Frederick Law Olmsted

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Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted (born April 26, 1822 in Hartford , Connecticut , † August 28, 1903 in Belmont , Massachusetts ) was a leading landscape architect after the Civil War and was primarily recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture.

Early years

The son of wealthy businessman John Olmsted attended Phillips Academy until 1838 , but had to give up his postgraduate studies at Yale University because of poison-sumac- induced poisoning that had impaired his eyesight. From August 1840 to March 1842, Olmsted was an employee of Bankard & Hutton in New York , which imported goods from France . He attended lectures at Yale for the remainder of 1842. On April 23, 1843, "Ronaldson" was hired as a cabin boy on the barque and returned to New York on April 15, 1844. In 1844, at the age of 22, he learned farming from his uncle in Cheshire , Connecticut. He spent the summer of 1845 on Mr. Joseph Welton's farm in Waterbury and that winter attended lectures in New Haven . In April 1846 he went to Mr. George Geddes' farm "Fairmont" near Syracuse (New York) , where he further deepened his knowledge of agriculture. In 1847 his father bought him a farm in Stuff's Head, Guildford, Connecticut. In January 1848, his father bought him Akerly Farm on the south coast of Staten Island , which he managed until 1854. He also started building a tree nursery .

Working life

Travel and journalism

In April 1850 he sailed to Europe on the "Henry Clay" together with his brother John and his fellow student Charles Brace . They spent two weeks each in Germany , France and Belgium , one week in Ireland , three weeks in Scotland and the rest of the time in England , each of which spent 300 US dollars (the equivalent of around 10,100 dollars today). In England he visited Joseph Paxton's work. Upon their return, Olmsted became secretary for the Richmond County Agricultural Society . In 1851 he visited Andrew Jackson Downing in Newburgh and in 1852 wrote "Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England".

In December 1852 he went on a trip through the southern states and wrote for the New York Daily Times his impressions of the "Seaboard Slave States", which were also published in 1856 as a book. In November 1853 he traveled to Mexico and California with his brother to report again as a correspondent for the Times . This travelogue was published in 1857 as a book under the title "A Journey to Texas". His ride from New Orleans to Richmond, from which he returned in 1854, he described in 1860 in his book "A Journey in the back country".

From 1855 to 1856 he edited the Putnam Magazine with George Willam Curtis . However, the magazine flopped, leaving Curtis and Olmsted in considerable debt. In February 1856 he traveled to Europe with his sister Mary, mainly because of the publishing business. He spent a lot of time in London , but also traveled to Germany and Italy.

First successes as a landscape architect

On September 11, 1857, Olmsted was appointed superintendent of the Central Park Planning Commission. Calvert Vaux suggested that Olmsted participate in the competition. On April 28, 1858, they won first prize with their so-called "Greensward" plan. On May 17th, Olmsted was appointed chief architect for the project, with Vaux serving as his advisor. In 1859, the area for the park was expanded to 110th Street by purchasing land. In September he sailed to Liverpool to look for ideas for Central Park in England. In August 1860, Olmsted was thrown from a carriage and broke his hip in the process. He continued his work on the park first from his sick bed and later from a stretcher (palanquin).

In 1861, Olmsted was given leave of absence from his Central Park duties so that he could work as administrative director of the United States Sanitary Commission , a predecessor organization of the Red Cross responsible for the welfare of Union Army soldiers during the Civil War. In 1863 he was offered the post of manager at the gold mining company Mariposa Estate in the Sierra Nevada , whereupon he left the US Sanitary Commission. When the mining project failed, he returned to New York. As a member of a commission, he called for the protection of what would later become Yosemite National Park and strict regulations for landscape protection as early as 1864 . Nevertheless, the public should have access to the beauties of nature.

Over the next seven years, Olmsted and Vaux worked together on a road system for the Fort Washington section of Manhattan and some private properties. It was not until the autumn of 1865 that they founded the company Olmsted, Vaux & Co. Olmsted was also involved in the architecture firm of Vaux, Withers & Co. Both partnerships were dissolved in 1872.

