Genius of Place (74 page)

Trask, Charley

Trees and other foliage

for Capitol grounds design

in Central Park

for Chicago World's Fair

cypress in Mountain View cemetery

for Hartford Retreat design

for Montreal design

for Biltmore Estate approach road

need for ones suited to Mediterranean climate for Stanford University

nurseries

in Panama

plant succession technique

for salt marsh of Back Bay Fens

sequoias in California

tree-moving machine invented

See also
Arboretums; Forest management

Trees and Shrubs for English Plantations
(Mongredien)

The Trent Affair

Trinity Church, Boston

Trinity Church, New York

Trollope, Anthony

Trotter, Laura

Tull, Jethro

Tweed, William Marcy “Boss,”

Tweed Ring

The Two Paths
(Ruskin)

Two Years Before the Mast
(Dana)

Typhoid fever

Uncle Tom's Cabin
(Stowe)

“Unconscious influence” of the environment

United States Sanitary Commission (USSC)

founding and background

and Bull Run

aid provided at Antietam

aid provided at Gettysburg

hospital ships

localism problems

medical reform efforts

wartime medical treatments described

FLO's resignation

record of battlefield relief, post-war activity

See also
Civil War battles

Urban planning.
See also
Planned communities

U.S. Capitol building and landscaping

FLO's design

L'Enfant's 18th century plan

U.S. Congress

U.S. Forest Service

USSC.
See
United States Sanitary Commission

Valley of the Shadow of Death
photo (Fenton)

Valley of Yosemite
painting (Bierstadt)

Vanderbilt, Cornelius

Vanderbilt, George Washington

Vanderbilt, William

Vanderbilt family mausoleum

Vaux, Bowyer

Vaux, Calvert

as architect working with Downing

first meeting with FLO

Central Park collaboration with FLO

feels slighted over credit given to FLO

marriage and family life

Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Natural History

Prospect Park collaboration with FLO

Niagara collaboration with FLO

partnership with FLO dissolved

professional setbacks

death

Vaux, Downing

Vaux, Julia

Vaux, Mary née Mary Swan McEntee

Vauxhall Gardens

The Vicar of Wakefield
(Goldsmith)

Viele, Egbert Ludovicus

background

Central Park plan submitted, rejected

Brookyn park design submitted, rejected

as FLO's nemesis

Waite, Morrison

Walker, Francis

Walker, Peter

“Walks Among the New-York Poor” articles (Brace)

Walks and Talks of an American Farmer . . .
(F. L. Olmsted)

Ward, John Quincy Adams

Washington, D.C.

during Civil War

public spaces reorganized by Rick

slavery

See also
U.S. Capitol grounds

Washington Monument

Washington Park, Chicago

Watkins, Carleton

Webster, Noah

Weed, Thurlow

Welton, Joseph

Wetlands restoration (Back Bay Fens)

White City.
See
World's Fair

White, Richard Grant

Whitmore, Zolva

Whitney, Elizabeth Baldwin.
See
Baldwin, Elizabeth

Whittier, John Greenleaf

Whittredge, Worthington

Wikoff, Henry

Williams, Andrew

Wilson, Edmund

Wilson, Henry

Wine making and FLO as consultant to upstart industry

Wisedell, Thomas

Wm. C. Bryant & Company

Women volunteers

on Civil War hospital ships

provide food, clothing to USSC

Women's Central Association of Relief

World's Fair of 1893 (Chicago)

background

boats for fairgoers

building architecture, construction

Ferris wheel

grounds designed, constructed, by FLO

Wooded Island with Japanese pavilion

Wormeley, Katharine Prescott

Wright, Frank Lloyd

Wright, Frank Lloyd, Jr.

Yale University

brother John Hull Olmsted attends

confers honorary degree on FLO

encounter with John's classmate, Allison

FLO's brief enrollment

stepson John Charles attends

and uncommon set of friends

Yeoman (pseudonym for F. L. Olmsted)

Yosemite

FLO's first glimpse

history and early representations in art

local Indians

Olmsted family trip

FLO serves on Yosemite preservation commission

becomes national park

Zimmermann, Johann Georg

Zouave regiments in Civil War

Zuckerman, Mary Ellen

APPENDIX

The Olmsted Views

I enjoyed visiting all these incredible sites while researching this book. For each, I've selected choice spots, some of which are remarkably unsullied and have changed little in appearance since Olmsted's day. Of course, you'll have to use your imagination to shut out cars and people using cell phones.

 

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

Go to the highest point on the hill. Legend has it that Olmsted stood here, lifted his finger, and pointed down toward the bay, declaring, “This is the spot.” In his day, one would have had an incredible view of two bustling boomtowns, Oakland and San Francisco. Your view today is of the same two cities, now all grown up. Notable people buried here include chocolate baron Domingo Ghirardelli and Julia Morgan, architect of the Hearst Castle at San Simeon.

 

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

The layout of the university's grounds was the result of a compromise—more like a showdown really—between Olmsted and iron-willed Leland Stanford. Visit the Main Quad, the area of the campus most true to Olmsted's vision. Stanford wanted this space covered in grass, but Olmsted fought to pave it and include the round oases filled with flowers and palms. The idea for the quad itself was Olmsted and Stanford's jointly.

Olmsted pushed for the arcades that unify the buildings. As someone who came to landscape architecture circuitously—as a sailor then farmer then journalist—Olmsted believed in mixing disciplines. The Main Quad was intended as a common space where students pursuing diverse studies could meet and mingle their ideas.

