Celebrating 200 years since the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted

Today, April 26, 2022, in honour of the bicentennial of the birth of Frederik Law Olmsted, the most revered figure in the history of American landscape architecture, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) unveiled What's Out There Olmsted a wonderfully illustrated digital guide to more than 300 North American landscapes designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (a 2:37-minute video below offers a preview of the content).

Olmsted, Sr. is well known as the co-designer of New York City’s iconic Central Park, but his legacy, and that of his successor firms, is vast.

Featuring landscapes from Maine, Massachusetts, Illinois, Canada, his home state of Connecticut, and 26 others, the guide offers a mapping system and database with important biographical information nearly 100 biographical entries about the Olmsted family and the firm’s many employees, consultants, and collaborators, and even details about works of his successor firms.

Plan of Central Park, c. 1875. Black ink on linen, 24 x 74 inches. This plan shows work both planned and completed as of the mid-1870s. It includes Drives, Rides, Walks, bridges, named gates, and major structures as well as several buildings that were being planned at the time but were never completed.

The 20th in the TCLF’s series of “What’s Out There” guides, (including six guides produced in partnership with the National Park Service). This edition gives equal weight to the 30 National Historic Sites and hundreds of other lesser-known designs associated with Olmsted, including Vermont’s Shelburne Farms and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which he long held to be his masterpiece. Each entry comes with a detailed, 250-word description and information about the site’s topology, style, design team, and related landscapes.

"What’s Out There Olmsted" is optimized for iPhones and similar handheld devices and includes What’s Nearby, a GPS-enabled feature that locates all landscapes within a given distance, customizable by mileage or walking time.

TCLF President and CEO Charles A. Birnbaum is currently finalizing a companion illustrated guide for Timber Press, co-written by Arleyn Levee and Dena Tasse-Winter, titled "Experiencing Olmsted: The Enuring Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted's North American Landscapes". In a statement, he announced that the book will also include a comprehensive examination of Olmsted's legacy, with stories from early Olmsted clients and collaborators such as William Lyman Phillips and Warren H Manning to add new insight into the visual and historical information of his work.

Central Park, Nov 2009 by Ed Yourdon. Image, handheld HDR shot, taken from an area near the southwest corner of Central Park, looking east towards Fifth Avenue.

Frederick Law Olmsted, c.1890, courtesy of the National Park Service.

A daguerreotype of Olmsted writing in winter 1858 at Brookline, MA. Olmsted was an accomplished literary journalist during the Antebellum period before turning to landscape design full-time. Image courtesy National Parks Service.

The park and parkway plan for Baltimore showing the linear parks proposed along Gwynns Falls, Jones Falls and Herring Run streams. Olmsted Brothers, The Development of Public Grounds of Greater Baltimore, 1904.

The gardens at North Carolina's Biltmore Estate were one of the last commissions for Frederick Law Olmsted. Photograph courtesy of The Biltmore Company.

Prospect Park. Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted

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FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

Frederick Law Olmsted. (1822-1903). He was born on April 26, 1822, in Island, New York. Landscape architect, journalist and botanist. He studied at Yale University and after finishing his studies he traveled through Europe and America, learning gardening and agricultural methods. Among his outstanding works, we find Central Park and Prospect Park in New York. As a journalist, he published Walks and Conversations of an American farmer in England in 1852. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted with Calvert Vaux were presented in honour of Andrew Jackson Downing to the contest to be the designers of Central Park. His project solved the problem that Central Park had because of its narrow, rectangular shape. Finally, they were the winners of the competition.

Although the public was satisfied with the creation of the new park, Olmest received a large number of demands for the policy and cost reduction, which caused him in 1861 he leave the Central Park project for a new project: executive secretary of the US Health Commission that treated the injured in the Civil War. His job was to supply the soldiers who were in the middle of war with blankets, food and clothes. In 1863 he traveled to California to manage Mariposa Estate, a gold mining operation.

On his return to New York, in 1865 Vaux and Olmsted created Olmsted, Vaux and Company. It was a defining moment in Olmest's life as he decided that his career would begin to focus on landscape architecture. Together they designed Prospect Park, the park system of New York and Milwaukee and the Niagara Reserve, at Niagara Falls. In Brookline, located in the state of Massachusetts, we highlight the works of Olmest the Emerald Necklace of Boston, the campus of Stanford University and buildings of the World's Columbian Exposition.

In 1872, Olmsted and Vaux decided to finish with the team they had created together, despite having a great demand for projects to be carried out.

Olmsted helped to enhance the architecture of the landscape and to prosper in the United States with his works and ideas so characteristic of the place. Finally, he died on August 28, 1903, at 81 years in Belmont, a town in Massachusetts.

Among other outstanding projects, we find:

- The coordinated system of public parks and avenues of Búfalo (New York).
- The Mount Royal Park, in Montreal (Canada).
- The Emerald Necklace, in Boston (Massachusetts).
- The Cherokee Park including the system of avenues in Louisville (Kentucky).
- Jackson Park, Washington Park and Midway Plaisance in for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
- Part of Detroit Belle Isle Park.
- The gardens of the United States Capitol and the building of George Washington Vanderbilt II.
- The Biltmore Estate, in North Carolina.

Published on: April 26, 2022

Cite: "Celebrating 200 years since the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted" METALOCUS. Accessed

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