For the next few years, Olmsted had his office in New York, where he worked with the English-born architect Thomas Wiesedell and other engineers. He also trusted the skills of the landscape gardener Jacob Weidenmann , who came from Switzerland , with whom he carried out several larger orders - such as B. the home for the mentally ill in Hartford, Prospect Park in Brooklyn , the US Capitol grounds and the Schuylkill Arsenal . His stepson joined the company as early as 1874, and his wife also helped as a secretary. During this time they worked on the projects for the US Capitol, on the parks on Mount Royal in Montreal and on Belle Isle (Detroit) , on the Back Bay Fens in Boston and on the expressway network in the Bronx .

Although Olmsted had no official training in landscape design, he and his company set standards for urban parks, in which millions of people can still find a break from everyday noise. He sculpted the gardens of zoos, hospitals, university campuses, train stations, expressways, and private residences across the country. He transformed ordinary, even desolate areas into lush wilderness, completed a meadow with a pond, and laid out nested paths and streets. All of this was created with such skill and respect for nature that the viewer was often not even aware of the metamorphosis that had happened or the idea behind the design. Among his many projects stand out:

Fairsted in Brookline

His friend Henry Hobson Richardson , whom he knew from the Staten Island Commission, persuaded Olmsted to move to Brookline , Massachusetts in 1883 . He also found 2 acres of land with an old farmhouse and barn built in 1810. The property belonged to two older sisters who did not want to sell it. But after negotiating with them, Olmsted came to an agreement: he bought the property for $ 13,200 (around $ 346,900 today) and built them a house at the end of the property where they could live rent free until their deaths. In the same year he built his own house "Fairsted", which is now registered as Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in the National Register of Historic Places and is open to the public as a museum.

Nearly 200 different types of trees, bushes and ground cover have been planted on Fairsted to create different areas in style and landscape. A Chicago journalist wrote in 1886: “There is no splendor in any part of the landscape. Every shady path and rocky corner shows an overview of nature's own easy paths. It is a bit of the splendor of nature and the human hand that tries to beautify, but greenhouse plants, marble figures and bronze fountains cannot improve it. "

Dense planting with trees and an irregular “wave” of bushes border the Fairsted lawn, which is intended to provide privacy by reflecting mystery and depth inside. Spaciousness was another of Olmsted's design features, which he achieved through varying shades of green and the play of light and color. In Fairsted, a single elm was planted in a meadow that became Olmsted's signature. "Gradually and quietly the charm overcomes us, we don't know exactly where or how," he once said.

Between 1857 and 1895, Olmsted and his employees or his students designed the outdoor facilities for 355 schools and colleges.

The enterprise

Frederick Law Olmsted
(painting by John Singer Sargent , 1895)

In 1889, another student from Olmsted, Henry Sargent Codman, was accepted into the company as a partner, but he died in 1893 at the age of 29. Olmsted fared not much better with Charles Eliot , who co-founded the Olmsted & Eliot company but died of meningitis in 1897 at the age of 37 . With these two promising successors, Olmsted had strongly hoped that his design concept would be continued. The new company, which existed shortly after Eliot's death, was called FL & JC Olmsted , but his son John Charles had already replaced the father. A year later, in 1898, the sons John Charles and Frederick re-established the partnership as the Olmsted Brothers . This name remained until 1961. With the death of his brother Charles in 1920, Frederick Olmsted Jr. became a senior partner in what was then the world's largest office for landscape architecture.

Frederick took on James Frederick Dawson , Percival Gallagher, Edward Clark Whiting, Henry Vincent Hubbard , William Bell Marquis and Leon Henry Zach as associates.

family

On June 13, 1859, Olmsted married his brother's widow John Hull Olmsted and had their children, John Charles, Charlotte and Owen. In this marriage another son named John Theodore was born on June 14, 1860, but he died in childhood. The daughter Marion was born on October 28, 1861 and the son Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. on July 24, 1870 .

