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Building green urban expertise: politicians, agronomists, gardeners and engineers at Lisbon City Council (1840–1900)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2022

Ana Duarte Rodrigues Open the ORCID record for Ana Duarte Rodrigues [Opens in a new window]
Ana Duarte Rodrigues*
Affiliation:
Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e Tecnologia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749–016 Lisboa, Portugal
*
*Corresponding author. Email: amnrodrigues@fc.ul.pt
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Abstract

Focusing on Lisbon's green urban renewal under the liberal regime between 1840 and 1900, this article shows how the construction of green urban infrastructure became a part of the liberal agenda for modernizing the capital. The history of Lisbon's nineteenth-century public gardens and parks and tree-lined avenues has received scant attention, but this article reveals the pioneering role played by Lisbon City Council Department of Gardens and Green Grounds and the subsequent creative adaptation of Parisian green urban renewal programmes to Lisbon. These two phases corresponded to the leadership of different professional groups – gardeners and engineers, whose authority derived not only from their expertise but from their role in the making of scientific authority. Finally, this article highlights how the value ascribed to engineering as being more ‘techno-scientific’ than gardening dictated the outcome of the rivalry between gardeners and engineers with the eventual demise of the Department of Gardens and Green Grounds.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , August 2023 , pp. 404 - 423
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Table of the afforestation of Lisbon in 1858, by species of trees: Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa (AML), correspondence received by the department, 1834–64, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23/cx. 48 DO SGO, 1858; and the statement by Viterbo, S., ‘A jardinagem em Portugal’, in O Instituto. Revista Scientifica e Litteraria (Coimbra, 1907), 291Google Scholar.

2 J.V. Serrão, História de Portugal, 1851–1890, vol. IX (Lisbon, 1986); O. Ferreira and T. Rodrigues, ‘As cidades de Lisboa e Porto na viragem do século XIX – características da sua evolução demográfica: 1864–1930’, Revista de História, 12 (1993), 299–301. The first seven censuses of the Portuguese population were in 1864, 1878, 1890, 1900, 1911, 1920, 1930, plus the extraordinary census of 1925.

3 On Portuguese liberalism, see M. de F. Bonifácio, Seis estudos sobre o liberalismo português (Lisbon, 1991); A.P. Mesquita, Liberalismo, democracia e o contrário: um século de pensamento político em Portugal (1820–1930) (Lisbon, 2006); L. Loia, Liberalismo constitucional, 1826–1926: o pensamento político de Luís de Magalhães (Lisbon, 2008); D. Justino, Fontismo: liberalismo numa sociedade iliberal (Alfragide, 2016). In this period, Lisbon's urban history has been foremost studied from the perspective of art history. See R.H. da Silva, ‘Lisboa romântica, urbanismo e arquitectura, 1777–1874’, NOVA University of Lisbon Ph.D. thesis, 1994; and J.-A. França, Lisboa física e moral (Lisbon, 2008).

4 Sardica, J.M., ‘Os partidos políticos no Portugal oitocentista (discursos historiográficos e opiniões contemporâneas)’, Análise Social, 32 (1997), 557–601 Google Scholar.

5 On the construction of the techno-scientific nation by engineers, military men and politicians, see Saraiva, T., ‘Inventing the technological nation: the example of Portugal (1851–1898)’, History and Technology, 23 (2007), 263–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A.C. de Matos, ‘Gas industry and urban modernisation: Lisbon in the 19th and 20th centuries’, Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles, 2009; M. Macedo, Projectar e construir a nação: engenheiros, ciência e território em Portugal no século XIX (Lisbon, 2012); M.P. Diogo and A.C. de Matos, ‘Going public: the first Portuguese national engineering meeting and the popularization of the image of the engineer as an artisan of progress (Portugal, 1931)’, Engineering Studies, 4 (2012), 185–204.

