Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26th 1822 with Hartford, Connecticut - August 28th 1903) was an American architect-landscape designer , famous inter alia for the design of many city parks, of which the Central Park of New York and the Mount-Royal Parc with Montreal.

Life and career

Born from a merchant and a girl of farmer, Olmsted was fascinated by nature since its childhood. After having attended the Academy Philips, he studied the Agronomie and the Ingénierie with the Université Yale. In 1843, it went in China for one year, returned to work on its farm of Connecticut, then set out again for the town of New York where it bought a small experimental farm of 0,5 km ² on Staten Island. This farm, called the Wood of Arden ( The Woods off Arden ) by its former owner, was famous Ferme Tomosock ( Tomosock Farm ) by Olmsted.

Olmsted also made an important career in Journalisme. In 1850, it went in Europe in order to visit certain public gardens of Paris, London and Vienna. It published, in 1852 Walks and Talks off year American Farmer in England ( Promenades and comments of an American farmer in England ).

Interested by the slave economy , it was given the responsability by the New York Daily Times (maintaining the NewYork Times ) to go to the Texas and in the south of the United States of 1852 to 1857 in order to studied the question. He concludes from it not only that the practice of the slave system was Morale lies odious, but that it was also expensive and economically ineffective. Its dispatches were preserved and constitute today invaluable documents concerning the period before the civil war. Olmsted was also the cofounder of the review The Nation , in 1865.

Olmsted' S friend and mentor, Andrew Jackson Downing, the charismatic landscape architect from Newburgh, New York first proposed the development off New York' S Central Park ace publisher off The Horticulturist magazine. It was Downing who introduced Olmsted to the English-born architect Calvert Be worth, whom Downing had personally brought back from England ace his architect-collaborator. After Downing died has hero' S death in has steamboat explosion one the Hudson River in July 1852, in his honor Olmsted and Vaux entered the Central Park design competition together-and won. One his return from the South, Olmsted began executing the plan almost immediately. Olmsted and Be worth continued to their informal partnership to design Prospect Park in Brooklyn from 1866 to 1868, and other projects. Be worth off remained in the shadow Olmsted' S social general public personality and connections.

The design off Central Park embodies Olmsted' S social consciousness and commitment to egalitarian ideals. Influenced by social Downing and by his own observations regarding class in England, Clouded and the American South, Olmsted believed that the common green space must always Be equally accessible to all citizens. This principle is now so fundamental to the idea off has " public park" coil-obvious ace to seem, goal it was not so then. Olmsted' S tenure ace park to commission was one long struggle to preserves that idea.

After completing Central Park, Olmsted served ace Executive Secretary off the U.S. Sanitary Commission, has precursor to the Red Cross in Washington D.C which tended to the wounded during the Civil War. After the war He managed the Mariposa mining estate in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. In 1865 Be worth and Olmsted formed Olmsted, Vaux and Company . When Olmsted returned to New York, He and Be worth designed Prospect Park, Chicago 'S Riverside subdivision, Buffalo, New York 'S park system, and the the Niagara Reservation At Niagara Falls.

Olmsted not only created city parks in many cities around the country, He also conceived off entire systems off parks and interconnecting parkways which connected some cities to green spaces. Year example off the scale one which Olmsted worked is one off the largest parts off his work, the park system designed for Buffalo, New York.

Olmsted has frequent collaborator with Henry Hobson Richardson for whom He devised the landscaping designs for half has dozen projects, including Richardson' S commission for the Buffalo State Asylum.

In 1883 Olmsted established what is considered to Be the first full-time landscape architecture firm in Brookline, Massachusetts. He called the home and office compound Fairsted , which today is the recently-restored Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. From there Olmsted designed Boston' S Emerald Necklace, the campus off Stanford University and the 1893 World' S Fair in Chicago among many other projects. In 1895, Senility forced him to withdraws. He moved to Belmont, Massachusetts and took up residence At McLean Hospital, which He had landscaped several years before, where He remained until his death in 1903, and burial in the Old North Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut. After Olmsted' S death, his sounds John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. continued the work off to their firm, doing business ace the Olmsted Brothers. The firm lasted until 1950 .

See too

External bonds

biographical Site on Frederick Law Olmsted

References

Beveridge, Charles E, Paul Rocheleau (October 1998). Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape , New York, New York: Universe Publishing. ISBN 0789302284.
(2003). Guide to Biltmore Estates , Asheville, North Carolina: The Biltmore Company.
Hall, Lee (1995). Olmsted' S America: Year " Unpractical" Man and His Vision off Civilization , Boston, MY: Bullfinch Near.
Olmsted, Frederick Law (1856). has Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks one Their Economy .
Rybczynski, Witold (June 1999). has Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century , New York, New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684824639.

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