Increasing dementia forced the sons to admit their father to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts . Ironically, Olmsted designed the grounds here. Frederick Law Olmsted died there on August 28, 1903 and is buried in Hartford (Connecticut) .

Legacy

On October 12, 1979, the United States Congress passed law providing for the establishment of the Frederick Law Olmstead National Historic Site . This law allowed the purchase of the Olmsted house and office. A full-time superintendent is now in charge of the Olmsted properties in South Brookline, Longfellow in Cambridge and Kennedy in Brookline.

Nearby is the Brookline Reservoir, which was built in 1848 to supply Boston with drinking water. Today it's a park. The gatehouse has the oldest surviving iron roof on any building in the United States.

In 1902 the City of Boston decided to sell the reservoir and the surrounding land. Local residents learned of the rumors of the undesirable development and contributed more than $ 50,000 to the purchase price of $ 150,000.

Fonts

literature

  • Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Theodora Kimball (Eds.): Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect, 1822-1903 . Putnam'sons, New York 1922.
  • Melvin Kalfus: Frederick Law Olmstead: The Passion of a Public Artist. NYU Press, New York 1990, ISBN 9780814746066 .
  • Lee Hall: Olmsted's America. An "Unpractical" Man and His Vision of Civilization . Bullfinch Press, Boston, MA 1995, ISBN 0-8212-1998-7 .
  • Cynthia Zaitzevsky: Fairsted: A Cultural Landscape . Report for the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Volume I: Site History (1997)
  • Charles E. Beveridge, Paul Rocheleau: Frederick Law Olmsted. Designing the American Landscape . Universe Publishers, New York 1999, ISBN 0-7893-0228-4 .
  • Elizabeth Stevenson: Park Maker. A life of Frederick Law Olmsted . Transaction Publishing, New Brunswick, NJ 1999, ISBN 0-7658-0614-2 .
  • Witold Rybczynski: A Clearing in the Distance. Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century. Scribner, New York 2003, ISBN 0-684-86575-0 .
  • Justin Martin: “Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted” . Da Capo Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-306-81881-3 .

Web links

Commons : Frederick Law Olmsted  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Olmsted Point  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Frederick Law Olmsted (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Toxicodendron vernix , often confused with poison sumac ( Toxicodendron pubescens ).
  2. ↑ Poillon House. (PDF; 1.6 MB) Landmarks Preservation Commission, February 28, 1967, accessed on September 11, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Olmsted expanded the residential building, which - with some changes - has been preserved to this day. It was later called Woods of Arden . It still stands today at 4515 Hylan Boulevard, near Woods of Arden Road.
  4. ↑ Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. , Theodora Kimball: Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect, 1822-1903 . GP Putnam's Sons, New York, London 1922, OCLC 780260398 ( online [accessed September 11, 2014]).
  5. ↑ Olmsted – Designed New York City Parks. New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  6. ^ Yosemite National Park. PBS, 2009, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Jacob Weidenmann. The Cultural Landscape Foundation, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  8. ^ The Accomplishments of Frederick Law Olmsted
  9. ^ Greg: Fairsted: Frederick Law Olmsted's Home in Brookline. In: Around The Bend. November 15, 2012, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Lisa Kalis: Fairsted is a living lab for Olmsted's landscapes. In: Chicago Tribune . May 23, 2004, accessed September 11, 2014 .
  11. ↑ General Management Plan: Frederick Law Olmstead National Historic Site National Park Service 1983.
  12. ^ Fairsted, 99 Warren Street, Brookline, Norfolk County, MA creator: Jack E. Boucher, Date Created / Published: 2000 in Library of Congress
  13. ^ Frederick Law Olmstead National Historic Site - page 15
  14. ↑ Flickr Photo
  15. ↑ Brookline Reservoir Park ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.brooklinema.gov
personal data
SURNAME Olmsted, Frederick Law
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American landscape architect, Central Park planner
DATE OF BIRTH April 26, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Hartford , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1903
Place of death Belmont , Massachusetts