He was a famous American landscape architect, public administrator, social critic and a journalist. Frederick is believed to be the founding father of American landscape architecture. He was well-known for his numerous co-design projects for famous city parks.
His senior partner in the projects was Calvert Vaux. But his work in Central Park in New York City with no doubt defined a standard of architectural high quality and excellence that still acts as a model for the landscape architecture in the United States up to date.
Frederick Olmsted also took part in the design planning of other famous construction projects such as the coordinated system of parkways and public parks in Buffalo, New York. Thanks to his devoted work now we can be thankful for having many popular historical spots today:.
Catharines in Ontario. Washington In Washington, D. Oregon Frederick created there the design of Washington Park. Frederick was a person with many talents and interests. Besides his architectural masterpieces Frederick excelled in other spheres too.
He was also an important activist in the conservation movement also known as nature conservation. Another little known fact is that Frederick also had an important role in the organization and provision of medical services to the Union Army during the period of the American Civil War.
The landscape architecture style of Frederick Olmsted characterizes with quality and genius. Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on April 26, His father was John Olmsted. He was a successful merchant and one of his passions was his huge interest in traveling, people and nature. After three years of debate over the park site and cost, in the state legislature authorized the City of New York to use the power of eminent domain to acquire more than acres of land in the center of Manhattan.
An irregular terrain of swamps and bluffs, punctuated by rocky outcroppings, made the land between Fifth and Eighth avenues and 59th and th streets undesirable for private development. Creating the park, however, required displacing roughly 1, poor residents, including Irish pig farmers and German gardeners, who lived in shanties on the site. The extension of the boundaries to th Streetin brought the park to its current acres.
The question of who should exercise political control of this new kind of public institution was a point of contention throughout the nineteenth century.
After a new citycharter in restored the park to local control, the mayor appointed park commissioners. The designers sought to create a pastoral landscape in the English romantic tradition. Open rolling meadows contrasted with the picturesque effects of the Ramble and the more formal dress grounds of the Mall Promenade and Bethesda Terrace.
Vaux, assisted by Jacob Wrey Mould, designed more than forty bridges to eliminate grade crossings between the different routes. After blasting out rocky ridges with more gunpowder than was later fired at the Battle of Gettysburg, workers moved nearly 3 million cubic yards of soil and planted more than , trees and shrubs.
The city also built the curvilinear reservoir immediately north of an existing rectangular receiving reservoir. The park first opened for public use in the winter of when thousands of New Yorkers skated on lakes constructed on the site of former swamps. By , the park received more than seven million visitors a year. Middle-class New Yorkers also flocked to the park for winter skating and summer concerts on Saturday afternoons. This year Central Park will celebrate it th birthday.
In the early 19th century, Manhattan was rapidly growing, having grown four times in population, and people were in a desperate need of open spaces for rest and recreation. In fact, such places were so scarce that people were turning to cemeteries! People were in a need of a park and where calling for it. The first site was Jones's Wood, but it was quickly abandoned for being small and belonging to rich owners. Also, a bill to acquire was turned down as unconstitutional.
The second pick was a piece of land, lying between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. It was large, and would have the Croton Aqueduct in its center. This piece of land was known as Central Park. Local authorities assessed and cleared nearly 34, lots near and in Central Park, demolishing Seneca Village and Pigtown in the process, and evicting 1, residents. The standout features of this plan were the large pastoral fields, massive wooded areas, and sunken transverse roads, hidden below the landscape.
It is considered to be first publicly funded park in England, open for all. Vaux wanted to implement this idea in the US, too. The construction works began in , but were hard and difficult due to the rocky, swampy terrain. This required about 5 million cubic feet of soil and rocks to be taken out of the area. The construction teams used more gunpowder to clear the area than it was used in the Battle of Gettysburg.
Then, more than 18, cubic yards of fertile soil were brought to the site. To that end, Central Park would offer spaces for music and the visual arts, passive recreation like sketching and bird watching, and active sports such as boating, ice skating, baseball, tennis, and croquet, and an outdoor classroom for the study of botany.
A 6-mile long, elm-lined promenade acted as a buffer between New York City and the park, and Bethesda Terrace , a two-tiered esplanade with a sculptural fountain, would offer additional pleasing aesthetics. American artist, Emma Stebbins, eventually received the commission to sculpt the fountain that became known as the Angel of the Waters. The plan also envisaged a system of intertwined roads, 28 miles of pedestrian walkways, six miles of equestrian and carriage paths and a separate bridle path exclusively for horseback riding.
A series of ornamental bridges separated walkways from the carriage and horse paths for quiet strolling. The specifications for the design competition required at least four roads that would crisscross the park and be open to city traffic. Olmstead and Vaux cleverly created below grade roads on 65th, 79th, 86th, and 96th streets to meet this requirement.
Their design camouflaged the roads behind dense vegetation. The construction of the Park was a massive undertaking. Over 20, workers were involved in creating the pastoral landscape. They removed 3 million cubic yards of soil, planted more than , trees and shrubs, and built an additional reservoir. The park opened in the winter of and immediately drew thousands of people to skate on the frozen lakes that were once swamps.
In the boundaries of the park would be extended to th Street to total the acres. By , the park was drawing 2 million visitors each year. Initially, the rules governing the park were strict. They prohibited group picnics, commercial vehicles for family drives through the park, and ball playing without a note from the school principal.
Gradually these rules gave way to more democratic uses: concerts on Sundays, a carousel, goat rides, tennis on the lawns, and bicycling on the roads.
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