About Gallaudet University 

Gallaudet University’s first and longest-serving president, Edward Miner Gallaudet, was a childhood friend of Frederick Law Olmsted. After seeing Olmsted and Vaux’s work in New York’s Central Park, Gallaudet invited them to visit the 14-acre campus in Washington, D.C. and officially engaged the firm to conduct an improvement of the campus grounds in 1866. 

Gallaudet wrote to Olmsted and asked specifically that he come to D.C. to help design the landscape: “It is with no lack of appreciation of Mr. Vaux’s abilities that I express a preference for your coming if you can do so. Memories of my childhood associations with you and your family when our family lived near yours in Chapel St. Hartford, lead me strongly to desire to renew the acquaintances of long ago.” Olmsted wrote back: “It will give me great pleasure to meet you again.”   

Olmsted’s design embodied his idea of campus as community— various buildings buffered from the surrounding environment by careful landscaping. The plan called for dense border plantings and a meandering circulation network designed to provide choreographed passages of scenery. To fit Olmsted’s design, Gallaudet engaged Vaux’s architectural partner, Frederick Clarke Withers, who proposed an attractive High Victorian Gothic style with red brick, brownstone and a great deal of external embellishment.   

Today, the original Olmsted-designed campus is identified as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. It is safe to say that Olmsted’s work has shaped, and continues to shape, the identity of Gallaudet University.