Book Selections

Esley Hamilton, NAOP Trustee

May 2010

Seeing Central Park: The Official Guide to the World’s Greatest Urban Park.  Sara Cedar Miller. New York: Abrams, 2009, 192 pages.
Following up on her 2003 history and photographic tribute, Central Park, An American Masterpiece, Sara Cedar Miller has now produced a handy square-format guide to the park, illustrated with more of her beautiful and informative color photos. Dividing the park into five regions, she highlights 61 major features, telling how and why they were created, what vicissitudes they have encountered, and how they are now maintained. Equally important, Miller places the park within the larger social history of the city. For example, the park first offered ice skating, few people owned skates, but within a year the numbers of skaters soared. The cover of this book is notable: the inside of the dust jacket is a large-scale map of the park, and the hard cover beneath is decorated with sprays of leaves – spring in front and autumn in back. Sara is a trustee of NAOP.

Franklin Park .  Julie Arrison. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009, 128 pages.
Charles E. Beveridge, editor of the Olmsted Papers, ranks the 527-acre Franklin Park in Boston as one of the seven most important urban parks designed by FLO Sr.  This book, in typical Arcadia style, assembles vintage and recent photos from many sources to illustrate the history of the park from its conception to its heyday at the turn of the century, its decline, and its rebirth, beginning in the 1990s.

The book’s chapters follow the park areas identified by Olmsted in his 1885 General Plan, using the picturesque names he coined. Even before the park was completed, though, changes were introduced. After sixty Bostonians petitioned in 1890 for a water feature, Olmsted created the seven-acre Scarboro Pond, named for a previous property owner. Perhaps the first game of golf in the US was played on the central meadow (called the Country Park) in 1890, and by 1896 an official course had been laid out there. A clubhouse opened in 1901 on Schoolmaster Hill (referring to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had lived there while teaching in Roxbury). Another important change came in 1910 when Arthur Shurtleff (later Shurcliff) designed a zoo spanning Olmsted’s formal promenade called the Greeting. Shurtleff also installed three flower gardens in Sargent’s Field, which Olmsted had intended for games.

After World War II, Franklin Park suffered even more than other parks. Lemuel Shattuck Hospital was built on the Heathfield in 1951. The Roxbury puddingstone bridges and staircases survived, but all Olmsted-era buildings disappeared with the exception of one carriage shelter, the most grievous loss being the Refectory, a grand Renaissance design from 1895 by Hartwell & Richardson. The zoo was rebuilt to a new design in the 1980s and the greenhouses were removed. Since 1978, the Franklin Park Coalition has done much to reverse the decline, but this book stops short of most of their achievements, such as the new golf clubhouse.

Fresh Pond: the History of a Cambridge Landscape .  Jill Sinclair. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009, 193 pages.
Located near the west end of Cambridge, MA, just north of Mount Auburn Cemetery, Fresh Pond was being engulfed by development by the Revolutionary War. Its beauty was well enough appreciated to attract the Fresh Pond Hotel by 1797, but the ice cutting industry followed soon after, eventually bringing rail lines that attracted other industries, including brickyards. The people who saved the pond in the 1880s were motivated not so much by its beauty as by its importance to the city’s water supply. Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot entered the story in 1894, charged with making the reservoir more attractive. Their plans were not fully implemented and conflicting pressures in the 20th century infringed in many ways on their vision. Most outrageously, two long strips of land were sold from the west side of the reservation in the 1950s, ostensibly for veterans housing, but in reality for the politically well connected; the strip is still sometimes called “politicians’ row.” By 1982, the MA Historical Commission rejected a National Register nomination for Fresh Pond, saying “not enough there.” A generation on, Jill Sinclair makes a strong case for the importance of the Pond’s history, aided by an unusually full visual record of vintage photos and maps. The book’s horizontal format facilitates publication of historic plans but makes the book difficult to read except at a table.

