46 Facts About Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator.

Frederick Law Olmsted is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States.

Frederick Law Olmsted was an early and important activist in the conservation movement, including in his work at Niagara Falls, the Adirondack region of upstate New York, and the National Park system.

Frederick Law Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 26,1822.

Frederick Law Olmsted's father, John Olmsted, was a prosperous merchant who took a lively interest in nature, people, and places; Frederick Law and his younger brother, John Hull Olmsted, showed this interest.

Frederick Law Olmsted's father remarried in 1827 to Mary Ann Bull, who shared her husband's strong love of nature and had perhaps a more cultivated taste.

The Frederick Law Olmsted ancestors arrived in the early 1600s from Essex, England.

Frederick Law Olmsted's father helped him acquire this farm, and he renamed it from Akerly Homestead to Tosomock Farm.

The house in which Frederick Law Olmsted lived still stands at 4515 Hylan Boulevard, near Woods of Arden Road.

Frederick Law Olmsted subsequently wrote and published Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England in 1852.

Frederick Law Olmsted's visit to Birkenhead Park inspired his later contribution to the design of Central Park in New York City.

Frederick Law Olmsted stated his views on the effect of slavery on the economy and social conditions of the southern states:.

Frederick Law Olmsted argued that slavery had made the slave states inefficient and backward both economically and socially.

Frederick Law Olmsted said that the profits of slavery were enjoyed by no more than 8,000 owners of large plantations; a somewhat larger group had about the standard of living of a New York City policeman, but the proportion of the free white men who were as well-off as a Northern working man was small.

Frederick Law Olmsted thought that the lack of a Southern white middle class and the general poverty of lower-class whites prevented the development of many civil amenities that were taken for granted in the North.

Between his travels in Europe and the South, Frederick Law Olmsted served as an editor for Putnam's Magazine for two years and as an agent with Dix, Edwards and Co.

Frederick Law Olmsted provided financial support for, and occasionally wrote for, the magazine The Nation, which was founded in 1865.

Vaux had invited the less experienced Frederick Law Olmsted to participate in the design competition with him, having been impressed with Frederick Law Olmsted's theories and political contacts.

On his return from the South, Frederick Law Olmsted began executing their plan almost immediately.

Frederick Law Olmsted's tenure as Central Park commissioner was a long struggle to preserve that idea.

In 1861, Frederick Law Olmsted took leave as director of Central Park to work in Washington, DC, as Executive Secretary of the US Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross.

Frederick Law Olmsted tended to the wounded during the American Civil War.

Frederick Law Olmsted was one of the six founding members of the Union League Club of New York.

Frederick Law Olmsted helped to recruit and outfit three African-American regiments of the United States Colored Troops in New York City.

Frederick Law Olmsted contributed to organizing a Sanitary Fair, which raised one million dollars for the United States Sanitary Commission.

Frederick Law Olmsted refused to delegate and he had an appetite for authority and power.

When Frederick Law Olmsted returned to New York, he and Vaux designed Prospect Park; the planned Chicago suburb of Riverside, Illinois; the park system for Buffalo, New York; Milwaukee's grand necklace of parks; and the Niagara Reservation at Niagara Falls and Belle Isle in Detroit.

Frederick Law Olmsted conceived of entire systems of parks and interconnecting parkways to connect certain cities to green spaces.

Some best examples of the scale on which he worked are the park system designed for Buffalo, one of the largest projects; the system he designed for Milwaukee, and the park system designed for Louisville, Kentucky, which was one of only four completed Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park systems in the world.

Frederick Law Olmsted was a frequent collaborator with architect Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom he devised the landscaping schemes for half a dozen projects, including Richardson's commission for the Buffalo State Asylum.

In 1883, Frederick Law Olmsted established what is considered to be the first full-time landscape architecture firm in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Frederick Law Olmsted called the home and office compound Fairsted.

Frederick Law Olmsted was one of the planners of the National Zoo in Washington, DC, which was founded in 1889.

Frederick Law Olmsted was an important early leader of the conservation movement in the United States.

Frederick Law Olmsted served a one-year appointment on the Board of Commissioner of the state reserve, and his 1865 report to Congress on the board's recommendations laid an ethical framework for the government to reserve public lands, to protect their "value to posterity".

Frederick Law Olmsted was one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1898.

Frederick Law Olmsted was known to oppose park projects on conservationist grounds.

In 1891, Frederick Law Olmsted refused to develop a plan for Presque Isle Park in Marquette, Michigan, saying that it "should not be marred by the intrusion of artificial objects".

Frederick Law Olmsted is known as the "father of American Landscape Architecture".

On June 13,1859, Frederick Law Olmsted married Mary Cleveland Frederick Law Olmsted, the widow of his brother John, who died in 1857.

In recognition of his services during the Civil War, Frederick Law Olmsted was elected a Third Class member of the Massachusetts Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States on May 2,1888, and was assigned insignia number 6345.

In 1891 he joined the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution by right of his descent from his grandfather Benjamin Frederick Law Olmsted who served in the 4th Connecticut Regiment in 1775.

Frederick Law Olmsted remained there until he died in 1903.

Frederick Law Olmsted designed primarily in pastoral and picturesque styles, each to achieve a particular effect.

Frederick Law Olmsted employed a vast expanse of greenery at the end of which would lie a grove of yellow poplar; a path that winds through a bit of landscape and intersects with others, dividing the terrain into triangular islands of successive new views.

Frederick Law Olmsted is a descendant of a Dutch physician who settled in Manhattan in 1700 and whose family members became prominent property owners in the city and various other locations.