Landscapes are a product of the collective imagination that find their inspiration in the archetypes of classical design. One of the outstanding representations of classical education, that has recently been gaining new found popularity with the revival in neo-classicism is Rafael's "School of Athens." At center stage Aristotle stands draped in robes with on arm pointing resolutely skyward as if punctuating his discourse on the movement of the planets. Plato and a host of other Greek intellectual giants look onward as the father of western science bathes in the glow of his intellectual progeny. The event is framed by Doric columns and sharp Euclidean angles hewn in marble and granite stone. This is the romanticized ideal of Greek education, beatified on oil and canvas.

Actually, Greek education was probably less formalized than contemporary opinion would have it. Socrates roamed the streets testing, antagonizing, and utterly confuting the accepted knowledge of his day as students rallied around and enemies decried his withering criticism. Although it's unlikely that Socrates viewed himself as an educator, what is significant is that he started a tradition of encouraging debate and public discourse in areas of human activity; at the baths, in the marketplace, in open spaces where bystanders could participate and join in the discussion.

Even as late as the 16th century, the famed Paris Academy was largely an outdoor affair. Groups of students would pool their money and hire private lecturers who gathered by the shores of the Seine. Lessons in Latin and rhetoric were taken under canopies of trees and amidst fisherman who came and went with the ebb and flow of the tide.

It was perhaps in the German medieval university that our common perception of campus design found its greatest expression. Learning was removed to the unimpeachable heights of monastic leirs, solemn and austere in their magnificent seclusion. As education was adapted by missionary and heuristic brotherhoods the method and practice of education became more formalized.

This view of Middlesex in fall is taken from above Bateman's Pond looking toaward the North Gate, at the far end of the playing fields.

The American pastoral ideal represented a reunion of democratic society with nature. The landscape of the American university represents an open invitation to participate in self-rule by virtue of one's education and one's merits. The high granite walls were reduced to a more republican dimension of shared open spaces and long vistas, redefining what it meant to be in an academic setting.

Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, is a prime example of the American attitude toward campus landscapes which returns education to its Greek origin. According to Hugh Fortmiller, associate head and historian of Middlesex School, the campus design was a rather fortuitous consequence of nepotism. School founder, Frederick Winsor, was a close friend of Harvard President, Charles Eliot. As luck would have it, Eliot's son was an avid environmentalist and a partner in Frederick Law Olmsted's firm. After Olmsted gave most of his work to his own son, and after young Eliot's untimely death in 1897, another of Olmsted's sons became a partner. In 1901, the new firm, Olmsted Brothers, was awarded the contract to design the Middlesex landscape.

The original Olmsted plan consisted of over 300 drawings, which are currently archived at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts. According to these plans, the brothers had once experimented with a figure eight design for the central campus. However, the final plan of 1901, which has been kept dutifully intact with respect to the Olmsted Brothers' original wishes, resolved upon an oval, perhaps an homage to the Keplerian ellipse.

There was an attempt in art and architecture to be consistent with scientific thought during this period, in form if not in function. The trend has sometimes been referred to as scientism. However, the apocalyptic first world war swept away the notions of scientific positivism that had predominated for over a century (beginning with Principia in 1789). Yet, the Middlesex Campus reflects the unblinking optimism that pervaded artistic sensibilities in the pre-dawn of the war era. The oval is a vestige of scientistic rationalism at its peak.

The oval serves as a focal point for the 235 acres of emancipated farmland and second growth forest that comprises the campus, including a portion of Thoreau's beloved Estabrook Woods. In the past ten years, students have formed an increasing attachment to this piece of land as the integration of ecology into the core curriculum makes them more passionate about becoming custodians of their environment. In the Spring, when everything is wet, the students make an effort to respect the grassy areas by using roadways and a hardpath that cuts across the diameter of the oval.

Recalling his first encounter with the Middlesex Campus, Spencer Allen, junior class president and next year's school president, described the central oval as the heart of the school. "It's one of the things that drove me to the campus," he said. He remembers people out on the oval playing and having fun. "It was one of the most beautiful schools I had seen. There was a community feeling."

The axis of the oval lies on the compass points, and the original buildings are unconnnected at varying angles and elevations outlining the area without confining it. The original plan created a very formal design with a grand entrance at the West end of the oval with a shallow rise to the main school building, Eliot Hall. However, a very dramatic shift took place after World War I. Distraught by the memory of the war dead, including those who had been students at Middlesex, Frederick Winsor sought to honor their sacrifice with a permanent monument. He proposed building a chapel where the grand entrance had been located.

