Reserve contained between Oscar Place, Oscar Road, North Grampian Circuit, Grampian Place, Torry, Aberdeen, Scotland

Torry is walking distance from Aberdeen’s city centre (via a fairly inhospitable series of industrial-strength port roads) and since 1891 has come under the aegis of Aberdeen city council. In the 1920s, it was the site of what Torry historian Ronald W. McDonald calls ‘the first major council housing scheme in Aberdeen’, laid out in ‘concentric rings centred on Tullos Circle’ (p. 20). The Aberdeen city library has some volumes of press cuttings called TORRY: From Cuttings in the Local Studies Department. These include an article from the Aberdeen Daily Journal 8 (or 18; both handwritten dates are given) April 1919 which details the display of varieties of plan in the Aberdeen Art Gallery, prepared by architects William Kelly and Harbourne McLellan and surveyor John Gordon. The Daily Journal included illustrations of two of these plans (it is unclear from the article how many plans were put on display and whether the two it included, 5a and 5b, were typical). The rationale for the display was to ‘invite suggestions for improvement’ from the general public. 5a, readers were told, was the favourite of the Housing Committee. The article continues:

The lay-out of each plan, so far as the proposed roadways are concerned, explains itself. As may be seen at a glance, 5a, towards the centre, favours the circular lay-out, 5b the octagonal. In the centre of 5a there is an open playground 2½ acres in extent at the top of Torry Hill, where 5b has a smaller area of recreation ground with a pavilion, while provision is made for a bowling green, and tennis court with pavillion. There is ground provided for allotments in both plans. 

The decisions were made quickly and what was decided on, as can be seen on the ground at Torry today, is closer to 5a than b conceptually but in actuality a different design. It contains four larger interior spaces rather than the seven (four enclosed, three open) of 5a. Another article from the Journal, also included in the clippings book and dated 11 November 1920, discusses the Torry project as the ‘Aberdeen Housing Scheme’ in an article of that title. It says it has been ‘exactly seven months to-day’ (that is, since May) since the first stone was laid on Torry Hill by the contractors for the initial instalment of 500 dwelling-houses of the Aberdeen municipal housing scheme.’  The centre of the scheme, rather than a playground, was as McDonald tells us ‘Torry Intermediate School which opened on 29th August 1927’ (p. 20).

I was pleased to visit the four extant interior spaces of Torry on 22 September 2019 in the company of good-natured companions Graham and Tanya. This is actually the last of the four we visited, but I am presenting them ‘left to right’ as it were. 

Whether the space was once allotments is a question I cannot presently answer, and while it would seem likely, the three aerial images I have to hand aren’t exactly instructive. One of them, which appears in the inside pages of a publication called Torry Times II is undated but looks to me like the 1930s, has the space as empty and apparently unused. 

Another, which appears in a book called Aberdeen 1800-2000 A New History, is mislabeled (as a cluey reader has pointed out). A third, from a photocopied newspaper item from 1971, appears to show the space with some small structures in it and some vegetation though it is very unclear. 

What is there today? Essentially, a basketball practice area, fenced, within the space with some passive recreation space at the southern end and some dense thicket at the west side. 

Ronald W. McDonald  A Short History of Torry The Labrys Press, 1995 

W. Hamish Fraser and Clive H. Lee eds Aberdeen 1800-2000 A New History Tuckewell Press, East Lothian 2000

https://goo.gl/maps/r6H3MbFoQwEV1ZnA6 takes you to an address opposite one of the entrances to this space. 

Unnamed reserve between Witham Drive, Garlepp Road, McFadzean St, South Gateway, Coldstream, Vic

It's here

Melrose Avenue Reserve, Coldstream, Vic

On Google Maps here

Glenhurst Park, Coldstream

Coldstream, effectively a north-eastern suburb of Melbourne, is a small commuter settlement that has always confused me as it seems to conform to many of the style elements of the 1920s subdivision - not least because of its three internal reserve spaces - but there does not seem to be any record of it before the 1960s. Whether the subdivisional plan was completed long before any land was sold is unclear. It may be that it is a genuine 1960s idea. Possibly someone who reads this will have some better idea than I do. 

As is evident from Google Maps, whatever status Glenhurst Park enjoys in the original plan, it is actually open-ended to the north - at present. This is not to say it will not, at some stage, be fully enclosed.

Visit it here.

Rye Beach Estate, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria

Via Victoria Kolankiewicz.

John Quinn & Co was a highly successful but let's be fair somewhat dodgy real estate developer active in the first half of the 20th century; one of the things the company made a bad habit of was piggybacking developments on other larger estates, qv Quinn's 'Milleara Station Estate' (where there was not and never will be a station) near the much more important Milleara Estate. In this case the only really 'dodgy' element is the extremely peculiar imaginative surrounds to the otherwise accurate plan, which puts the 'Back Beach' right next door, whereas it is more like 12 km away. Queenscliff and Portsea are, similarly, 12-14 km further away. The suggestion that the Pacific Ocean is 4 miles from the estate is also arguable.

What is important for us is of course that in this design via the surveyor Bonwick, we see a well-placed internal reserve (now known as Quinn Park) one block back from the beach. The park space is, you will note, included without comment: it's just best practice for the time.

When was 'the time'? The estate was being actively promoted in 1927, as per this ad from the Melbourne Herald 28 September of that year, page 17. Note there is some uncertainty about whether the homeowners of Rye Beach Estate should be weekend-only or permanently abiding.

This was largely built as designed. View it here.

Liverpool Garden Suburb, 1911

From Town Planning Review Vol. 2, No. 1 (April 1911) pp. 69-89. Three competition entries for a garden suburb. Dixon's was the winner; it is clear that something along these lines was built here.

Dorfplatz, Wangerooge, Germany

As this blog has shown, there are many ways to slice and dice the idea of the 'internal reserve', and we have seen an enormous variety of them. However, we have in many instances seen the form's originators express the hope that internal reserves serve primarily to keep children away from street traffic, and of course the initial burst of enthusiasm for internal reserves - a little over a century ago - came at the same time as the first real rise of the automobile from a curiosity to something which had to be contended with as a danger as much as it was an advantage.

That's why the park known as Dorfplatz, on the picturesque holiday island of Wangerooge in the East Frisians, is something of an anomaly: the island permits no cars (or at least, no private vehicles, and no roadway wide enough for two conventional automobiles to pass each other). 

That said, this particular park space conforms in all other ways to the internal reserve form, with some extra delights that make it a great template for these kinds of spaces. Key amongst the 'conforming' elements are that surrounding properties have direct visual connection to the space and gateway access; it is hidden from, but close to, the central shopping area and it is used and valued by local residents. View it here; note its proximity to a much more 'public' park, the Rosengarten. 

I visited it twice, on the 30th and 31st of January 2019, and I have to say that as an Australian, from a place that sees snow about twice a century (and then momentarily), I was much taken by the apperance of the place in the second of these visits. 

The space is divided into three parts. The northernmost serves as the garden for a hotel, the New Hampshire. The middle part is essentially featureless; the southern section is treed, with a war memorial and serves as a memorial area at the front of a church. Thus, the space is commercial, neutral and commemorative in equal measure. 

 
Above: directly adjoining the hotel. Below: the middle area

 Below: the treed memorial area, church behind

 Below: southern end walkway

 Below: central area

 Walkway at western side of park space