Photo: Bartlett F. Kenney, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frederick Law Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1822. He worked as a sailor, a farmer and a journalist. For the New York Times he traveled through the South and wrote about slavery.
Central Park
In 1857 he became superintendent of the land New York City had set aside for a new park. The next year he and architect Calvert Vaux won the design competition with their “Greensward” plan.
They designed sunken roads so crosstown traffic would not cut through the scenery, and separate paths for walkers, riders and carriages.
Parks across the country
Olmsted and Vaux went on to design Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Olmsted’s firm planned Boston’s Emerald Necklace, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina and the grounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also pushed to protect Yosemite and Niagara Falls.
He is widely called the father of American landscape architecture.
Olmsted retired in 1895 as his memory failed. He died in 1903 in Belmont, Massachusetts. His home and office in Brookline is a National Historic Site.
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