Frederick Law Olmsted Biography

Dromo's Den

OLMSTED, Frederick Law (1822–1903). An American landscape architect, the pioneer of this art in the United States. He was born at Hartford, Conn., April 26, 1822. After special studies at Yale in 1843 he sought practical knowledge of agriculture by working on a farm in central New York and subsequently on Staten Island, contributing on rural subjects to technical periodicals. In 1850 he made a tour afoot in England and on the Continent for the study of landscape gardening and agricultural methods. His observations are found in Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (1852). He then went on a similar quest through the Southern and Southwestern States, studying also the effects of slavery on production, and embodying his experience in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, with Remarks on their Economy (1856), a new edition of which was published in 1904, with a biographical sketch by F. L. Olmsted, Jr., and an introduction by W. P. Trent; in A Journey through Texas; or, a Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier, with a Statistical Appendix (1857); and in A Journey in the Back Country (1860). The three volumes were reissued as The Cotton Kingdom (2 vols., 1861). In 1856 Olmsted was made superintendent of the New York Central Park Commission, and a plan for this park, prepared by him and Calvert Vaux, was adopted in 1857. In its present aspect this, the first great park of the United States, is, in the main, the product of his design, forming a lasting monument to his skill. In 1861 he was appointed member of a commission of inquiry and advice on the sanitary condition of the United States troops. Of this commission he became general secretary and was active in Washington from 1861 to 1864, visiting also the armies in the field. Later he was prominent on the Southern Famine Relief Commission and in the organization of the New York State Charities Aid Association. In 1871 he presented to the Territorial government of the District of Columbia the plans, since in large measure executed, for the parking system of the streets of the capital. He helped also to found in New York the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History. In 1872 he was made president of the Department of Public Parks in New York, and devised the plan, in large measure carried out, of the street system of New York north of the Harlem River, as well as for Riverside and Morningside parks in New York, Prospect and Washington parks in Brooklyn, Washington and Jackson parks in Chicago, and many others. He planned also the approach from Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol in Washington, was first commissioner of the Yosemite Park, and prominent in the Niagara Falls Reservation Committee and in devising the system of parks and parkways in and around Boston. With his partners he planned important park systems for Detroit, Rochester, Montreal, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Louisville, and other cities. In designing naturalistic landscape he has had few, if any, superiors, particularly in his masterly manner of taking advantage of natural features, which determined the character of his design. Olmsted died Aug. 28, 1903. His son of the same name is separately treated.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920)