industrial Versailles’. 27 Huxter, D. ‘The State of the Art’, Landscape Design 155 (June 1985), 29–31. 28 Ulrich, R. S. and Addoms, D. L. ‘The Psychological and Recreational Benefits of a Residential Park’, Journal of Leisure Research 13:1 (1981), 43–65; Ulrich, R. S. ‘Aesthetical Affective Response to Natural Environment’, in Altman, I. and Wohlwill, J. F. (eds), Behaviour and the Natural Environment (New York, 1983), 85–125; Wilson, E. O. Biophilia (Cambridge, MA, 1984); Kaplan, R. and Kaplan, S. The Experience of Nature: a Psychological Perspective (Cambridge, 1989). 29 See Mayson Whalley, J. ‘The Landscape on the Roof ’, Landscape Design 122 (May 1978), 7–24 and ‘Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House): roof gardens and perimeter landscaping’, Historic England, www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/listentry/1422221 (accessed 3 November 2015). 30 Britain had developed one of the world’s first industrial estates, Trafford Park, Merseyside, from the 1890s. 31 Edward Mills’s 1967 book Factory Building, an updated version of his 1951 book The Modern Factory, includes an additional chapter on industry and landscape by Susan Jellicoe. See also Journal of the Institute of Landscape Architects 82 (May 1968). 25–6; Journal of the Institute of Landscape Architects 84 (November 1968). This issue is devoted to the landscaping of power stations, including the new nuclear facilities. See also Colvin, Land and Landscape. 32 Journal of the ILA 91 (August 1970) 23–4. 33 Shepheard, Peter. ‘The Setting for Industry in the Landscape’. in Tandy, Clifford R. V. (ed.). Landscape and Human Life (Amsterdam, 1966), pp. 92–3. 34 Holland, J. and Jackson, I. ‘A Monument to Humanism: Pilkington Brothers’ Headquarters (1955–65) by Fry, Drew and Partner’, Architectural History 56 (2013), 343–86. 35 Shepheard, ‘The Setting for Industry in the Landscape’, p. 6. 36 Conversation with former resident, 7 November 2015. 37 Tony Skottowe, Welwyn Garden City Heritage Trust.

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The factory in a garden 38 Butterfield, R. ‘The Shredded Wheat Factory at Welwyn Garden City’, Industrial Archaeology Review XVI:2 (Spring 1994), 196–213. 39 Bournville Reporter (August/September 1977), CB. 40 Jeff Opt, NCR archivist at Dayton History. 41 Bell Labs, ‘Come Work at Bell Labs’ and ‘Holmdel Twentieth Anniversary’. 42 Telephone conversation with Ed Eckhart, company archivist. 43 See for example Tuan, Y-F. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1974). 44 For a discussion of sculpture in corporate landscapes and solving car-parking through landscape design, see Susan Jellicoe’s chapter ‘Industry and Landscape’ in Mills, Factory. 45 Koetter, F. ‘The Corporate Villa’. Design Quarterly 135 (1987). 3–32. 46 Mozingo, Pastoral Capitalism, p. 147. 47 Ibid., chapter 5 and pp. 207–8. 48 See Fieldhouse, K. ‘Creating an Impression’, Part 11 Landscape Design 195 (November 1990), 48–9. 49 Farley, P. and Symmons Roberts, M. Edgelands. Journeys into England’s True Wilderness (London, 2011), p. 223. 50 Ede, B. ‘The Stockley Park Project’. Landscape Design 187 (February 1990), 42–7. 51 Phillips, A. The Best in Science, Office and Business Park Design London, 1993. 52 Lowry, Tom. ‘From GM to Cisco in Just Four Decades: Market-cap Rankings tell the Story of Industrial Evolution’, Business Week (7 February 2000) p. 40, in Frieden, Global Capitalism, p. 402. 53 Myerson, J. and Ross, P. The 21st Century Office (London, 2003). 54 Long, Rise and Fall, pp. 219–20. 55 Severson, K. ‘The Rise of Corporate Gardens’, New York Times (11 May 2010), www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/dining/12gardens.html?_r=0 (accessed 10 November 2015). 56 See for example Irvine, K. N., Warber, S. L., Patrick Devine-Wright, P. and Gaston, K. J. ‘Understanding Urban Green Space as a Health Resource: A Qualitative Comparison of Visit Motivation and Derived Effects among Park Users in Sheffield, UK’, International Journal of Environmental.Research Public Health 10 (2013), 417–42; Ward Thompson, C., Aspinall, P. and Bell, S. Innovative Approaches to Researching Landscape and Health (London, 2010); Coles, R. and Millman, Z. (eds), Landscape, Well-Being and Environment (London, 2013); Davigne, A., Waliczek, T. M., Lineberger, R. D., Zajicek, J. M. ‘The Effect of Live Plants and Window Views of Green Spaces on Employee Perceptions of Job Satisfaction’, Hortscience 43:1 (2008), 183–7. 57 Kaplan, R. ‘The Role of Nature in the Context of the Workplace’, Landscape and Urban Planning 26:1–4 (October 1993), 193–201 and Stigsdotter, U. ‘A Garden at your Workplace may Reduce Stress’, in Dilani, A. Design & Health 111 – Health Promotion Through Environmental Design (Stockholm: International Academy for Design and Health [Proceeding] (2004), pp. 147–57. 58 Herrington, S. On Landscapes (New York and London, 2009), pp. 114–15. 59 Thrift, N. ‘Performance and Performativity: A Geography of Unknown Lands’, in Duncan, J. S., Johnson N. C. and Schein R. H. (eds), A Companion to Cultural Geography (Oxford, 2008), pp. 121–36.

From factory gardens to ‘connected gardens’213 60 Humberstone, B. ‘Embodiment, Nature and Well-being, More than the Senses?’ in Robertson, M. Lawrence, R. and Heath, G. Experiencing the Outdoors: Enhancing Strategies for Wellbeing (London, 2015). 61 In June 2013, 800 members of the public came to see the Nomura garden at the annual London ‘Open Gardens Weekend’, almost four times the numbers expected. The garden has received local and national press coverage and the women gardeners have won a trophy for ‘Flowers in the City’ presented by the Lady Mayoress of the City of London. 62 For an overview of research on landscape and climate change from scientific, social science and humanities perspectives, see Leyshon, C. and Geoghagen, H. ‘Landscape and Climate Change’, in Howard, P., Thompson, I., Waterton, E. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (London, 2013).

Select gazetteer

Select gazetteer: company gardens and parks c.1750–c.1960 and offices and office parks with significant landscaping, 1970–2015

• These sites have been identified during the course of research. The list is not comprehensive and it focuses on examples in the UK and USA. Key eighteenth- and nineteenth-century company towns and villages are listed. From the 1880s, gardens and recreation grounds were constructed for the factory itself, independently of housing. • Emboldened entries are mentioned, discussed or illustrated in the book. •  Dates given are the building of the factory, the start of production, or the dates of the landscaping where known. Some dates are approximate. • Abbreviations: Meakin’s Model Factories and Villages to ‘Meakin’; Beveridge, Master List to ‘Beveridge’; Gilman’s A Dividend to Labor to ‘Gilman’; Tolman’s Social Engineering to ‘Tolman’; Mozingo’s Pastoral Capitalism to ‘Mozingo’. • For corporate landscapes in the USA following the Second World War, see Mozingo Pastoral Capitalism.

William Champion’s brassworks Coalbrookdale

1746

Turton Mills Saltaire Mill and village

c.1850

1851

1847

1811

1800

Samuel Greg, Quarry Bank Mill and village New Lanark, Mill and village Lowell Mills and Village Copley and Ackroydon (1859)

1784

1782–92

Company

Date

Details

Bolton, Lancs, UK Near Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK

Halifax, Yorks, UK

New Lanark, Lanarkshire, Scotland Lowell, MA, USA Mills and villages. Allotments.

Ironbridge, Shropshire, Quaker and ironmaster UK Richard Reynolds laid out The Sabbath, or Workmen’s Walks through woodlands overlooking industrial Coalbrookdale. Styal, Wilmslow, Cheshire, UK

Warmley, Gloucesteshire, UK

Location

Select gazetteer: company gardens and parks c. 1750–c. 1960

Pevsner, History of Building Types, p. 279 Darley, G. Villages of Vision (Nottingham, 2007), pp. 133–6

Long, Gardens of Industrial Revolutionaries

Source

Familistère de Guise

Thomas Mason & Sons Price’s Patent Candle Company Waltham Watch Co.

After 1850

1853

Menier Chocolate Noisiel sur Marne, Factory and France village

South Manchester, CT, USA

1871–72

1860s

Swindon, Wilts., UK

Great Western Railway and Village Cheney Brothers Industrial village

Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancs, UK. Bromborough Pool, Liverpool, UK Waltham, MA, USA

Guise, France

Location

From 1850s

1854

1853

Company

Date

Grounds around mills ‘laid out like a park’. Cottages beyond. Keeping of cows and hens forbidden to encourage vegetable growing. Park in village adjacent to the factory. Houses with gardens.

From 1870s (?) sports ground, children’s playground. Garden village with sports ground. Factory surrounded by lawns. Two small parks opposite, and another ‘at a distance’. Park in village.

