Frederick Law Olmsted: An Appreciation and an Appraisal

Frederick Law Olmsted has recently come in for well-deserved tributes on the anniversary of his death. It is no doubt tempting Providence for a subsequent park official to offer an appraisal: Self-anointed custodians of a great reputation resent anyone who appears to denigrate their hero. It seems like laying an impious hand on the Ark of the Covenant or challenging Babe Ruth’s place in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But there is a big difference between a respectful following and a cult. If we hope to solve current urban and suburban recreation problems in any metropolis we must depart, however reluctantly, from the authorities of the last century.

Olmsted was never really at home in the highways and byways, the post-Civil War tenements and rundown waterfronts of cities like New York. He had a short radius. He was not a master planner like Baron Haussmann, his contemporary who rebuilt Paris.

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Robert Moses

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Frederick Law Olmsted has recently come in for well-deserved tributes on the anniversary of his death. It is no doubt tempting Providence for a subsequent park official to offer an appraisal: Self-anointed custodians of a great reputation resent anyone who appears to denigrate their hero. It seems like laying an impious hand on the Ark of the Covenant or challenging Babe Ruth’s place in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But there is a big difference between a respectful following and a cult. If we hope to solve current urban and suburban recreation problems in any metropolis we must depart, however reluctantly, from the authorities of the last century.

Olmsted was never really at home in the highways and byways, the post-Civil War tenements and rundown waterfronts of cities like New York. He had a short radius. He was not a master planner like Baron Haussmann, his contemporary who rebuilt Paris.