Frontier and Civilization in the Thought of Frederick Law Olmsted

Abstract

BORN IN 1822, FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED PURSUED MANY VOCATIONS before his death in 1903. A gentleman farmer in New York and Connecticut in the 1840s interested in scientific agriculture, he became one of the most popular travel writers of the next decade, renowned for his detailed observations of Southern life. His literary activities included editing the cosmopolitan Putnam's Magazine and being one of the founders of the Nation. During the Civil War he enlarged his reputation by serving as the executive secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission, and he continued to espouse civil service reform during the Gilded Age. Beginning with the design of Central Park in 1857, he planned most of the early parks in the major American cities; today, his fame rests mainly on his contribution to landscape architecture. Forty years ago, in a highly original study of late nineteenth-century American culture, Lewis Mumford indicated the extent of Olmsted's achievements and his significance in urban planning.' More recently, with the rise of new interests in the history of the environment and urban history, Olmsted has been rediscovered. His reports on city parks have been edited and reissued, his proposals for national and local park systems reassessed, and his designs appreciated.2 However, even the most probing analyses of