Frederick Law Olmsted , American landscape architect, journalist, and botanist, famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park , both in New York City.
Biographical data
Born on April 26, 1822, in Island , New York , United States , he was early inclined towards landscape architecture, which he learned through self-taught methods.
Life and work
During his lifetime, Olmsted was noted not only for his architectural works but also for his journalistic career. In 1850, he traveled to England to visit public gardens, and was greatly impressed by Joseph Paxton’s Birkenhead Park, and subsequently published Walks and Conversations of an American Farmer in England in 1852. Interested in the slave economy, he was paid for by the New York Daily Times (now the New York Times) and undertook an extensive research trip through the American South and Texas from 1852 to 1857. After the trip, Olmsted opined that the practice of slavery was not only morally odious, but also expensive and economically inefficient.
Olmest married his brother’s widow Mary Cleveland in 1859 and adopted his brother’s three children. Olmsted’s friend and mentor Andrew Jackson Downing, a charismatic landscape architect from Newburgh, New York, proposed the development of Central Park in his journal The Horticulturist. Downing introduced Olmsted to the English architect Calvert Vaux. After Downing was killed in an explosion in July 1852, Olmsted and Vaux entered a competition to be the joint designers of Central Park in his honor, and won (1858). Olmsted and Vaux partnered and designed Brooklyn’s Prospect Park from 1865 to 1873, among other projects.
After completing Central Park, Olmsted served as executive secretary of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a predecessor of the Red Cross in Washington, D.C., which cared for the wounded during the American Civil War. Olmsted headed the medical effort for the sick and wounded in New Kent County. In 1863, Olmsted went west to become manager of the Mariposa County mines in the Sierra Nevada of California. In 1865, Vaux and Olmsted formed Olmsted, Vaux and Company. When Olmsted returned to New York, he and Vaux designed Prospect Park, the New York and Milwaukee park system, and the Niagara Reservation at Niagara Falls. In Brookline, Massachusetts, Olmsted designed Boston’s Emerald Necklace, the Stanford University campus, and buildings for the World’s Columbian Exposition,2 among other projects. In 1895, dementia forced him to retire. Omlsted moved to Belmont, Massachusetts, and lived in McLean Hospital, which he had landscaped for several years, remaining there until his death. After Olmsted’s death, his sons John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. continued the work of his company, doing business as the Olmsted Brothers. The company lasted until 1950.
Most notable projects
- Central Park
- Prospect Park
- The coordinated system of public parks and avenues of Buffalo, New York.
- Niagara Falls Preserve Park , in Niagara Falls, New York.
- Mount-Royal Park, in Montreal ( Canada ).
- The Emerald Necklace, in Boston (Massachusetts).
- Cherokee Park (and its parkway system) in Louisville, Kentucky.
- Jackson Park, Washington Park and the Midway Plaza in Chicago for the World’s Columbian Exposition .
- Part of Detroit Belle Isle Park.
- The gardens of the United States Capitol and the George Washington Vanderbilt II building .
- The Biltmore Estate, in North Carolina .
Death
He died in Belmont , Massachusetts , on August 28, 1903, and was buried in the old cemetery in Hatford, Connecticut .