Parks, Plants, and People: Beautifying the Urban Landscape.
Lynden B. Miller. NY: Norton, 2009, 206 pages.
Trained as a painter, Lynden Miller has devoted the last two decades to gardening in the public parks of New York City. Beginning with the Conservatory Garden in the northeast part of Central Park and Bryant Park on 42nd Street, she has extended her expertise to gardens all over the city. In this book she shares the lessons she has learned, using colorful photos, including some by Sara Cedar Miller (no relation).  The book is full of practical information on just about every aspect of gardening. Along with such subjects as soil preparation and weeding, Miller demystifies the aesthetics of gardening. At the same time, she emphasizes that aesthetic decisions must be informed by practical realities. Flowering annuals may be colorful and long bloomers, but they can be expensive to buy, plant, and maintain, and their repeated dead-heading is labor-intensive. Don’t emphasize spring-blooming plants to the detriment of other seasons; Iris and peonies bloom for only a short time and take up space the rest of the year. The administration of the garden will determine its success, and here too Miller has advice on staffing, volunteers, fundraising, and building advocacy organizations. By now, the benefits of gardens have been amply demonstrated, and Miller gives examples from across the country in cities large and small. She has been particularly impressed by the efforts of Mayor Richard M. Daley in Chicago, and he returns the compliment on the jacket.

Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks.
Photography by Joel Meyerowitz; Foreword by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; Essay by Phillip Lopate. NY: Aperture, 2009.
Joel Meyerowitz, native New Yorker and respected photographer of the urban scene, happens to be a longtime friend of Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. With his friend’s help, Meyerowitz has created a large-scale – at 12.4” x 10.8” and weighing 5.6 pounds, even unwieldy – book depicting the wildest parts of his city’s extensive park system. He finds that after nearly 400 years of intense development in the region, most of the healthy areas of wilderness are the result not of survival but of purposeful human intervention, much of it during the past two decades. The invasive plants, challenging growing conditions and debris of earlier buildings mark most of the photos in this book as documentary rather than aesthetic successes. And, as we might expect, the most beautiful landscapes in these pages tend to be those such as Prospect Park that have been most shaped by master designers or those that have benefitted the most from massive cleanup campaigns. At Udalls Cove in Queens, for example, 750 tons of debris was removed between 2003 and 2006. Meyerowitz takes us to all five boroughs and shows us not only the celebrated parks but some that are unknown even to most New Yorkers. Historical outlines highlight important moments at each location, from Peter Stuyvesant to Bette Midler.

February 2010

August 2009

Designing the Maine Landscape

Theresa Mattor and Lucie Teegarden, with a preface by Earle Shettleworth Jr. and foreword by Charles E. Beveridge. Camden, ME: Down East Books and the Maine Olmsted Alliance for Parks & Landscapes, 2009, 216 pages.

Starting in 1991, the newly formed Maine Olmsted Alliance collaborated with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission on the Survey of Designed Historic Landscapes. The project, completed in 2000, was the first of its kind in the nation and uncovered a wealth of resources, among them work by Beatrix Farrand, Jens Jensen and Hans Heistad.

This book celebrates the survey by featuring a selection of the state’s landscape resources in greater depth, rather than by itemizing the whole. The fourteen chapters cover parks and gardens in Portland, Augusta, Camden and Northeast Harbor, campus designs, golf courses, rural cemeteries, residential developments, and great estates. All are captured in beautifully composed and lighted photos by Greg Currier, printed in an unusual color palate, probably based on the Fuji Velvia film he uses, that gives the book a distinctive appearance. Currier should have been listed as co-author instead of being acknowledged only at the head of the endnotes.

The impact of the Olmsteds is highlighted in the village green and harbor park in Camden, Capitol Park and Blaine Memorial Park in Augusta, and the 1903-04 plan for the Portland park system. FLO Senior’s most important professional association with the state was his 1867 plan for the Maine College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, now the University of Maine at Orono, but it was rejected.

July 2009

Birmingham Historical Society Publishes Trilogy on Olmsted Plan

The Birmingham Historical Society (BHS) has produced a remarkable series of three publications that explore the Olmsted Brothers park plan for Birmingham, which was written in 1924 and published in 1925.  Back then, the community’s response to the plan was disappointing, but over the years the wisdom of the Olmsted recommendations has become increasingly apparent.  The Society hopes that these publications will encourage “the continued wise and respectful development of our region envisioned by Olmsted Brothers in 1924.”

Commissioned by the Birmingham Park and Recreation Board, FLO Jr. and his project leader Edward Clarke Whiting (1881-1962) found that the city, with a population of over 200,000, had just 600 acres of parks.  They recommended standards and specific sites for new parks of all types, especially targeting ridgetops, floodplains, and watersheds that might affect the water supply.  The firm designed three parks immediately.  Later developments, designed primarily by landscape engineer Ruby J. Pearse, concentrated on recreational facilities rather than land acquisition.

Recent years, however, have seen a resurgence of interest in the Olmsted proposals, with many public and private organizations contributing tracts of land.  Repeated flooding led the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove many houses from the Village Creek area, where two new parks are in the works.  The Jefferson County Greenway Trust has acquired 3,300 acres along county streams.  Southwest of town, the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center has more than 1,000 acres, and another thousand acres on Red Mountain southwest of town have been offered by U.S. Steel.

All three publications may be ordered from the BHS at 205-251-1880.  An order form is available at www.bhistorical.org.

A Park System For Birmingham.  Olmsted Brothers.  Originally published by the Birmingham Park and Recreation Board, 1925.  Republished by Birmingham Historical Society, 2005, 31 pp.

The title on the title page explains more:  “A system of parks and playgrounds for Birmingham: preliminary report upon the park problems, needs, and opportunities of the city and its immediate surroundings.”  This is an exact reproduction of the original publication, using the same size pages and similar paper stock, with illustrative black-and-white photos of parks in Boston, New York and Chicago.  The two large fold-out maps are printed on velum in color and are mounted inside the back cover.  In order to maintain the original style, the four-page introduction by authors Heather McArn and Marjorie White is printed as an insert.

The Olmsted Vision – Parks for Birmingham.  A publication about the Early Years and Today.  Marjorie White and Heather McArn.  Introduction by Charles Beveridge.  Birmingham Historical Society, 2006, 72 pp.

White and McArn returned to Birmingham’s Olmsted Plan with a site-by-site analysis of the plan’s recommendations and subsequent history.  This publication is in color, with a large-scale 15 by 11-inch format intended to make the plans legible.  The authors look not only at the specifics of each plan but at the design principles guiding them, which the plan helpfully spells out.  They particularly cite the 1904 Olmsted plan for Baltimore.  M. P. Phillips, the driving force behind Birmingham’s park board, was from Baltimore and had seen how effective the plan was there.  Warren Manning also played a role, as he had already worked on a city plan for Birmingham in 1916.  He also designed the fashionable low-density Mountain Brook residential area and golf course in 1928.  The book compares the Olmsted plans with recent ones, including the Jefferson County Greenways Project promoted by the nonprofit Freshwater Land Trust.  The book concludes with analysis of the new regional park initiatives anticipated by the Olmsted Plan.

Hand Down Unharmed: Olmsted Files on Birmingham Parks 1920-1925.  Birmingham Historical Society.  Foreword by Arleyn Levee.  Introduction by Marjorie L. White.  Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Historical Society, 2008, 426 pages.

This unique volume reproduces all the correspondence relating to Olmsted plans for Birmingham, detailing the interaction of local leaders with the firm over a six year period, during which FLO Jr. made several visits to the city.  Letters, telegrams, and reports are transcribed in their original format, with letterheads as found.  A few hand-written notes are reproduced photographically.  Newspaper articles that were enclosed with letters are transcribed.  The book ends with ten pages of biographical summaries of the principle participants.  The result is unparalleled in the way it makes so much primarily source material accessible to the public.

SPRING 2009

The Garden Squares of Boston.  Phebe S. Goodman.  Hanover, NH and London: University Press of New England, 2003, 179 pages.

