A Story by Melissa Farlow

Frederick Law Olmsted | A Passion for Parks, National Geographic

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was the founder of American landscape architecture and most appreciated as the park designer who created the much-loved refuges in our cities.

Best known for his work in Central Park, he collaborated with Calvert Vaux in New York on this first project. Olmsted organized 4,000 workers to move boulders to create meadows and a waterfall, along with knolls, lakes and forested areas. He planted more than 4 millions trees to contrast the stone archways, formal terrace, and steps. Today the city towers over the park, but when Olmsted planned it in the mid-1800s, most New Yorkers lived below 38th street.

As a designer, Olmsted drew on the influence of natural scenery. Much of his inspiration from nature traces …

Frederick Law Olmsted | A Passion for Parks, National Geographic

By Melissa Farlow

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was the founder of American landscape architecture and most appreciated as the park designer who created the much-loved refuges in our cities.

Best known for his work in Central Park, he collaborated with Calvert Vaux in New York on this first project. Olmsted organized 4,000 workers to move boulders to create meadows and a waterfall, along with knolls, lakes and forested areas. He planted more than 4 millions trees to contrast the stone archways, formal terrace, and steps. Today the city towers over the park, but when Olmsted planned it in the mid-1800s, most New Yorkers lived below 38th street.

As a designer, Olmsted drew on the influence of natural scenery. Much of his inspiration from nature traces back to a stint managing California gold mines when he became enthralled with Yosemite Valley and its “placid pools that reflect the wondrous heights.” Advocating for its protection, he laid the groundwork for the National Park System.

Olmsted grew up at a time when city populations were growing rapidly, and waterfronts and open spaces were gobbled up for commerce and industry. Cemeteries were among the few rural settings accessible to city dwellers. Olmsted believed in the restorative effects of natural scenery to counteract what he saw as the debilitating effects of the modern city.

He separated his “pleasure grounds” with thick screening of plants along the borders. He believed the experience would serve to strengthen society by providing a place where all classes could mingle in contemplation and enjoyment of pastoral experiences.

Olmsted’s legacy includes parks in Brooklyn, Louisville, Buffalo, Chicago, Montreal and Rochester, as well as the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and Niagara Falls. He designed the Stanford University campus as well as the first suburban residential plan located in Chicago where he included open space for parks and parkways.

Biltmore, the private estate planned for George Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Carolina, dominated the last seven years of Olmsted’s life. The grand opus includes a six-acre lake created to reflect the majestic house that he sited on a west-facing hillside surrounded by gardens and woodlands.

Olmsted’s last home was Fairsted in suburban Boston, where he worked and established design offices. Operated today by the National Parks Service in Brookline, the home and workspace houses original plans rolled in papers and stacked haphazardly as they were found in the basement.

Olmsted was a perfectionist, temperamental, and easy to anger when his designs were altered or not followed to the letter. When he developed senility, Olmsted became a patient in McLean Hospital, the grounds of which he had designed years earlier. He spent his last days looking out onto an imperfect landscape that differed from his plans.

