Olmsted, Frederick Law

um'sted, Frederick Law (1822-1903), an American landscape architect. He was born at Hartford, Connecticut. He was educated as a civil engineer at Yale. His early manhood was passed as a farmer and horticulturist. In 1850 he traveled in Great Britain, France, and Italy, studying the condition of agriculture and public parks of those countries. On his return he traveled extensively in the South, and published two or three volumes of his observations relative to the effects of slavery on agriculture. They were republished in Great Britain under the title of The Cotton Kingdom and, during the Civil War, they had no little influence in molding sentiment in favor of the North. Olmsted's personality and writings had so far attracted attention that, when New York City embarked on the project of creating a central park, he was made superintendent. Among the ideas which governed him in laying out that and subsequent parks may be mentioned an avoidance of artificial or mathematical lines. He believed that each park should take advantage of the natural lay of the land, and that it should be a combination of cultivation and wildwood. In his judgment, a rocky ledge covered by a thicket should not be disturbed. In other words, nature should be aided, not destroyed, by art. His work in New York City made him the leading landscape architect of America. He laid out parks for Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Louisville, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and many other less prominent cities. He gave valuable advice relative to the beautifying of the capitol grounds at Washington. He was also one of the first commissioners of the Yosemite National Park and the Mariposa Grove. He was connected with many charitable organizations, being one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History at New York. In his later years he opened an office in Boston. He died at Waverly, Massachusetts. His name and work have descended to his son, now professor of landscape architecture in Harvard University. See Central Park; Yosemite; Vanderbilt