6 Grey infrastructure refer to railways, sewage and other technical infrastructure, while green infrastructure refer to the making of public parks, boulevards, tree-lined streets, squares and all public spaces that include botanical species. The terms grey and green infrastructure have been used by the history of technology, environmental history and urban history. See, for example, Y. Depietri and T. McPhearson, ‘Integrating the grey, green, and blue in cities: nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and risk reduction’, in N. Kabisch, H. Korn, J. Stadler and A. Bonn (eds.), Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas. Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions (Cham, 2017), 91–109; A. Bassi, A. Cuéllar, G. Pallaske and L. Wuennenberg, Stormwater Markets: Concepts and Applications (Ottawa, 2017), 3. Blogs dedicated to environmental issues have also discussed cities’ infrastructure by using these terms. See, for instance, J. Talberth and C. Hanson, ‘Green vs. gray infrastructure: when nature is better than concrete’, Blog of the World Resource Institute, 19 Jun. 2012; J. Talberth, E. Gray, L. Yonavjak and T. Gartner, ‘Green vs. gray: nature's solutions to infrastructure demands’, Blog of the Ecology Global Network, 14 Mar. 2013.

7 Synopse dos principaes actos administrativos da Camara Municipal de Lisboa no anno de 1840 (Lisbon, 1841), 11.

8 C. Hamlin, Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain, 1800–1854 (Cambridge, 1998); M.V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, 2000); Highmore, B., ‘Street life in London: towards a rhythm analysis of London in the late nineteenth century’, New Formations, 47 (2002), 171–93Google Scholar; L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven, 2005).

9 Rodrigues, A.D., ‘O que é um jardineiro? Nomes, privilégios e funções de hortelãos e jardineiros na Idade Moderna em Portugal’, Tritão, 1 (2012), 299–308 Google Scholar.

10 The bibliography on Parisian renewal has focused on Haussmann and only a few works are dedicated to Alphand, who led the construction of green infrastructure and was the mayor of Paris from 1867. On Alphand, see Komara, A., ‘Measure and map: Alphand's contours of construction at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris 1867’, Landscape Journal, 28 (2009), 22–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G.F. Shapiro, The Promenades of Paris: Alphand and the Urbanization of Garden Art, 1852–1871 (Philadelphia, 2015); R. Hopkins, Planning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris (Baton Rouge, 2015); M. Audouy, J.-P. Le Dantec, Y. Nussaume and C. Santini (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand – Création et transmission d'un paysage urbain (Paris, 2018).

11 S. Dierig, J. Lachmund and J.A. Mendelsohn, ‘Introduction: toward an urban history of science’, Osiris, 2nd series, 18 (2003), 1–19.

12 D. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago, 2003).

13 M. Dagenais and P.-Y. Saunier, ‘Tales of the periphery: an outline survey of municipal employees and services in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in M. Dagenais, I. Mayer and P.-Y. Saunier (eds.), Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches (Abingdon, 2016), 13.

14 C. Rabier (ed.), Fields of Expertise: A Comparative History of Expert Procedures in Paris and London, 1600 to Present (Newcastle, 2007); H.M. Collins, ‘Expert systems and the science of knowledge’, in W.E. Bijker, T.P. Hughes and T.J. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2012); D. Rodogno, B. Struck and J. Vogel (eds.), Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s (New York and Oxford, 2015); H. Collins, R. Evans, D. Durant and M. Weinel, Experts and the Will of the People: Society, Populism and Science (Cham, 2019).

15 Among the prolific works on this topic, see Buchanan, R.A., ‘Science and engineering: a case study in British experience in the mid-nineteenth century’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 32 (1978), 215–23Google Scholar; idem, The Engineers: A History of the Engineering Profession in Britain, 1750–1914 (London, 1989); A. Picon, L'invention de l'ingénieur modern: l’École des ponts et chaussées, 1747–1851 (Paris, 1994); idem, ‘Engineers and engineering history: problems and perspectives’, History and Technology, 20 (2004), 421–36.

