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Botanical art helped make nursery one of nation's largest
By Bill Kemp
Archivist/Librarian
McLean County Museum of History
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BLOOMINGTON -- During the 19th century, plant nurseries helped define the Corn Belt landscape. Prairie farmers, to cite several examples, used apple trees for sustenance and market profit; Lombardy poplars and Norway spruce for windbreaks; maples for shade; and Osage orange for hedging. | From Our Past page

In the decade after the Civil War, the largest nursery outside the Eastern states was operated by Franklin K. Phoenix of Bloomington.

“Mr. Phoenix has been a lifelong enthusiastic lover of trees and plants,” The Pantagraph noted in 1900. “He has lived close to the heart of nature and has enjoyed through all his years the beauties and mysteries that are observed by him who studies the growth of plants and flowers.”

True enough. But the large-scale nursery business also was a product of the Industrial Age, dependent on railroads and the interrelated advances in horticultural science, mass communication and marketing.

Nurseries also benefited from the services of skilled botanical artists who took advantage of technological advances in printing. In 1867, Phoenix hired William Henry Prestele to oversee the design and production of hand-colored lithographic prints.

The German-born artist, later joined by his brother, Joseph Jr., produced beautiful yet practical works of art, many of which are on exhibit at the McLean County Museum of History. Salesmen (or “tree peddlers”) under the employ of Phoenix could use these nursery plates to drum up business as they traveled from town to town and farm to farm.

The Phoenix nursery greenhouses, stables, printing shop and other outbuildings were located just east of Illinois Wesleyan University in an area today bordered by Park and Phoenix streets and Fell and University avenues. There were also 600 acres of nursery grounds scattered throughout the eastern edges of Bloomington and Normal.

The virtues of trees

Phoenix grew up in the temperance colony of Delavan, Wis. Even after he left the colony, he railed against social ills such as alcohol and tobacco with an evangelical fervor common to Yankee businessmen of the 19th century. He zealously believed trees were agents of civilization, moral order and prudent economy. “What but trees can ever purge the prairie air of its desert bleakness and desolation?” Phoenix asked in 1858.

The Presteles also were raised in a communal, utopian community. Joseph Prestele, the father of William Henry and Joseph Jr., was an accomplished artist who produced, on both sides of the Atlantic, some of the most accomplished botanical prints of the 19th century.

In 1843, the family came to America as members of the “Community of True Inspiration,” a pietistic splinter of Lutheranism. The Presteles settled outside Buffalo, N.Y., in the Inspirationist community of Ebenezer, where property was held in common and elders dictated work arrangements.

The two brothers left the “Community” for the cosmopolitan life of New York City, though they continued to assist their father by hand-coloring his lithographs. During this period, Inspirationists relocated to eastern Iowa, where they established the communal network of Amana Colonies. In 1870, Joseph Jr. came to Bloomington to join his brother at the Phoenix nursery print shop.

Magazine’s review

The following year, a correspondent for Country Gentleman, a leading agricultural journal published in the East, visited Bloomington “to see the great Phoenix nursery.” The correspondent described the expansive grounds, which included 250 acres of apple trees; 100 acres of grapes and pear, peach and plum trees; 60 acres of hedges and small fruit plants; and 20 acres of evergreens. The business also featured 13 greenhouses and a “bulb house” that contained 150,000 tulips.

Around 300 men worked for Phoenix in the spring and fall (the busiest time in the seasonal nursery business), with that number dropping to 100 in the summer and 75 in the winter.

“Another very interesting branch of the business,” the Country Gentleman added, “is the production of beautiful and accurate fruit and flower plates which are lithographed in black and colored by hand (all from natural specimens) in highly artistic style.”

Lithography involves making engravings on polished limestone tablets that are coated with a gum-like substance. The stone is then inked and the paper pressed onto the stone. The resulting image is hand-colored. William Henry, though, did not engrave on stone like his father. Instead, he probably used chalk or lithographer’s ink (“tusche”) to draw the image directly on stone or transfer paper. Regardless of the technique, these prints had a vibrant newness to them that’s hard to appreciate in our jaded, visually saturated age. These images were undoubtedly the first color pictures many Phoenix customers had ever seen.

The McLean County Museum of History exhibit, “Gifts to the Prairie: The Work of Pioneer Nurserymen and the Art of the Prestele Family,” runs through Nov. 3. An exhibit catalog, note card set and a selection of matted prints, all of which feature the stunning work of the Presteles, are available for sale.

Take a look
This print of a pomme grise apple, a variety of dessert apple, is representative of the work of William Henry Prestele and Joseph Prestele Jr. Their colored lithographic prints helped drum up business for the nursery operated by Franklin K. Phoenix in Bloomington in the second half of the 19th century. (Courtesy of McLean County Museum of History)
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