It is a fool’s errand to attempt to convey the enormity of Olmsted in a brief essay, let alone in a course of landscape history. Sadly, those few lectures suffered by most landscape architects during their college education forms the extent of our awareness of his contributions. We know the story of Central Park; we can list a handful of his notable projects; we are aware of his letter to the NYC Board of Park Commissioners in 1858, offering his resignation as park designer and signed Messrs Olmsted and Vaux, Landscape Architects, which we take to be the first use of that title and the “birth of our profession”. We are also likely familiar with his poetic words outlining our profession first penned in Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, 1850, and later repeated in his letter to the Board of Commissioners of Central Park, May 20, 1858, upon his appointment as Architect-in-Chief:
“What artist so noble as he who, with far-reaching conception of beauty and designing power, sketches the outlines, writes the colors, and directs the shadows, of a picture so great that Nature shall be employed upon it for generations, before the work he has arranged for her shall realize his intentions!”
But to scratch beneath the surface is to gain an appreciation of a remarkable human being. My own discovery and fascination with Olmsted began with a move to Massachusetts to begin my professional career, and later, graduate studies. So often I would find myself wandering the paths of Boston’s Emerald Necklace, entranced by the vision and artistry of the man who had sculpted and planted this landscape a century earlier. My good fortune to enroll in a graduate school elective course at Harvard, 50 years ago was, I have to say, transformative. The course was entitled “Frederick Law Olmsted and the American Environmental Tradition”, and was taught by noted Olmsted scholar Albert Fein, who had published his book by the same title earlier that year.
Fein wove together the biographical threads of a career so unpredictable, it would defy the imagination of a most creative writer of fiction. From civil engineering apprentice, to clerk in a dry-goods store, to cabin boy on a steamer to China; from farmer to journalist to editor/co-owner of Putnam’s Monthly and co-founder of The Nation (the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States); from author of numerous works chronicling his travels through England and the antebellum southern slave states, including The Cotton Kingdom, to designer and Architect-in-Chief of Central Park; from Executive Secretary of the pre-cursor of the Red Cross (US Sanitary Commission) serving Union Forces in the Civil War, to authoring the report of the Yosemite Commission to the Governor of California, outlining the purpose and value of what would later become Yosemite National Park; and from designing some 100 parks, to establishing an office with his two sons that would create over 6,000 planned/designed landscapes across North America. But perhaps more profound than this tangible chronology was the set of environmental and social values he infused into the fledgling profession that grew from his efforts. Fein’s course jolted me into a realization that Olmsted was about far more than creating pastoral landscape scenes.
One wonders, with his practical take on politics and ability to succeed in the face of extreme political bickering, what role he may have played if he were present among us today? Would his skill and savvy have been able to navigate the great rift that so bitterly divides us?
Public Lands and Open Space
As I walk the trails system above my home in Logan with my dog, (not coincidentally named Olmsted), I gaze across the valley reflecting on past, present, and future. While I enjoy a network of public parks and open spaces that would have been unimaginable in 1822, I wonder at the same time if we are forward-focused enough.
I note in the recent Earth Day issue of the Salt Lake Tribune, that Utah lost an estimated 713 square miles of natural and agricultural open space between 1982 and 2017 to development and urban sprawl driven by record levels of population growth. The article observes that nationally, a new study tallies a total of 68,000 square miles of vanished open spaces over that same time … larger than the entire land mass of the State of Florida. Olmsted would be urging us to be proactive in encouraging smart growth and preserving space for our grandchildren. He would be saddened at the deterioration of our national parks due to underfunding, and outraged at the push by our representatives to privatize public lands.
Global Environment
The catastrophic threat to our global environment would have been beyond his wildest nightmare, but the sustainable practices he followed, had they been embraced, may have prevented us from reaching our present situation. Olmsted would ask how a humankind so advanced that we can explore the solar system and look down on planet earth 1,000 miles below from a satellite window, allow our home to succumb to a spiral of self destruction? Indeed, the man who envisioned converting a landfill in Manhattan into a verdant green-lung serving 1.7 million souls would be urging us to forgo short-term comforts, suck it up, and move forward posthaste to salvage our very future.
Social Reform
To Olmsted, creating parks and open space was not an end in and of itself, but a means of improving quality of life for urban dwellers, particularly the poor:
“It is one great purpose of the Park to supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers, who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of God's handiwork that shall be to them, inexpensively, what a month or two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in easier circumstances.”
Prior to Central Park, Olmsted made journeys through the South, writing detailed commentary on general industry and life style. His keen observations and vivid descriptions of inhumane and unjust treatment of enslaved blacks were printed in journals in the largely oblivious northern states, and eventually bound as a series of books raising awareness of the cruel practice of slavery. Promoting a clear message that black lives mattered, would he think about continuing racial inequality 120 years after his own death?
Medical Care
In 1862, driven by a sense of moral obligation, he took a leave from ongoing work with Central Park to offer his services as Secretary of the US Sanitary Commission. His accounts from the battlefield detailing the horrific conditions being suffered by severely wounded and ailing troops, cried out for the provision of humane treatment and advances in scientific medicine. More broadly, he urged a greater responsibility of government and society in general to address issues of public health. What would he have said about a health care system 160 years later which, despite our great wealth as a nation, still cannot provide universal health care for all?
War
Serving the Union forces during the Civil War, he spoke of atrocities of war that should be unthinkable in 2022. What would a man who questioned how Northern and Southern brothers could be killing each other in 1862 think to see Russian troops slaughtering Ukranian brothers, sisters, and children 160 years later?
“The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth”
On this, the bicentennial of his birth, I would encourage every landscape architect to venture on a pilgrimage to more fully understand the importance and relevance of his Olmsted’s work to our contemporary world and practice. A personal visit to some of his masterworks is unequaled as a means of gaining an appreciation of his true genius. A few years ago, I was privileged to undertake a brief internship at the Olmsted Center for Historic Landscape Preservation at Fairsted, Olmsted’s home and office in Brookline, Massachusetts, and now the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Sitting at my desk in what was his bedroom, looking out the window at the Olmsted elm which had been planted around 1810 and around which he had designed his own domestic landscape, I could quite literally sense his spirit.
If you are unable to undertake a physical pilgrimage, I encourage reading either from his own works, or the excellent biography by Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance. For a jump start, I’d suggest a visit to the National Association for Olmsted Parks website at https://www.olmsted.org/the-olmsted-legacy/frederick-law-olmsted-sr and the website of the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site https://www.nps.gov/frla/index.htm.
Lastly, consider how we, as landscape architects of the 21st Century, can pay homage to the wisdom of our founder 200 years after his birth. Are we promoting the well being of all levels of society through our work? Are we truly embodying sustainability in everything we do … every choice of materials from plant pallet to hardscape embodying low carbon footprint? Are we raising our voices, imbued with the wisdom and moral compass of Olmsted, to fight for the protection of our public lands, and to create democratic green spaces in the face of ever-increasing urbanization/suburbanization of our world?
