CHAPTER III

ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE GARDENING, AND ENGINEERING

(FIGS. 5 TO 14)

Only a few photographs are necessary to show how valuable to the architect, the construction engineer, the city planner, or the landscape gardener the air photograph, both vertical and oblique, is destined to become. Pictorial records of progress in the construction of buildings, bridges, ships, canals, reservoirs, etc., that partake also of the nature of ground plans, as do air photographs, furnish an admirable means of study and comparison. No photograph of the great shipyards at Newport News taken from the ground would show the relation of the shops and drydocks to the deep-water approaches as does Figure 7. Figure 8 gives an unusually comprehensive idea of the location, magnitude, and construction of Hell Gate Bridge; and Figure 10, Rockaway Beach, now a densely populated town where a few years ago was a barren strip of sand, suggests that photographic records of construction in rapidly growing communities where changes are being made in streets, railroads, and buildings, will come to be a part of the equipment of the city engineer and architect.

ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE GARDENING

Equally useful will the air photograph become to the landscape gardener and architect. Heretofore, in order to get a comprehensive conception of his task and a definite picture of its completion, the landscape gardener has had to depend upon the use of maps and such views as could be made by the sketch artist or the ordinary lateral photograph. In the future, from vertical and oblique photographs of the area to be developed, he will have the means of studying its features in their correct proportions and relationship. By means of similar photographs of completed projects he can choose and combine until he has developed the plans best suited to his purpose. He can bring to his aid first-hand studies of gardens and grounds the world over whose beauties have made them famous.

ENGINEERING PROJECTS COVERING LARGE AREAS

Where the project covers large areas, the “mosaic,” or group of matched photographs, can be used in the study of problems of construction or improvement. Figure 13, a mosaic of the Anacostia flats, the site of improvements under way in the District

of Columbia, shows the Anacostia marshes as they appeared in the autumn of 1920, after the changes effected since 1915, as can be seen by comparison with Figure 14, the topographic map of the same area. To the right is the terraced slope rising to a height of about 150 feet above the river--an elevation so low that the air photograph does not properly reproduce it. Near the foot of the principal terrace lie the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad, on which can be seen Benning, Deanewood, and Kenilworth. Between the railroad and the Anacostia River are the Benning race track and the swampy lowland and tidal marshes of the Anacostia flats. The river and the marshland on either side of it from the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge to Benning Road have been modified by dredging, but north of

this road the surface appears in its natural state. In the mosaic are shown at the left the highlands west of the marshes, wooded in some places but cleared and improved in others. In the northern part can be seen land wooded north of the District line but cleared south of it. So comprehensive a view of the field of the project and of the progress to date should be of great service to the engineers and promoters.