Recreational garden at residential complexes near foundry.

Details

Garner, Company Town, pp. 48–68

Stilgoe, Borderland, p. 252

Gilman, p. 203

de Soissons, Welwyn Garden City Meakin, p. 71 Gilman, pp. 206–8

Familistère de Guise: www. familistere.com/site/english/ visiting_familistere/guided_ tours.php Gilman, p. 191

Source

Cadbury

Pullman factory and town Morris & Co.

Boston and Albany Railroad (Stations)

Rowntree Chocolate factory North Easton Railroad Station

From 1878

1880s

1880–84

1881

1883

1880s

Krupp

From 1871

North Easton, MA, USA

York, UK

Merton Abbey, Surrey, UK MA, USA

Bournville, near Birmingham, UK Illinois, USA

Essen, Germany

Ryan, ‘Krupp’ McCreary, E. C. ‘Social welfare and business. The Krupp welfare programme 1860–1914’, Business History Review 42:1 (Spring 1968), 24–49

Landscaping of station (H. H. Richardson) by Olmsted firm.

Beveridge, p. 265

Landscaping of stations by F. L. Beveridge, p. 265 Olmsted and Olmsted, Olmsted Mulford Robinson, and Eliot. Modern Civic Art, p. 74 (photograph)

Two of the four workers’ colonies had ‘extensive parks’. Recreation centre, 1890 for office staff surrounded by a large garden. Similar facilities for factory workers from 1894.

Endicott Johnson Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott, NY, USA Witin Engineering Whitinsville, MA Company

1890s

Dartford, Kent

1890–1950

1889

Racine, WI, USA Port Sunlight, Wirral, near Liverpool, UK

Horlick Lever Brothers, Port Sunlight factory and village Burroughs, Wellcome and Co.

1887 1888

1886–87

N. O. Nelson LeClaire factory and town Procter & Gamble Cincinnati

1886

Location

Company

Date

‘beautiful and healthful environment’.

Factory overlooked picturesque lake (formerly millponds) with artificial island. Roof terrace. Sports grounds. ‘Materia Medica’ farm for drug production opened 1904. Mansion and grounds taken over as employee club. Boating and swimming on river. Communities had parks, playgrounds and sports facilities.

Playgrounds and sports grounds. Company hothouses and boys’ gardens. Factory in landscaped park – ‘Ivorydale’.

Details

Soltow and Gravelle, Worker Benefits, p. 78

Zahavi, Workers, Managers

http://blog.wellcomelibrary. org/2015/08/the-changinghistory-of-mill-ponds/ Meakin, pp. 219–20

Biggs, Rational Factory, pp. 65–6 Meakin, pp. 246, 284 Marchand, Corporate Soul, p. 33

Source

C. J. Clark

Eastman Kodak

Postum Cereal Co.

National Cash Register Co. (NCR)

c.1890

From 1890

From 1894

From 1895

Dayton, Ohio, USA

Battle Creek, Michigan, USA

Rochester, NY, USA

Street, Somerset, UK

Sutton, A History, pp. 73, 158–9 Meakin, p. 68 Factory in landscaped park. NCR.DH.fl Recreation ground. George Price, Modern Factory, p. 328 Eastman interested in horticul- (photograph) ture. Flowers sent to offices each Brayer, E. George Eastman morning. From 1995 borders (Rochester, 2006) designed by Samuel Parsons, supervisor of Central Park. First World War – wartime gardens. Administration building in Marchand, Corporate Soul, Elizabethan style surrounded by p. 255 lawns and flowerbeds. Building became clubhouse in 1925. Now a ‘Michigan Registered Historical Site’.

Factory in attractive surroundings. Allotments.

United Shoe Machinery Company The Boots Company

Acme White Lead Detroit, MI, USA and Colour Co.

Brunner, Mond & Co. Chivers Jam Factory Clements Manufacturing Co.

1899

c.1900

c.1900

c.1900

c.1900

1900

1899

Northampton, MA, USA

Northwich, Cheshire, UK Histon, Cambs., UK

Nottingham, UK

Beverly, MA, USA

Joliet, IL, USA

Niagara Falls, Buffalo Avenue, NY, USA

Natural Food Company (renamed Shredded Wheat from 1913) Illinois Steel Works

After 1895

Location

Company

Date

Lady Bay Recreation ground opened 1900. Recreation ground outside D31 building on the Beeston site. Lawns outside canteen used for company celebrations. Landscaped with shrubs. Potted climbing plants on trellis inside building. Former country estate. Athletic ground and pavilion. ‘The Orchard Factory’ situated in fruit fields. Flowering vines cover sheds.

Flowerbeds, tennis and croquet outside employees’ ‘Atheneum’ Club. 300 acres of land crossed by the Charles River.

Details

Meakin, pp. 68–9 (with photograph) Meakin, p. 73 (photograph)

Meakin, p. 75 Mulford Robinson, Modern Civic Art, p. 253, fn. 1 Meakin, p. 217

Beverly Historical Society: www.beverlyhistory.org/; Tarbell, New Ideals, p. 38

Meakin, p. 224 Gilman, p. 213

Source

Crane Paper Mills Pittsfield, MA, USA Eastman Kodak Harrow, Middx, UK. (opened 1896)

Newark, NJ, USA Akron, Ohio, USA

Sheffield, Yorks, UK Aintree, Liverpool, UK

Ferris Corsets Goodyear Tyre Co.

J.G. Graves Hartley

c.1900 c.1900

c.1900 c.1900

c.1900 c.1900

c.1900

Cleveland Varnish Cleveland, OH, USA Co. J. and J. Coleman Carrow, Norwich, Norfolk, UK

c.1900

Cleveland, OH, USA

Cleveland Cliffs Iron Co.

c.1900

Roof garden. Employee institute, bowling green and pavilion.

Creeper-clad factory. Large sports grounds and children’s playground. Gardens.

Creeper-clad; gardening prizes to employees: plants supplied at reduced prices. ‘has beautified the grounds around its factory’. Formal gardens with seats outside administrative offices – ‘a shady nook for the dinner hour’. In park overlooking a river. Landscaping and recreation grounds.

ILA, ‘Industrial Gardens’, p. 231 (photograph) Meakin, p. 222 (photograph) Meakin, p. 71 The late Frank Davies, Chairman of the King’s Langley Local History and Museum Society, whose father worked for Kodak. Meakin, p. 103 The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. Boettiger, Employee Welfare, pp. 196–7 Meakin, p. 96 Meakin, p. 228

Meakin, p. 78 (with photograph) Gilman, p. 221 Meakin, p. 75

Heinz Co. Pittsburgh, PA Jacobs & Sons Dublin, ROI Parke-Davis Drug Detroit, MI Co. Plymouth, MA

Cincinnati, OH, USA

Plymouth Cordage Co.

US Playing Card Co.

Warner Brothers Bridgeport, CT, USA Corsets Westinghouse Pittsburgh, PA, USA Electric Company

Weston Electrical Instrument Co.

c.1900 c.1900 c.1900

c.1900

c.1900

c.1900

c.1900

Newark, NJ, USA

Aylesbury, Bucks. UK

Hazell, Watson and Viney

c.1900

c.1900

Location

Company

Date

Meakin, p. 224

Meakin, pp. 75, 223

Meakin, pp. 78–80

Meakin, p. 113

Meakin, pp. 69–70, 222 Gilman, p. 185

Source

Company town with ‘numerous Mulford Robinson, Modern open squares and playgrounds’ Civic Art, p. 253, fn 1 and central recreation ground. Comstock, W. P. The Housing Book (New York, 1919), p. 37 Estate of 27 acres surrounded by Meakin, p. 85 woods and lawns.

Factory guides wore carnations in buttonholes supplied from directors’ hothouses. Factory surrounded with lawns and shrubs; walls planted with creepers. Courtyards surrounding the factory planted with flowerbeds. Reservoir for swimming and skating. Employees institute beside park.

‘Creeper-clad’ factory. Six-acre recreation ground. Employee allotments.

Details

Willimantic Thread Co.

1905

Larkin Soap Company Administration Building John Player

1904

Nottingham, UK

Buffalo, NY, USA

Hershey Hershey, PA, USA Chocolate factory and town

Minneapolis, MN, USA

Syracuse, NY, USA

Willimantic, CT, USA

From 1903

1901–2 Solvay Process (landscape) Co. factory and village 1903–28 Cream of Wheat Co.

c.1900

Factory and town with park. Approach to factory landscaped and factory covered in ivy. Hershey Gardens opened 1936.

Factory resembled a conservatory and had an Italian garden and roof garden.

Climbers, geraniums, petunias and flowering shrubs on piers on factory floor.

Hunter Bradley, B. The Works: the Industrial Architecture of the United States (New York, 1999), p. 207 Snavely, J. R. The Hershey Story (Hershey, 1950), p. 67

Meakin, p. 100

Spirella Corset Co.

Gorham Co.