 

YOSEMITE, CALIFORNIA

Olmsted was an environmentalist before the term even existed. He led the early efforts to preserve this natural wonder. One of his favorite spots here is Yosemite Falls, where water cascades over three separate tiers, plummeting a total of 2,425 feet. Olmsted put great effort into positioning the tents of his large camping parties so that everyone would have a view of the falls.

 

GUILFORD, CONNECTICUT

From Guilford, drive three miles south to Sachem's Head, a little spit of land jutting into Long Island Sound. Park on Chimney Corner Circle. You are now at the approximate site of Olmsted's seaside Connecticut farm. The farmhouse is long gone, but the view out across the sound remains. Meanwhile, if you visit Staten Island, New York, Olmsted's farmhouse remains, but the view is long gone. Unfortunately, the house is situated on a busy modern thoroughfare, lined with shops. Address: 4515 Hylan Boulevard. The New York Parks Department purchased Olmsted's old farmhouse in 2006. During my visit it was under renovation, surrounded by scaffolding.

 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Stand on the Clarence Darrow Bridge. During the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the Brazilian Bridge occupied this same site. The big building you see: That was once the Palace of Fine Arts. It's the only large structure
from the White City that remains. Today, it's the Museum of Science and Industry. The water flowing under the bridge: It is one of the languid waterways Olmsted designed for the fair. Continue over the bridge onto the Wooded Island, a natural-looking place that Olmsted built out with dredged lakeshore muck. It was intended to provide a respite from the bustle of the fair. Enjoy a stroll on the Wooded Island, which remains a calm spot in hectic modern Chicago.

 

RIVERSIDE, ILLINOIS

This model suburb was designed by Olmsted, Vaux & Company. Go to the intersection of Fairbank and Barrypoint roads. Looking in one direction, note the long stretch of green. Ample communal spaces such as this are the hallmark of Riverside's design. Now, find 100 Fairbank, a gray two-story house with Gothic accents. This is the work of Calvert Vaux. Sadly, it's one of the few houses designed by this exceptional architect that's still standing.

 

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

This is a unique piece of the Emerald Necklace, an ambitious park system that Olmsted created for Boston. It's a tree museum jointly maintained by Harvard University and the city. Walk along the path; it follows nearly the same course that Olmsted laid out. The trees are still planted in the same order prescribed by Olmsted and his friend and founder of the arboretum Charles Sprague Sargent. Some of these trees are original plantings such as a cucumber magnolia (1880) and a silver maple (1881).

 

Your ideal view is from the Boylston Street Bridge. This monumental structure, hewn of Cape Ann granite, was designed by Olmsted's friend architect H. H. Richardson. Take a look at all the rushes and
other aquatic plants growing along the creek bank. Believe it or not, this was once a fetid swamp where Bostonians dumped their garbage. Olmsted turned it into a marsh, a type of landscape that he remembered fondly from growing up in Connecticut. In Olmsted's day, this was a saltwater marsh. Today, it's freshwater, thanks to the damming of the Charles River in 1910. But the landscape looks generally the same. It's fair to say that Olmsted's work here was America's first act of wetland restoration.

 

Franklin Park and Back Bay Fens are also segments of the Emerald Necklace. Walk through the Ellicott Arch, designed by stepson John Olmsted. Follow the path, and very soon you'll come to the 99 Steps, a wonderful and whimsical Olmsted touch. The steps are made of Roxbury puddingstone and lead up into a wilderness area grown thickly with trees. Listen carefully. You may not even be able to hear traffic noises. It's hard to fathom, but you are right in the middle of Boston right now.

 

BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS

Olmsted worked out of this home office at 99 Warren Street from 1883 to 1895, one of the most productive stretches in his career. As a landscape architect, Olmsted was sometimes required to design grounds to be secondary to structures. (His design for the grounds surrounding the Capitol building in D.C. is a good example.) Not at Fairsted. Here, foliage trumped structures. Note how the south face of the house is utterly blanketed in vines. The house is a National Historic Site, open to the public for tours. But make sure and walk around Olmsted's “yard,” too. Look for the cucumber magnolia, a gift from Charles Sargent, his Brookline neighbor. (Olmsted and Sargent collaborated on the Arnold Arboretum, discussed above.) Olmsted loved trees, especially elms, as they reminded him of his childhood. Check out the “Olmsted elm,” estimated at roughly 150 years old.

 

BUFFALO, NEW YORK

Olmsted and Vaux dreamed up the park system, a set of connected parks. How do you connect parks? Why, with “parkways,” a phrase the pair coined. In Buffalo, they got their first real opportunity to put the idea into practice. Delaware Park is the jewel of the Buffalo system. Enter it via Olmsted and Vaux's parkways. Here's an ideal route: Follow Chapin Parkway onto Lincoln Parkway under a canopy of trees the whole way and down a now-paved old bridal path and right into Delaware Park. Walk around the lake. Appreciate its lovely, meandering shoreline, and realize that it's entirely man-made, designed by Olmsted and Vaux.

 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Enter at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. The diagonal roadway gets you quickly out of the bustling city and into the peaceful heart of the park, per Olmsted and Vaux's design. Walk the quarter-mile length of the Mall to Bethesda Terrace. Note Jacob Wrey Mould's wildly imaginative stone carvings. Walk down the steps, past Bethesda Fountain, to the Lake. When the park opened in 1858, this was the most popular feature. Some winter days, thousands of people skated on it. A nineteenth-century engineering marvel, it was possible to raise the water level in the warmer months for boating. Follow the Lake's shore westward to the Bow Bridge. This is Vaux's masterpiece. Cross the Bow Bridge into the Ramble. This is Olmsted's wild garden, his favorite part of the park. He tinkered with its plantings endlessly, like a mad botanist.