Boston parks exemplify Olmsted's vision
While his parks are popular recreation destinations, Frederick Law Olmsted has been largely forgotten
By Ned Prickett
4/29/10
The Emerald Necklace is a 1,100-acre string of parks spread out through Boston and Brookline. From the Boston Common downtown to Franklin Park in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, the Necklace gives Boston a wholly unique greenway that connects a city of distinct neighborhoods. While more than 300,000 Bay Staters live within the parks' watershed area, most have probably never heard of Frederick Law Olmsted.
Olmsted, considered the father of landscape architecture, had a hand in designing 100 parks in cities across America, including New York City's Central Park. And while thousands enjoy his parks every year, his name has been mostly lost to history.
Charlie Stewart, an avid runner, jogs the 1.5-mile trail around Jamaica Pond every day. The pond is a part of Olmsted's Necklace and while Stewart enjoys one of Olmsted's parks daily, he had never heard his name. "Was he a mayor or something?" Stewart asked.
Jessie Miller,22, a history major at Northeastern enjoys relaxing in Olmsted Park in Jamaica Plain. She was surprised that one man had designed most of the parks in Boston. "That is pretty incredible, but not totally surprising," Miller said. "They really do feel connected."
Olmsted came to park design later in his life. He was 36 when he and his partner, Conrad Vaux, won the job to design America's first and greatest urban park, Central Park in New York City.
Competing with 30 other designers, Olmsted and Vaux won thanks to their unique design.
From the beginning, he felt that the idea of preserving and creating a sense of the natural world in urban parks was essential.
"He depressed the roadway around the park so you couldn't see the cabs or at that time, the horse and carriages," said Gerry Wright, who wrote and has performed a one-man-play on Olmsted's life since 2004.
Public parks have become such a distinct and necessary part of the fabric of any city it is strange to think of American cities without them. Perhaps that is why their designers have been largely forgotten.
But it was not until the late 19th century that city leaders realized parks were necessary. As the cities became more and more industrialized it became apparent that people needed a place to escape all the concrete and hustle and bustle of city life according to Wright. Olmsted himself often talked of the necessity.
"A beautiful and healthful pleasure ground... must soon prove as conspicuous for its moral as for its material affects," Olmsted wrote in 1869. "If we seek to wean others from debasing pursuits and brutalizing pleasures, we can only hope to do so by opening them freely to them new sources of rational enjoyment."
At the time, a popular idea was to keep parks private, only letting citizens who could pay for them enjoy the pleasures they had to offer. Olmsted saw it as essential that they be public for all to enjoy.
"It's was Olmsted's entire philosophy," Stephen Baird, president of the Emerald Necklace Bird Club said. "It was a public health issue. Parks satisfy every health concern not just physical but mental and spiritual as well. Olmsted was quite clear about the need for greenspaces to be open for everyone."
The idea that parks should be open for everyone was probably inspired by his visit to Europe when Olmsted was still a journalist, according to Wright. While in England, Olmsted visited Birkenhead Park on the Wirral Peninsula.
"Olmsted had never seen anything like it," Wright said. "He was amazed because there were
people from all walks of life there. (He saw) this is a democratic park for everyone. We didn't have anything like this in America. There was the seed. From then on, he had a tremendous commitment to the democratic idea that parks are for everyone."
It is hard to believe that urban parks would ever not be open to everyone, but it was Olmsted's drive that made sure it was so. Olmsted felt that nature had an inherently calming effect on everyone.
Historian Lee Hall wrote about that idea in his book, "Olmsted's America."
"Nature had the power to touch and rearrange the souls and minds of all human beings and thus the authority to remind all citizens of equality."
While his memory may have faded over time along with the other men who helped build our modern cities, Olmsted's legacy remains even as cities continue to grow larger around his parks.
The quiet parkways in Boston that once carried carriages past Olmsted's parks in Jamaica Plain are now full of cars that zip by at speeds once thought impossible. These days, people need the parks more than ever to escape from Boston's always increasing fast pace.
Learn more about Olmsted and the Emerald Necklace at:
