The Llewellyn Park Historical Society is a five-member committee that oversees the Llewellyn Park archives. These archives are housed in the Gatehouse.

The Gatehouse, the architectural jewel at the entrance of Llewellyn Park, was designed by A.J. Davis in 1857 to resemble Llewellyn Haskell's home, the Eerie, a farmhouse that Davis had transformed into a picturesque rustic wooden dwelling in 1853. The Gatehouse was built of native rock. Named Willow Lodge because it once overlooked Willow Lake and Willow Falls, the Gatehouse was once home to a caretaker and the Park's team of horses and wagon.

The Gatehouse is now in the care of the Historical Society and is home to Llewellyn Park's archives, which include photographs, maps, clothing, memorabilia, and the Committee of Managers' records. The collection also contains West Orange history such as items that belonged to the Condit's, a founding family, Saint Mark's Church, and General George McClennan, a Civil War general and West Orange resident.

The Historical Society expands the archives by accepting donations, especially memorabilia and plans left in newly purchased homes or items excavated from the grounds. Periodically the Society holds an open house, which provides Proprietor's with the opportunity to view the rich history of the Park. If you have a question, request, or donation to the archives, please call 973-731-5010 or email the Park office. Your message will be forwarded to a member of the Society.

LLEWELLYN PARK HISTORY

Adapted from the Llewellyn Park Ramble Landscape Preservation & Maintenance Master Plan   The Master Plan was prepared by LANDSCAPES, Charlotte, Vermont, July 2001.

Historic Context & Importance of Llewellyn Park

In the mid-1800s people of means sought a retreat from the degradation of living conditions, air quality and health hazards that were enveloping crowded cities. In response to these oppressive conditions in the New York area Llewellyn Haskell, a self-made pharmaceuticals magnate and a Perfectionist (a Swedenborgian religion) and Alexander Jackson Davis, a prominent architect developed the idea of a Neighborhood Park, a new concept at the time.

This designed neighborhood with its picturesque entry gatehouse became a prototype and served as an inspiration for urban and suburban development over the following decades. The concept for this neighborhood park was a forerunner of the development of many notable, subsequent communities. Llewellyn Park is known as the first such community and is important in the history of the American suburb for its design, its significance as a prototypical planned community and for the fact that today it retains much of the common parklands with a degree of integrity.

HISTORY OF LLEWELLYN PARK & THE RAMBLE

Beginning with his personal retreat, Llewellyn Haskell purchased a tract of land in 1852 with a farmhouse and 40 acres of forest, 15 of which were used for a 'picturesquely landscape garden' with the remainder of the property initially left in its natural state. Haskell's long-time friend and noted architect Alexander Jackson Davis remodeled the old farmhouse on the property. Within a year, Davis had assisted in the layout of a Neighborhood Park- a planned community designed in the Picturesque style where like minded individuals could be surrounded by nature yet have convenient access to the City. Haskell acquired 350 acres by 1857 and by 1870 the Park had grown to 750 acres with over 100 home sites planned, 50 of which were sold with 30 families already in residence.

Each site was between one and ten acres. Individual residents were required to pay a fee of ten dollars per acre, an annual assessment for the maintenance of commonly held property. This property was a fifty-acre irregular, linear landform running up the hillside in the center of the Park, which was set aside for use as a common park area.

By 1860, Haskell had spent over $100,000 on improvements to the land in preparation for building and for embellishments to the landscape of the Parkland, bringing in native trees and flowers as well as exotics such as evergreens and weeping trees, many of which were from Europe, South America and Asia.

On February 28, 1857, Haskell deeded the fifty-acre parkland in the center of the  development to a board of trustees and committee of managers that collected the annual dues and assisted in overseeing the management of the Park. This marked the official beginning of Llewellyn Park and provided the structure of the organization and boundaries of the neighborhood. The central parkland was the fundamental element of Haskell's concept of a shared community space. This parkland was known as Llewellyn Park from 1856 to 1860, at which time the name Llewellyn Park came to include all the residential sites and the parkland became known as the 'Ramble'.

