FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED AND HIS WORK 
An Appreciation by John Nolen, M. A., (Harvard) 
F rederick law olmsted was bom at 
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1822, and died near 
Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903. In his long life 
of over eighty 
years he played 
many honorable 
parts. He was 
distinctly versa¬ 
tile. In him the 
old type of artist 
of the Italian 
Renaissance, the 
man who could 
do many things 
and do them all 
well, was again 
illustrated. He 
was a successful 
farmer in his 
young manhood, 
gaining by close 
observation in 
that occupation a 
knowledge and 
love of nature 
which were of in¬ 
estimable value 
to him later. He 
served the nation 
faithfully, effec¬ 
tively and unself¬ 
ishly during the 
Civil War as Gen¬ 
eral Secretary of 
the United States 
Sanitary Com¬ 
mission, display¬ 
ing masterful ex¬ 
ecutive ability. In 
the decade from 
1850 to i860, he 
wrote books of 
travel describing 
accurately and 
vividly what he 
saw in Europe and in this country, books which 
remain to this day the most interesting authorities 
on the social, political and economic conditions of 
that period. Posterity, however, will remember 
him best and longest, not for these services, great 
though they were, but for his work as artist in 
the field of landscape design. Indeed, he has been 
called by so eminent a critic as Professor Charles 
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED Born 1822 Died 1903 
“ What artist so noble has often been my thought, as he who with far reaching conception of beauty 
and designing power sketches the outline, writes the colors and directs the shadows of a picture so great 
that nature shall be employed upon it for generations before the work he has arranged for her shall 
realize his intentions.” (From “ Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England” by Frederick 
Law Olmsted, written in 1851, long before he had any idea of becoming a landscape architect.) 
Eliot Norton “the greatest artist that America has 
yet produced.” 
Mr. Olmsted’s contribution to landscape archi¬ 
tecture was of a 
double character, 
his writings and 
his designs. His 
professional re¬ 
ports upon parks 
and other sub¬ 
jects, his letters 
and his addresses 
are, indeed, clas¬ 
sic. They are the 
best expression 
yet made of the 
fundamental 
principles that 
govern good de¬ 
sign out-of-doors, 
yet far more im¬ 
portant than what 
he said is what 
he did. His 
works of land¬ 
scape design are 
great in number 
and wide in 
variety. They in¬ 
clude over eighty 
public recreation 
grounds, besides 
many designs of 
a semi-public or 
private character. 
They extend from 
Massachusetts to 
California, from 
Montreal to 
North Carolina. 
They are national 
in range. In 
character they are 
likewise broad, 
including almost 
every conceivable problem of design and dealing 
with city, country, seashore, mountain and lowland 
sites. His main work, however, was upon parks, 
and the American parks of to-day are nearly all 
the work of his mind and imagination. In the 
design of large parks his main purpose was to 
provide scenery, what he called, “pleasing rural 
scenery,” and to exclude rigorously everything 
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