Background
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was born on July 24, 1870, on Staten Island, New York, the son of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. , a landscape architect, and Mary Cleveland Perkins Olmsted (his brother's widow).
(Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was a journalist and la...)
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was a journalist and landscape designer who is regarded as the founder of American landscape architecture: his most famous achievement was Central Park in New York, of which he became the superintendent in 1857, but he also worked on the design of parks in many other burgeoning American cities, and was called by Charles Eliot Norton 'the greatest artist that America has yet produced'. His A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States was originally published in 1856, and arose from journeys in the south which Olmsted, a passionate abolitionist, had undertaken in 1853-4. This edition was published in two volumes in 1904, with the addition of a biographical sketch by his son and an introduction by William P. Trent. It abounds in fascinating and witty descriptions of Olmsted's encounters and experiences in a society which was on the verge of overwhelming change.
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Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was born on July 24, 1870, on Staten Island, New York, the son of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. , a landscape architect, and Mary Cleveland Perkins Olmsted (his brother's widow).
Frederick trained and studied under his father while attending Roxbury Latin School and then earned a B. A. at Harvard University in 1894.
As a sixteen-year-old Frederick was taken to California to help his father, who was laying out the grounds for Stanford University; his later apprenticeship included work on the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and George W. Vanderbilt's Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina, his father's last major project before retiring in 1895, at which time he turned his landscape architecture firm over to Frederick and John C. Olmsted, the son of Mary by her previous marriage to his younger brother, John. Under the name Olmsted Brothers they prospered and expanded at their Brookline, Massachussets, headquarters until in the early 1900's they headed by far the largest landscape architecture firm in the United States. In 1898 Frederick was appointed landscape architect to the Boston Metropolitan Park Commision, a position he held until 1920; and in 1900, at the request of Harvard President Charles W. Eliot, he instituted the first curriculum in the United States for the study of landscape architecture as a profession. He also taught at Harvard from 1901 to 1914, having been appointed in 1903 to the Charles Eliot professorship established in honor of Eliot's son, who had been a partner in the Olmsted firm until his premature death in 1897.
Olmsted's career was an amalgam of professional and public works in which he served as environmental designer, public and quasi-official servant, and member of numerous formal commissions and organizations dealing with urban park design, town planning, housing, recreation, landscape architecture, land development and management, national-park planning, and conservation. The beginning of his varied career really came in 1901 when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the Senate Park Commission, a recommendation that his father's reputation undoubtedly influenced, along with the distinguished architects Daniel H. Burnham and Charles F. McKim. Their purpose was to "restore and develop the century-old plans of L'Enfant for Washington and to fit them to the conditions of today. " Before beginning work the team traveled throughout Europe examining urban exemplars and precedents. This was a stimulating experience for Olmsted, who acted as design secretary, measuring and photographing subjects of interest. Not all the ideas put forward by the commission were adopted, but for Olmsted it marked the beginning of a long-term, felicitous association with those directing the physical growth of Washington, D. C. Perhaps more than any other person Olmsted is responsible for the appearance of the nation's capital, and especially for the coherent quality of the monuments that bespeak the symbols of national power.
Not only was he, together with Olmsted Brothers, responsible in whole or in part for dozens of major landscape projects, such as the White House grounds, Lafayette Park, Washington Monument Gardens, the Jefferson Memorial, the National Arboretum, Washington Cathedral, portions of Rock Creek Park and its zoo, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and other structures, but he was instrumental in the founding of the Fine Arts Commission, thereby assuring the urban and architectural controls necessary to protect the federal matrix. He thus continued the work begun by his father, who had designed, among other major early projects, the U. S. Capitol grounds and had recommended steps that resulted in the "greening" of Washington with trees and plantings. Olmsted served on the Fine Arts Commission from 1910 to 1918 and during World War I with the War Industries Board's Commission on Emergency Construction and with the Town Planning Division of the U. S. Housing Corporation. Between 1926 and 1932 he was a member of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
As a private consultant he directed the development of major residential complexes for the Roland Park Company of Baltimore, the Sage Foundation Home Company of Forest Hills, L. I. (Forest Hills Gardens), and Palos Verdes Estates in California. In these, as in many other projects, he had full responsibility, while in the manifold projects of the firm (10, 000 jobs have been logged in the Brookline office, now known as Olmsted Associates, Inc. ) he and his brother supervised and approved the work of draftsmen, plantsmen, and engineers. Over the years Olmsted made many urban planning studies for cities such as Rochester, N. Y. ; Pittsburgh; New Haven; Boulder, Colo. ; and Newport, R. I. - work for which he further prepared himself in the early 1900's by study and travel in Europe. He devoted much time to two professional organizations, the American Society of Landscape Architects, which he helped found, and the American Institute of Planners, serving as president of both.
