12/5/13 Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

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Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (July 24, 1870 – December

25, 1957) was an American landscape architect who is best Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr
known for his wildlife conservation efforts. He had a lifetime
commitment to national parks, and worked on projects in
Acadia, the Everglades and Yosemite National Park.
Olmsted Point in Yosemite and Olmsted Island at Great Falls
of the Potomac River in Maryland are named after him. He
and his brother John C. Olmsted created Olmsted Brothers
as a successor firm to their father's.

Contents
1 Career
2 Projects
3 References Born July 24, 1870
4 External links Staten Island, New York
Died December 25, 1957 (aged 87)[1]
Malibu, California[2]
Career Nationality American

Olmsted was born on Staten Island, New York, the son of Awards Pugsley Medal (1953)
Frederick Law Olmsted and Mary Cleveland Perkins, and Practice Olmsted Brothers
half brother of John Charles Olmsted.
Buildings Biltmore Estate
After graduating from the Roxbury Latin School in 1890,[3] Projects Washington, D.C.: National Mall;
he began his career as his famous father's apprentice. He Jefferson Memorial; White House
worked early on two significant projects: the 1893 World's grounds; Rock Creek Park. Others:
Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the largest privately Bok Tower Gardens; Forest Hills
owned home in the United States—the George Vanderbilt
Gardens; Lake Wales, Florida
estate in North Carolina, famously called the Biltmore Estate.

In 1894 he earned his bachelor's degree at Harvard University and became a partner in his father's Brookline,
Massachusetts landscape architecture firm in 1895. Shortly thereafter, his father retired. Olmsted and his half
brother quickly took over leadership of the firm. For the next half-century, the Olmsted brothers' firm completed
thousands of landscape projects nationwide.

In 1900 Olmsted returned to Harvard to teach, and he also established the school's first formal training program in
landscape architecture.

In 1901, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as a member of the Senate Park Improvement
Commission for the District of Columbia, commonly known as the McMillan Commission. He joined other notable
personalities such as Daniel H. Burnham, Charles F. McKim and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, with a charge to
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"restore and develop the century-old plans of Major L’Enfant for Washington and to fit them to the conditions of
today."

In 1910, he was approached by the American Civic Association for advice on the creation of a new bureau of
national parks. This initiated six years of correspondence, including this letter to the president of the Appalachian
Mountain Club, January 19, 1912:

"The present situation in regard to the national parks is very bad. They have been created one at a
time by acts of Congress which have not defined at all clearly the purposes for which the lands were
to be set apart, nor provided any orderly or efficient means of safeguarding the parks . . . I have made
at different times two suggestions, one of which was . . . a definition of the purposes for which the
national parks and monuments are to be administered by the Bureau."

His best contribution was of a few simple words that would guide conservation in America for generations to come
and were preserved in the National Park Service Organic Act (1916):

"To conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide
for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the
enjoyment of future generations."

Olmsted and his wife, Sarah Hall Sharples, whom he married on March 30, 1911, had one child.

By 1920, his better-known projects included plans for metropolitan park systems and greenways across the
country. In 1928, while working for the California State Park Commission (now part of the California Department
of Parks and Recreation), Olmsted completed a statewide survey of potential park lands that defined basic long-
range goals and provided guidance for the acquisition and development of state parks.[4] and was a founding
member and later president of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Under the leadership of John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the
Olmsted Brothers firm employed nearly 60 staff at its peak in the early 1930s. As the
last surviving family member in the firm, Olmsted, Jr. retired in 1949.

A partial listing of Olmsted, Jr. design projects in the nation's capital reads like a
guide to National Park Service-managed sites: the National Mall, Jefferson
Memorial, White House grounds, and Rock Creek Park. Olmsted also prepared the
plan for Boston's metropolitan park system and a master plan for Cornell University, Frederick Law Olmsted,
and was involved in the planning of Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, and Roland Park, Jr. at his drafting table
Baltimore. He was a founding member of the American Society of Landscape
Architects and actively involved in numerous planning and design organizations and
commissions, including the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the
Baltimore Park Commission, the National Park Service Board of Advisers for Yosemite, the National Conference
on City Planning, the American City Planning Institute, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the American
Academy in Rome. Olmsted received many awards and honors during his long career, among them the American
Academy Gold Medal (1949) and the U.S. Department of the Interior Conservation Award (1956).[5]

In his later years, Olmsted, Jr., worked for the protection of California's coastal redwoods. Redwood National
Park's Olmsted Grove was dedicated to him in 1953, the same year in which he received the Pugsley Gold Medal.

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He was responsible for the original terrace-style 'master plan' layout of Cornell University, that is responsible for the
large Arts Quad and Libe Slope. He also worked on the Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida and Forest
Hills Gardens in New York.

Olmsted, Jr. died while visiting friends in Malibu, California[2] and is buried at Old North Cemetery in Hartford,
Connecticut.

Projects
Landscape design at Waveny Park,[6] New Canaan, Connecticut, 1912.
Shelter at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, 1932

St. Francis Wood residential neighborhood located in

southwestern San Francisco, California, ci 1914
Fort Tryon Park, New York City, 1917-1935
Palos Verdes Estates, Los Angeles County, mid-
1930s

References
1. ^ American Council of Learned Societies (1958).
Dictionary of American Biography. Scribner. p. 485.
ISBN 0-684-16226-1.
2. ^ a b "The Lasting Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
Is Everywhere" (http://www.pvld.mobi/lh/?p=74). 2008-11-18. Retrieved 2009-02-09.
3. ^ F. Washington Jarvis, Schola Illustris: The Roxbury Latin School, 1645-1995, p. 344. Boston: David R. Godine,
1995. ISBN 1-56792-066-7.
4. ^ "A State Park System is Born" (http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=940). State of California.
Retrieved 2007-07-28.
5. ^ Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 551.
6. ^ Kendall, Jane. "The Magic of Waveny" (http://www.mofflymedia.com/Moffly-Publications/New-Canaan-Darien-
Magazine/July-2008/The-Magic-of-Waveny/). Retrieved 2009-02-09.

M. Christine Boyer, Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style, 1850-1900. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
ISBN 0-8478-0650-2

This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Government document
"http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/sontag/olmsted.htm National Park Service Biography: Frederick
Law Olmsted, Jr.". Accessed: 2007-09-13

This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Government document
"http://www.nps.gov/archive/frla/background.htm Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site". Accessed:
2007-09-13

External links

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12/5/13 Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

www.olmsted.org (http://www.olmsted.org)

Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (http://www.olmsted.org/events/frederick-law-olmsted-jr-symposia/faq)

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (http://www.rpts.tamu.edu/Pugsley/Olmstead.htm)

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Categories: 1870 births 1957 deaths American landscape architects Harvard University alumni
American conservationists American environmentalists

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