Llewellyn Park was advertised in 1857 as "500 Acres of land divided into Villa Sites of 5 to 10 Acres each with a Park of 50 Acres reserved for the exclusive  use of the owners of Sites.” The Ramble was shown to include Glyn Ellyn, the forest, Evergreens, Lyceum, Kiosk and a series of ponds along the stream course through the length of the Park. As a common shared space, the Ramble became the focal point of the neighborhood, with forest enlivened by sunny openings, reflective water features and spacious meadows for gathering.

During the initial development of Llewellyn Park, there were three landscape design styles that were widely used in the field of landscape architecture and gardening. Briefly defined these styles were:

• Picturesque: an informal landscape style characterized by curvilinear forms; changes in topography; babbling brooks, full layered forest and glade planting; a sense of mystery and dappled light and shade.

• Pastoral: informal landscape style characterized by open, gently sloping meadows, calm, reflective ponds and lakes graced by overhanging trees.

• Gardenesque: a formal landscape style characterized by geometry and formal shapes, decorative bedding and individual plantings to highlight exotic plants or planting groups.

Aspects of all three of these styles were present in the Ramble. Although Llewellyn Haskell initiated the original concept of the Park and worked with several architects, landscape architects and landscape gardeners to develop the property, there were obvious influences from the style and character of landscapes of that time. The landscape gardening of the picturesque, pastoral or gardenesque styles were familiar to Haskell and his advisors. In addition the art works of the Hudson River School that focused on an accurate or somewhat romanticized articulation of nature may have provided another influence. Some notable and influential contemporaries of Haskell and Davis included Andrew Jackson Downing, landscape gardener, who popularized the picturesque style of gardening, Calvert Vaux, architect and landscape architect who worked with Downing, Thomas Cole, master of the Hudson River School of painters, who explored the wilds and articulated nature in paintings.

Also important to the concept of the landscape development of Llewellyn Park were the social and religious theories of the day that were of interest to Haskell. The ideas given shape in the design and execution of this residential landscape reflected aspects of Swedenborgianism, Fourierism and Transcendentalism in their attempt to define a new way of life. At its inception, Llewellyn Park had elements of a Transcendentalist world, a combination of picturesque aesthetics and nature, intending to bring "man closer to his creator through art and nature” This was expressed most vividly in the embellishments of the Ramble's landscape.

It is clear that Haskell and Davis initiated Llewellyn Park, but the actual design of its parkland cannot be thoroughly or definitively attributed although several persons appear to have influenced it. Eugene A. Baumann, a European landscape gardener, new to America at the time, is credited with some assistance in the design. It is clear that Baumann delineated plans of the  Ramble, which were published in 1859, but it is not clear whether he was designing the landscape or simply producing that drawing of it. A role in the development of the landscape is also credited to Howard Daniels, architect and landscape gardener, who was awarded fourth place in the Central Park competition.

In addition, at least one local landscape gardener, James MacGall (or McGall), who came to Orange from Bermuda, has a family tradition that holds he "laid out Llewellyn Park".  Even though there were others who may have had some influence or assisted in the layout of the Park, Haskell is reported to have taken an active part in directing the work and in this way maintained a consistent influence on the Park's design.

Author Susan Henderson, in describing the Ramble, says "the picturesquely designed park was the spiritual and social centerpiece of Llewellyn Park, to be freely used and jointly owned by the residents. There was an informal agreement that no fences would be built: "each estate being isolated from the next, yet each, by a happy partnership with every other, possessing the whole park in common, so that the fortunate purchases of two or three acres becomes a virtual owner of the whole five hundred: a plan by which a poor man, for a few thousands of dollars, may buy a country seat that challenges comparison with the Duke of Devonshire's”