From 1909

Before 1909

1908

Sears Roebuck & Chicago Co. Spirella Corset Niagara Falls, Co. Ontario, Canada

1906

Providence, RI, USA

Meadville, Pennsylvania, USA

Chicago, IL, USA

Western Electric Hawthorne Works

1905 and 1929–45 (landscape plans)

Location

Company

Date Landscaped by Olmsted Brothers. Grounds included a greenhouse. (Western Electric became one of the forerunners in applying scientific management to its production units.) Formal gardens, athlectic fields and tennis courts. 300 ft frontage on the gorge of the Niagara River. Flowers and shrubs around the building. (Building became the Niagara Falls Museum in 1958 and is now the Niagara Falls Aviary.) Company helped to maintain Athletic Park in Meadville. (The town was known for its parks and gardens.) Moved to Niagara Falls 1912–17. Park-like surroundings including, lawns, pond, woods, slopes, ravines, rocks, winding roadways and paths.

Details

Tolman, p. 328

Beveridge, pp. 266–7 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #09198

Source

Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory

1909–13 (landscape plans) 1911

1907 (landscape plans)

1911 (landscape plan) ?

1911

Steel Mill

Before 1909 Roxbury (now Jamaica Plain), MA, USA

Pueblo, CO, USA

Jersey City, NJ, USA

Cuticura Soap Factory

The Iron Clad factory

Ludlow Manufacturing Association White Enamel Refrigerator Co.

Malden, MA, USA

Brooklyn, NY, USA

St Paul, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Ludlow, MA, USA

National Electric Cleveland, OH, USA Lamp Association (NELA) Park

L. O. Koven & Brothers

Before 1909

Plan for factory grounds by Morell and Nichols, Landscape architects. Dining room with window boxes and ceiling covered with grapevines. Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Employee clubhouse and ­recreation ground.

Office campus in landscaped park.

Park adjacent to factory designed by F. L. Olmsted, Jr.

Grounds for employees adjoining main factory building. Seats under trees and ground for games. Baseball ground, tennis courts.

Beveridge, p. 269 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #03320

Biggs, Rational Factory, p. 68

Morell and Nichols, Landscape Architecture

Beveridge, p. 269 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #03792 Price, M. ‘The Development of an Industrial Group’, Architectural Record LIII:296 (May 1923), 383–95 Biggs, Rational Factory, p. 66

Tolman, p. 316

Tolman, p. 316

Eastern Michigan Edison Co.

Country Gentleman’s Association, distribution centre Detroit Edison/ Delray Plant

1910–13 (landscape plans)

c. 1911

1912–20s

Barton Power Plant/Detroit Edison Co. Spirella Corset Co. Spirella Corset Co.

Reckitt & Sons, factory and garden village

1907–10

1911–24 (landscape plans) 1911–14 (landscape plans) From 1912

Company

Date

Details

Letchworth Garden City UK

Niagara Falls, NY, USA

Barton, MI, USA

Detroit, MI, USA

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Letchworth Garden City, Neo-Elizabethan building with Herts., UK huge garden.

Hull, East Yorkshire, UK Sixteen-acre recreation ground from 1907 designed by Runton & Barry who retained trees on site. (They also designed the village.) Later the grounds were enlarged. Rochester, MI, USA Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Location

Beveridge, p. 271 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #03617 Beveridge, p. 271 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #03618

FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #05069 Photographs in archive of FGCHM.

Beveridge, p. 271

Garden Village Society: http://mysite.wanadoomembers.co.uk/shelagh_ houlton/GardenVillage.htm

Source

Before 1914

1913–19 (landscape plans) Before 1914

1913 (landscape plans)

1912–25

Leverkusen, Germany

Bayer Chemical Company Boden’s Net Factory Derby, Derbys, UK

Watertown, NY, USA

Waterbury, CT, USA

Headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA, USA

New York Air Brake Co.

US Steel Corporation (founded 1901) Chase Rolling Mill Co.

Windows look out on wellkept courtyard gardens and gymnasium, ‘the former of which would have done credit to a nobleman’s chateau, so neat and well kept were their flower borders’. Cricket ground and two bowling greens.

‘Very beautifully located’.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Beveridge, p. 272 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #05920 Price, Modern Factory, pp. 59, 327 Price, Modern Factory, 59 Meakin, p. 221

Beveridge, p. 267 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #05873

1914 and 1930–61 (landscape plans)

Jena, Germany

Milwaukee, WI, USA

Near Vienna, Austria

Schenectady, NY, USA

Location

American Optical Southbridge, Co. MA, USA

Hammerbrot works (socialist co-operative bakery) Before 1914 International Harvester Co., McCormick and Deering Works Before 1914 Karl Zeiss Works

General Electric Light Co.

Before 1914

Before 1914

Company

Date

Price, Modern Factory, p. 59

Price, Modern Factory, p. 58 Littmann, ‘Designing Obedience’, p. 3

Source

Football grounds. Price remarked Price, Modern Factory, p. 327 that the company had only a football club and a singing society so that the workers could mingle in the social life of the town and develop their own pleasures according to their individual tastes. Landscape plans by Olmsted Beveridge, p. 269 Brothers. FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #06007

Tubs of flowers at main entrance and Boston Ivy planted around the principle buildings. Tennis courts, running track, baseball diamond, large clubhouse. ‘With beautiful surroundings’.

Details

Torrington, CT, USA

Erie, PA, USA

Torrington Mfg. Co.

Hammermill Paper Co.

1917–27 (landscape plans) 1918–20; 1935 (landscape plans)

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Roof garden with tennis court. The company publicised itself on its wonderful environment.

Kirkcudbright, Scotland

Youngstown, OH, USA

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. Galloway Engineering Co. (Munitions)

1916–37 (landscape plans) 1917

Large portion of factory area laid out in gardens. Canteen doors opened on to rose gardens with seats. Bowling green, tennis courts and recreation park. Roof garden. Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Aintree, Liverpool, UK

W. & R. Jacob and Co. Ltd

After 1914

Beveridge, p. 272 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #06367 Clarsen, G. ‘A Fine University for Women Engineers’: a Scottish Munitions Factory in World War I’, Women’s History Review 12:3 (2003), 333–55 Beveridge, p. 267 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #06535 Beveridge, p. 273 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #06632

Industrial Welfare (March 1928), pp. 78–81 (includes photograph) UW.MRC

Chase Companies Inc. and North Main Street Project Fort Pitt – Malleable Iron Co. Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Attleboro Springs Co.

1919–21 (landscape plans)

1921–22 (landscape plans)

1919–21 (landscape plans) 1920

Ovaltine

From 1919

Attleboro, MA, USA

Govan, Scotland

Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Waterbury, CT, USA

Kings Langley, Herts, UK

Phoenix Dynamo Bradford, Yorks, UK Manufacturing Co.

Before 1919

Location

Company

Date

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Welfare organisation founded and financed by employees. Leased seventy acres of grounds for sport and golf, for poultry and allotments. Bandstand for Sunday evening concerts. Model farms established 1929. Dairy farm design based on Marie Antoinette’s ‘hameau’ at Versailles. Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Details

Beveridge, p. 268 LC.MD.OAR Job #06992

Beveridge, p. 273 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #06764

Beveridge, p. 267 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #06671 and #07009

Industrial Welfare (October 1919), 190 (photograph) UW.MRC

Source

J. & P. Coats and Clark & Co.

Condé Nast Publications, printing works

Dunlop Rubber Co.

1920s

1920s

1920s

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

Greenwich, CT, UK

Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

Birmingham Gas Dept.

1920s

1920s

Municipal Letchworth Garden Waterworks City, Herts, UK Barlow and Jones Bolton, Lancs, UK

c.1920

Bedminster and Bristol, Avon, UK

Messrs. E. & A. Robinson

c.1920

Sports ground and substantial pavilion.

A landscaped estate with pond and fountain, overlooked by a temple and sphinx on plinth.

Thirty-acre recreation ground with terraced walks and pavilion. Twenty-acre recreation ground. ‘Picturesque’ landscaping of perimeter of grounds and bowling greens with belts of trees and shrubs. Landscaped factories.

Both factories had roof gardens. At Bedminster, men played cricket on the roof and women played basketball.

Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (June 1931), xi (­advertisement) UW.MRC Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (March 1930), 89 (­photographs) UW.MRC Industrial Welfare (August 1925), 293 UW.MRC

Industrial Welfare (September 1927), 308–9 UW.MRC Industrial Welfare (September 1927), 309–10 UW.MRC

Industrial Welfare (July 1921), 295 UW.MRC

Oxo

Joseph Pickering & Sons Ltd

Tootal Broadhurst Radcliffe, Lancs, UK Lee Co.

1920s

1920s

1920s

Sheffield, Yorks., UK

Bromley, Kent, UK

Reading, Berks, UK

Huntley and Palmer

1920s

Location

Company

Date Small canal-side garden beside employees’ social club. Landscaped factory façade. Fourteen-acre recreation ground. Twenty-one-acre recreation grounds. Roof garden surrounded by concrete parapet and railings for roller-skating and cricket. (Largely female workforce.) August 1925 – dance on the roof garden lit by fairy lights and Chinese lanterns and decorated with bunting and streamers; 400 dancers. At Works A: garden used during summer months for putting etc., in the dinner hour. A greenhouse supplying plants ‘for internal decoration’. Plants and hanging baskets inside works. At Works C: garden with tennis courts, planted with trees, flowering beds etc.