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Snow drifts onto the doorway of a cottage at McLean Hospital that once housed mental patients including Frederick Law Olmsted who had earlier designed the grounds of the institution. “Near the end of a long life otherwise steeped in serendipitous good luck and brilliant achievement, Frederick Law Olmsted—maker of our nation’s first great urban parks and founding father of landscape architecture in America—succumbed to a senile dementia so severe it demanded his confinement in this institution he had intended for others a generation before. The year was 1898; the place, Belmont, Massachusetts, not far from Boston. There, asylum staff watched over Olmsted among a cluster of cottages, one called Hope. The name had no relevance to his prognosis. Accompanied by a nurse or a family member, he strolled the grounds, his gift for observation not yet so dulled that he failed to note certain deviations from his original concept. “They didn’t carry out my plans,” he complained to his family. “Confound them!”  John G. Mitchell, National Geographic McLean maintains the world’s largest neuro-scientific and psychiatric research program in a private hospital. It is located near Olmsted’s former offices in Brookline, Massachusettes and is also known for the large number of famous people who have been treated there including mathematician John Nash, poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and musicians James Taylor and Ray Charles.
Bethesda Terrace in New York City’s Central Park is an architectural marvel featuring two grand stone stairways that lead from the upper terrace down to the lake and fountain named ‘Angel of Waters.” Decorative elements carved into the stone represent nature and seasons and are symbolic of day and night. In their master plan for Central Park, the 1858 “Greensward Plan,” Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux proposed an architectural “heart of the Park” defined by a sweeping promenade that would culminate into Bethesda Terrace. The entire terrace is constructed primarily of New Brunswick sandstone, paved with Roman brick, and boasts granite steps and landings.
A stately oak tree stands in the snow-covered grand meadow of Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York.  A symbol of strength and endurance, the oak can live 500 to 600 years and grow up to 100 feet if left undisturbed. Frederick Law Olmsted, America’s first and greatest landscape architect, planned the city’s system of six major parks and connecting parkways representing one of his largest bodies of work. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the system comprises seventy five percent of the city’s parkland. 
During the 1901 Pan American Exposition, Buffalo was celebrated not only as the City of Light, but the City of Trees.
Drummers have gathered informally in a corner of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park every Sunday afternoon since 1968 with a mix of dancers, musicians, and others who listen and participate in the celebratory atmosphere. Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted did not envision Drummers Grove in the 1860s when he and Calvert Vaux planned an urban space of meadows, woodlands, and pastoral views to help people connect with nature in New York.
Families congregate for a block party in Riverside, a Frederick Law Olmsted planned community west of Chicago, Illinois. The entire village was designated a National Historical Landmark in 1970 because of its significance as the first planned community in the U.S. The unique original landscaping of the suburban plan still followed today allows for green space and an open rural feeling.
Flashing lights of a railroad crossing light the night sky in front of the water tower on central village square in Riverside, Illinois. Riverside is the first planned community in the United States, and was commissioned for a design by well-known landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux. An affluent suburban community nine miles west of Chicago, Riverside maintains the original aesthetic charm that was planned to appeal to people desiring a “rural” location. The town might not have ever been popular had it not been for the disastrous Chicago fire of 1871 which served as an impetus for people to move away from the crowded, urban setting. In 1868, an eastern businessman named Emery E. Childs formed the Riverside Improvement Company, and purchased a 1,600-acre tract of property along the Des Plaines River and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad line. The site was highly desirable due to its natural oak-hickory forest and its proximity to the Chicago Loop. In 1869, the town’s plan called for curvilinear streets that followed the land’s contours and the winding Des Plaines River. The plan included a central village square, located at the main railroad station, and a Grand Park system that uses several large parks as a foundation, with forty-one smaller triangular parks and plazas located at intersections throughout town to provide additional green spaces.
Brilliant red and orange lacy leaves of a Japanese cutleaf maple bring drama in autumn on the grounds of the Biltmore Estate near Ashville, North Carolina. The informal four-acre Shrub Garden is a rich, picturesque landscape with hundreds of woody plants. Designer Frederick Law Olmsted chose this site near the Vanderbilt mansion for a “secluded and genial” garden where guests could “ramble” along meandering paths lined with what is today five hundred different varieties of plants, shrubs, and trees. As the seasons change, so does the stunning colorful pageant of jasmine, forsythia, lilac and cut–leaf Japanese maples.  
