John Charles Olmsted was an American landscape architect who with his adopted brother, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. , founded Olmsted Brothers, a landscape design firm in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Background
John Charles Olmsted was born on September 14, 1852, in Geneva, Switzerland. He was the eldest of the three children of John Hull Olmsted, who, after studying at Yale, in 1851 married Mary Cleveland (Perkins), received the M. D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1852, and then went abroad. After interludes in America, in 1857 John Hull died at Nice, leaving his wife and young family in charge of his brother Frederick Law Olmsted, who married the widow in 1859. There was a strong bond of common interest between Frederick Law and the young John Charles, who, even at the age of twelve, demonstrated his enjoyment of the outdoor world during the family's residence in California, and especially during an exploring trip made in 1864 eastward through the High Sierras. Late in 1865 the family returned to New York, which remained its actual headquarters until 1881.
Education
Largely on account of the travels of his parents, John Charles received his early education from private teaching. He graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale in 1875 with the degree of Ph. B.
Career
From 1859 when the Olmsted family resided for a time in the Central Park in New York, then developing under his step-father's charge, John Charles lived in the midst of the designing and construction of works of landscape architecture, and came to apprehend the social and political phases through which esthetic success in public works had to be achieved. After graduation from Yale, he entered the landscape office of his step-father, and in 1878 was given a financial interest in the practice. Although he always emphasized the professional character of landscape architecture, he early showed marked business ability and the power to keep a large number of projects - for public and private clients - moving steadily along. In this, he was an invaluable aid to his step-father, whose genius could be in some measure released for expression of the philosophical and esthetic phases of the art as these appeared in the everwidening and diversified practice of the office. The calm, stable, practical abilities of John Charles Olmsted established the professional practice of the firm on such a sound basis that it not only advanced the profession in the eyes of the world but also influenced the organization of the offices of many later firms of landscape architects in the United States.
In 1884, following removal of the office to Brookline, Massachussets, John Charles became a full partner in F. L. and J. C. Olmsted. After his step-father's retirement in 1895 he became senior partner in the firm, which after 1898 was called Olmsted Brothers, and shared responsibilities with his half-brother Frederick Law, Jr. , and other later partners until his death in Brookline in 1920. Although he traveled extensively in the course of his more than forty years of professional practice, he kept in the closest touch with the office organization. During the period when he was senior partner, approximately 3, 500 jobs came to the firm; and the proportion of these with which he made himself familiar was very large. He was concerned alone or with his partners in the design of hundreds of private estates, large and small, in all parts of the country, and the grounds of many institutions, including Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College, and Ohio State University, of industrial plants (notably the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio), public buildings, state capitols, and exposition grounds, including the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Oregon, 1906, the Seattle Exposition of 1909, the San Diego Exposition of 1915, and the Canadian Industrial Exposition at Winnipeg.
Of the many parks in the design of which he participated, the Hartford (Connecticut) parks, the Boston municipal parks and parkways, the Essex County park system, and the Chicago Southside Playgrounds which set a new standard in community playgrounds, engaged his special interest; and the parks of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Trenton, New Jersey, Buffalo and Rochester, New Yersey, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Seattle and Spokane, Washington, Portland, Oregon, Louisville, Kentucky, Atlanta, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana, are evidences of his far-reaching influence for the public benefit, exercised in conjunction with Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. , or other partners. He kept in close touch with the operation of parks through his active membership in the American Association of Park Superintendents. He made an early contribution, also, to the still inchoate science of city planning in his solutions of difficulties in connection with park system design and in his interpretations to civic leaders.
John Olmsted served as the first president of the American Society of Landscape Architects (founded 1899) and for many years on the executive board. He was also active in the formation of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects. Unlike his partners, F. L. Olmsted, Sr. , and Jr. , J. C. Olmsted has only a very brief list of writings to his credit. Many of his letters containing valuable statements of the principles of park system design were incorporated into reports by the firm without differentiation as to authorship. As an example of his writing on parks, an extract from the Report of Olmsted Brothers on a Proposed Parkway System for Essex County, New Jersey (1915) was published as "Classes of Parkways, " in Landscape Architecture (1915). A report which he wrote during the first year of his partnership on Beardsley Park, Bridgeport, Connecticut, was privately printed in Boston (1884), and a description by him of the Hartford parks appeared in the Hartford Courant, July 10, 1901. Of his travels abroad he made many notes, especially on English gardens, but these remained unpublished, although in style and manner of treatment they have been compared to the intelligent discussion of landscape problems by the French writer, the Duc d'Harcourt.
With his industrious methods of mastering a problem, and his wide knowledge of practical community affairs, John Olmsted inspired confidence in citizens charged with responsibility for large undertakings within the field of landscape architecture, and was thus able to see realized to a very considerable extent the projects to which his "independence of thought, great fertility of resource, a pains-taking care for the details of his schemes, " and his thorough knowledge of materials gave potency.
John Olmsted died on February 24, 1920, in Brookline.
Achievements
Membership
John Olmsted was president of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a founding member of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects.
Personality
Olmsted was short of stature but possessed of quiet dignity, retiring but abounding in vigor, gentle and kindly but firm and always possessed of the courage of his convictions.
Connections
On January 18, 1899, in Brookline, John Olmsted married Sophia Buckland White; they had two daughters.