The Mark Twain House & Museum, The Bushnell Park Foundation, and the National Association for Olmsted Parks are excited to welcome Hugh Howard and Donald Poland for an IN-PERSON discussion of ARCHITECTS OF AN AMERICAN LANDSCAPE, a dual portrait of America’s first great architect, Henry Hobson Richardson, and her finest landscape designer, Frederick Law Olmsted―and their immense impact on America. Join us on the anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted’s birthday for a deep dive into the reimagining of America’s Public and Private Spaces.
Frederick Law Olmsted is widely revered as America’s first and finest parkmaker and environmentalist, the force behind Manhattan’s Central Park, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Biltmore’s parkland in Asheville, dozens of parks across the country, and the preservation of Yosemite and Niagara Falls. Yet his close friend and sometime collaborator, Henry Hobson Richardson, has been almost entirely forgotten today, despite his outsized influence on American architecture―from Boston’s iconic Trinity Church to Chicago’s Marshall Field Wholesale Store to the Shingle Style and the wildly popular “open plan” he conceived for family homes. Individually they created much-beloved buildings and public spaces. Together they married natural landscapes with built structures in train stations and public libraries that helped drive the shift in American life from congested cities to developing suburbs across the country.
The small, reserved Olmsted and the passionate, Falstaffian Richardson could not have been more different in character, but their sensibilities were closely aligned. In chronicling their intersecting lives and work in the context of the nation’s post-war renewal, Hugh Howard reveals how these two men created original all-American idioms in architecture and landscape that influence how we enjoy our public and private spaces to this day.
LIVE AND IN-PERSON event. Tickets are $5, all proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum, the Bushnell Park Foundation, and the National Association for Olmsted Parks. Tickets can be redeemed at the Museum Store for $5 off a signed copy of ARCHITECTS OF AN AMERICAN LANDSCAPE.
____________________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Hugh Howard is an American historian, writer, and speaker who has written over a dozen books about architecture. His book, Houses of Civil War America, was listed as one of Southern Living ‘s best illustrated books of Fall 2014.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Dr.Donald J. Poland is an urban geographer and planner with over twenty-seven years’ experience in land use planning, economic development, and neighborhood investment. His consultancy practice has spanned 19 states and over 125 communities. Dr. Poland is a Visiting Associate Professor in Urban Studies, Graduate Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. He earned his PhD from UCL (University College London), Department of Geography, Cities and Urbanization program. Dr. Poland recently wrote a manuscript, “Unconscious Influence: Olmsted’s Hartford” for the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office. The manuscript is about Fredrick Law Olmsted’s formative years in Hartford.