Olmsted Landscapes from Central Park to Palos Verdes
John Charles Olmsted is considered the father of landscape architecture. He was born in Vandeuvre, a town close to Geneva, Switzerland and had crossed the Atlantic twice by the time he was five. By the start of the Civil War in 1861, his stepfather first moved his new family to Washington, D.C., and then to the Mariposa Estate, a frontier gold-mining business in the Californian Sierra Nevada foothills. John Charles learned to read the scenery while receiving an education amidst the natural beauty of Yosemite and the towering sequoias.
Olmsted started working after graduating from Yale's Sheffield Scientific School as an apprentice in his stepfather's New York business. Early initiatives included work on the grounds of the US Capitol as well as several park and institutional initiatives. In 1877–1878, he traveled to Europe and focused on architectural research in London, which widened his perspective and improved his abilities.
His inspiration for landscape design originally emerged after his first trip to England with his brother. They traveled through several quaint villages as they made their way across the English countryside. They also visited Birkenhead Park outside of Liverpool, the country's first public park constructed with public money, which was significant for Olmsted's professional development.
Birkenhead was similar to Olmsted’s designs of Central Park. The landscape designer by the name of Joseph Paxton, who would have a significant impact on Olmsted, had maleated the monotonous grassland to produce ponds and rock gardens, cricket fields, and meandering walks. Birkenhead Park was seen by Olmsted, a revolutionary municipal experiment. It was a place where commoners and aristocracy freely mingle.
He created Central Park with Calvert Vaux in the 1850s as an egalitarian green space in the developing city. The Park's expansive lawns, serene water features, and lush trees provide the jaded New Yorker with a chance to relax and experience the "feeling of larger freedom."
The Olmsted Brothers spent more than two decades developing Palos Verdes (Project No. 05950). John Charles Olmsted began the planning process in 1913, and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. completed it.
Palos Verdes Estates, a sizable and unique new community in South Los Angeles County. It was designed as a collection of towns that made the most of the lovely surroundings and evolved to be the largest suburban community project the Olmsted Brothers had ever taken on. It also provided an example of careful, ecologically conscious architecture that was tailored to the unique features of Southern California. Palos Verdes was the biggest non-irrigated development in the US, according to an Olmsted precept that called for using less water in response to the climate in Southern California.
Over 200 projects in California were completed by the Olmsted Brothers. The city of Los Angeles presented the company with tremendous ecological, cultural, and technological problems in the early 20th century because of its unrestrained urbanization, widespread usage of water, and prevalence of automobiles. The firm's completed and suggested designs over a 20-year period demonstrated the discipline of landscape architecture in its richest and most scalar form, and they were rich in solutions. The Olmsted Brothers designed public places that complemented the local environment at a pivotal point in history, including small-scale gardens, residential communities, park and parkway systems, open space, and watershed planning.
The designs of Olmsted resonate to this day as spaces that shape our vision of the world spanning over 3,500 commissioned works for Boston, Buffalo, Detroit, Rochester, Atlanta, Hartford, Louisville, Brooklyn, Chicago, and other cities.