Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) planned many parks and park systems across the United States, leaving an enduring legacy of designed public space that is enjoyed and defended today. His public parks, the design of which he was most proud, have had a lasting effect on urban America.
The final chronologically arranged volume in the series, it will present the last stage of Olmsted's career, with a firm that included his former students Henry Sargent Codman and Charles Eliot as new partners. During this time Olmsted concentrated his energies on his two last great commissions: one was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 on the site of the Chicago South Park that he and Vaux had designed in 1871, with subsequent redesigning of Jackson Park and the Midway; the other was the extensive Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. There will also be correspondence concerning the development of the park systems of Louisville, Kentucky, and proposals for park systems in Milwaukee and Kansas City. The volume will present some of the remarkable retrospective letters he wrote to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer and his son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. It will conclude with several undated and unfinished writings on the history and principles of landscape design.
These papers document the personal and professional life of the foremost landscape architect in American history. Frederick Law Olmsted relocated from New York to the Boston area in the early 1880s. With the help of his stepson and partner, John Charles Olmsted, his professional office grew to become the first of its kind: a modern landscape architecture practice with park, subdivision, campus, residential, and other landscape design projects throughout the country. During the period covered in this volume, Olmsted and his partners, apprentices, and staff designed the exceptional park system of Boston and Brookline—including the Back Bay Fens, Franklin Park, and the Muddy River Improvement. Olmsted also designed parks for New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, and Detroit and created his most significant campus plans for Stanford University and the Lawrenceville School. The grounds of the U.S. Capitol were completed with the addition of the grand marble terraces that he designed as the transition to his surrounding landscape. Many of Olmsted’s most important private commissions belong to these years. He began his work at Biltmore, the vast estate of George Washington Vanderbilt, and designed Rough Point at Newport, Rhode Island, and several other estates for members of the Vanderbilt family. Olmsted wrote more frequently on the subject of landscape design during these years than in any comparable period. He would never provide a definitive treatise or textbook on landscape architecture, but the articles presented in this volume contain some of his most mature and powerful statements on the practice of landscape architecture.
The biggest and best single-volume collection ever published of the fascinating and wide-ranging writings of a vitally important nineteenth century cultural figure whose work continues to shape our world today. Seaman, farmer, abolitionist, journalist, administrator, reformer, conservationist, and without question America’s foremost landscape architect and urban planner, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was a man of unusually diverse talents and interests, and the arc of his life and writings traces the most significant developments of nineteenth century American history. As this volume reveals, the wide-ranging endeavors Olmsted was involved in—cofounding The Nation magazine, advocating against slavery, serving as executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission (precursor to the Red Cross) during the Civil War, championing the preservation of America’s great wild places at Yosemite and Yellowstone—emerged from his steadfast commitment to what he called “communitiveness,” the impulse to serve the needs of one’s fellow citizens. This philosophy had its ultimate expression is his brilliant designs for some of the country’s most beloved public spaces: New York’s Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Boston’s “Emerald Necklace,” the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, garden suburbs like Chicago’s Riverside, parkways (a term he invented) and college campuses, the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and many others. Gathering almost 100 original letters, newspaper dispatches, travel sketches, essays, editorials, design proposals, official reports, reflections on aesthetics, and autobiographical reminiscences, this deluxe Library of America volume is profusely illustrated with a 32-page color portfolio of Olmsted’s design sketches, architectural plans, and contemporary photographs. It also includes detailed explanatory notes and a chronology of Olmsted’s life and design projects. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Readers concerned with the quality of the environment in which we live and work, as well as architects, landscape architects, urban planners, historians, and preservationists, will find stimulating insights in Plans and Views of Communities and Private Estates.
A reporter’s account of the people, culture, and terrain of Texas in the mid-1800s. Frederick Olmsted was a journalist when he made his journey through Texas. Tasked with covering the state of slavery during the quiet years before the Civil War, he took copious notes about the people, places, and cultures of the Texas of his day. These notes, in the form of a journal, would become his seminal work, Olmsted’s Texas Journey. In Olmsted’s Texas Journey, the reader gets to travel back in time and witness Texas as it once was, and see how today’s Texas, with its variety of peoples and traditions, still shares a deep connection to the richness of its past. But his great Texas journey was in fact so much more. As he made his way to that great state, he took copious and wonderful notes of all the others he passed through. From Maryland to California, and Ohio to Louisiana, Olmsted’s great history chronicles every detail that he observed. This truly is a classic piece of American literature.
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