Municipal Parks and City Planning: Frederick Law Olmsted's Buffalo Park and Parkway System

Abstract

For three decades beginning in 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted and his partners and successors created for Buffalo, the second largest city in New York State, a series of parks and parkways that attracted national and international attention. Olmsted's work for Buffalo occupied a prominent place in his influential career as park planner and urban reformer. In Buffalo, Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux implemented a comprehensive series of parks and parkways that pioneered the concept of the metropolitan recreational system. Initially conceived between 1868 and 1870 and substantially constructed by 1876, Olmsted and Vaux's Buffalo park system carefully modified the city's original plan, framed in 1804 by Joseph Ellicott, and introduced progressive design features inspired by the example of the Second Empire in Paris.