In 1801, on a hilly wooded 20-acre site in Manhattan, New York physician David Hosack founded the Elgin Botanical Garden. Named after his father’s birthplace in Scotland, it was the first public botanical garden in the United States and the first research institution devoted mainly to the cultivation and study of native plants. Its scientific laboratory was critical to the advancement of medicine in America.
Painting, c.1810
Today Rockefeller Center is sited where the Elgin Botanical Garden stood and Dr. David Hosack, perhaps fueled by the popular musical Hamilton, is best remembered as the attending physician at the 1804 duel of his friends and colleagues, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. In her sweeping biography, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, Victoria Johnson elevates Hosack from a historical footnote to his rightful place as a key figure in New York City’s history.
David Hosack as painted by Rembrandt Peale, 1826
Born in Manhattan in 1769, Hosack’s life paralleled the shaping of the new nation and the transformation of New York from a bucolic town to a cosmopolitan city, overtaking Philadelphia in prominence. His prodigious talents and seemingly endless energy for social reform were shaped by the enlightenment. A physician, botanist, educator and civic-minded forward-thinking visionary, Hosack was at the forefront of the creation of many of New York City’s key institutions including the Historical Society, the Horticultural Society, the American Academy of Fine Arts, Bellevue Hospital and the medical school that became Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He seemingly knew everyone and became known as the “First Citizen of New York.”
“View of the Botanic Garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York.” Engraving of drawing by L.Simond, c.1802
However, it was medicine and nature that were his true passions. The son of a Scottish merchant, Hosack received an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and traveled to London and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland to further his medical studies. While there, his experiences of the two cities’ universities and gardens combined with studies in anatomy and botany to provide a new, more holistic way of thinking about medical practice. Convinced that the exploration of the vast, unexplored American wilderness was integral to the advancement of medicine in America, medical botany became an obsession.
An 1837 illustration of Hosackia stolonifera, the wildflower named for David Hosack, image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, Missouri Botanical Garden
Determined to create America’s first Botanical Garden, Hosack purchased land from the City of New York and using his own funds developed a site and managed it as a working farm and horticultural classroom. Seedlings and plants from Thomas Jefferson, William Bartram, Meriwether Lewis and others arrived and European scientists, including Baron Alexander von Humboldt, and Emperor Napoleon’s botanist visited. One of the largest greenhouses in America was built. That the enterprise ultimately failed, from a lack of funding, municipal support and political turmoil, did not diminish the enormity of Hosack’s undertaking.
Drawing of Elgin by Reinagle, frontispiece of Hosack’s Hortus Elginensis catalogue (2nd ed., 1811)
Hosack wrote Hortus Elginensis, a catalogue and visitor’s guide, containing a list of plants under cultivation in the garden.
In American Eden Johnson describes Hosack as an urban pioneer and visionary who, despite skepticism, sought to learn from and celebrate nature. His pioneering efforts foreshadowed many of the environmental practices we take for granted today. These include organizing citizen-scientists to map out native plants before they are overrun by invasive species, advocating for city-wide tree planting for beauty and health and proposing a national system of agricultural stations eighty years before one was established.
View of the David Hosack Estate at Hyde Park, New York, from Western Bank of the Hudson River (from Hosack Album) by Thomas Kelah Wharton
Johnson, an associate professor of urban planning at Hunter College, is an authority on botanical gardens and her expertise makes her uniquely qualified to tell this story through both a historical and contemporary lens. While the accomplishments of Hosack can occasionally overwhelm the reader, Johnson provides a compelling narrative in which to absorb their impact both on and within history’s context.
Eddy, John H. Map of the Country Thirty Miles Round the City of New York. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/s/h1o9di.
Dating from 1811, the map above, was found on the blog of the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s article about John Torrey’s Calendarium Flora for the Vicinity of New York. It shows the Elgin Botanic Garden (now Rockefeller Center) Greenwich (now Greenwich Village), Bloomingdale (now the Upper West Side of Manhattan), and Hoboken, New Jersey.
Wildflowers, from Hosack Albumn. Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Elgin Botanical Garden helped changed how Americans’ perceived the natural world, including their own bodies, and it is remarkable that Hosack’s story has until now been largely forgotten. As we explore new frontiers in medical botany, while struggling with climate change and its implication for plants and the environment, his pioneering work is more relevant than ever.
Author Victoria Johnson will present an illustrated lecture on American Eden: on Saturday, November 10th at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden.
She discusses American Eden on the Cultivating Place episode below:
https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00027&segmentID=5
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