Master Plans
While a cultural landscape report often focuses on the past and present, a master plan for a historic site charts a course for the future. In fact, a cultural landscape report can serve as a perfect starting point for a master plan, offering ways to implement the cultural landscape report’s treatment recommendations. As well as offering guidance as a historic resource preservation tool, master plans address complementary issues such as staffing and funding needs.
Liz Sargent HLA works with each client to define the parameters of their master plan, typically looking 15 to 20 years into a site’s future. Teams assembled to prepare master plans are often multi-disciplinary and might include architects, environmental specialists, and planners.
While we work with a network of experts with whom we have developed relationships over the years, Liz Sargent HLA is always open to recommendations from clients for new team members. We regularly serve as the lead consultant or as a subconsultant to another firm that might be taking the lead on the project.
Fort Negley Master Plan
Metro Nashville is engaged in enhancing historic Fort Negley, a Civil War-era Union fortification and associated grounds near downtown. Local and regional scholars and academics have uncovered a wealth of stories tied to the grounds that relate to emancipation, self-determination, community development, and racial conflict for African Americans since the Civil War.
The master plan for Fort Negley endeavors to tell these stories within an inclusive environment. While the master plan covers preservation and management of the fort and its immediate environs, the surrounding landscape carries the memories of self-emancipating former enslaved persons who traveled to the fort for protection by the Union army, and later remained to form Nashville’s first post-Emancipation African American neighborhood. Interpretive trails, commemorative markers, and open space suitable for gatherings are among the features articulated in the master plan.
Project Credits:
Client: Metro Nashville
Prime Contractor: Hodgson Douglas Landscape Architects (HDLA)
Historical Landscape Architect: Liz Sargent HLA
Oatlands Historic House and Gardens Master Plan
Oatlands Historic House and Gardens, a former plantation in Northern Virginia dating from the early 19th century, is a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The staff of Oatlands, along with the National Trust, determined that a master plan was the best tool for guiding historic preservation of the property while also accommodating tourism, educational programming, and community events.
Our work on the master plan identified historic landscape features meriting preservation, while exploring ways to connect visitors with the stories behind those features through new interpretive trails. To accentuate the layered history of Oatlands, we proposed trails that intersected via hubs where different eras could be compared and contrasted. The trails connected visitors with both buildings and the larger landscape, pointing out historic natural and agricultural features.
In addition to trail design, the master plan featured concepts for accommodating a new approach road, visitor center, and event space within the farm precinct.
Project Credits:
Client: National Trust for Historic Preservation Site
Prime Contractor: John Milner Associates, Inc.
Historical Landscape Architect: Liz Sargent
Stratford Hall Master Plan
Stratford Hall, the seat of the Lee family and home to two signers of the Declaration of Independence, is operated today by a private nonprofit organization that preserves and
interprets its history. As part of a master plan for the property, which lies along the Potomac River in Westmoreland County, we developed detailed design and interpretive concepts for a network of trails across the 2,000-acre site.
The trail design was intended to balance several priorities, including accessibility; minimal environmental impact; “landing places” to sit and enjoy a story and a view; and connections to natural and cultural features of the property.
We also articulated a series of themed trails to highlight aspects of the property’s history,including the experiences of Indigenous residents before European settlement; the Lees’ Great House; the enslaved African Americans who built and kept the plantation running; and the influences of English Enlightenment thought on landscape and garden design.
Project Credits:
Client: Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation
Prime Contractor: Glavé & Holmes Architecture
Historical Landscape Architecture: Liz Sargent HLA