Details

Industrial Welfare (June 1924), 158–60 UW.MRC

BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/ legacies/work/england/berkshire/user_1_article_1.shtml Meakin, p. 222 Industrial Welfare (May 1925), 182–3 Industrial Welfare (September 1925), 328 UW.MRC

Source

Crittall, factory and village T. W. Lench Ltd

London Brick Company Sawyer, Regan Company Mill

1920s/30s

1920s/30s

1925

1922–23 (landscape plans) 1923–35

Fry, Somerdale Chocolate Factory Shredded Wheat

Bowaters

1920s/30s

1920s/30s

Bata, factory and Town

1920s/30s

Welwyn Garden City, Herts. UK

Somerton, near Bristol, Avon, UK

Dalton, MA, USA

Blackheath near Birmingham, West Midlands, UK Stewartby, Beds, UK

Silver End, Essex, UK

Kemsley, Kent, UK

Zlin, Czechoslovakia

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Factory village.

Village with playing field in the centre. Gardens made from disused slagheap.

Factory village.

‘A Factory in a Garden’.

Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (April 1930), 121 UW.MRC Darley, Villages of Vision, p. 259 Beveridge, p. 268 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #07102

Pavitt, J. ‘The Bata Project’, Twentieth Century Architecture: the Journal of the Twentieth Century Society 1 (Summer 1994),. 33–44 Darley, Villages of Vision, p. 259 Crittall, ‘Silver End’

Nottingham, UK

Raleigh Cycles

Community Oneida, NY, USA Plate Co./Oneida Community Joseph Lucas Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

Carreras Tobacco

Selfridges Department Store

c.1926

1926–36 (landscape plans) 1927

1928

1928

‘Arcadia Works’ Mornington Crescent, London and Marsh Lane, Stanmore, London, UK London, UK

Kohler, WI, USA

Kohler factory and village (built from 1913)

1925 (landscape plans)

Location

Company

Date

Roof garden, designed by Lady Allen and Richard Sudell. Built by Y. J. Lovell & Son, Marlow.

Roof garden. Moor Park Recreation ground opened 1927, with bandstand. Large recreation ground and gardens at Stanmore factory. Elaborate plan by Stanley Hart.

Landscaping designed by the Olmsted Brothers who also designed the village. In 1918 built American Club to provide accommodation and recreation facilities for mainly immigrant workforce. Recreation ground opened at Woolaton. Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Details

Lady Allen Collection, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick

Beveridge, p. 272 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #07728 Industrial Welfare (December 1927), 391 (photograph) UW.MRC Adams, Playparks (photograph)

Beveridge, p. 273 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #07392 Klaus, Modern Arcadia, 155

Source

Messrs C. & T. Harris

De Havilland Aircraft

London Film Studios

1930s

1930s

1930s

Perivale, London, UK

Sanderson

Denham, Bucks, UK

Hatfield, Herts, UK

Calne, Wilts, UK

Hemel Hempstead, Herts, UK

West Springfield, MA, USA

United Electric Light Co.

Aladdin Industries

Baltimore, MD, USA

Western Electric Point Breeze

1930s

1928–34; 1939 (landscape plans) 1929 (landscape plans) c.1930 Surrounding meadows laid out as playing field. Flower borders and seating around bowling green. Formal gardens to front and sides of building designed by Ian G. Walker, Landscape Architect. The company bought a country estate and used the grounds for recreation. The club there became a centre for industrial recreation in Calne. Formal garden with lawns, pond, roses, shrubs and trees designed by Richard Sudell. Formal gardens outside modernist buildings.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Landscaping by Olmsted Brothers.

ILA (Winter 1936), 230–3 (photographs)

ILA (Winter 1936), 230–3 (photograph)

Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (April 1936), 33–4

Beveridge, 269 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #09116 Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (April 1933), 18–20 (including photograph) UW.MRC ILA (Winter 1934), pp. 48–9 (photographs)

Beveridge, p. 271 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #09035

Company

Miners’ Welfare Committee (MWC)

Guinness

Reader’s Digest

United States Steel

Date

1930s

1930s

1930s

1930s

Details

One of many parks made for miners and their families promoted by the MWC. Adams remarks on the good quality of design and amenity at this park. Park Royal, London, UK Site landscaped with trees and shrubs. Kitchen garden. 1,380 trees of 60 varieties, 410 ornamental shrubs and 500 Lombardy poplars planted on site. Farm established during Second World War and continued. Geoffrey Jellicoe remodelled grounds in the 1950s. Pleasantville, NY, USA Neo-Georgian building in landscaped setting. Employee gardens. Various During the Depression, company provided over 80,000 employee vegetable plots, totalling an area of 16,000 acres.

Backworth, Tyne and Wear, UK

Location

Marchand, Corporate Soul, p. 208

Parker, ‘Corporate Garden’

Strangleman, T. Imagining Work in the Twentieth Century: Guinness and the Transformation of Employment (Oxford, 2017), chapter 3.

Adams, Playparks

Source

A T & T Bell Telephone Co. (Laboratories)

1942

1940s

From 1938

From 1938

From 1932 From 1936

Summit, NJ, USA

Bradford, Yorks., UK

Barlaston, Staffs., UK

Worsley, Lancs, UK

Perivale, London, UK Greenford, Middx, UK

Various – Ford’s village industries East Tilbury, Essex, UK

Ford

Bata factory and village Hoover Glaxo Laboratories Montague Burton (‘Burtonville’) Wedgwood factory and village Kellett, Woodman & Co.

Milwaukee, WI, USA

A. O. Smith Corporation

From 1932

1930–31; 1938 (landscape plans) From 1931

‘Garden with lawn, flower garden and rose garden. An air raid shelter has been converted into a cinema.’ Landscape by Olmsted Brothers. The firm had been involved in the scheme since 1930.

Park-like situation. Recreation grounds.

Gardens designed by Cheals Nurseries of Crawley.

Landscape plans by Olmsted Brothers.

Mozingo, pp. 53–64 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #9218

Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (Jan./ Feb. 1947), 31

Gater and Vincent, Factory

Benton, Cheals

Beveridge, 273 FLO.NHS and LC.MD.OAR Job #09250

General Electric Electronics Park.

1948

After 1945

Paynes Chocolate Croydon, Surrey, UK factory W.S.Shutterworth Bermondsey, London, & Co. (Chocolate UK Manufacturers)

After 1945

Syracuse, New York, UK

Glasgow, Scotland

Creamola Food Products

1940s

Location

Company

Date

Gardens designed by Cheals Nurseries of Crawley. The company planned a more attractive setting for their workers (a high proportion were female) and employed three full-time gardeners. Flowers from the company greenhouses decorated the interiors. A small garden, park and playground opposite the factory. The council supplied playground equipment and mothers could leave their children there when they went shopping. The grounds were opened three times a year to the general public. The scheme attracted much comment in the local press and other factories in the area followed suit. Wilcox & Laird, Landscape Architects.

Roof garden provided with chairs and magazines, etc.

Details

Mozingo, pp. 64–8

Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (May/ June 1954), 80

Industrial Welfare and Personnel Management (May/ June 1946), 113 Benton, Cheals

Source

1959–63

Bell Laboratories John Deere & Co. Connecticut General Life Insurance Company Pilkington Brothers

1956–62 1956–64 1956–57

St Helen’s, UK

Holmdel, New Jersey Moline, IL Bloomfield, CT

Tar and Ammonia Beckton, London, UK Products Works

1950s

Bracknell, Berks, UK

Brimsdown, Middx, UK

Manville, New Jersey, UK Detroit, MI, USA

Fluidrive Engineering Co. Ltd.

Johns-Manville Research Center General Motors Technical Centre Enfield Cables Ltd

1950s

1950s

1950–56

1948

Verulam and Youngman, Factory Gardens (photograph)

Verulam and Youngman, Factory Gardens (plan)

Verulam and Youngman, Factory Gardens (plan)

Mozingo, pp. 68–72

Eero Saarinen and Hideo Sasaki. Mozingo, pp. 119–36

Pleasure gardens at factory canteen with formal flowerbeds and informal lawns planted with trees and shrubs. Tennis courts and sports ground. Car park landscaped with trees and shrubs. Factory surroundings planted with trees, shrubs and lawns. Landscape Architect: S. H. Haywood. Factory buildings landscaped with lawns and flowerbeds.

Clark, Rapuano and Holleran, Landscape Architects.

Weyerhaeuser International Headquarters, WA

Wiggins Teape Gateway House (now Mountbatten House), Basingstoke, UK Pepsico, Purchase, NY, USA

Codex World Headquarters, Canton, MA, USA Stockley Park, Hounslow, London Capability Green, Luton, UK Nike, Inc., Beaverton, OR, USA

Dreamworks Animation SKG, Glendale, CA, USA

Vodafone, Newbury, UK Googleplex campus, Mountain View, CA, USA Roche Products Ltd, Welwyn Garden City, UK

Innocent Drinks, London, UK

Google, Central St. Giles, London, UK

From 1971

1974–76

1980s 1980s 1980s 1990

From 1998

From 2002 From 2004 2005

2007

2011–15

1980–1

Company and location

Date

BDP Architects. Courtyard garden. Sports club. In-house design team and Jump Studios. ‘Beer garden’ with picnic tables. Google’s new building in King’s Cross, designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and Thomas Heatherwick will have a roof terrace with swimming pool and running track.

