{"id":3111,"date":"2022-05-30T19:54:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T00:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/?p=3111"},"modified":"2022-05-30T19:54:01","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T00:54:01","slug":"olmsteds-gift-of-magnificent-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/beyond-gotham\/olmsteds-gift-of-magnificent-places","title":{"rendered":"Olmsted\u2019s Gift of Magnificent Places"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consider what Frederick Law Olmsted created in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

Central Park is the most iconic, the beautiful jewel \u201cGreensward\u201d that Olmsted and his partner, the architect Calvert Vaux, designed and created over 18 years, 1858 to 1876. After the Civil War, Olmsted reunited with Vaux to plan and fashion the gem of Prospect Park as a green space separate from the street grid in Brooklyn. Its landscape contains formal, pastoral, and rustic elements, with its vales, Long Meadow, Ravine, Concert Grove House, scenic vistas, winding pathways, and old-growth forests. The Emerald Necklace today remains a verdant string of five parks stretching over 1,100 acres of Boston, which Olmsted intended as a place where people would go after the day\u2019s work \u201cseeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets.\u201d In Newburgh, N.Y., Downing Park — the last landscape that Olmsted and Vaux produced together \u2013 is a 35-acre treasure with meandering paths, water features, structures of natural stone, a great variety of trees, and a large, peaceful pond.<\/p>\n

Yet, there was so much more that this one man, the foremost pioneer of landscape architecture, gave to us in shaping parks, park systems, campuses, neighborhoods, scenic reservations, preserves, communities, and more. Just to cite a selection: Belle Island Park in Detroit; park systems in Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y.; New York City\u2019s Morningside, Riverside, and Fort Greene parks; Montreal\u2019s Mount Royal Park; Hubbard Park, Meriden, Ct.; The University of Chicago main campus; the University of Rochester campus; and Wellesley College campus. The Cultural Landscape Foundation\u2019s newly released digital guide, What’s Out There Olmsted<\/em><\/a>, encompasses more than 300 North American landscapes designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., as well as his successor firms, such as Olmsted Brothers, the one that his son Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and stepson and nephew John Charles Olmsted led.<\/p>\n

In April, we marked the 200th anniversary of Olmsted\u2019s birth, on April 26, 1822. This bicentennial provides a fitting point to reflect on and be grateful for the astonishing legacy of Olmsted, whose life spanned much of the 19th century just past the turn of a new century till his death in 1903. A key initiative, Olmsted 200<\/a>, has highlighted and continues to point to events and resources devoted to the Olmsted bicentennial.<\/p>\n

Olmsted\u2019s landscape jewels have survived and thrived though the 20th century and well into the 21st, even as many came under threats again and again. I believe the survival of these cherished places is nothing short of a miracle (and one that many dedicated people have helped ensure constantly). Yet most people who are hiking, strolling, having picnics, skating, attending concerts, touring gardens, reading, studying in, and otherwise experiencing beauty and untold pleasure likely do not even known Olmsted\u2019s name as they do so. But, wow, do we owe so very much to Olmsted!<\/p>\n

\"Frederick<\/a>