The Last Great Projects, 1890-1895

David Schuyler

Volume IX of The Papers of : The Last Great Projects,

1890-1895, has just been published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. It is the longest and final volume of documents in the twelve-volume series begun in earnest in

1972, the sesquicentennial of Olmsted’s birth. One additional volume, Supplementary

Series III, a larger format collection of plans and historic photographs of Olmsted projects ranging from suburban communities, college campuses and the grounds of public buildings to private residences, will complete the series upon its publication in 2016.

The two “last great projects” are George Washington Vanderbilt’s estate,

Biltmore, near Asheville, North Carolina, and the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Olmsted considered Biltmore much more than a wealthy gentleman’s estate: it was a unique opportunity to merge landscape art and horticultural science, a private commission with enormous public significance. He also hoped that as a result of its many visitors Biltmore would influence the public’s taste in landscape architecture. The

World’s Columbian Exposition, held in between May and the end of October

1893, the greatest of America’s world’s fairs, was developed at the same time as Biltmore and weighed heavily on Olmsted’s mind. Each of the two projects would have been more

than enough for any individual, but at the same time Olmsted and his partners were also engaged in completing the Boston park system, working on parks in Louisville, KY,

Buffalo, Rochester, and Brooklyn, N.Y., Milwaukee, WI, and other places, and also engaged in the planning of institutions, college campuses, and numerous private estates.

Figure 56 from Volume IX: Plan for the Chicago Exposition

Figure 50 from Volume IX: Shores of Wooded Island Chicago Exposition

At times Olmsted worried that the firm’s many commitments would make it impossible to devote enough time to each to do its best work. Despite that concern, the last six years of Olmsted’s involvement with the firm were among the most challenging and rewarding of his long professional career.

During these years the Olmsted firm evolved from a small firm to a large practice with projects across the and Canada. When Henry Sargent Codman became a partner in 1889, the firm became F. L. Olmsted and Company. Codman became the

firm’s principal for the Columbian Exposition. When Olmsted visited Chicago in March

1892, he reported that Codman had exposition matters “as well as possible in hand” and that he was “showing high ability on the diplomatic and social as well as the executive side.” Following Codman’s sudden death in January 1893 Olmsted described him as “our pupil, attached friend and partner.” Within weeks Olmsted and his stepson John met with

Charles Eliot, who had been the first apprentice in their office, and persuaded him to join the firm, renamed Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot. Eliot brought to the firm a growing practice that included the Cambridge, Massachusetts, park system as well as planning for the

Trustees of Public Reservations and the Metropolitan Park System in greater Boston.

Until Codman’s death, John Charles Olmsted oversaw the firm office in Brookline while his partners traveled to clients in distant places. He managed a growing staff that included

Warren H. Manning as chief horticulturist and engineer Edward Bolton as chief of construction as well as approximately twenty assistants and secretaries, and established many of the procedures that enabled the firm to function effectively. When Eliot joined the firm, John traveled much more extensively, as Eliot was tied to work in eastern

Massachusetts and had a family with small children. Eight months after Eliot became a partner Olmsted wrote Frederick J. Kingsbury, his longtime friend, describing Eliot: “He is clever; has a fine cultivated taste and some special talents,” he wrote, but added, he

“does not yet fill Codman’s place.”

In addition to the many letters and reports that reflect on the various projects the firm was undertaking, two other themes are important: Olmsted’s concern over his declining health and his determination that his son and namesake, Frederick Law

Olmsted, Jr., be the best trained landscape architect in the world.

These were incredibly busy years for Olmsted, even as he was aging. His health declined over the course of the volume, his memory began failing, and he fretted over the future of his profession. Still, in a remarkable letter to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney

Olmsted reflected on a sermon that he had read during his New Haven years (1845-46),

James Martineau’s “Having, Doing, and Being.” In the sermon Martineau castigated not only acquisitiveness (“having”) but also those individuals who were concerned with

“doing,” who saw themselves as “the mere instruments of some social work” and who spend themselves “wholly in it.” Martineau urged listeners and readers to “be good” and to live a life of virtue (“being”) that would serve as a model for their community. As

Olmsted confessed to Whitney, “I have been selling being for doing”—giving up too much of his life in order to accomplish his goals. Other than his children, he conceded, the center of his life had been “the improvement of scenery and making the enjoyment of it available.”

What follows are excerpts from several documents in the volume that suggest the range, and the creativity, Olmsted and his partners brought to several of these projects.

These excerpts reveal both the human side of the man—his affection for his sons and daughter, his relationship with his partners, his awareness of his failing health—as well as his thoughts on several of the most important projects he undertook during the final six years of his professional career. In several of them Olmsted assesses the profound influence he has had on the shaping of the American landscape to meet deep human needs, for recreation, to be sure, but also for community and for family life.