In-house design teams and Murase Associates. Japanese gardens, sports facilities, `running trail, water gardens. Landscape architect SWA Group. Formal garden with pool and topiary. ‘Lagoon’ with amphitheatre.

Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens designed by Russell Page.

Peter Walker of Sasaki, Walker Associates in association with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Details

Select gazetteer: offices and office parks with significant landscaping, 1970–2015

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus, Seattle, WA, USA

Microsoft Studios West Campus, Redmond, WA Nomura International Plc, London, UK

Facebook campus, Palo Alto, CA, USA

SAS Headquarters, Carey, NC, USA

Apple Campus 2, Cupertino, CA, USA

2011

2012 2012–13

2013–17

2014

2014–17

Architect Frank Gehry. ‘A park atmosphere’ and roof garden. 900-acre site, 800 acres are recreation areas, woodland, lakes, streams, farmland. Company farm supplies cafeterias. Solar farm. SAS Austen, TX campus in deer park with walking trails. Architects Foster + Partners (UK). Landscape architects OLIN. Circular building ‘like a spaceship’ containing and surrounded by extensive landscape to include orchards, running and cycle trails. Ratio built area to landscape 20:80.

Landscape by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, ‘A campus landscape for outdoor work and collaborative problem solving’. LEED Platinum certificate in 2011. Brumbaugh & Associates. ISS Facilities Landscaping.

Bibliography Bibliography

List of archives Art Institute of Chicago, Burnham Library, Chicago, IL Bata Reminiscence & Resource Centre, East Tilbury, UK (BRRC) Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK Boots Company Archive, Nottingham, UK (BC) Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York, Rowntree Archive (BI.RC) Cadbury Archive, Bournville, UK (CB) Cereal Partners (Nestlé) Archive (Corporate Affairs Dept, Shredded Wheat, Welwyn Garden City) Chicago Public Library: Special Collections, Chicago, IL First Garden City Heritage Museum, Letchworth, UK (Spirella Corset Company) (FGCHM) Frederick Law Olmsted, National Historic Site, Boston, Massachusetts. Site Plans (FLO NHS) Hagley Library, Wilmington, Delaware Hertfordshire Library, Local Studies Section, Hertford, UK (Hl) Ian Ormerod Archive, Solihill, UK Kings Langley Museum and Historical Society, UK Kraft Foods Archive, Kraft Foods Inc., Moreton Grove, Illinois (KA) Library Of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C. Olmsted Associate Records (LC.MD.OAR) NCR Archive – The Archive Center, Dayton History, Ohio (NCR.DH) Newberry Library, Chicago, IL: Pullman Company Archives Nottingham City Museums and Galleries, Nottingham, UK Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham, UK: Raleigh Company Archives Port Sunlight Village Trust, Sunlight Vision (Lever Bros. Ltd.), Port Sunlight, UK (PSVT.SV) Sears Holdings archive University of Warwick, Modern Records Centre, Coventry, UK (UW.MRC)

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Bibliography245 Bournville Village Trust Sixty Years of Planning: the Bournville Experiment (Bournville, no date, 1940s?) Brandes, S. D. American Welfare Capitalism 1880–1940 (Chicago, 1976) Brayer, E. George Eastman (Rochester, 2006) Brown, E. H. The Corporate Eye. Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture (Baltimore and London, 2005) Brown, J. The Pursuit of Paradise. A Social History of Gardens and Gardening (London, 1999) Buder, S. Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern Community (New York and Oxford, 1990) Buder, S. Pullman: an Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning 1880–1939 (New York and Oxford, 1967) Buenker, J. D., Burnham, J. C. and Crunden, R. M. Progressivism (Cambridge, MA, 1977) Burrell, G and Dale K. ‘Utopiary: Utopias, Gardens and Organisation’, in Parker, M. (ed.) Utopia and Organization (Oxford, 2002) Cadbury, D. Chocolate Wars. From Cadbury to Kraft: 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry (London, 2010) Cahn, W. Out of the Cracker Barrel; the Nabisco story, from Animal Crackers to Zuzus (New York, 1969) Cannons, H. G. T. Bibliography of Industrial Efficiency and Factory Management (Books, Magazine Articles etc.) (London and New York, 1920) Chapman, S. Jesse Boot of Boots the Chemists. A Study in Business History (London, 1973) Cochran, T. C. Social Change in Industrial Society: Twentieth Century America (London, 1972) Cochran, T. C. and Miller, W. The Age of Enterprise. A Social History of Industrial America (New York, 1965) Coles, R. and Millman, Z. (eds) Landscape, Well-Being and Environment (London, 2013) Colvin, B. Land and Landscape (London, 1970) Conway, H. People’s Parks: the Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain (Cambridge, 1991) Coolidge, J. Mill and Mansion. Architecture and Society in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1820–1865, 2nd edn (Amherst, MA, 1993) Cooper, D. A Philosophy of Gardens (Oxford, 2006) Corner. J. (ed.) Recovering Landscape. Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture (New York, 1999) Cosgrove, D. Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (London, 2008) Cosgrove, D. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (London, 1984) Cosgrove, D. and Daniels S. (eds) The Iconography of Landscape (Cambridge, 1988) Cranz, G. ‘Reform Parks in the United States (1900–1930)’, in Mosser, M. and Teyssot, G. The History of Garden Design. The Western Tradition from the Renaissance to the Present Day (London, 2000) Cranz, G. The Politics of Park Design (Cambridge, MA, 1982) Crawford, M. Building the Working Man’s Paradise: the Design of American Company Towns (London, 1995) Creese, W. ‘Imagination in the Suburb’, in Knoepflmacher, U. C. and Tennyson, B. Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1977)

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Bibliography247 Hareven, T. K. Family Time and Industrial Time. The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge, 1982) Harris, J. Private Lives Public Spirit: a Social History of Britain 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1993) Harrison, B. H. Drink and the Victorians. The Temperance Question in England 1815–1872 (Keele, 1994) Harrison, M. Bournville: Model Village to Garden Suburb (Chichester, 1999) Harvey, D. Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, 2000) Harwood, E. and Saint, A. London (London, 1991) Herrington, S. On Landscapes (New York and London, 2009) Hickman, C. Therapeutic Landscapes. A History of Hospital Gardens since 1800 (Manchester 2013) Holroyd, A. Saltaire and its Founder (Saltaire, 2000) Howard, P., Thompson, I. and Waterton, E. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (London, 2013) Humberstone, B. ‘Embodiment, Nature and Well-being, More than the Senses?’ in Robertson,  M., Lawrence, R. and Heath, G. Experiencing the Outdoors: Enhancing Strategies for Wellbeing (London, 2015) Hunter Bradley, B. The Works: the Industrial Architecture of the United States (New York, 1999) Irwin, W. The New Niagara. Tourism, Technology and the Landscape of Niagara Falls 1776–1917 (Pennsylvania, 1996) Jackson, J. B. The Necessity for Ruins and Other Topics (Amherst, 1980) Jackson, K. T. Crabgrass Frontier. The Suburbanisation of the United States (New York and Oxford, 1981) Jacoby, S. M. Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions and the Transformation of Work in American Industry 1900–1945 (New York, 1985) Jeansonne, G. and Luhrssen, D. ‘A Time of Paradox’: America since 1890 (New York, Toronto and Oxford, 2006) Jennings, M. W., Doherty, B. and Levin, T. Y. (eds), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’ and other Writings on Media. Walter Benjamin (Cambridge, MA, 2008) Jones, E. Industrial Architecture in Britain 1750–1939 (London, 1985) Jones, M. A. The Limits of Liberty: American History 1607–1992 (Oxford, 1995) Jones, S. G. Sport, Politics and the Working Classes. Organised Labour and Sport in Inter-War Britain (Manchester, 1992) Joseph Rowntree Village Trust One Man’s Vision. The Story of the Joseph Rowntree Village Trust (London, 1954) Joyce, P. Work, Society and Politics, the Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Aldershot, 1991) Kaplan, R. and Kaplan, S. The Experience of Nature: a psychological perspective (Cambridge, 1989) Kleinberg, S. J. Women in the United States 1830–1945 (New Brunswick, 1999) Knoepflmacher, U. C. and Tennyson, G. B. (eds) Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1977) Kofman, E. and Lebas, E. (eds) Henri Lefebvre. Writings on Cities (Oxford, 1996) Lang, M. H. Designing Utopia. John Ruskin’s Urban Vision for Britain and America Montreal (New York and London, 1999)

