Shared Spaces

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 […]

Olmsted judged the Genesee River to be Rochester’s fairest asset with natural settings that should be preserved. He recommended the purchase of land and the development of two large parks straddling the Genesee River north and south of the city’s center. The North Park later was named Seneca Park and the South Park Genesee Valley […]

Organizer: Planting Fields FoundationLocation: Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Oyster Bay, New YorkDate: October 20 and 21, 2022 We are seeking contributions for a symposium to be held in October 2022 (exact dates TBA) that will examine the residential projects of the Olmsted landscape architecture firm. Organized in conjunction with Olmsted 200, an initiative […]

Parks are spaces for reflection, offering solace from the churn of the city and the demands of everyday life. They are places to let air into lungs, to release energy, and to stretch your arms wide. The physical benefits of parks are clear, but as COVID-19 has demonstrated, the mental benefits from public outdoor spaces […]

The first of its kind in the United States, the Buffalo, New York system of interconnected parks and parkways is one of the largest Olmsted bodies of work comprised of 24 park and parkway features.

Land adjoining Frederick Law Olmsted’s farmhouse on Staten Island, which was instrumental in shaping his design principles, is in danger of being sold to developers. Despite recent designations to the national and New York state historic registries of the Farmhouse, the state has yet to release the funds it set aside to purchase 1.2 acres […]

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 […]

For more than a century, authors have grappled with how to tell the story. Frederick Law Olmsted was, in turn, a “scientific” farmer, merchant seaman, surveyor, literary thinker, roving reporter, publisher, anti-slavery advocate, conservationist, superintendent with his own “navy,” and, most famously, shaper of America’s urban landscape. We offer readers some top picks for reading […]

Charmed by the natural beauty of Asheville, North Carolina, George Washington Vanderbilt III amassed 125,000 acres in the late 1880s on which to build his “little mountain escape.” Architect Richard Morris Hunt designed Biltmore House in the Châteauesque style modeled after the Renaissance châteaux of Blois, Chenonceau, and Chambord and England’s Waddesdon Manor. In what […]