Exhibit Dates:
3/8/2006 -
5/10/2006
On display at University YMCA March through May 10. If you are interested in hosting this exhibit, please contact us at 704.333.1887 ext. 228.
|
John Nolen: Neighborhood-Maker
A traveling exhibit John Nolen: Neighborhood Maker opened May 14 at Queens University and will travel to sites in and around Charlotte throughout the year. Created by Levine Museum of the New South, historian Dr. Tom Hanchett, and in partnership with Charlotte-based planner Tom Low, the exhibit showcases the Charlotte work and national career of one of America's foremost landscape planners.
The exhibit and a series of programs at sites around the Charlotte area will explore Nolen's vision of neighborhoods designed in harmony with nature. And also question, how can this history be useful in today's hot debates over planning and suburbanization in our region?
100 years ago in Charlotte, NC, John Nolen began a career that would make him a world-renowned pioneer of urban design. In May 1905 Nolen's professors at Harvard gave him permission to skip final exams and travel to south to create his first project, Independence Park near uptown Charlotte. Soon after, he planned a greenway park along Little Sugar Creek – an idea being revived today.
Nolen returned again in 1911 to create the gracious neighborhood of Myers Park. He took a tree-less cotton farm, designed curving avenues, laid out parks, and moved in hundreds of trees to make Myers Park one of the South's most important garden suburbs.
Nolen's detailed landscape drawings for Myers Park, discovered in the archives of Cornell University, are the exhibit's highlight. Photos trace his nationwide career and explore his recent rediscovery by a whole new generation of designers.
Based in Massachusetts, John Nolen planned over 400 projects nationwide – neighborhoods, parks, entire cities. Today his ideas are inspiring the "New Urbanism" movement, such as Baxter, Birkdale and Vermillion in the Charlotte area, as well as entire cities including the acclaimed new towns of Seaside and Celebration in Florida.
The exhibit is sponsored by a major grant from Crosland, Inc., with assistance from the John Nolen Research Fund of Cornell University Library.
SCHEDULE AND VENUES
May 14 – July 2, 2005: Queens University, Watkins Art Gallery
July 5 – Sept. 5, 2005: Town of Cornelius, Town Hall
Sept. 7 – 11, 2005: Levine Museum
Sept. 12 – Oct. 6, 2005: Freedom Park, Community Shelter
Oct. 8 – 9, 2005: Hawthorne Lane United Methodist Church
Oct. 11 - Dec. 21, 2005: Atkins Library, UNC-Charlotte
Jan. 3 – Feb 26, 2006: Davidson College, E.H. Little Library
Feb. 27 – 28, 2006: Davidson College, Alvarez Student Union
Mar. 1 – May 10, 2006: University City YMCA
May 15 - Aug. 6, 2006: Duke Mansion, 400 Hermitage Road |