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Bibliography253 Institute of Landscape Architecture (ILA) ‘Industrial Gardens’, Landscape and Garden III:IV (Winter 1936), 230–3 Irvine, K. N., Warber, S. L., Devine-Wright, P. and Gaston, K. J. ‘Understanding Urban Green Space as a Health Resource: A Qualitative Comparison of Visit Motivation and Derived Effects Among Park Users in Sheffield, UK’, International. Journal of Environmental Research Public Health 10 (2013), 417–42 Jordan, H. ‘Public Parks, 1885–1914’, Garden History 22:1 (1994), 85–11 Kaplan, R. ‘The Role of Nature in the Context of the Workplace’, Landscape and Urban Planning 26:1–4 (October 1993), 193–201 Kaplan, S., Talbot, J., Kaplan, R. ‘Coping with Daily Hassles. The Impact of Nearby Nature on The Working Environment’, project report, USDA Forestry Service (1988) in Zadik, ‘Studying the Corporate Garden’, 77 Klaus, S. L. ‘All in the Family: The Olmsted Office and the Business of Landscape Architecture’, Landscape Journal 16:1 (1997), 80–95 Knapp, R. F. ‘Municipal Recreation: Background of an Era’, Parks and Recreation VII:8 (1972), 14–19, 44–52 Knowles, S. G. and Leslie, S. W. ‘“Industrial Versailles” Eero Saarinen’s corporate campuses for G.M, I.B.M. and A.T & T’. Isis 99:1 (March 2001), 1–33 Koetter, F. ‘The Corporate Villa’, Design Quarterly 135 (1987), 3–32 Langhamer, C. ‘“A Public House is for all Classes, Men and Women Alike.” Women, Leisure and Drink in Second World War England’, Women’s History Review 12:3 (2003), 423–43 Le Bas, E. ‘The Making of a Socialist Arcadia: Arboriculture and Horticulture in the London Borough of Bermondsey after the Great War’, Garden History 27:2 (Winter 1999), 219–37 Lee, A. C. K, Maheswaran, R. ‘The Health Benefits of Urban Green Spaces: A Review of the Evidence’, Journal of Public Health 33:2 (2010), 212–22 Littmann, W. ‘Designing Obedience: The Architecture and Landscape of Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1930’, International Labor and Working-Class History 53 (Spring 1998), 88–114 Long, D. ‘Warmley. A Brass Works Landscape 1748–1768’, Avon Gardens Trust Journal 8 (2015), 10–31. Long, V. ‘Industrial Homes, Domestic Factories: The Convergence of Public and Private Space in Interwar Britain’, Journal of British Studies 50 (April 2011), 434–64 Lynch, E. C. ‘Walter Dill Scott: Pioneer Industrial Psychologist’, Business History Review XLII:2 (Summer 1968), 149–70 Mayson Whalley, J. ‘The Landscape on the Roof ’, Landscape Design 122 (May 1978), 7–24 McCreary, E. C. ‘Social Welfare and Business. The Krupp Welfare Programme 1860–1914’, Business History Review 42:1 (Spring 1968), 24–49 Murphy, M.T. ‘The History of Employee Services and Recreation’, Parks and Recreation 19:8 (August 1984), 35–9 Neer, D. L. ‘Recreation in the Age of Automation’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 313 (September 1957), 79–82 Nelson, D. ‘The New Factory System and the Unions: the National Cash Register Company Dispute of 1901’, Labour History 15:2 (1974), 163–78 Park, J. ‘Sport, Dress Reform and the Emancipation of Women in Victorian England: A reappraisal’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 6:1 (1989), 10–30

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures advertising and promotional materials 2, 42, 44, 45, 57, 142–3, 184 changes in imagery in the 1920s and 1930s 164–6, 166 factory tours, lectures and films 150–5 imagery’s motivational power, and representation of childhood, gender and class 155–60, 158, 159, 160 landscape imagery in corporate identity and advertising 143–50, 145, 147, 148, 149 NCR images of the Boys’ Gardens 161–4, 162, 163 Aesthetic Movement 70 allotments 2, 14, 20, 23, 23, 29, 30, 38, 39, 41–2, 107–8, 109, 178, 185 American Civic Association 41, 78 Anderson, Jackson M. 171, 181, 185 Industrial Recreation 176, 178 Apple 3, 241 Architects’ Journal, The 33 Arkwright, Sir Richard 16 Armley Mill, Leeds 16 Arnim, Elizabeth Elizabeth and her German Garden 157 art 142, 146 Arup Associates 197, plate 8

Association of Schools Gardens 53 AT & T Bell Laboratories, Summit, New Jersey 47, 237 atria 197, 202 Barrett, Nathan F. 26 Barthes, Roland Camera Lucida 156 Bata factory, East Tilbury 71, 99, 103, 104, 108, 180, 237 Bata Record 104, 108 Beard, George M. 103 Beauchampé, Steve 128 Bedford Park, Chiswick 107 Bedford-Tyler, Henry 49 behaviour rules 40, 94, 102, 130, 133, 180 Bellamy, Edward Looking Backward 7 Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey 196–7, 198–9, 201, 239, plate 7 Benjamin, Walter ‘Little History of Photography’ (essay) 156 Berman, Solon S. 26 B. F. Goodrich Company, Ohio 113–14 Boettiger, Louis A. 171–2, 178 Boots Company 33, 72, 74, 75, 171, 181, 185, 220 Bourke-White, Margaret 142

Index257 Bournville see Cadbury (company), Bournville Bournville Works Magazine 102, 108, 110, 150 Bradfield (school), Reading 106 Builder, The 23 Building Research Establishment Environmental Methodology (BREEAM) assessment 204 Burnham, Daniel 41 Burton, Montague 45–6 Burtonville, Worsley 45–6, 237 Cadbury (company), Bournville 1, 5, 29, 30, 32, 33, 38, 45, 48–50, 49, 50, 66, 67, 72, 75–6, 76–7, 95, 98, 184–5, 192, 193, 217, plate 3, plate 4 allotments 107–8 Cadbury at Work and Play 114 children’s gardens 109, 109 club committees and membership 182 cultural activities 102, 104, 105–6, 105 Elsie and the Brown Bunny (film) 155 Factory and Recreation, A (booklet) 102 Factory in the Garden, The 150 factory tours, lectures and films 151, 152–3, 155 gardening staff 110 gardens 77, 80–5, 82, 83, 84, 99, 101–2 Girls’ Grounds 49–50, 81–5, 82, 83, 84, 101–2, 101, 104, 105, 106, 131, 148, 155, 158, 160, 170, 180, 182, 201 landscape imagery in corporate identity and advertising 143, 148, 150 recreational facilities 93 Rowheath Park 50, 102, 104, 108, 114, 119, 123–8, 124, 125, 127, 201, plate 5

welfare capitalism 172, 173–4 workers in photography 157, 158, 158, 159–60, 160, 165 workers’ personal reminiscences 170, 171, 183, 185 Works Councils 181 Cadbury, Edward 182 Experiments in Industrial Organisation 33, 51, 103–4, 173 Cadbury, George 29, 44, 51, 64, 69, 119, 173, 174 Cadbury, George (the younger) 193 Cadbury Music Society 102 Cadbury World 1 Cahn, William 152 Capability Green 203, 203, 240 Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago (1933) 145 Chadwick, Edwin 39 Champion, William 16–17, 17, 215 Cheals of Crawley 50, 82, 120–1, 123–8 children 21, 39, 157–8 boys’ gardens plate 6, 53, 79, 80, 161–4, 162, 163, 201 girls’ gardens 49–50, 53, 81–5, 82, 83, 84, 101–2, 101, 104, 105, 106, 131, 148, 155, 158, 160, 170, 180, 182, 201 horticulture 19, 20, 109, 109 Christian Work and Evangelist Magazine, The 55 City Beautiful Movement 41 Coalbrookdale 16, 215 Coca Cola 1 Codex 202, 240 Cole, Thomas Home in the Woods 131 company magazines 142–3, 145 Connecticut General Life Insurance Company 196, 198 control 7, 8–9, 23, 86, 108, 143, 147, 180, 182–3, 186 Cooper, David 86–7 Coote, Commander 46

258Index corporate identity 57, 191 factory tours, lectures and films 150–5 and landscape imagery 143–50, 145, 147, 148, 149 corporate landscapes 2, 4–5 of the 1950s and 1960s 195–200, 199 development of 192–4 digital age landscapes 204–7, 205, 206 economic change and landscape pluralism, 1970s and 1980s 200–4, 203 see also landscapes Cosgrove, Denis 7 Country Life 146 Coutts & Co 197 Cranz, Galen 95 Crawford, Margaret 21, 24 Creese, Walter 107, 126 cultural activities 96–7, 98–9, 102–7, 105, plate 4 dancing 96, 98, 99, 103–4, 105, 126, plate 4 Daniels, Stephen 7 Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States 119 Darbys’ iron mills, Coalbrookdale 16, 215 Dibsdall, K. D. (employee) 182, 185 Dickens, Charles 24 Diman, Joanna 198 discrimination 180 Disraeli, Benjamin Sybil 107 Domasio, Antonio 207 Doughty, Thomas Old Silk Mill, Derby, The plate 1 drama societies 97 Du Pont, Pierre S. 106 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 123 emotions 202, 204, 207

factories 1920s and 1930s landscapes 44–7 British factory utopias 28–31 daylight factories 51, 54, 58–9, 59 early images of 14, 15 early Industrial Revolution 16–19 floral factories 75–7 insanitary conditions 21, 22, 32 landscaping 4, 14–16, 38–9 model factories 14, 19–25, 20, 22, 23 mythologisation of 142–3 ornamental features 1–2, 44–5 promotional images 147–50, 147, 148, 149 recreation at factories 98–9 status and 65 tours, lectures and films 150–5 urban reform and factory landscapes into the twentieth century 40–4 and welfare capitalism 31–3, 45 Factory Garden and Park Movement 39, 48 Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd 46, 230 family values 68–9, 69–70 Farley, Paul 202–3 Faucher, Léon 18 films 38, 94, 96, 102, 142, 144, 150–1, 154, 155 Firestone 194 First World War 30, 33, 34, 39, 40, 99, 164, 165 flowers 75–7 images of 146 food production 19, 20, 66, 97, 109, 113–14, 178, plate 6 Ford Foundation offices 197 Ford, Henry 60, 114 Ford Motor Company 33, 237 Foucault, Michel 186 Discipline and Punish 8 Fourier, Charles 19 Fry, Maxwell 198–200, 199, 202

