Merriam Webster defines “longheaded” as “having unusual foresight.” Oxford goes a bit further with having or showing foresight and good judgment” – although it cites the usage of the word as now dated (make of that and its implications upon our times what you will). However dated or not, the qualities that when assembled together earn a person the designation of long-headed are laudatory ones indeed. Mind you, they may not serve well in the most sought-after and highly compensated occupations of today, where the ephemeral and the transitory are often prized above the well-considered and the enduring. However in times past when people did things not only for the moment but for the future – indeed, when they thought more of how the future would remember their works than how they would be understood in the present – being long-headed would stand a person very well indeed.
The founders of our great libraries and museums were long-headed. Those who laid out the nation’s roadways and railways were long-headed. It would take years, even decades, for their plans to reach fruition. Yet even more than these, those few who literally sought to change the landscape of the nation itself required a degree of long-headedness beyond all others, for they knew that the more grand their plans, the less likely they would ever see the results of their labors within their lifetimes. And of these, the most remarkably long-headed of all was Frederick Law Olmsted.
More than any other person of his time (and most certainly more than any of our own), Olmsted changed the way in which people and nature came together. From New York City’s iconic Central Park to the much smaller and now significantly modernized Morton Park in Newport, Rhode Island, Olmsted’s designs for areas of recreation and nature-inspired rejuvenation in the rapidly urbanizing Nineteenth Century America – and to a lesser degree Canada – are still with us in a host of ways previously beyond our everyday awareness. Beyond our awareness, that is, prior to the publication by Johns Hopkins University Press of Frederick Law Olmsted; Plans and Views of Public Parks
In this enlightening and lavishly illustrated new book, the editors have assembled and annotated an extraordinary collection of drawings, paintings, and photographs that tell the story of some of Olmsted’s most monumental works. From New York City’s enormous Central Park (to which a full fifty-two pages are dedicated) and Chicago’s extraordinarily complex World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 to such relatively smaller projects as Newburgh, New York’s Downing Park and the various squares of Louisville, Kentucky, seventy-nine of Olmsted’s projects are given attention in the book.
As noted by editor Charles Beveridge in his introduction, one purpose of Plans and Views of Public Parks is to serve as a visual companion to the monumental twelve volume Olmsted Papers Project, and in truth when employed as such both its full importance as well as its most intricate subtleties make themselves known. However for all those who might not wish to devote themselves to pouring through the thousands of pages of Olmsted’s letters and papers, Plans and Views of Public Parks stands very well on its own with its remarkable images carrying the weight of the many fascinating stories it contains.
Examining the images, it becomes brilliantly clear just what a far-seeing imagination Olmsted possessed. Of particular interest are the paired drawings of original landscapes and Olmsted’s desired results for them. His was not a desire simply to make things “pretty” or ostentatiously grand but to make them relaxing and refreshing to behold. Indeed, the purpose behind so many of these parks was to give the people of what were often rapidly growing and increasingly crowded industrializing cities space to breathe, to be refreshed, and to experience the land from which their hectic lives were increasingly alienating them. To Olmsted, parks were a public good of the first order; a necessity for the betterment of both the individual and the society, “The establishment by government of great public grounds is […] a public duty.” (What he would think of the state of so many of this nation’s parks today and the attitude toward them by public officials and – alas – a sizable portion of the people can only be imagined.)
Of course, not all of the included images are scenic. Olmsted was not only long-headed when it came to his visions of the finished project, he was a meticulous planner – a project manager of truly extraordinary skill. Indeed, his skills at managing even the smallest details of the largest projects, originally discovered and developed during his years of involvement with the scientific farming movement of the early Nineteenth Century, brought him into and served him well in his tenure as the executive secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission (essentially the precursor to the Red Cross) during the U.S. Civil War. Thus it should not surprise readers of Plans and Views of Public Parks to find included his diagrams of such important aspects of landscape design as the extensive drainage plans necessary to maintain not only the appearance but the long-term health of the land itself.
Whether your interest is in Olmsted and his work, landscape architecture in general, the development of nature-based recreation, or American history, Frederick Law Olmsted; Plans and Views of Public Parks can provide a substantial expansion and deepening of your thoughts in your area of interest, as well as help connect it to other related (and perhaps even previously unconsidered) areas of study. Indeed, for myself, I discovered in its pages not only a better understanding of all the above-noted topics of inquiry but also something about my own professional work in the management of projects both large and small. In such discoveries, in the contemplation of the too-easily overlooked details that if well attended to will in the end produce something truly sublime, is where the magnificence of Olmsted’s work is found. May the heads of all reading this book become a little longer as a result.
Title: Frederick Law Olmsted; Plans and Views of Public Parks
Editors: Charles E. Beveridge, Lauren Meier, and Irene Mills
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: Hardback
Pages: 448 pp. (with 129 color and 348 b&w illustrations)
ISBN: 9781421410869
Published: May 2015
Nota bene: For those who might not be particularly familiar with the life and work of Mr. Olmsted, and who would like perhaps to acquire a bit more understanding of him, his work, and his times, I highly recommend Witold Rybczynski’s A Clearing In The Distance; Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century
In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.