The small fenced parks that were created to enhance residential developments in Boston were inspired by the squares and crescents of London, Bath and Edinburgh.  Charles Bulfinch’s Franklin Place of 1793 is long gone, but Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill, planned in 1826, survives with all its surrounding houses, as do most of the remarkable squares created in the South End during the 1850s.  Olmsted’s influence on Boston’s park system ironically proved to have a negative impact on these squares.  George F. Parkman in 1887 bequeathed a fund “for the improvement of the Common and other parks now existing,” but in 1921 the city decided these spots didn’t qualify because they were too unlike the “country landscapes” Olmsted had created.

The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe.  Chet Raymo.  New York: Walker & Company, 2003, 197 pages.

Raymo, a professor of physics and astronomy, has for nearly four decades walked from his home in North Easton, Massachusetts to the campus of Stonehill College through “Sheep Pasture,” the estate FLO designed for Oliver Ames, part of the remarkable collection of work by Olmsted and H. H. Richardson in this small community.  Raymond lyrically but concisely records his observations of natural history and human effort along this route.  Over these years, his admiration for Olmsted has deepened.  “Imagine what our cities and suburbs might be today,” he writes, “if those in charge of the planning and execution of public and private development were guided by Olmstedian principles.”

Baltimore’s Patterson Park.  Tim Almaguer.  Chicago and elsewhere: Arcadia Publishing, 2006, 127 pages.

Another volume in Arcadia’s ubiquitous Images of America series, this book was written on behalf of the Friends of Patterson Park, which since 1998 has brought this historic park back from almost total ruin.  Beginning with the six-acre gift of William Patterson in 1827, the park has grown to 137 acres, its most famous feature being the 1891 pagoda.  Olmsted Brothers were on the scene from 1905 to 1915, designing recreation facilities on the east side of the park to fit into the broader landscape.  The two-acre clay-lined lake they designed for swimming has been replaced but other Olmsted features survive.

City Trees: A Historical Geography from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century.  Henry W. Lawrence.  Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2006, 336 pages.

Including a 22-page bibliography, this scholarly but readable book looks at the development of cities to show how the idea of trees in the street changed from a seeming absurdity to a sine-qua-non of civilized life, and how the requirement was exported from Europe to the rest of the world.  FLO plays an important part in this story for both his parks and parkways.  The parkways of Brooklyn and Buffalo were based more on Unter den Linden in Berlin than the boulevards of Paris but had the greater intention of weaving the image of the park into the urban fabric.  Lawrence notes that the ideal of greenery for all is waning as municipal budgets are cut.

The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core.  Nathan Glazer & Cynthia R. Field, editors.  Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, 220 pages.

Ten essays by ten authors focus on three themes: the design of the Mall, its role as a symbol of and a theater for national life, and the dilemma of accommodating new initiatives as the space fills up.  Witold Rybczynski credits the concept of the Mall as a uniform tree-lined lawn to FLO Jr.  Pierre L’Enfant described the space in his 1791 plan as a “Grand Avenue” presumably along the lines of a Parisian boulevard.  The original Mall in London, laid out in 1660 for the game “pall mall,” was also an avenue, not a park.  In 1870, part of the Mall did not even have grass but was “a surface of yellow or white clay, cut into by deep gullies, and without trees.”  Olmsted outlined his vision of a large but simple tree-lined lawn in 1900 and was able to make it the centerpiece of the plan produced by the McMillan Commission two years later.  While the other members of the Commission all died within the decade, Olmsted was able to guide subsequent development into the 1930s.

Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies.  Ginger Strand.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, 337 pages.
The great falls at Niagara are pale shadows of their once awe-inspiring grandeur, Strand writes, exploited for electrical power to such an extent that the water can now be turned off completely.  The tourist business, however, requires that Niagara retain the illusion of unspoiled nature.  Olmsted’s intervention beginning in 1869, created an artful setting for the falls in place of the natural one that had already been destroyed.  Strand argues that the Niagara Reservation, a rather small intervention in a much larger landscape, gave license to unbridled development everywhere outside it.  Even inside it, almost everything Olmsted wanted to keep out has been introduced: roads, parking lots, concession stands, statues.  The historic rallying cry for a “Free Niagara,” now has little meaning in a park that has a $10 parking fee and has become one of the two top revenue producers in the New York state park system, managed under contract by a company better known for racetracks and casinos.