Index259 Garden City Movement 41–3, 42, 43, 113, 174 Gardener’s Chronicle 97 gardens 38 atria 197, 202 boys’ gardens 53, 79, 80, 110–11, plate 6 connected gardens 204–7, 205, 206 as an ‘epiphany’ experience 86–7, 208 factory garden pioneers 47–8 and female employees 69–70, 71–5 food production, role in 19, 20, 66, 97, 109, 113–14, 178 garden bridge proposal, London 209–10 gardening and horticulture 97–8, 107–14, 109, 111, 112 girls’ gardens 53, 81–2, 82, 83, 84, 100, 101–2, 101, 104, 105, 106, 111, 131, 148, 155, 158, 160, 170, 180, 182, 201 and health 39–40, 206–7, 208 healthy rest and play in the factory gardens 99–103, 100, 101 and ideals of home 69–71 and place-making 77–85, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84 pleasure gardens 2, 94, 98 Port Sunlight 30 and promotion of world fairs 145, 145 religion, family values and the factory garden 68–9 roof gardens 46, 73, 99, 100, 101, 197–8, 205, 205, 207, plate 8 status and factory gardens 66–8, 67, 81 styles of 2 value of 59–60, 64–6 value of, according to the workforce 179–85 value of, according to welfare institutions 176–9 see also imagery

Gateway House, Basingstoke (now Mountbatten House) 197–8, 240, plate 8 gazetteer of sites 214–41 General Electric Works, New York 172, 180, 181, 185, 228 General Motors Technical Centre, Detroit 195, 239 gesamtkunstwerk 196–7 Glaxo Laboratories 120–1, 237 Godin, Jean-Baptiste André 19 Google 3, 191, 205–6, 205, 208, 209, 209, 240 Googleplex, Silicon Valley 205–6, 206, 240 Gott, Benjamin 16 Great Depression 47, 113, 134 Great Exhibition, London (1851) 144 Green, Dolly (employee) 170, 182, 185 Greg, Samuel 19 Griffin, Andrew 69 Hall, Stanley 103 Hapgood, Lynne 69–70 Harvey, David 7 health 51–2 and gardens and parks 39–40, 206–7, 208 Heatherwick, Thomas 209 Heinz factory, Pittsburgh 48, 72, 99, 100, 103 Herrington, Susan 207 Hershey (company), Pennsylvania 1, 96, 120, 223 Hershey, Milton 96, 192 Hershey’s Chocolate World 1 Hickman, Clare 39 Hignett, Cecil 58 Hills and Dales Park and Old Barn Club, Dayton, Ohio 119, 128–34, 129, 133, 201 Hine, Lewis 142, 156–7 holidays 95 Hoover factory 44, 45, 71, 194, 237 Horlicks factory 67, 218

260Index horticulture 97–8, 107–14, 109, 111, 112, 145 Howard, Ebenezer 44 Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform 41 Humberstone, Barbara 207 Humphreys, David 21 Humphreysville (now Seymour) 15, 21 Hunt, John Dixon 65 Huntley and Palmers biscuit factory, Reading 97 IBM 195 imagery ‘before’ and ‘after’ imagery 154–5 changes in imagery in the 1920s and 1930s 164–6, 166 factory tours, lectures and films 150–5 landscape imagery in corporate identity and advertising 143–50, 145, 147, 148, 149 motivational power of and representation of childhood, gender and class 155–60, 158, 159, 160 NCR images of the Boys’ Gardens 161–4, 162, 163 inclusive design 202 Industrial Recreation Association 47 Industrial Revolution 16–19 Industrial Welfare Society (IWS) 45, 193 Factory Gardens 4, 46, 47, 177–8 Industrial Welfare (journal) 46, 182 Recreation in Industry. A Guide to Existing Facilities 46, 176–7, 179 Ingels, Bjarke 209 Inglis, Simon 128 International Harvester, Milwaukee 103, 147, 147, 180, 228 Jackson, J. B. Necessity of Ruins and Other Topics, The 7

James, Henry 146 Jefferson, Thomas 21 Jellicoe, Geoffrey 199 John Player 72, 74, 75, 223 Kensington Gardens 145 Kiley, Dan 197 Koetter, Kim and Associates (architects) 202 labour departments 33 lakes and lagoons 17, 25–6, 26, 126, 127, 134–8, 135, 136, 137–8, 166, 199–200, 199 Landscape and Power (Mitchell) 8 landscapes of the early Industrial Revolution 16–19 factory landscapes 4, 14–16, 38–9 factory landscapes in the 1920s and 1930s 44–7 factory parks 122–3 Hills and Dales Park and Old Barn Club, Dayton, Ohio 119, 128–34, 129, 133, 201 interrelations with humans 7–8 landscape architecture profession and corporate landscaping 120–2 and national identity 119, 129–30, 131, 132 Old River Park, Dayton, Ohio 134–8, 136, 201 power relations 8–9 Rowheath Park, Bournville 50, 102, 104, 108, 114, 119, 123–8, 124, 125, 127, 201, plate 5 urban reform and factory landscapes into the twentieth century 40–4 see also corporate landscapes; imagery Larkin Company, Buffalo 46, 223 Leadership for Energy in Environmental Design (LEED) assessment 204 Le Corbusier 46

Index261 Vers une Architecture 56 lectures 110, 112, 112, 143, 150–1, 153, 154 Ledoux, Claude-Nicholas 1 Lefebvre, Henri 7, 9, 186 Leiper, William 2 leisure see recreation Letchworth Garden City 41, 42, 43, 43, 171 Spirella Corset Company 43, 48, 57–9, 59, 66, 72–4, 74, 92, 97, 98, 107, 183–4 Lever, William Hesketh, First Viscount Leverhulme 29, 44, 66, 67, 121, 122, 154, 218 Littmann, William 172, 180, 182–3, 186–7 Lombe Brothers’ silk mill, Derbyshire 16 Long, Vicky 40, 179 Loudon, John Claudius 81 Lowell, Massachusetts 24, 215 Lowell Offering, The 24 Lukes, Steven 186 Power. A Radical View 9 Mandell, Nikki 172, 180 Marx, Leo 123 Machine in the Garden, The: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America 119 masques 106–7 Masson mills, Derbyshire 16 Matless, David 7 Mawson, Thomas Civic Art 121, 122 McKibbin, Ross 31 Meakin, Budgett 32, 99 Model Factories 70 Meller, Helen 96 Mertens, H. F. 46, 197 Merton Abbey 6, 28–9, 217 Miller, Mara 65, 66 Miller, Wilhelm What England can Teach us About Gardening 138

mining communities 95–6 Mitchell and Kenyon 38 Mitchell, W. J. T. 8 modernism 5, 33, 44, 71, 106, 107, 108, 194, 195 Montague Burton 45–6 Morell and Nichols, Minneapolis 122 Morris, R. J. 23 Morris, William 6 ‘Factory as it Might Be, A’ (article) 28–9 News from Nowhere 7, 39 Mosely, Alfred 193 Mosely Industrial Commission 193 moving pictures see films Mozingo, Louise A. 121–2, 194, 198 Pastoral Capitalism: a History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes 4–5 music 96, 98, 102–3 National Cash Register Company (NCR), Dayton, Ohio 5, 32–3, 38, 48, 51–3, 52, 55, 66, 67, 72, 98, 106, 107, 175, 193, 219 Boys’ Gardens 161–4, 162, 163, 201, plate 6 factory tours, lectures and films 151, 153, 154–5 gardens 77–80, 79, 80, 101, 110–12 Hills and Dales Park and Old Barn Club 119, 128–34, 129, 133, 201 landscape imagery in corporate identity and advertising 143, 148 Old River Park 119, 134–8, 136, 201 recreational facilities 93 strikes 33, 77, 99, 172–3, 181 workers in photography 157, 161–4, 162, 163, 165, 166 National Civic Federation 45 National Industrial Conference Board 4, 47, 176, 178 National Industrial Recreation Association 47, 171, 195

262Index National Institute of Industrial Psychology (NIIP) 184 Natural Food Company (Shredded Wheat) 43, 48, 53–7, 54, 56, 66, 76, 99, 103, 172, 184, 194, 200–1 factory tours, lectures and films 151, 152 gardens 101, 112–13 Landscape Gardening 113 landscape imagery in corporate identity and advertising 143, 147, 148 List of Trees, Shrubs and Vines, suitable for sidewalk planting, Season of 1902–3 113 Wonders of Niagara, The 143 NCR News 165, 166 NCR, The 111 Nelson, Daniel 72, 172 New Lanark, Scotland 6, 19, 20, 98, 103, 104, 192, 215, plate 2 Niagara Falls Gazette 54 Nimmons, George 121 Noguchi, Isamu 198 Nomura Bank, London 207, 241 Norcross Brothers 54 Ohmann, Richard 157 Old River Park, Dayton, Ohio 119, 134–8, 136, 201 Old Silk Mill, Derby, The (painting) plate 1 Olin, Laurie 202 Olmsted Brothers 46–7, 53, 54–5, 62n.41, 78–80, 79, 80, 120, 121, 122, 129–34, 134–8, 136, 194, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 233, 234, 235, 237 Olmsted Firm 51, 62n.41, 77–8, 217 Olmsted, Frederick Law 41, 51, 77–8, 113, 120, 130, 138, 155, 225 Olmsted, John Charles 110–11, 111, 132 open air cult 39, 40

