Category: Parks & Public Spaces

The mission of the Belle Isle Conservancy is to protect, preserve, restore and enhance the natural environment, historic structures, and unique character of Belle Isle as a public park for the enjoyment of all– now and forever. To carry out this mission, the Conservancy works alongside community stakeholders and partners at the State of Michigan […]

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. […]

Earlier this summer, the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy (Project No. 00700) launched the Olmsted App 2.0, an update to their original mobile app that launched in 2018. The app features updated wayfinding capability, an event calendar, and the latest news. The app also includes cutting-edge technology and imaginative 3D models, through augmented reality (AR), to […]

Memorial Park Association’s Board of Directors is pleased to announce the completion of the replacement of the nearly 100-year-old balustrade that formerly lined the seawall of Jacksonville-based Memorial Park before Hurricane Irma destroyed it in September 2017.  Southside-based Intron Technologies was selected by the City of Jacksonville in June 2020 to replace the 560-foot-long stretch […]

Friends of McMillan Park returned to the D.C. Court of Appeals in September to appeal a demolition permit that was issued in August of 2019 for most of the McMillan site. During the meeting, the group argued that the demolition permit was issued in violation of the Historic Preservation Act as the entire site is […]

On Tuesday, September 28, 2021, former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama visited historic Jackson Park (Project No. 01902) in Chicago, IL for the Obama Presidential Center’s (OPC) ceremonial groundbreaking.  This groundbreaking took place weeks after construction crews began demolishing the site— a plot of parkland along the South Side’s sublime Lake […]

Decades of budgetary restrictions, nonconforming changes, poor decisions, and theft have compromised the integrity of these parks,– now to be addressed in a “master plan” in Forest Hills.

In this episode of Cream City Windy City, podcast host Wendy Bright discusses Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture. Olmsted had an outsize impact on Milwaukee and Chicago, designing some of the cities’ most exquisitely conceived parks in the early 1890s. Listen to the podcast now: https://cream-city-windy-city.simplecast.com/episodes/frederick-law-olmsted

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).

A new book highlights part of Frederick Law Olmsted’s legacy in Milwaukee.

On July 20, 2021, hundreds of viewers tuned into Conversations with Olmsted: Creating Parks for the Ages. Hosted by the National Association for Olmsted Parks on behalf of Olmsted 200, the second installment in the series explored Olmsted’s belief that thoughtfully-designed public parks could bring communities together and provide residents and visitors with a host […]

Following up on our previous post about the Urban Park Grant Opportunity (ORLP)… City Parks Alliance, and our partners the National Recreation and Park Association and the Trust for Public Land, is hosting an Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) Program technical assistance webinar in partnership with National Park Service. National Park Service staff will provide […]

Just one week after the 199th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted, father of the American urban park, the Department of Interior announced expanded funding for urban public parks. See the press release from DOI. During the pandemic, the power and importance of parks for our mental and physical health became obvious to us all, so […]

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.

A light breeze, the first splash of tree canopy green and a forest floor dotted with spring’s early wildflowers, it was a perfect afternoon for my walk with Dan Jones, one of the country’s great 21st-century park thinkers and makers. Dan is the visionary behind The Parklands of Floyds Fork, an Olmsted-inspired four-park system on […]