Maine Memory Network

In 1915, Carl Rust Parker developed a circulation plan for the roads on the southern end of Good Will's Campus. A circulation plan is a projection or model of how pedestrians and vehicles will move through an area.

Parker's original plans included the design for Prescott Drive at the south end of campus. Prescott Drive is the main thoroughfare at Good Will. It begins with a stone entrance off of Route 201 and ends on Page Terrace.

Parker's drawings for Prescott Drive included a plan for a pond, the "artificial," which is located behind the L.C. Bates Museum. The artificial was built partly for aesthetic reasons, and partly as a source of water for putting out fires on the campus.

As time went on it was used by the children on campus for ice skating and other recreational activities. Today, the artificial is used for educational programming by the L.C. Bates Museum.

A view of Good Will before the construction of the "artificial" shows a low area, to the right of the road, that is the future site of the pond.

In addition to creating the pond and planning the campus roads, Parker also chose the placement of the sugar maple trees along the campus' winding roads.

Between 1924 and 1928, while working for Olmsted Bros., Carl Rust Parker created landscape plans for Good Will's new cottages and the girls' school.

These plans included the stone entrance at the north end of Bates Drive. The stone used in the construction of the Bates Drive entrance was collected locally.

One of the difficulties in designing the campus was connecting the campus roads to the main highway.

As of January 1929, when the stone for the entrance to Bates Drive was being gathered, rumors were swirling that the highway through Hinckley (which was then being built) was going to be moved, affecting the placement of the Bates Drive entrance to the campus.

Although many of the Olmsted Bros. ideas for the Good Will campus were realized, some, such as the placement of a campus museum with Moody Chapel and Averill High School (as seen in this blueprint) were not.

Parker had also hoped to build a dedicated science building, several memorial fountains and a separate agricultural school with a dairy in the basement.

As with many of the buildings at Good Will, Carl Rust Parker chose the location for the Prescott Administration Building. His letters to George Walter Hinckley show his reasoning for its placement.

Parker stated that Prescott should be placed in a commanding position, and be easily accessible from the railroad, highway and the rest of the campus.

The final location chosen for the Prescott Building was on high ground, overlooking both the campus and the Kennebec River.

In addition to placing many of the buildings and the roads on campus, Parker designed the school's outdoor athletic facilities, including the baseball diamond, tennis courts and 9-hole golf course.

As a landscape architect, Carl Rust Parker not only planned the locations of roads and buildings at Good Will, but also the locations and types of plants.

Many of the plants chosen for Good Will were shrubs and flowering plants like roses and honeysuckle.

After the original Prescott Building (pictured) was destroyed by fire, Carl Rust Parker advised the school on how to transplant and care for the shrubs and other plants that were growing around the building so that they could be re-used once Prescott was rebuilt.

Parker also designed the lawns at Good Will. In an effort to enrich the sandy soil on which the campus stood, he planned to plant corn and potatoes where existing and proposed lawns stood for one year, after which they would be plowed under. This was to be followed by planting oats and rye.

The following spring the lawns were to be seeded with a mix of rough stalked meadow grass, orchard green, alsyke, crested dogtail, meadow foxtail and perennial ryegrass.

Part of the philosophy of Good Will was to provide children with opportunities for outdoor recreation.

In the area of the Good Will campus known as Sunset Park, George Walter Hinckley developed walking trails. Along these trails were placed monuments, gardens, trees, and two trail-side museums.

The entrances to many of the walking trails were marked with monuments, such as these pillars at the entrance of the Dartmouth Trail.

G.W. Hinckley was the driving force behind the monuments and memorials at Good Will-Hinckley.

He explained his view in 1939: "Memorials are valuable because: First, they take us into the past and show us why we should be grateful; second, they inspire us to emulate the examples memorialized; and third, they beckon us into the future."

The stones used to build monuments along the trails at Good Will sometimes had special significance. In the case of Roosevelt Tablet, erected in honor of Theodore Roosevelt in 1921, a stone was obtained from Roosevelt's estate at Sagamore Hill.

Murray Tablets, another of the monuments along the trails at Good Will, was built north of Uncle Ed's Road on the campus. Constructed on the highest point of land at Good Will Farm,

Murray Tablets became a popular picnic spot, in part because it provided a clear view over the central Maine landscape.

Jaehne Shell House was one of two trail-side museums at Good Will. Herman and Paul Jaehne donated many items to Good Will before retiring to Florida in 1941, including a large collection of shells. The Jaehne Shell House was built in order to house that collection.

Granite House, the other of the two trail-side museums, was designed by Charles D. Hubbard (1876-1951). It contained Hubbard's paintings of nine Maine stone quarries along with samples of Maine granite.

Surrounding Granite House was a large garden of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, some of which can be seen in this picture.

Over time the landscape of Good Will has changed a great deal. Trees have grown where there were once fields, and several of the buildings, such as the Fogg and Christian Endeavor cottages (seen here) are no longer standing.

Despite all that has happened to the campus over the years, the landscape still remains very much the child of George Walter Hinckley, Charles Rust Parker and the Olmsted Brothers.