Osgood, Mabel Garden of a Commuter’s Wife, The 157 Outka, Elizabeth 152 Ovaltine factory, Kings Langley 72, 73, 98, 104, 158–9, 159, 164–5, 230 Owen, Robert 6, 19, 20, 98, 103, 104, 192 New View of Society, A, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character and the Application of the Principle to Practice 20 pageants 106–7 Palmer, Tessa (employee) 207 Panopticon model 8, 186 parks 38, 41, 119–20 Capability Green 203, 203, 240 factory parks 122–3 and health 39–40 Hills and Dales Park and Old Barn Club, Dayton, Ohio 119, 128–34, 129, 133, 201 municipal parks 120 office, business and research parks 202–3 Old River Park, Dayton, Ohio 134–8, 136, 201 reform parks 40 Rowheath Park, Bournville 50, 102, 104, 108, 114, 119, 123–8, 124, 125, 127, 201, plate 5 Stockley Park, Heathrow Airport 203, 240 value of, according to the workforce 179–85 value of, according to welfare institutions 176–9 Parks and Playgrounds for the People (pamphlet) 39 paternalism 10, 19–25, 28, 29, 30, 86 Patterson, John H. 32–3, 38, 44, 48, 51–3, 67, 68, 69, 77–8, 93,

Index263 110–12, 111, 119, 128–30, 131, 132, 133, 153, 154, 172, 173–4, 181, 192 Paynes Chocolate Factory 121, 238 Pearson, Dan 209 Peiss, Kathy 94–5 Perky, Henry 53–5, 112 Philips, S. 185 photography 146–7, 150 ‘before’ and ‘after’ imagery 154–5, 161–4, 162, 163 changes in the 1920s and 1930s 164–6 children 157–8, 161–4, 162, 163 lantern slides 153 and reality 156 of workers 156–60, 158, 159, 160 Pilkington Brothers 198–200, 199, 239 place-making 65, 77–85, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 192–3, 202 planting schemes 18, 26, 43, 45, 47, 55, 70, 71, 78–9, 79, 113, 132–3, 133, 138, 197, 199 pollution 47, 200 Port Sunlight 29–30, 67, 121, 154, 218 power 8–9, 86, 143, 147, 186 Price, Fanny (employee) 183 Priestley, J. B. 45 English Journey 194 Progressivism 5, 40, 44, 51, 59, 93, 121, 164 promotional materials see advertising and promotional materials Proud, Dorothea 174, 175–6 Pullman, George 25, 152, 192 Pullman, Illinois 25–8, 26, 27, 30, 43–4, 66, 67, 77, 152, 183, 217 Pullman Palace Car Company 24–5 Purdom, Charles 43 Purdue University 47 Quakers 16–17, 18, 29, 68 Quarry Bank Mill, Manchester 19, 20, 215

Raleigh Cycles 72, 74, 75, 181, 234 recreation 92–3, 170–1 cultural activities 96–7, 98–9, 102–7, 105, plate 4 at factories 98–9 gardening and horticulture 97–8 healthy rest and play in the factory gardens 99–103, 100, 101 outdoor recreation and welfare capitalism 171–6 rational recreation 93–4, 95 revolution in sport and leisure 94–7 Relf, Edward 192 religion 68–9 Repton, Humphrey 16, 155 Richardson, Benjamin Ward Hygeia: A City of Health 39 Rivera, Diego 142 Roberts, Michael Symmons 202–3 Robinson, Charles Mulford 59 Modern Civic Art 121 Roche and Dinkerloo (architects) 197 Rogers, Daniel 193 romanticism 122–3 Rowheath Park, Bournville 50, 102, 104, 108, 114, 119, 123–8, 124, 125, 127, 201, plate 5 Rowntree, Joseph 64 Rowntree, Seebohm 29, 30, 154 Rowntrees, York 69, 72, 76, 99, 101, 101, 151, 157, 158, 172, 217 chocolate boxes 146 Royal Salt Works, Arc-et-Senans 1 Russell, James 197–8, plate 8 Saarinen, Eero 196, 198–9 Saltaire, Bradford 22–3, 23, 192, 215 Salt, Titus 22, 44, 66 Samuel, Raphael 156 Sasaki, Hideo 196 Schama, Simon 131, 139 Schools Gardens Movement 53 scientific management 224 Sears Roebuck & Co., Chicago 31, 66, 72, 72, 121, 224

264Index Second World War 11, 47, 75, 114, 148, 194, 195 Shaw, George Bernard Major Barbara 88n.14 Sheeler, Charles 142 Shredded Wheat see Natural Food Company (Shredded Wheat) Shrimpton, Alan 84–5, 185 Simmons, Algie M. 28 Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (architects) 198 slogans 32–3, 52, 58–9, 174 social democratic workplace concept 204 socially responsive office concept 204, 205, 208 Society of Recreation Workers of America (later American Recreation Society) 47 Soissons, Louis de 43, 56, 57 Solvay Process Company (Soda-Ash) 47, 223 Sontag, Susan 156 space 9 utopian space 5–6 Spirella Corset Company 43, 48, 57–9, 59, 66, 92, 97, 98, 104, 107, 158, 170, 171, 180, 194, 224, 226 gardens 72–4, 74, 99, 100, 110, 183–4 sports grounds 2, 27, 29–30, 33, 46, 47, 92, 93, 128, 196 Stockley Park 3, 203, 240 strikes 24–5, 27–8, 172–3, 181, 183 Studio, The 126 Sugg Ryan, Deborah 106 Sunlight Soap 30 Sunny Vale Pleasure Gardens, Calderdale 94 Tarbell, Ida 174–5 Taylor, William Cooke 18 temperance 39 Templeton carpet factory, Glasgow 1–2

theatre 97, 98, 99, 105–6 Thompson, F. M. L. 28 Thoreau, Henry David 131 Thrift, Nigel 207 Tolman, William 174, 176 Tomlinson, Mick (employee) 181 tours 150–2 Tracy, Lena Harvey 99, 172–3 trade unions 32, 181, 193, 195 Tuan, Y-F. 13n.15, 212n.43 Turner, J. M. W. Rain Steam and Speed 122–3 Turton Mills, Bolton 18, 215 Unilever Works, Rotterdam 46, 197 United Shoe Machinery Co., Beverly, Massachusetts 71, 132, 220 urban reform 40–4 US Steel Corporation 33, 44, 70, 226, 236 utopian space 6–7 British factory utopias 28–31 Vaux, Calvert 120, 130, 155 Vauxhall Motors 182, 185 Verulam, Lord 177 Vodafone 12, 206–7, 240 W. & R. Jacob and Co. Ltd 158, 228 Walker, John A. Design History and the History of Design 9–10 Wallis, Thomas 44, 45, 46 Ward, J. T. Factory System, The 21 Warmley House garden, Gloucestershire 16–17, 17 welfare capitalism 31–3, 45, 170–1 and outdoor recreation 171–6 value of factory gardens and parks, according to the workforce 179–85 value of factory gardens and parks, according to welfare institutions 176–9

Index265 ‘Welfare Song’ 170 Wells, H. G., Modern Utopia, A 7 Welwyn Garden City 42–3, 42 Shredded Wheat factory 56–7, 56, 103, 184, 200 Western Electric 142 Wiggins Teape 197, 240 Williams, Owen 33 Williams, Whiting 180 women employees 10, 11, 15, 30–1, 33n.67, 48–9, 49, 68, 178, 196 disputes 99 gardens for 69–70, 71–5, 79, 81–5, 82, 83, 84, 100, 101, 104, 105, 106, 131, 148, 155, 158, 160, 170, 180, 182, 201 leisure 94–5, 98 in photography 157–60, 158, 159, 160, 164–5, 166 Wonders of Niagara 76 workers 1, 60 attitudes to gardens and parks 86, 99, 170, 171, 171–2, 179–85, 186, 208

club membership 102, 130, 132, 134, 179–82, 200 committee membership 181–2 control of 7, 8–9, 23, 86, 108, 143, 147, 180, 182–3, 186 discrimination 180 gender issues 99, 101, 111, 157–8, 180 holidays 95 individuality of 67–8, 186 mythologisation of 142–3 in photography 156–60, 158, 159, 160, 164–5, 166 reductions in working hours 94, 95 reminiscences 170, 171, 181, 183–4, 185 rest breaks 46, 99, 179, 184–5 wages 95, 180, 185 world fairs 145, 145, 154 World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893) 41, 78 Wright, Frank Lloyd 46, 197 Youngman, G. P. (Peter) 177, 199–200, 199