Frederick Law Olmsted
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Born, Apr 26, 1822
Died, Aug 28, 1903
Factoids
1873-Charles Sprague Sargent officially began a 54-year term as first director of the Arnold Arboretum. Sargent soon enlisted the aid of pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted – then busy designing the Boston park system – to help him lay out the grounds. “Olmsted immediately grasped the idea that an arboretum where the public could see varied plantations of rare and exotic trees and shrubs skilfully [sic] selected, artistically arranged, and grown under scientific oversight, would not only be an appropriate feature in the park system [now known as Boston’s “Emerald Necklace”] but might well become its culminating attraction,” Benjamin Lincoln Robinson, the Asa Gray Professor of Systematic Botany, wrote in the late 1920s. Nonetheless, the Arboretum proved a hard sell, Robinson noted. “Neither the City [of Boston] nor the Harvard Corporation welcomed the idea. The press was indifferent, and the public apathetic. Nine years of persistent effort were required before it was possible to draft a plan of procedure acceptable both to the City and to the University and to secure its approval by the General Court of Massachusetts.”
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SITES
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1
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Frederick Law Olmsted
Preservation
2
Prospect Park
Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux
Park
3
Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University
Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Sprague Sargent, Beatrix Jones Farrand
Park, Greenspace, Public Space, Education
4
The Back Bay Fens
Frederick Law Olmsted
Park, Greenspace
+4
5
Franklin Park Zoo
Frederick Law Olmsted
Park, Recreation
6
Morningside Park
Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux
Park
+1
7
Columbus Circle
Frederick Law Olmsted, WET Design, OLIN
Public Space
8
Emerald Necklace
Frederick Law Olmsted
Park, Greenspace, Public Space
9
Central Park
Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux, Andrew Haswell Green
Park
10
Vanderbilt Mausoleum
Richard Morris Hunt, Frederick Law Olmsted
Cemetery
11
The Mall & Literary Walk
Olmsted, Vaux & Co
Park
PLAYLISTS CURATED by Frederick Law Olmsted
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HISTORIC MAPS
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