In the past ten years, students have formed an increasing attachment to this piece of land as the integration of ecology into the core curriculum make them more passionate about becoming custodians of their environment. In the Spring, when everything is wet, the students make an effort to respect the grassy areas by using roadways and a hardpath that cuts across the diameter of the oval.

To the North of the chapel are the dining hall and the social hall. To the South is located the most distinctive feature of the entire landscape.

The attraction begins with a simple entrance gate that was donated by the first graduating class of 1905. Made of wrought iron and brick, the gate animates a delicate arc suggesting a preface to the storied landscape. Mircea Eliade once described the significance of thresholds in the context of architecture. He explained that doorways have unique ceremonial and religious value as the dividing lines between spaces of sacredness and profanity. Whether one realizes it or not, the emergence from a threshold has a strange and profound psychological power. The gate at Middlesex is curious in that it is not connected to a perimeter wall or fortification but stands oddly independent of any supporting structure, gracefully dividing the outlying forest from the school's interior. The transformation upon entering the gate is consummated by a meandering drive that people seem to remember and relive. As one enters the school grounds, evergreens close around the entrance. The drive winds through rolling lawns and past Bateman's Pond where students crew on low slung racing shells which skim across the surface to the rhythm of oars beating time.

During their nearly one hundred year reign as the preeminent landscape design firm in the country two generations of Olmsted's prepared plans for an estimated 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. Among these, New York's Central Park and the Boston Park System stand as testimony to the Olmsted's enduring legacy. Today, the Olmsted Archive at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts preserves over 5,000 original plans and drawings including the entire Middlesex School site plan.

Despite the school's reputation for having preserved its historic identity, however, Fortmiller does admit to certain changes; some the result of age, others as concessions to modernity. Although you wouldn't guess it from looking at the landscape, the element that has changed the most are the school's trees. When Frederick Winsor, his wife Molly, their three children and nine students moved into the farm house on the road to Lowell, the future Middlesex campus was a broad expanse of farmland that had been cleared away from old growth forest. Today, the campus is conspicuous for its sheltering canopies of evergreens and mature deciduous trees.

Middlesex School's wooded forests and surrounding wetlands remind one of how this land might might have appeared when settlers first arrived on the Massachusetts shore, exhausted and frightened from their voyage, and yet invigorated by the prospect of transforming the pristine wilderness into workable farmsteads. The sense of time standing still is an illusion however. Most of these trees were no more than saplings when the first dormitories were being erected. In fact, many of the native Elm that pre-existed the campus were carried off by the Dutch Elm pandemic which swept the continent in the 1930s and took more trees again in the 1950s and 1960s. After the devastation of the plague, a former Middlesex student from the southeast sent a flatbed truck full of Maple and Oak to replant the once proud growth. The trees we see today, the gesture of a grateful Middlesex graduate, are the survivors of this generous gift.

The caretakers of the school have working hard to retain the sylvan parkstead. This has meant a significant investment in placing all of the infrastructure underground. All of the school's heating and wiring have been buried to preserve the unspoiled beauty of the school's rolling lawns. The result is an almost perfect time capsule of turn-of-the-century Massachusetts.

Preserving the legacy of Frederick Winsor and the Olmsted Brothers' grand vision is no small challenge. In the course of 100 years alot can happen that is peripheral to the environment but nevertheless, has significant consequences for the landscape. Contractors and manufacturers go out of business, tools and parts become obsolete, pipes and wiring corrode, reservoirs dry up, pollution from encroaching communities alter the chemistry of the water and atmosphere; there are a myriad of possibilities that have to be weighed, calculated, and understood. The irony of maintaining a "vintage" landscape is that it can cost a great deal of time and money in an effort just to keep things the same.

The transformation upon entering the gate is consummated by a meandering drive that people seem to remember and relive. As one enters the school grounds, evergreens close around the entrance. The drive winds through rolling lawns and past Bateman's Pond where students crew on low slung racing shells, which skim across the surface to the rhythm of oars beating time.

The challenge for Middlesex's immediate future will be providing its students with the facilities they need to stay current with the changes that have occurred in education. The school is in desperate need of a new science facility as well as new dormitories. The problem is there's no where left to go. For the past five years, the school has been mediating with the town of Concord and with local environmental groups over the school's desire to cross wetlands in order to reach high land the school owns to the East. The school has placed one third of its land under permanent protection, primarily to buffer a 750-acre portion of Estabrook Woods that Harvard University manages for the study of flora and fauna. The argument over Middlesex's possible expansion has thus burst the boundaries of what was essentially a staid family debate. Whatever the outcome, Middlesex will continue to attract and nurture students in bucolic serenity. LASN

In their blazers, white pants, and white sun dresses, the senior class line up at Memorial Chapel for the processional to Eliot Hall.