Olmsted reflecting on his accomplishments:

As I travel I see traces of influences spreading from it [my work] that no one else would detect—which, if given any attention by others would be attributed to “fashion.” There are, scattered through the country, seventeen large public parks, many more smaller ones, many more public or semi-public works, upon which, with sympathetic partners or pupils,

I have been engaged. After we have left them they have in the majority of cases been more or less barbarously treated, yet as they stand, with perhaps a single exception, they are a hundred years ahead of any spontaneous public demand, or of the demand of any notable cultivated part of the people. And they are having an educative effect perfectly manifest to me—a manifestly civilizing effect. I see much indirect and unconscious following of them. . . . I know that I shall have helped to educate in a good American

School a capital body of young men for my profession. All men of liberal education and cultivated minds. I know that in the minds of a large body of men of influence I have raised my calling from the rank of a trade, even of a handicraft, to that of a liberal profession—an Art, an Art of Design.

Olmsted to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney, Dec. 16, 1890

On the training of landscape architects

The best way to meet your inquiries will be by stating what other men have done under our advice. There are four such who have all gone through the course that we shall describe and there are two others who have entered upon it. They have all been men of liberal education; the majority graduates of Harvard, and have been so situated as to have acquired a good deal of general cultivation and to be somewhat familiar with works of art

in various forms. They have taken post graduate courses in engineering, botany and drawing, freehand, mechanical and topographical. At the same time, they have taken courses of reading in the literature of landscape architecture, some in French and German as well as English. They have also attended lectures and had some field practice at the

Bussey Institution, and have become more or less familiar with the large collection of trees and shrubs at the Harvard Arboretum which is connected therewith. They have then come into our office as students and have visited various works upon which we have been engaged in different parts of the country and have engaged in office practice, and more or less in the superintendence of such works. This is generally continued for two years and they have then, in each case, spent a year traveling in Europe under our advice.

We have made no charge for such instruction and advice as we have given them, but while with us they have paid their own expenses. After returning from Europe, they have either found employment as assistants, or have entered directly upon the practice of the profession on their own account.

Olmsted to Charles Chambers, Dec. 4, 1890

On planning the Columbian Exposition:

The general comradship and fervor of the artists was delightful to witness & was delightful to fall into. If people generally get to understand that our contribution to the undertaking is that of the framing of the scheme, rather than the disposition of flower beds and other matters of gardening decoration—as to which those familiar with

European exhibitions will be disappointed—it will be a great lift to the profession—will

really give it a better standing than it has in Europe. I was exceedingly pleased to find how fully the architects recognized our service in this respect.

Olmsted to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, Nov. 7, 1892

On the significance of Biltmore:

To you and Harry, this work will, twenty years hence, be what Central Park has been to me. The first great private work of our profession in the country.

Olmsted to John Charles Olmsted, Oct. 27, 1890. Harry is Henry Sargent

Codman.

It is a great work of Peace we are engaged in and one of these days we shall all be proud of our parts in it.

Olmsted, Notes and Memoranda, for Messrs. Gall, Manning, Beadle, Boynton and

Bottomley, June 10, 1894

On his family:

Our two living boys seem to have been brought into firmly established good constitutions, which, as to John, is an almost unhoped for success. Rick is even robust. Marion is very delicate; suffers much from rheumatic troubles and I don’t know what, and she is just the nicest girl—little old maid—possible; patient, happy, indefatigable. I shall leave her and my wife tolerably provided for; so that I hope, with what John & Rick can do, they will not need to change their habits. And John and Rick will have had a good education and training and the good will of a fair, but not a fortune-making business. Rick will this year be a Senior. He is going creditably thro’ college, and I have provided for his technical

education afterwards. He is a good boy, healthy, of fair ability, thoughtful for his mother and sister, industrious. Incidentally I do what I can for his education. I enjoy my children.

They are one of the centers of my life; the other being the improvement of scenery and making the enjoyment of it available.

Olmsted to Frederick John Kingsbury, Sept. 6, 1893

On the reputation of the firm:

Our way of designing, our way of doing business, in distinction from Bowditch’s, for instance, or Cleveland’s or Weidenmann’s, or, perhaps, Parson’s, or that of the ordinary jobbing so called Landscape Gardener; even from Andre’s—or any living Englishman’s is pretty well established & justified by results, with reference to Public Parks. We stand very distinctly at the head & if anybody else is employed for any considerable work it will be because he is cheaper or because of personal favoritism. And our position in this respect gains with every year’s growth of trees. We have been unfortunate with private places. We have had no great success, have gained no celebrity. Have made several failures—or what will be, by many, so regarded. We have been badly used, our reputation injured, by the folly of our clients. The more important that we make a striking success where a chance is given us. This is a place & G.W.{V} is a man, that we must do our best for. This is critical for you, for our “school,” for our profession. We do not give it the care {we} should. It is “critical” as the Central Park was critical. You cannot afford not to do the best for it.

