Preface ix 



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 pub- 

 lished papers must necessarily be a somewhat disjointed com- 

 pilation, 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 ex- 

 tracts, — 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 presenta- 

 tion of the theory and practice of the landscape art as de- 

 veloped 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 cooperation 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 connec- 

 tion 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 