Fall colors of the forest line a serpentine drive along the approach road to the Biltmore Estate house.  As visitors arrive, they experience “the sensation of passing through the remote depths of a natural forest” before encountering the grand chateau. Frederick Law Olmsted integrated natural terrain with landscaping to create moods of mystery and surprise at the Vanderbilt home in North Carolina. Known for his planning of many public parks, Olmsted’s last design was Biltmore completed in 1895.
A mighty, old beech tree creates a sculptural point in the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusettes. The park-like setting was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is the second largest link the Emerald Necklace, a series of parks. Founded in 1872, the arboretum today encompasses 265 acres, and has collection areas delineated by family and genus that are tributes to the natural world. Smooth gray bark is a highlight of the impressive beech tree although the European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) has a trunk that resembles elephant hide. Some trees in the beech collection were probably planted in the early 1800s. There are 14,900 individual plants with a particular emphasis on North American and east Asian Species. The Arboretum is a Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site and a National Historic Landmark.
A young daredevil bicyclist rides down a carriage road that is closed to vehicular traffic in Iroquois Park. Frederick Law Olmsted created a network of pedestrian pathways and curving roads for carriages, but might not have ever imagined this use. Iroquois Park is known for its panoramic views and long winding roads to the top of 725-acre park in Louisville, Kentucky.  Three parks Olmstead planned in Louisville are named to honor a Native American Indian tribe—Cherokee, Shawnee and Iroquois—that once shared the dark and bloody hunting grounds of Old Kentucky.
A young girl holds a baseball while watching older boys play in a ball field in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. In the original plan of the park, Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed with Calvert Vaux, appreciated pastoral scenery and long meadows broken only by clumps of deciduous trees. Those open views have been difficult to preserve in present day times as a demand for active recreational facilities has mounted in urban areas. The ball fields in Prospect Park were moved to the ends of the meadow, pushing the backstops to the edges to conform to Olmsted’s original plan.
A gondola drifts in the lake beyond “Angel of the Waters,” a fountain rising from Bethesda Terrace that was created by sculptor Emma Stebbins (1815-1882), the first woman to receive a commission for a major public work in New York City. Bethesda Fountain, as it is commonly called, stands twenty-six feet high and ninety-six feet in diameter, remaining one of the largest fountains in New York. Designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux considered Bethesda Terrace to be the heart of Central Park. They envisioned a grand terrace overlooking the Lake. Stebbins worked on the design of the statue in Rome from 1861 until its completion seven years later. Cast in Munich, it was dedicated in Central Park celebrating the 1842 opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which brought fresh water from Westchester County into New York City. Stebbins likened the healing powers of the biblical pool to that of the pure Croton water that cascades from the fountain. The lily in the angel’s hand represents purity, while the four figures below represent Peace, Health, Purity, and Temperance.
Morning sun kisses the icy tops of winter trees in snow blanketed New York’s Central Park. An elevated view shows a walker following a curved path planned by Frederick Law Olmsted to create a greater sense of space and mystery about what was to come around the next bend. Olmsted partnered with Calvert Vaux to plan “Greensward,” and won a design competition to make the what became a beloved urban park. When the idea was conceived, New York was much smaller and no one could imagine the open space surrounded by a city with tall buildings. Olmsted was a visionary and understood that man needed nature to combat the stresses of city life.  Construction began in 1858  and was completed fifteen years later. Central Park was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 and is now managed by Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit which contributes eighty five percent of the park’s $37.5 budget. More than thirty-five million visitors to Manhattan come to the park annually.
A lone hockey player circles the edge of Beaver Lake in Canada’s Mt Royal Park (in French: Parc du Mont-Royal), where winter visitors can cross country ski and snowshoe. Frederick Law Olmsted designed the park to emphasize the areas mountainous topography. The city fell into hard times and never implemented all of his plans, but it is still the greatest of Montreal’s greenspaces.
