Frederick Law Olmsted

The richness and variety of the professional papers left by Frederick Law Olmsted, Senior, is astonishing, especially in view of the enormous amount of work on the ground which he accomplished in the almost forty years of his active career as a Landscape Architect. Orderly and thorough by habit of thought, he wrote down with minute care the various steps of his professional dealings, in many cases retaining unused drafts which show valuable processes of mind. From the beginning he realized fully the importance of presenting the new profession to the public in a favorable light, and was constantly “coming before the public,”—as the phrase went,—in the daily press and in occasional pamphlets. Several of his professional reports also were printed at his own expense, but a far greater number have lain buried in the files of Park Department Documents or have never been printed in any form. His personal life after 1857 was so closely bound up with his professional activities that his family and friendly letters reveal many sidelights on his work. The record of his professional correspondence is fortunately full. When the political harassments to which he was subjected prevented him from sleeping, he used to while away the hours of the night by writing, sometimes in regard to his current problems and sometimes bits of general wisdom gained in his professional experience. About 1890 when he was obliged in some degree to lessen his travelling about, he wrote several long retrospective letters, reviewing his career, and he left also two or three short fragments of autobiography, which are included in this present volume.

Among the many people outside the Olmsted family who had preserved and were able to return letters for editorial purposes, there should be especially mentioned: the late Frederick J. Kingsbury of Waterbury, Conn., who added to the letters a valuable group of reminiscences; Miss Emma Brace (letters to her father Charles Loring Brace) who assisted also in the preliminary sorting of Olmsted letters; Miss Sarah Norton (letters to her father Charles Eliot Norton); and the Vaux family, who have aided the editors of Mr. Olmsted’s papers in every possible way, Mr. Bowyer Vaux especially, and given permission for the publication in Vol. Two of several very illuminating letters from Calvert Vaux to Mr. Olmsted, in 1864-65, which formed a turning point in the latter’s career.

The present volume of Mr. Olmsted’s papers is intended as an introduction to a series covering his main activities as a Landscape Architect. The writings are to be arranged by large groups, according to the nature of the works in connection with which they were written,—public parks and park systems, town plans, land subdivisions, grounds for public and semi-public buildings, private estates, and so on. This somewhat arbitrary rather than sequential arrangement is adopted perforce because Mr. Olmsted’s writings—illuminating as they are in regard to principles of wide application—relate, with few exceptions, directly to some specific problem or set of conditions, dealing with the case now from the point of view of æsthetics, now from that of utility and convenience or economy, sometimes from that of the sociologist, sometimes from that of the administrator or that of the artisan.

Mr. Olmsted wrote not primarily to set forth general theories but to show how to get satisfactory results under actual specific circumstances and requirements as he found them, or to carry conviction of the wisdom of certain courses of action which he advised.

In this connection it is interesting to compare his professional writings with those of A. J. Downing,—whose friendship unquestionably did much to stimulate and develop Mr. Olmsted’s interest in landscape matters, and whose activities in the Central Park campaign and in bringing Calvert Vaux into relations with Mr. Olmsted led the latter so unexpectedly into the profession. It is very striking to note the contrast between Downing’s somewhat doctrinaire and a priori method of discussing landscape problems, and Mr. Olmsted’s habitual method, which was frankly to envisage the peculiar facts of each situation as an individual problem to be solved on its own merits in its own individual way, and then to test and perhaps correct his conclusions by reasoning back to find principles consistent alike with the facts and artistic intuitions present in this particular case and with other principles and theories accepted by him as sound and true. He looked on theories and “principles” as valuable tools of service, inevitably incomplete and defective, frequently in need of reshaping, sharpening and improvement, and he was seldom tempted to overlook or minimize new and special factors in a problem merely because their recognition would force him to modify what he had come to regard as firmly established principles.

As a result of his method of writing Mr. Olmsted’s published papers must necessarily be a somewhat disjointed compilation, passages of the greatest interest and value for their applicability to problems of residential property occurring in the discussion of a park problem and vice versa, points of detail in matters of technique sometimes coming cheek by jowl with discussions of fundamentally controlling purposes. It is proposed, however, to round out the series by a general volume which will weave together many fragments and extracts,—mainly from letters and reports not considered worthy of presentation in extenso in the previous volumes, together with connecting and explanatory matter by F. L. Olmsted, Junior,—into an orderly and consistent presentation of the theory and practice of the landscape art as developed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Senior. This last volume is also to contain a full subject index to all the material in the whole series of volumes, thus opening for ready reference a mine of information on hundreds of topics in the field of landscape architecture and administration of public works.

While Volume One is devoted to the background of Mr. Olmsted’s professional career, Volume Two will deal with his first professional undertaking, the New York Central Park, designed in coöperation with Calvert Vaux, which marks the beginning of a new era of parks and of civic design in America. On this account it has seemed desirable to give a much fuller presentation of Mr. Olmsted’s papers relating to Central Park than can be given to any other single example of design. This is the more justifiable because many of the later park reports repeat and develop principles first stated in connection with Central Park.

Furthermore the history of Central Park is considered of such importance in the development of the City of New York that the Russell Sage Foundation, in connection with the survey of Greater New York and Environs, has made a special grant to enable the editors of the Olmsted Papers to produce a monograph on Central Park which shall not only present the Park from the standpoint of design, but shall also give a connected history of its conception, design, construction, and management up to the time of its fullest development before its principal designers lost touch with it in the 80’s. The volume will therefore offer not merely, or even primarily, Mr. Olmsted’s personal contribution as a designer, but rather the conception of the park as he always regarded it,—as a great collaborative effort in and for a democratic community.

The editorial work on the great mass of Mr. Olmsted’s papers personal and professional was begun soon after his death by F. L. Olmsted, Junior. At this time, 1903-04, the bulk of the papers was gone over and separated into the more and less important, and a beginning made on their arrangement, with the assistance of Mr. Philip P. Sharples. In the spring of 1920, Mr. F. L. Olmsted engaged the present editor’s services to bring the material into definitive form for publication, while Mrs. Frederick Law Olmsted, Senior, was still alive to lend the aid of her memory to the work. During the summer and fall of 1920 Mrs. Olmsted, at ninety years of age, made it her major occupation, saw the scheme of the whole series of volumes take shape, and approved the selection of material for the first volume, in which she herself had perhaps the greatest personal interest. It was hoped that the first volume might appear on the hundredth anniversary of Mr. Olmsted’s birth, April 26, 1922, and that she might live to see it published. She died on April 23, 1921, but not before she had helped the work immeasurably not only by her discriminating advice but by the inspiration of her interest.

The whole work has been subject to the direction, criticism, and approval of the present Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who has made the editorial work and publication possible, and has added some of the brief explanatory notes.

T. K.