16 Komara, A., ‘Concrete and the engineered picturesque: the Parc des Buttes Chaumont (Paris, 1867)’, Journal of Architectural Education, 58 (2004), 5–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strohmayer, U., ‘Urban design and civic spaces: nature at the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris’, Cultural Geographies, 13 (2006), 557–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Picon, A., ‘Nature et ingénierie: le parc des Buttes-Chaumont ’, Romantisme, 150 (2010), 35–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O. Hochadel and L. Valls, ‘Civic nature: the transformation of the Parc de la Ciutadella into a space for popular science’, in O. Hochadel and A. Nieto-Galan (eds.), Barcelona. An Urban History of Science and Modernity, 1888–1929 (London, 2016), 25–45; Audouy et al. (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand.

17 H. Conway, People's Parks (Cambridge, 1991); idem, Public Parks (Princes Risborough, 1996); R. Rosenzweig and E. Blackmar, The Park and the People (Ithaca, 1992); H. Schencker, Melodramatic Landscapes: Urban Parks in the Nineteenth Century (Charlottesville, 2009); Rodrigues, A.D., ‘Greening the city of Lisbon under the French influence of the second half of the nineteenth-century’, Garden History, 45 (2017), 224–50Google Scholar.

18 Lawrence, H.W., ‘Origins of the tree-lined boulevard’, Geographical Review, 78 (1988), 355–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Winter, London's Teeming Streets 1830–1914 (London, 1993); A.B. Jacobs, E. Macdonald and Y. Rofé, The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards (Cambridge, MA, 2002); H.W. Lawrence, City Trees: A Historical Geography from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century (Charlottesville and London, 2008); F.R.V. Monteiro, The Modern Avenue: Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Regent Street, Avenida da Liberdade (Casal de Cambra, 2015); M. Johnston, Trees in Towns and Cities: A History of British Urban Arboriculture (Oxford, 2015); idem, Street Trees in Britain: A History (Oxford, 2017); A. Collantes de Téran et al., Las alamedas. Elemento urbano y función social em ciudades españolas y americanas (Seville, 2019).

19 Audouy et al. (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand.

20 Sawyer, S.W., ‘Définir un intérêt particulier parisien. Les élections et l'administration municipal de Paris au milieu du XIXe siècle’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 64 (2009), 407–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Pinon, ‘La création d'un service des Promenades et Plantations’, in Audouy et al. (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand, 90–2.

21 J.C. Machado, Novo guia do viajante em Lisboa: Cintra, Collares, Mafra, Batalha, Setúbal, 3rd edn (Lisbon, 1872).

22 Ibid .

23 A. Dry, Vers l'Occident. Nord du Maroc, Andalousie, Lisbonne (Paris, 1899), 255.

24 Z. d'Aça, Lisboa moderna (Lisbon, 1906).

25 This occurred in the international historiography mentioned in n. 6 but also regarding studies on Lisbon: Silva, ‘Lisboa romântica’; França, Lisboa física e moral; Ferreira and Rodrigues, ‘As cidades de Lisboa e Porto’; de Matos, ‘Gas industry’.

26 Mesquita, Liberalismo, democracia e o contrário; Loia, Liberalismo Constitucional; Justino, Fontismo.

27 Silva, C.N. da, ‘Conceitos oitocentistas de cidadania: liberalismo e igualdade’, Análise Social, 14 (2009), 533–63Google Scholar.

28 E.F. de Oliveira, Elementos para a história do município de Lisboa, vol. I (Lisbon, 1887), 41.

29 Ibid .; M.G. Martins, A evolução municipal de Lisboa: pelouros e vereações (Lisbon, 1996), 25; P.J. Fernandes, As faces de proteu: elites urbanas e o poder municipal em Lisboa de finais do século XVIII a 1851 (Lisbon, 1999), 167–89.

30 Audouy et al. (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand, 34–7.

31 Hamlin, Public Health; Melosi, Sanitary City.

32 A.F. da Silva, ‘Thirsting for efficiency: technological and transaction-cost explanations for the municipalisation of water supplies’, in A.D. Rodrigues and C.M. Marin (eds.), The History of Water Management in the Iberian Peninsula between the 16th and 19th Centuries (Cham, 2020), 89–110.

33 Silva, ‘Lisboa romântica’.

34 Synopse, 1840, 114. 1,000 réis was equivalent to £7,67: H.M. Filho, ‘Exchange rates of the mil-reis (1795–1913)’, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, 5210 (2007), 16.