Olmsted to John Charles Olmsted and Charles Eliot, Nov. 1, 1893.

In this passage Olmsted is distinguishing the firm’s work from that of Ernest William

Bowditch, an engineer and landscape gardener; Horace William Shaler Cleveland, a landscape architect and writer; his former partner Jacob Weidenmann; Samuel Parsons,

Jr., a landscape architect who was then partner of ; and Édouard André, the

French landscape architect and author of L’Art des Jardins. G.W.{V} is a reference to

George W. Vanderbilt and the development of his estate, Biltmore.

On the importance of the Muddy River and other projects in eastern Massachusetts

Our reputation is still to be made in such dealings with pleasure roads outside of “parks,” and in such “wild” public grounds, as those that we are now first to engage with about

Boston. As much is to be made in this respect, as was to be made in Central Park. In your probable life-time, Muddy River, Blue Hills, the Fells, Waverly Oaks, Charles River, the

Beaches, will be points to date from in the history of American Landscape Architecture, as much as Central Park. They will be the opening of New Chapters of the Art. And there will be fashions starting from them, which will run across the Continent. And our first stroke of importance in this sort of work is that now being made on Muddy River.

Twenty years hence you will be looking back to Muddy River, as I do to Central Park.

That is what I mean when I say that it is a critical work. It will bring confidence of the public to you for a certain distinct class of works. You cannot afford to undertake other work or yield to pressure for your services elsewhere to any degree that will so take up your time that you cannot do your very best for the Muddy River work.

Olmsted to John Charles Olmsted and Charles Eliot, Nov. 1, 1893

Figure 54 from Volume IX:

Boston Emerald Necklace

On sub-tropical planting along the Lower Approach Road, Biltmore

There is nothing that we are now so immediately anxious about at Biltmore as that these borders should more fully acquire the general aspect originally intended to be given them, and which is broadly suggested by saying that it is an aspect more nearly of sub-tropical luxuriance than would occur spontaneously at Biltmore, or than is now fully promised, or that has, as yet, been as fully provided for as it is possible that, in various minor particulars, it may be. The subject is one of so much interest that I may be pressing advice upon you more than is reasonable. . . .

The term “sub-tropical luxuriance” is, of course, used only suggestively. The result desired is to be brought about largely by a profuse use of plants that simply, in certain respects, are calculated to produce a distant, broad, general resemblance to the landscape qualities of sub-tropical scenery: more so, at least, than we are accustomed to see, or than would be practicable with such slight contraction of opportunity as we should have, for example, about New York, or even Washington, but that will for compositions more nearly approaching in general landscape character such as are to be seen further South than any that are the result of spontaneous growth near Biltmore.

Olmsted to Chauncey Delos Beadle, July 27, 1895

Figure 80 from Volume IX: Sub tropical Luxuriance Biltmore

B

Olmsted on the education of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

. . . you must have acquired a good deal of knowledge of my principles and methods unconsciously, and it is to be hoped that you will henceforth be much more than you have been in an attitude of interest and intelligence to take in more. I want you to keep up a certain regular methodical reading and thinking on the subject, I will say at least five hours a week. I reckon that in four years you would thus have read everything not ephemeral in English, French & German

& would be the best read man as to this Art in the world. I want you at the same time to keep such knowledge of what is going in our office that you will gradually be led to an understanding of practice in relation to theory and of theory in relation to practice. What I want now is that you adopt this wish of mine and let it enter into your plans and expectations and habits, in the same way that the cut and dried requirements of the college course will enter into them.

Olmsted to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Sept. 5, 1890

Olmsted on his failing memory

It has today for the first time, become evident to me that my memory as to recent occurrences is no longer to be trusted. If Rick had not been with me and had not privately set me right I should have shown this fact in a flagrant way to Mr. Vanderbilt. I think it my duty to tell you this at once in order that you may take measures to guard the business from possible consequences. I try to look at the situation from an outside and impersonal point of view and so looking at it I see that I ought no longer to be trusted to carry on important business for the firm alone. . . . I have no reason to think that I have lost capacity in respect to invention, design or reasoning powers in any respect, only that my memory (or presence of mind) in regard to recent occurrences is less trustworthy than it has been.

Olmsted to John Charles Olmsted, May 10, 1895