George Edward Kessler (1862-1923) was born in Bad Frankenhausen, Germany. His parents left Germany in 1865 for Hoboken, New Jersey, before moving on to Dallas, Texas.

After his father's death in 1878, young George returned with his mother and sister to Europe where he studied botany, landscape gardening and engineering for three years. His last year abroad was spent investigating the civic design of major cities from Paris to Moscow.

Back in the United States in 1882, Kessler found a few months of work as a gardener in Frederick Law Olmstead's Central Park until friends found him a challenging assignment in the West--laying out a pleasure park in Fort Scott, Kansas, just eight miles by rail from Kansas City, Missouri. Impressed with Kessler's accomplishments at Merriam Park, the Kansas City Board of Park & Boulevard Commissioners hired him in 1890.

A rapidly growing metropolis, blessed with what Kessler called "an eccentric topography," Kansas City had imposed a rigid gridiron on its street system. In 1893, Kessler gave the Board a bold plan for a grand system of interwoven boulevards and parks that enhanced rather than ignored, geography. By 1915, the entire proposal had been implemented.

Meanwhile, Kessler had married Ida Grand Field of Kansas City in 1900, moved to St. Louis to work on landscape plans for the 1904 World's Fair and then moved back again to supervise the required restoration of Forest Park after the Fair shut down.

St. Louisan Henry Wright, who got his professional start with Kessler in Kansas City, came back to his hometown to work on Kessler's growing number of projects in St. Louis and other cities. Wright also worked with Kessler on the 1906 plan for the Vanderbilt campus in Nashville; both men were heavily involved in the 1907 Civic League Plan for St. Louis.

In 1908, after the demolition of the Cottage restaurant in Forest Park, Kessler and Wright were engaged by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition to design the World's Fair Pavilion.

In 1910, Kessler and his family moved to St. Louis permanently. Their first address was the "ABC's," a prestigious apartment building overlooking Forest Park on Kingshighway; later the Kesslers purchased the John David Davis house at #51 Vandeventer Place. Davis had been Chairman of the Civic League's 1907 Inner and Outer Park Committee. Kessler, Julius Pitzman and a handful of plutocrats completed the group.

Included in the introduction of the parks chapter in their 1907 plan is the following exhortation:

While parks are of inestimable value in making a city inviting to desirable residents and visitors, furnishing pleasant drives to those who can afford these luxuries, adding to the value of real estate, and promoting the general prosperity, these are matters of small consideration when compared to the imperative necessity of supplying the great mass of the people with some means of recreation to relieve the unnatural surroundings in crowded cities.

Along with the proposal (only partly implemented) to connect existing city parks, the committee report called for riverside parks and drives, a solution to the errant River des Peres and the acquisition of land for five outer parks.

The men who drafted the Civic League plan expected results, and the necessary act was passed by the state legislature in time to place the proposition on the November 1910 ballot. The proposal had been pared down to three sites: the picturesque Meramec Highlands southwest of the city; the bluffs affording magnificent views of Creve Coeur Lake, and the strip of bluffs overlooking Chardonnier Island in the Missouri River.

It seems likely that Kessler moved to St. Louis in the expectation that the proposal would pass in the city and the county. It failed in both. Supporters blamed the massive numbers who turned out to vote "NO" on a proposal favoring prohibition. In 1911, Dwight F. Davis, former Chairman of the Civic Centers Committee for the 1907 plan, became St. Louis Park Commissioner.

A staunch disciple of the good citizenship through recreation doctrine, "...the primary purpose of the park system should be the raising of men and women rather than grass or trees," Davis worked with Kessler to develop a landscape plan for Forest Park that concentrated formal floral displays in prominent locations. Government Hill crowned by the new pavilion by Kessler & Wright was an obvious choice. (The fountain was not added until 1930.)

Kessler served on the St. Louis Park Board and the new City Plan Commission until 1914 and remained a consultant to the Kansas City Park & Boulevard Commission until his death in 1923 while working on a park and boulevard study in Indianapolis. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery. The obituary in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects credited him with work in more than 40 cities and communities of the West and Middle West, "...a city planner and landscape architect of extraordinary insight, vision and practical ability ." Kessler was survived by his wife and son George Jr., a student at Central High School.

In 1949, George E. Kessler, Jr. donated an extensive collection of papers to the Missouri Historical Society. This fall (1993) the American Institute of Landscape Architects will be meeting in Kansas City in honor of the 100th anniversary of Kessler's comprehensive plan. The city that provided the first and perhaps the best opportunity for Kessler's talents can now boast more than 10,000 acres in parks, more than 130 miles of tree-lined boulevards and parkways plus recognition as one of the finest park systems in the nation. It is time that Kessler received the attention he deserves as well. Not even a footnote appears in American Landscape Architecture: Designers and Places published by the National Trust and the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1989.

All information and illustrations on these pages
are from the collections of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, Inc.
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