Among the many works of landscape architecture he designed, one of the most outstanding is Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters in New York City. Here, the structure on a high rocky ridge is carefully blended into the extensive park grounds through which the paths curve and rise as the visitor approaches. Sited at the edges of the "natural" environment are terrace overlooks that take full advantage of the lower Hudson Valley views available from Manhattan.
Turning the firm over to his associates in 1950, Olmsted moved to California, where he devoted himself primarily to the conservation of natural lands and wilderness areas. In 1916 he had helped frame the legislation that established the National Park Service. He studied the Colorado River Basin for the Bureau of Reclamation, advising on conservation methods for these water resources. For the California State Park Commission he prepared a master plan for preservation of the redwoods and fought vigorously against the destructive exploitation of forest resources by private interests. From 1928 to 1956 he served on a committee of experts on plans and policies for Yosemite, closing a circle, for his father had served in 1864 as leader of the original commissioners of Yosemite, the first land set aside for public use in the United States.
On his eighty-third birthday he attended the dedication of the Frederick Law Olmsted Grove of redwood trees purchased by friends in his honor in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Humboldt County, California, a rare and fitting tribute. He died in Malibu, California. During his lifetime Olmsted was believed to have surpassed the accomplishments of his father, who had slipped into almost total obscurity. Of course, the elder man has now emerged as a giant. The younger Olmsted did not seem to face, or perhaps recognize, the prototypical environmental challenges that came his father's way. He worked within the established framework. Nevertheless, he expanded the base and solidified the achievements of a profession that has no name even today ("geotecht" was Lewis Mumford's term for the elder Olmsted) but in whose pursuit of ordering the built environment he advocated and worked toward an ever more progressive and humanistic approach.
Frederick Olmsted's major works: Landscape design at Waveny Park, New Canaan, Connecticut; Shelter at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument; Olmsted-designed shelter at Casa Grande National Historic Monument; St. Francis Wood residential neighborhood located in southwestern San Francisco, California; Fort Tryon Park, New York City; Caracas Country Club, Caracas, Venezuela; Palos Verdes Estates, Los Angeles County; Governor Francis Farms neighborhood in Warwick, Rhode Island; National Mall, Washington, D. C. ; Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D. C. ; White House grounds, Washington, D. C. ; Rock Creek Park, Washington, D. C. ; Bok Tower Gardens; Forest Hills Gardens; Leimert Park, Los Angeles; Lake Wales, Florida. Olmsted Point in Yosemite and Olmsted Island at Great Falls of the Potomac River in Maryland are named in honor of Frederick Olmsted.
(Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was a journalist and la...)
(Excerpt from The Improvement of Boulder, Colorado: Report...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
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Frederick Olmsted was a member of the Senate Park Improvement Commission for the District of Columbia; a founding member and later president of the American Society of Landscape Architects; a member of the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts; the National Capital Park and Planning Commission; the Baltimore Park Commission; the National Park Service Board of Advisers for Yosemite; the National Conference on City Planning; the American City Planning Institute; the National Institute of Arts and Letters; and the American Academy in Rome.
Frederick was named "Henry Perkins" at birth but renamed in childhood "Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. " by his father, who intended that his son follow in his footsteps. Achieving competence in his own right, Frederick dropped the "Junior, " causing thereafter much confusion in bibliographic nomenclature and even in the attribution of works to him and his father.
Frederick married Sarah Hall Sharples on March 30, 1911; they had one child.
He was a landscape architect.
