Garden restoration calls for more research

The Corbin house and garden at Pioneer Park recently won a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, but a companion nomination for the adjacent Moore-Turner garden has been sent back to Spokane for additional documentation.

The National Park Service, which oversees national listings, has asked the city of Spokane to provide more information about the landscape of the Moore-Turner garden and its relationship to its previous owners, said Lynn Mandyke, director of the Corbin Art Center, housed inside the 1898 Corbin house at Pioneer Park.

Together, the two historic gardens comprise the Corbin and Moore-Turner Heritage Gardens, which have been under a cautious and slow restoration for the past five years.

“You need to have a lot of documentation to restore,” Mandyke said.

While the city-owned Corbin house is still in use for classes and art shows, the 1889 Moore-Turner house was torn down in 1940. It was located just to the west of the Corbin house at the site of a lower parking area in the park. It was designed by Kirtland Cutter for F. Rockwood Moore, the first president of Washington Water Power Co., now known as Avista Corp. Judge George and Bertha Turner were the second owners.

Judge Turner rose to a single term in the U.S. Senate in 1897 and became an ally to President Theodore Roosevelt, who visited the home on his triumphant swing through the West in 1903.

Corbin, who also used Cutter to design his home, was an important industrialist and entrepreneur.

Thus, the site holds substantial historical relevance, both for the history of its early occupants as well as what remains of its old-fashioned landscapes.

Initial restoration has included a historically-accurate reconstruction of a fanciful castle overlook in the back yard of the Corbin house. The feature is handicapped-accessible from a driveway that extends to the rear of the house. From there, a gentle pathway leads to a bench, patches of lawn, plantings, a drinking fountain and the overlook.

The Moore-Turner landscape, developed over a period of decades, fell into ruins after the house was demolished to avoid a property tax bill of $250 a year. Trees and undergrowth had overtaken the garden hillside when current parks staff discovered the extensive garden remains in the late 1990s. Mandyke and others started investigating it in 1999.

Documents and extensive photographs of the garden from Bertha Turner were donated to Washington State University and included in its historical photo collection, which became an important resource in the documentation of the garden. The photos show many of the original features, including a 70-foot concrete pond in the upper garden. The basin remains intact today, although it is threatened by erosion, and some of its surrounding features, including mortared stone columns, have been damaged by vandals.

In addition to the Turner photo collection, Spokane resident Pat Larson Miller, a grandniece to Corbin’s second wife, Anna Corbin, provided the city with photographs of the house, family and castle overlook.

In May, the National Park Service notified the city that the Corbin house and grounds were included on the national register. It also was placed on the Washington State Historic Register in January. The Corbin house previously was listed as part of a historic district in the area.

The Moore-Turner landscape won a listing on the state register and is expected to eventually gain national listing as a cultural landscape once the additional research is completed, Mandyke said.

Cultural landscapes are a new listing for the national register, Mandyke said, which is one reason why National Park staffers wanted to make sure the Moore-Turner listing was well researched.

The city expects to hire a consultant for the additional work needed to gain the national listing, she said.

Earlier this year, the city received another consultant’s report that reviewed the history of the gardens and makes recommendations on how to restore it through what’s called a “cultural landscape report.”

Duane Dietz of Dietz Hartlage Landscape Architecture of Tacoma, recommended a $1.45 million plan to protect the garden ruins initially and then restore only those features that can be adequately documented through photos or other evidence.

The cultural landscape report was financed through a $32,000 grant from the Martha S. Cargill Foundation.

The city has approximately $400,000 available for stabilization of sensitive areas and protection of the site. Some fencing may be installed to prevent future vandalism. The large pond basin on the hillside has been used for years by young skateboarders.

“Stabilization of sensitive areas is a priority,” Mandyke said.

Dietz said, “There’s a lot of erosion happening on the downhill side” of the pond.

Part of the funding is coming from a recent $136,000 grant from the Washington State Historical Society. The Spokane Parks Foundation and Spokane Preservation Advocates also have been contributors.

A long-term goal is to restore the pond, a reflecting pool, rose arbor, rose garden, staircases, perennial gardens, tea house and pergola. Those all have photographic documentation.

Features unlikely to be restored include a greenhouse, stone house, pump house and outbuildings. They are not well documented.

Original plant materials such as roses, violets, elms and German irises could be included in the landscape eventually, Dietz said.

His cultural landscape report called for construction of a replica of a porte cochere entry to the Moore-Turner home. The replica would become a gateway to the garden and a visual link to the house that once stood at its front. The entry would be the only non-authentic feature in a restored garden, Dietz said.

Dietz said he and his staff believe the original lower garden was designed by Cutter for Moore to create an aesthetic environment as a backdrop for the home. The design used chunks of native basalt rock for staircases and a reflecting pool that were symmetrical to the house. However, there is no documentation to prove Cutter’s influence, Dietz said. Cutter at the time had worked with the Olmsted Brothers, of Brookline, Mass., he said, and the Olmsteds, nationally renowned for landscape architecture, were brought to Spokane in the early 1900s as consultants for the Spokane parks system.

Dietz said Cutter “wouldn’t have plunked down the house without a stage behind it.” He described Cutter’s potential involvement in the garden as “our hypothesis.”

Later, the Turners added new features and altered some of the original garden structures.

Thus, the garden itself tells a story of different occupants and different styles from 1889 to the 1930s, he said.