Shrouded in a light, misty snow, Chapin Parkway is one of seven tree-lined boulevards planned for the Buffalo, New York park system. Although other cities have implemented this kind of plan, it was in 1868 that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux tried to integrate a system of parks and parkways for the first time. Olmsted designed the parkways so that within steps of each resident’s door was the entrance to a park-like setting. The parkways in Olmsted’s day were smoothly paved and intended solely for use of private carriages. Featuring 200-foot rights of way and flanked by several rows of trees, they were designed to provide open space for the neighborhoods through which they passed.
The Biltmore Estate is one of Frederick Law Olmsted’s finest landscapes and includes a six-acre lagoon that reflects the majestic house that is located near Asheville, North Carolina. In the late 1800s, George W. Vanderbilt sought the advice of Olmsted, the country’s preeminent landscape designer, to help him with an appropriate design to complement the French Renaissance-style château he was building in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Olmsted sited the house and created a lagoon, woodlands, gardens and the resulting Biltmore Estate that is considered a masterpiece and presently is enjoyed by nearly one million visitors each year. Here, frail and nearing 70 nears old, he wrote to a friend, “I have raised my calling from the rank of a trade . . . (to) an Art, an Art of design.”
Protective wrappers that once held drawings for America’s grandest landscapes remain in the vault at Fairsted, Olmsted’s home and studio in Brookline, Massachusetts. More than 140,000 plans are carefully preserved as they were found at Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Olmsted (1822-1903) left a legacy of urban parks that changed America’s landscape. He is recognized as he founder of American landscape architecture and best known for his vision of Central Park as a respite for urban masses.
A fern leaf frames a historic portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted along with tools of his trade as a landscape architect. The still life is arranged on a work stool in his office at Fairsted, now the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Olmsted (1822-1903) is remembered as America’s first landscape architect and park planner. He designed many well-known urban parks including Central Park in New York, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, as well as parks in Buffalo, Rochester, and the Niagara Reservation. He is also credited with drawing plans for Louisville, Chicago, Boston, Detroit and Montreal parks as well as his final masterpiece, the grounds of Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.
Shadows sweep across Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre space where people congregate for picnics on in New York City on Sunday afternoon. Until 1934, a shepherd stopped traffic on the west drive so his flock could travel to and from their meadow. When Central Park was being considered, most New Yorkers lived below 38th Street in crowded, chaotic quarters. Frederick Law Olmsted planned the park with Calvert Vaux as a refuge from urban stress in a natural environment. The Park’s design embodies Olmsted’s social consciousness and commitment to egalitarian ideals. Today, woodlands dwarfed by buildings line the east boundary of Central Park and modern urban life surrounds the entire perimeter of the pastoral park.
A field of baseball diamonds dot the North Meadow, one of New York Central Park’s largest open areas. Ball fields first appeared there in the 1870s. Park planner Frederick Law Olmstead loved the natural world and did not intend for recreation to take place in Central Park or any park he designed. He created a place where the elite could go to relax and breathe fresh air while being surrounded by nature. The theory was that this would help limit the amount of disease and illness they believed resulted from the congested tenement buildings. He created natural looking water falls and moved huge rock boulders to make a untouched looking space. Although Central Park is beloved, Olmsted would not have approved of how we use our parks today. 
A mirror image of El Capitan framed with fall leaves is reflected in water pooled along the Merced River in Yosemite National Park. Located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the spectacular granite landscape was formed over millions of years by forces of nature. Volcanic uplifts transformed into glacial valleys, canyons, domes, rivers and amazing waterfalls, with habitat supporting rare species of plants including ancient Giant Sequoia trees. During a stint managing California gold mines, Frederick Law Olmsted, was inspired by nature while in Yosemite. He was America’s first landscape designer and is best known for his plans for New York Central Park. He became enthralled with Yosemite Valley and its “placid pools which reflect the wondrous heights.” Advocating for its protection, he planted the seeds for the National Park System 25 years before it was designated. He suggested the road on the valley floor travel around the perimeter-not down the middle along the Merced River-which would have spoiled the view. He also planned the route that tourists travel today from the valley floor to the giant sequoia trees in the Mariposa Grove. Olmsted was appointed chairman of the Yosemite commission by the governor of California, and proposed that the valley floor and sequoia grove be set aside as a park—protected from development and left open for public enjoyment.