124 Frederick Law Olmsted 



competition plan of Colonel Viele, Chief Engineer, whose 

 original design for the Park had been rejected before the 

 institution of the competition, found no favor with the com- 

 missioners. Mr, Ignaz A. Pilat, an Austrian, said to have 

 designed the grounds of Prince Metternich, and who had 

 been engaged since 1856 on a botanical survey of the ground 

 of the Central Park, submitted a design, although not in 

 competition. It would appear that no distinguished foreign 

 designer participated, although the Central Park Commis- 

 sioners had hoped for this, and had gone so far as to appro- 

 priate money for the traveling expenses of the "engineers or 

 other persons in chief ' ' by whom the Bois de Boulogne and 

 Birkenhead Park had been laid out and constructed, could 

 they be induced to visit New York for the purpose of giving 

 the Board "aid and information." 



At this time in Boston the firm of Copeland and Cleveland 

 (R. Morris Copeland and H. W. S. Cleveland) was engaged 

 in the professional practice of landscape gardening, mainly 

 the laying-out of suburban and country estates. In 1856 

 these gentlemen had published a very sensible pamphlet 

 modestly entitled A Few Words on the Central Park, in which 

 they urged on the City of New York the ultimate economy 

 of a comprehensive plan. Mr. Charles Pollen, also of Boston, 

 was in practice at the time, styling himself "architect and 

 landscape gardener," in his pamphlet, Suggestions, intended 

 for estate owners, issued in 1859. Both Mr. Copeland and 

 Mr. FoUen submitted plans in the Central Park competition. 



In a book published at Cincinnati early in 1855, called 

 Practical Landscape Gardening, the author, G. M. Kern, 

 refers to a flourishing state of the art of laying out grounds 

 in the Mississippi region and mentions especially Adolph 

 Strauch, of Cincinnati, now remembered as the designer of 

 Spring Grove Cemetery, which he undertook in that same 

 year, 1855. But the field in the West as in the East was 

 mainly restricted to private grounds, and the "many repre- 

 sentatives" mentioned by Mr. Kern remained obscure, most 

 of them perhaps lands chafts gar tner emigrated from Europe 

 with the influx of German settlers to the Middle West at this 

 period. 



Outside of Downing's writings, which were widely known, 

 there were few books on landscape gardening by American 

 writers, and few English books had gone into American edi- 

 tions. Even in i860, Mr. C. A. Dana, as editor of Appleton's 



