Category: Landscape Architecture & Design

Moraine Farm (Project No. 12297) in North Beverly, Massachusetts, is a remarkable but not well-known property, retaining much of the ambiance and character that Frederick Law Olmsted intended for this private commission 140 years ago. That it has retained so much of its integrity over the decades is due to the wise and committed stewardship […]

Service must precede art, since all turf, trees, flowers, fences, walks, water, paint, plaster, posts and pillars in or under which there is not a purpose of direct utility or service are inartistic if not barbarous…So long as consideration of utility are neglected or overridden by considerations of ornament, there will be no true art. […]

Frederick Law Olmsted and his successors are well known for their development of city parks and park systems, but they also made lasting contributions to the National Park Service (NPS).

In the final decades of the 19th century, the new art of landscape architecture was born, in large part due to the efforts of Frederick Law Olmsted. This new profession offered “very specific responses” to the social, political, and environmental challenges of the time, argued Charles Waldheim, Hon. ASLA, the John E. Irving professor of landscape […]

Sometimes when you know someone as an adult and find out something about their childhood, it makes perfect sense. That was how I felt when I learned that Arnold Randall, who is now General Superintendent at the Forest Preserves of Cook County, loved playing in Washington Park’s Adventure Playland when he was a boy. Arnold […]

Olmsted believed public parks would serve as a democratizing force, bringing many communities together to forge a new American society.

Frederick Law Olmsted is regularly recognized as the brilliant mind behind New York’s Central Park, but just across the East River lies another one of Olmsted’s greatest works in Brooklyn: Prospect Park.

Frederick Law Olmsted created hundreds of works of landscape architecture. While they were all different, they embodied a set of design principles that Olmsted developed in his writing and “on the ground.”  What were Olmsted’s design concerns? And what should one look for when walking through an Olmsted design? Key principles shaped Olmsted’s designs and serve […]