From Recreation to Re-creation: New Directions in Parks and Open Space System Planning.  Megan Lewis, ed.  Chicago: American Planning Association, 2008, 121 pages.

Planning Advisory Service Report Number 551 is the third in a series from the City Parks Forum.  It sets out to provide a broad and inclusive approach to park planning, in contrast to the most commonly used park planning texts, which tend to concentrate on recreation and to limit “planning” to site planning.  Most importantly, it recognizes that “parks have an aesthetic function.”  It cites Olmsted in these regards and also for his stress on the public health function of parks.  The six chapters by four authors lay out a process for creating useful park plans, and the CD-Rom at the back of the book (a sign of the times) contains eleven briefing papers concerning the various roles of urban parks, from cultural programs to climate change management.  Co-author Mary Eysenbach encourages discontinuation of the words “passive” and “active” to describe parks.  She suggests “structured” versus “flexible,” “creative,” or “informal.”

PREVIOUS REVIEWS 2006-2008

The City Parks Forum

The American Planning Association maintains its own parks initiative, the City Parks Forum, which is made possible by support from the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.  The Forum or CPF encourages information sharing among mayors, park advisors, and community leaders through conferences, staff consultation, and publications.  The Forum has published two of a projected three reports as part of the APA’s Planning Advisory Service Reports series.

Report Number 497/498, Parks, Recreation, and Open Space: A Twenty-First Century Agenda, by Alexander Garvin, published in 2000, is of particular interest to NAOP members because it looks at the urban landscape from the perspective of Frederick Law Olmsted himself.  Garvin calls Olmsted’s vision of integrated systems for open space and development “the Olmsted Agenda.”  He shows how postwar development has strayed from that agenda, noting particularly how gated communities and private open spaces fail to meet Olmsted’s goal of genuine social interaction.  The second part of the report sets out an agenda for the 21st century, showing how projects being undertaken all over the country are revitalizing the Olmsted Agenda.

Report Number 502, Parks and Economic Development, by John L. Crompton, came out in 2001.  It too builds on Olmsted, particularly his demonstration that park investments raise real estate values.  Crompton goes on to show how parks, as a key component in the quality of life, attract economic development of all kinds, including tourism and retirement services.

These and many other publications can be ordered through the APA website, http://www.planning.org/.

Many additional publications are available on the Forum’s website, http://www.planning.org/cityparks/index.htm.  A series of case studies, called “Making a Difference,” highlights innovative park projects all over the country, from Alexandria, Virginia to Reno, Nevada.  Another series, Briefing Papers, uses a concise and lively four-page format to explain “How Cities Use Parks for . . .”  So far ten briefing papers, have been produced, most recently “Arts and Cultural Programs” by David Rivel, “Promote Tourism” by John L. Crompton, and “Smart Growth” by Kathy Blaha.  The Forum’s six conferences have produced a series of on-line proceedings, including the complete graphic presentations of the 3 to 5 case studies featured at each conference.  The summer 2002 conference featured Buffalo’s Olmsted Parks and Parkways.

1902 McMillan Plan Online

The National Park Service has been creating its own version of the Gutenberg Project by adding many entire books and unpublished studies to its website.  The table of contents has recently been moved to www.cr.nps.gov/history/park_histories/index.htm, but most of individual documents are still located in the “online_books” section of the website.  The index is grouped into several subjects, but the most important one is “Park Histories,” which has up to a dozen studies for almost every unit of the National Park system.  Under Olmsted NHS, for example, we find Cynthia Zaitzevsky’s 243-page cultural landscape report on Fairsted from 1997.  The “Research and Education” subject includes the Park Service’s own Cultural Landscape Bibliography from 2000, 369 pages long.

An important recent addition to this project is the 261 pages of the McMillan Plan for Washington, D.C. in 1902 (listed under National Capital Parks).  Long recognized as one of the most effective and influential city plans in American history, the McMillan Plan resulted from an special congressional committee chaired by Senator James McMillan of Michigan and including Frederick Law Olmsted, Junior, architects Daniel Burnham and Charles Follen McKim, and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.  They focused on restoring and expanding Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s original 1792 design for the National Mall and the monumental core of the city.  So persuasive was the plan that the Mall was transformed from an area of railroad crossings and obstructed vistas to a source of civic pride.  Among today’s landmarks conceived by the McMillan Plan are Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, the Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery, the Jefferson Memorial, and the George Washington Parkway to Mount Vernon.  The National Park Service has been responsible for the National Mall since 1935 and continues to use the plan as inspiration.  Less famous but equally influential were the McMillan Plan’s recommendations for a comprehensive park system for the District of Columbia, anchored by the long sweep of Rock Creek Park.

The McMillan Plan has long been admired for the quality of its visionary perspective drawings, for which the Committee enlisted the best delineators in the country.  Seeing the report in its complete form, one can also appreciate the powerful role that photographs played in bringing its recommendations to life.  Pictures from Rome, Venice, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and even Algiers and Henley-on-Thames stand together with more recent developments in Boston, Hartford, Savannah, and Chicago.  A deep perspective view of a shoreline crowded with mostly well-hatted and suited people is titled “Revere Beach, near Boston. What the people think of its value.”

The McMillan Plan is at http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/mcmillan/index.htm.

Capital’s Utopia: Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916.  Anne E. Mosher, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, 249 pages.

John Charles Olmsted laid out Vandergrift, Pennsylvania in 1895 for George McMurtry’s galvanized steel works.  Many thought that the ideals it incorporated – solid buildings in spacious surroundings with all the modern conveniences – had been definitively found irrelevant to community harmony only a year earlier as a result of the bitter strike at George’s Pullman’s planned community south of Chicago.  But McMurtry ran a non-union factory, and even during the strike of 1901 that succeeded the incorporation of McMurtry’s business into J. P. Morgan’s United States Steel, the workers at Vandergrift remained unorganized.  Even the muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell wrote in 1916 that “it would be difficult. . . to find a prettier town, greener, trimmer, cleaner, and more influential. . . than Vandergrift.”  Mosher shows that the reality was not quite so ideal, as two adjacent, less well planned towns grew up next door to accommodate the flood of unskilled and low-wage immigrants crucial to the company’s success.  Just as Vandergrift is not as well known today as its counterparts, so not much attention has been paid to this book.  Its most important review, by John F. Bauman, has appeared in a British periodical, Planning Perspectives (April 2005, pp. 238-239).  Nevertheless, Mosher, an associate professor in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, has balanced planning and design with social and industrial history to produce a study that is a landmark in Olmsted studies.

Cities and Nature: A Handbook for Renewal.  Roger L. Kemp, editor.  Jefferson, NC, & London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006, 320 pages.

Roger Kemp has served as city manager for cities across the country for the past two decades, and during that time he has turned out 14 books on issues facing local governments.  The present volume is an anthology of articles drawn from nearly a dozen professional journals that may have escaped your attention, such as Planning, Urban Land, The Futurist, and Government Finance Review.  Gathered here, they serve as an inspirational and practical resource on a wide variety of open space concerns, ranging from brownfield reclamation to wildlife preservation, and including trails, riverfronts, beaches, and playgrounds, ranging from local to regional in scope.  The book begins with five chapters on the importance of parks and open spaces to economic and environmental health and continues with 40 chapters describing examples of successful initiatives, arranged alphabetically by city, from Atlanta to West Des Moines.  Five final chapters consider the future and conclude that “the eco-economic revolution is here to stay.”

Branch Brook Park.  Kathleen P. Galop and Catharine Longendyck.  Charleston, SC, etc.: Arcadia Publishing, 2007, 128 pages.

Newark’s park system traces its origins to an 1867 study by Frederick Law Olmsted, and this volume celebrates the 140th anniversary of that seminal event.  Although the land Olmsted recommended for purchase by the city included the site of the present Branch Brook Park, acquisition didn’t begin until after the Essex County Park Commission became the nation’s first countywide park district in 1895.  By that time considerable construction had taken place on the park site, and the natural beauty of the present long narrow park is largely man-made.  John Bogart and Nathan F. Barrett began the park’s development, but Olmsted Brothers took over in 1898 and continued well into the 1920s.  The park’s architecture ranges from the Beaux-Arts splendors of Carrère and Hastings to utilitarian buildings by Sears, Roebuck.  Galop and Longendyck have assembled nearly 200 black and white photos in Arcadia’s familiar “Images of America” format to document the park’s seasonal beauties, popular uses, and current restoration.

Jacob Weidenmann: Pioneer Landscape Architect.  Rudy J. Favretti.  Hartford, CT: Cedar Hill Cemetery Foundation, Inc., in cooperation with Wesleyan University Press, 2007, 192 pages.

Now professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, Rudy Favretti has made his name synonymous in preservation circles with authenticity in landscape restoration, particularly 19th-century gardens.  While writing 11 previous books, he devoted years to researching the life of the designer of two of great Hartford, Connecticut landscapes, Bushnell Park and Cedar Hill Cemetery, and this book is the result.  Jacob Weidenmann was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, near Zurich, in 1829 and migrated to New York in 1856.  In 1871, he began an association of nearly two decades with Frederick Law Olmsted, contributing to Prospect Park, Mount Royal, Congress Park in Saratoga Springs, and other projects.  Olmsted also recommended Weidenmann for private estates including the Lockwood-Mathews mansion in Norwalk, today a National Historic Landmark.  Before his death in 1893, Weidenmann’s practice stretched as far west as Iowa, where he designed the capital grounds in Des Moines.  This large-format book, illustrated in color with plates from Weidenmann’s own publications, such as Beautifying Country Homes (1870), is a worthy tribute to his achievements.

The Biltmore Nursery: A Botanical Legacy.  Bill Alexander.  Charleston, SC: Natural History Press, 2007, 288 pages.

FLO’s last great project, the enormous Biltmore estate near Asheville, North Carolina, combined a palatial country house with a vast program of forestry and agriculture intended to restore the depleted Blue Ridge landscape of 125,000 acres to aesthetic and economic health.  Plants propagated on the estate for this purpose were also sold all over the country in a commercial venture that lasted from 1889 until 1916.  Smaller orders were sent by mail, while larger plants could be sent by express or freight.  This substantial paperback begins with a 90-page history of Biltmore’s horticultural establishment, including forestry, arboretum, herbarium, and nursery, with 45 glossy illustrations.  Then the 190-page Biltmore Nursery Catalog from 1912 is reproduced in its entirety, complete with period illustrations and price lists.  For a modern gardener interested in the Edwardian era, this constitutes a veritable time machine.  A practical plantsman with long experience at Biltmore, Alexander helps the reader with a table of Latin names that have changed in the 95 years since publication, as well as a list of plants in the catalog that are now recognized, and in some cases outlawed, as invasive.

Large Parks.  Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves, editors.  New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007, 255 pages.

This is the third collection of essays about landscape from Princeton Architectural Press, following Recovering Landscape (1999) and The Landscape Urbanism Reader (2006).  Only two of the writers in the present work have appeared before.  As before the essays tend toward the theoretical, but here they are anchored in current examples in which the Central Park model of constructed landscapes as opposed to ones left as found has been applied.  Parks receiving attention from several of the essayists include Fresh Kills, New York; Golden Gate Park in San Francisco; the Bois de Boulogne in Paris and the new Parc du Sausset outside the cty; Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord in Germany; Bos Park in Amsterdam: and Centennial Parklands in Sydney. Unfortunately the book has no index.

The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation.  David Grayson Allen.  Hanover (NH) and London: University Press of New England and Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007, 317 pages.

When Fairsted, the Olmsted home and office in Brookline, became part of the national park system in 1979, park administrators found themselves unprepared by standard Park Service practices to deal with its unique challenges.  The house came with only 1.75 acres but vast contents, including 120,000 uncatalogued drawings.  It also brought with it a tradition amounting to an imperative for furthering Olmsted principles of design, not only in the restoration of Olmsted-designed projects but in all landscapes.  David Allen, a consulting historian based in Concord, Massachusetts, records in this administrative history how the Park Service’s unwieldy decisionmaking process has gradually moved over nearly 30 years from resisting to leading the recognition of landscape as a cultural resource.

Milwaukee County Parks.  Laurie Muench Albano.  Charleston, SC, etc: Arcadia Publishing, 2007, 128 pages.

Like Branch Brook Park reviewed last fall, this volume is part of Arcadia Publishing’s extensive “Images of America” series.  Using Arcadia’s standard format of two illustrations per page (and no index), Albano, a landscape architect and county park employee, charts the course of the county’s parks from a scattering of private open spaces set aside by real estate promoters to the modern system of 15,000 acres.  A board of park commissioners first met in 1889, and Olmsted & Co. designed three of the first parks.  Lake Park, which for many defines the image of the city, and Riverside Park were connected by Newberry Boulevard.  Washington Park became a focus for recreational facilities, including a zoo, racetrack, and bandshell.

The Washington National Mall.  Peter R. Penczer.  Arlington, VA: Oneonta Press, 2007, 128 pages.

This modestly priced, horizontal-format paperback recounts the story of the Mall (now called the National Mall to distinguish it for younger generations from a shopping center), from Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 plan for the capital city, through the transgressions of the 19th century, to the McMillan Plan of 1902 and the century since then needed to implement it, with setbacks such as wartime temporary buildings and funding cuts.  Exceptionally apt illustrations in color and black-and-white reinforce histories of each feature of the Mall and its surroundings, past and present, including FLO’s masterful design for the Capitol grounds.

April 28, 2008 was the 150th anniversary of the Greensward Plan for Central Park, and this seems a good time to remember some of the many books on the subject.

Central Park: An American Masterpiece.  Sara Cedar Miller, with a preface by Kenneth T. Jackson and an epilogue by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers.  New York: Abrams, in association with the Central Park Conservancy, 2003, 255 pages.

Miller’s photos of Central Park in every mood and season were taken over a period of twenty years and form an unparalleled tribute.  But don’t overlook her text, which leads the reader through the design, realization, decline, and revitalization of the park, explaining all its many natural features, buildings, and works of art, fortified with good period photos.

Barnes & Noble Complete Illustrated Map and Guidebook to Central Park.  Raymond Carroll, with concept, design, maps and photographs by Richard J. Berenson.  New York: Berenson Design & Books, Ltd. for Silver Lining Books, 1999, 127 pages.

Printed in a tall narrow format similar to the old Michelin guides, this book divides Central Park into four districts and then describes the features of each, with detailed maps that even mark good camera angles.  (See if you can do better than Sara Cedar Miller.)  Historic photos supplement recent ones, and sidebars highlight key persons, geology, trees, and birds.  Similar guides have been published for Prospect Park and the Boston parks.

The Bridges of Central Park.  Jennifer C. Spiegler and Paul M. Gaykowski.  Charleston, et al: Arcadia Publishing, 2006, 143.

Unlike many books from Arcadia, this one is in a larger horizontal format and mixes photos of several sizes.  With its pioneering system separating pedestrian, vehicular, and horse traffic, Central Park probably has more bridges than any other park, and Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould made them all different.  Here each bridge is treated to two views or more, comparing their origins to current conditions.

L’Enfant’s Legacy: Public Open Spaces in Washington, D.C.  Michael Bednar.  Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, 285 pages.

Bednar traces the fate of the many circles and squares Pierre L’Enfant intended, in his Washington plan of 1791, to punctuate his complex pattern of diagonal avenues.  For each group of such features, Bednar provides a history over the past two centuries, with maps, photos and a commentary on present conditions, often with suggestions for improvement.  FLO (omitted from the index) does come into the story through his 1874 design for the Capitol Grounds, which at that time had just been expanded by taking in several city blocks beyond L’Enfant’s original reservation.  Bednar notes that the controversial new Capitol Visitor Center is far too big but will (if ever completed) restore some Olmsted features and remove some post-Olmsted intrusions.  While the book mentions the Olmsteds only in passing, it adds significantly to our understanding of Washington’s parks and urban design.