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NPS Form 10-900 a OMBApp maIW1024 0018 • United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number _8_ Page _12_ An analysis of Kessler's work reveals a careful combination of the creation of parks as pastoral retreats, as healthy places of active recreation, and as devices for guiding the planned development of cities. Kessler's aesthetic combined both the romantic style of earlier Victorian parks, and the formal renaissance styles favored by landscape architects after the world's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Kessler is primarily known for his successful landscape planning efforts; his work expanded the young profession of landscape architecture in this regard. Kessler design principles Park planning work undertaken by Kessler is consistently comprised of interconnected Parks and Boulevards proposed as planned elements of the coordinated city plan. In many cases the park and boulevard plan was proposed as the framework for subsequent city expansion. Kessler plans used natural features, especially rivers and streams to unify the park and boulevard system.The park plans, themselves, combined formal and informal elements, and incorporated provisions for both passive and active recreation, including provision for baseball, golf, swimming, tennis courts, and childrens play. • Community centers which combined both indoor and outdoor recreation and other public facilities are also common. Road and Path alignments feature sweeping, complex radial curves, similar to the 19th century German and French designs of Lenne and Alphand , with transitions near buildings and on small, geometric sites to Beaux Arts Classicism. Plantings are massed to form open lawn spaces. Boulevards are typically planted with single or multiple rows of trees. Larger sites of informally massed plantings are bordered at street edges by linear street -tree plantings. Many prominent street corners, intersections and street terminii feature vistas, focal points, or other landscape or architectural features. Architectural/Engineering elements, such as bridges, pavilions, colonnades were also designed by Kessler in the classical revival style common during the City Beautiful era which followed the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. A designer for the progressive era, Kessler's plans and writing called for parks to be places for community. His plan for Leeper park represents many aspects of George Kessler's design philosophy. The park was to be an integral part of the riverway park system and would be connected with outer parks and boulevards; the park would be oriented to the River, and bring the water into the park through a series of lagoons; the park would incorporate active and passive recreation, a "splendid playfield, and in this it would be wise to establish a complete equipment for all out -door sports. There should be an adequate shelter building as a field house."* In these words Kessler foresaw the eventual use of Leeper Park as the playground for the James Madison School (1930), the YWCA (1928) and the site of subsequent indoor and outdoor recreation facilities developed sympathy with the Kessler vision well into the 1960's. *George Ressler: Annual Report, Department of Public Works. South Bend, 1913. 0