35 AML, session of Lisbon City Council, 17 Jan. 1884.

36 ‘Regulamento do pelouro dos Passeios e Arvoredos’, in Annaes do Municipio de Lisboa, 43, Jul. 1859, 355–9.

37 This data corresponds to the salaries earned in 1859. AML, correspondence, 1834–64, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 48 do SGO, doc. 7.

38 Orçamento geral da CML para o ano económico de 1874–1875 (Lisbon, 1875).

39 On this topic, see A.D. Rodrigues and A. Simões, ‘A liberal garden: the Estrela Garden and the meaning of being public’, in A. Simões and M.P. Diogo (eds.), Science, Technology and Medicine in the Making of Lisbon (1840–1940) (Leiden, forthcoming 2022).

40 Annaes, 1858, 102.

41 More than half of the council presidents of the second half of the nineteenth century belonged to this political formation. Its leaders were Fontes Pereira de Melo (1856–87), António de Serpa Pimentel (1887–1900), Ernesto Rodolfo Hintze Ribeiro (1900–07), Júlio de Vilhena (1907–09) and António Teixeira de Sousa (1909–10). In 1901, the dissidence of a faction led by João Franco gave rise to the Liberal Regenerator Party.

42 Synopse, 1850, 7.

43 See J.D. Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (London and Cambridge, 1994).

44 Komara, ‘Concrete and the engineered picturesque’; Picon, ‘Nature et ingénierie’.

45 ‘Regulamento’.

46 Report from 1859, Archivo Municipal de Lisboa, 8, Feb. 1860, 61.

47 Payroll for the employees of the Department of Gardens and Green Grounds for the week ending on 10 Nov. 1869. AML, Mapas de trabalho e despesa, 1869, PT/AMLSB/CMLSB/OMUN-C/13.

48 As the abundant iconography of the Estrela Garden highlights, which, for reasons of space, cannot be included within this article. This iconography is published in A.D. Rodrigues, Horticultura para todos (Lisbon, 2017), 30–40; and A.D. Rodrigues, O triunfo dos jardins: o pelouro dos passeios e arvoredos de Lisboa (1840–1900) (Lisbon, 2020), 431–50.

49 Ferreira, T., ‘Escolas infantis ou jardins Froebel: apontamentos para a sua história em Portugal’, Froebel: Revista de Instrucção Primária, 1 (1882), 2–3 Google Scholar.

50 AML, session of Lisbon City Council, 16 Mar. 1882.

51 Rodrigues, Horticultura para todos, 113–66.

52 M. Johnston, The Tree Experts: A History of Professional Arboriculture in Britain (Oxford, 2021).

53 D.O. Junior, ‘Chronica’, Jornal de Horticultura Pratica (1873), 60.

54 Table of the afforestation of Lisbon in 1858.

55 Urban space was dominated by elms, both in Paris and London. For example, elms, limes and sycamores are mentioned in Johnston, Street Trees in Britain.

56 All the items of this specialized library are published in Rodrigues, ‘Greening the city of Lisbon’, 241–5.

57 A.D. Rodrigues and A. Simões, ‘Horticulture in Portugal 1850–1900: the role of science and public utility in shaping knowledge’, Annals of Science, 74 (2017), 192–213.

58 Boletim da Real Sociedade Nacional de Horticultura de Portugal, 5 (1899), 78; and 7 (1900), 98.

59 Rodrigues, ‘O que é um jardineiro?’.

60 Letter from the amateur Sebastião Estácio da Veiga to the municipal gardener João Francisco da Silva, requiring lessons on botany. AML, correspondence, 1865–1881, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, cx. 49 do SGO, 1865, doc. 15.

61 AML, session of Lisbon City Council, 5 Apr. 1883.

62 Alves, B.A., ‘Plantas florestaes e de ornamento naturalizadas na Quinta do Lumiar’, Archivo Rural. Jornal de Agricultura, Artes e Sciencias Correlativas, 1 (1858), 323–5Google Scholar.

