Frederick Law Olmsted

Born:  Hartford, April 26, 1822
Died:  Waverly, Massachusetts; August 28, 1903

Frederick Law Olmsted was responsible for the foundations of landscape architecture in the United States and made the public park a significant factor in American urban life. In 1857 he was appointed the superintendent of New York City's Central Park, and in 1858, in collaboration with Englishman Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), he won the competition for the design of Central Park, one of the pioneer enterprises of American municipal planning. In the course of a career that continued until 1895, Olmsted and his associates were the landscape architects for Brooklyn, New York's Prospect Park; Riverside Park in New York City; the grounds of the nation's Capitol in Washington, D. C.; the park system of Boston, Hartford, and Louisville; Mount Royal Park in Montreal; the grounds of the Chicago World's Fair (1893); Roland Park in Baltimore; Belle Isle Park in Detroit; the grounds of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley; the grounds of the State Capitol of New York at Albany; and "Biltmore," the estate of George W. Vanderbilt near Asheville, North Carolina.

Olmsted's early years were rather rambling, characterized by frequent travel, made possible by his merchant father's affluence, and irregular schooling. By the time he was sixteen Olmsted had been educated by a succession of rural parsons and had made with his parents four separate journeys of a thousand miles each through New England, New York, and Canada. Unable to enter Yale in 1837 because sumach poisoning had weakened his eyes, Olmsted embarked upon a series of experiences: a two-year study of engineering; a stint with a New York City dry goods importing firm; a year's voyage to China working before the mast in the bark Ronaldson; work in agriculture and landscaping at farms in Connecticut and New York; and tours through Great Britain, the Continent, and the American South that resulted in highly perceptive publications—Walks and Tours of an American Farmer in England (1852) and The Cotton Kingdom (2 vols., 1861).

By the late 1850s Olmsted's varied experiences had brought him an acute understanding of life around him, a mature knowledge of an interest in landscaping, and an energetic commitment to meeting urban America's need for sylvan retreats as essential municipal amenities. That commitment was a key factor in his acceptance of the Central Park post as well as in the subsequent projects to which he devoted his life. Contrary to frequent assumptions, Olmsted did not play any determining role in the development of Hartford's Bushnell Park.

For Further Reading

Roper, Laura Wood. FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted. Baltimore, 1973.

Stevenson, Elizabeth. Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted. New York, 1977.

Entry by David M. Roth.

* Entry under revision.