Milwaukee Parks – Metropolitan Park Commission

In 1890 the Park Commissioners of Milwaukee contacted Frederick Law Olmsted to request his services in beautifying several of the city’s parks. (see jobs 01650 -01654) Almost two decades later the Metropolitan Park Commission wrote to Frederick Law Olmsted Jr in 1907 requesting copies of other city reports, in particular Baltimore and Seattle. Subsequently, the Commission published a report in 1909 titled the First Tentative Report of the Metropolitan Park Commission focused on the Civic Center and requested FLO Jr. confer with John Nolen, a Cambridge landscape architect, to comment on the proposed plan. They responded with some detailed advice in particular focused on the siting of the County Building.

The firm reviewed plans for the Milwaukee Civic Center and expressed that “our judgment is that the general situation proposed by the Metropolitan Park Commission would permit of an orderly, advantageous, and economical grouping of public and semi-public buildings; that the plan of development proposed, is in its essentials, admirable: and yet that the project is of such complexity that the best results are to be secured only by means of the most thorough and skillful study applied to the revision and development of the plan.” [Frederick Law Olmsted & John Nolen to The Metropolitan Park Commission of Milwaukee_07-27-1909_LOC-OAR-B-R73_im.28]