“We want a ground to which people may easily go when the day’s work is done, and where they may stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets where they shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them…” -Frederick Law Olmsted
One of the greatest champions of the City Beautiful movement was Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 – 1903). The City Beautiful movement emerged in the late 1850s as a result of the revolution of cities in America. Olmsted was the leading landscape architect of the post-Civil War generation, and has long been acknowledged as the founder of American landscape architecture.
Through several connections gained as a columnist with the New Yorker, Olmsted was able to become the Superintendent of Central Park, New York City, in 1857, early in the development of the park project. In 1861, Olmsted obtained a leave of absence from his duties at Central Park so that he could serve as the Executive Secretary of United States Sanitary Commission, an early version of the Red Cross, which was responsible for aiding the well being of the soldiers of the Union Army during the Civil War. While in New York he also worked on the following projects: Prospect Park (1865-1873), Chicago’s Riverside subdivision, Buffalo’s park system (1868-1876), and the Niagara Reservation at Niagara Falls (1887).
In 1883, he departed New York City and relocated to Brookline, Massachusetts with his practice. Olmsted had begun work on a park system for the City of Boston; eventually he focused much of his time on the Emerald Necklace. This along with his work on the design of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago were among the last of Olmsted’s projects.
His papers are now housed in the Library of Congress, while the Olmsted National Historic site preserves the drawings and plans for much of Olmsted and his firm’s body of work.
The Work of Frederick Law Olmsted:
