4 The art and architecture of the bandstand

Early designs

Despite the popularity of the ‘orchestras’ in the early pleasure gardens in Vauxhall and Cremorne, by 1851, as the catalogue for the Great Exhibition demonstrates by their absence, bandstands were still not commonplace enough for them to attract the attention of manufacturers. In fact, where a bandstand was required, it was often adequate to erect a temporary structure for the occasion. As previously referred to, at a fete in Mount Boone Park, Dartmouth, South Devon, in 1852, the band was placed in a ‘rustic orchestra’, and on Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 1856, the orchestra had been fixed in a hollow near the cricket ground. At Basford Park fete in Nottinghamshire in 1859, the band was performing upon an orchestra raised for it in the grounds. In South Park, Darlington, County Durham, the winters of the early 1890s were extremely hard and the ornamental lake in front of the park’s first bandstand – ‘a little wooden structure with a canvas top’ – froze solid for seven weeks.

The earliest inspiration for the design and development of the many new public parks and the facilities within included buildings such as lodges, shelters, boathouses, band houses, pagodas, monuments and sculptures and such inspiration came from the many private parks and pleasure gardens of the 18th century. Palm houses and winter gardens were developed in the early years of the 19th century before public parks even came into being and were found not only on the many grand estates throughout the country, but within the many pleasure gardens. As described, the early forms of the bandstand primarily had their precedent in the pleasure gardens in London.

Simultaneously, the early advent of bandstands in North America followed a similar path to the United Kingdom. Bandstands there were often perceived purely as functional pieces of civic architecture, usually placed within civic squares. However, a fresh current in landscape architecture caused North Americans to increasingly view bandstands and similar structures as vital links between people and nature. This new sensibility dictated that the bandstand should fit picturesquely into a pastoral landscape. This bucolic conception of the bandstand had been set forth by landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing in A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening. ‘There is scarcely a prettier or more pleasant object for the termination of a long walk in the pleasure grounds or park than a neatly thatched structure of rustic work.’ The gazebos he contrived to fill this function were in fact prototypes for a new form of rustic bandstand that followed the decadent Chinoiserie style of the pleasure gardens.