63 Catálogo das plantas e sementes de flores e hortaliças (Lisbon, 1830 and 1850).

64 B.A. Alves and J. Bonnard, Énumération des végétaux cultivés à Lisbonne (Portugal) par la Compagnie Horticole. 1854 à 1855 (Paris, 1854).

65 S. Viterbo, A jardinagem em Portugal (Lisbon, 1906), 741.

66 AML, correspondence, 1865–81, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 49 do SGO, 1871, doc. 6.

67 Ibid ., docs. 11 and 14.

68 Letter from the amateur Sebastião Estácio da Veiga to the municipal gardener João Francisco da Silva, requesting botany lessons. AML, correspondence, 1865–81, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, cx. 49 do SGO, 1865, doc. 15.

69 F. Le Cunff, ‘Parques e jardins de Lisboa, 1764–1932. Do Passeio Publico ao Parque Eduardo VII’, NOVA University of Lisbon M.Sc. dissertation, 2000, 176.

70 Archivo Municipal de Lisboa, 210, 1863, 1678.

71 Committee's opinion on the species to grow on the avenue. AML, correspondence, 1865–81, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 49A do SGO, 1882, doc. 50.

72 The role model for the Avenida da Liberdade could only be the Champs Élysées as the greatest amount of information arriving at Lisbon City Council dealt with this boulevard. This weakens the theory presented by Monteiro, The Modern Avenue.

73 The Republican Party appeared in 1872 but had almost no expression until 1890 and was banished from the political regime from 1891 to 1906. It stems from the ideals of the 1789 French Revolution and was founded on the belief that it was not liberalism that republicanism had to displace, but the interpretation that was implemented in the Portuguese Chartist constitutional regime, concerning political, social and economic affairs. Republicanism intended to overcome the commitment institutionalized by the constitutional monarchy, which was biased towards liberal values and wanted to establish a regime based on freedom, equality and fraternity. The party's return to power in 1906 led to the end of monarchy in 1910 and the implementation of the Republic.

74 Buchanan, The Engineers.

75 Buchanan, ‘Science and engineering’; A. Carneiro, M.P. Diogo, A. Simões and M. Troca, ‘Portuguese engineering and the colonial project in the nineteenth-century’, Icon, 6 (2000), 160–75.

76 Buchanan, ‘Science and engineering’, 219–21.

77 Picon, L'invention de l'ingénieur modern; Berlanstein, L.R., ‘Managers and engineers in French big business of the nineteenth century’, Journal of Social History, 22 (1988), 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 AML, correspondence, 1865–81, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 49A do SGO, 1884, doc. 26.

79 Opinion of the commission appointed by the CML to deliberate on the species to be planted on the Avenue. AML, correspondence, 1865–81, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 49A do SGO, 1882, doc. 50.

80 AML, correspondence, 1865–81, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 49A do SGO, 1884, doc. 26.

81 AML, session of Lisbon City Council, minute of 17 Jan. 1884.

82 Damage to the grove caused by wood merchants on the 24 de Julho Avenue; by the Telephone Company on the Avenida da Liberdade; and a disturbance in the Estrela Garden. AML, correspondence, 1880–89, PT/AMLSB/AL/CMLSB/UROB-E/23, Cx. 50 do SGO, 1886, docs. 16, 17 and 58.

83 The committee included the engineer António Maria de Avelar, the city council's architect José Luís Monteiro, the forest engineer Pedro Roberto da Cunha e Silva, Ressano Garcia and Jules Daveau: Le Cunff, Parques e jardins de Lisboa, 177–9.

84 Luisa Limido, ‘La formation des architectes-paysagistes depuis Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps’, in Audouy et al. (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand, 75–89.

85 Rodrigues, ‘Greening the city of Lisbon’, 232–7.

86 C. Santini, ‘Construire le paysage de Paris. Alphand et ses équipes (1855–1891)’, in Audouy et al. (eds.), Le grand Pari(s) d'Alphand, 37.

87 Santini, ‘Construire le paysage de Paris’, 38.

88 AML, session of Lisbon City Council, 2 Jan. 1904.