Category: Life & Times

Come along as Mark Roessler visits Hartford— Connecticut’s capital city and Olmsted’s birthplace— with historian Jana Colacino. 

Tony Horwitz’s collection of Olmsted books was recently donated to the University of Virginia’s Center for Cultural Landscapes.

In October 2024, the Olmsted Network hosted a six-week course on the work of Frederick Law Olmsted and the Olmsted firm for older adult learners through Osher Online.

Olmsted Network President & CEO Dede Petri recounts the trip of a lifetime, retracing Frederick Law Olmsted's footsteps in England with John Phibbs, Gilly Kitching and 12 intrepid Olmsted pilgrims. Olmsted’s first book and delightful travelogue, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, provides the backdrop for these observations.

Landscape Architect, Author, Conservationist (1822–1903)

Despite his late commitment to landscape design, Olmsted's ideas on the subject had taken form long before he thought of himself as a landscape designer or attempted anything of the sort in a professional way.

Learn more about the women behind the Olmsted firm.

In this reprinted article, learn about Frederick Law Olmsted's adopted son, John Charles Olmsted.

Olmsted believed that the thoughtful design of parks and public spaces has positive social, environmental, economic, and health impacts on the people and communities around them.  Witnessing rapid growth and urbanization in America, Olmsted understood that the future of the natural world would be threatened without more public-spirited intervention. Olmsted’s foresight is best illustrated by […]

F.L. Olmsted was greatly influenced by what he saw during his brief visit to Birkenhead. As well as the Park’s design, he was fundamentally challenged by the social and political concepts that it embodied.

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 addition to writing about the scourge of slavery, Olmsted was a fierce advocate for abolition and an early supporter of equal rights for Blacks in America.

A two-story farmhouse and two acres are all that remain of the original 125-acre ornamental farm that Frederick Law Olmsted managed in the 1830s that shaped much of his later career. Known as Tosomock Farm, the historic landmark overlooks Raritan Bay and is now preserved as the Olmsted-Beil House. Tosomock Farm functioned as an “experimental” farm […]

Olmsted was more than the founder of American landscape architecture. He was an author, public servant and an antislavery advocate, too. See the seminal moments in his extraordinary life below.