Kevin A. Roberts
When Chris Carl started to work on his plan for transforming the empty lot across from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation into a rain garden, he anticipated digging up remnants of old structures. But when he made that first diagonal cut and came upon architectural treasures, “we just kept pulling more and more out,” the landscape artist, designer, and Studio Land Arts founder says—and then he made them a part of the garden.
The vision for the new outdoor space, Park-Like, is morphing as Carl gets further into the project, but it started with an altruistic motive: The Pulitzer wanted to be a good neighbor, not just to the residents across the street or the Contemporary Art Museum, next door, but also to the birds, bees, and other animals who call the area home. A ton of water flowed down from the Fox Theatre’s parking lot—and the idea for a rain garden, a place where water can run off the lot and sit for 72 hours before evaporating so as not to flood the sewer, was born. Opening to visitors this month, its mounds will be lush with native plantings, including grasses, sedges, and flowering plants such as milkweed. A winding pathway will allow visitors to admire what Carl envisions as a wild roadside: “In two or three years’ time, it will really transform what you see there. Now you see the structure, but all that will melt away and it’ll become something else. It will become more about plant material than the structure of the garden.”
Part of the intrigue has been working with the site as it reveals itself. When Carl uncovered the pieces of buildings, he wanted to be “as resilient and flexible as possible, so we just started saving them.” He’s worked the interesting pieces into the landscape. Staff from the Pulitzer also did research to find that some of the remnants came from an old social club on the site. Carl’s favorite? A piece of a Corinthian capital. “It speaks to a way of working and a way of making our built environment that just doesn’t happen anymore.”
