Book:
Calvert Vaux (1824–1895), better known as an architect, is most frequently remembered as Frederick Law Olmsted’s partner in the design of Central Park, primarily of its fanciful architectural structures. In this visionary book, Francis R. Kowsky illuminates Vaux’s work as a landscape architect through a significant practice of his own. In 1850, the American architect […]
Author:
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was, at turns, a scientific farmer, journalist, park administrator, publisher, public health commissioner, and conservationist, but his contributions to the field of landscape architecture alone would have secured him a reputation as one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century. Olmsted’s career as a landscape architect began in 1856 […]
Post:
Frederick Law Olmsted is rightly remembered as the most accomplished landscape architect in U.S. history, the designer of great municipal parks and other landscapes. He also was a key figure in the nation’s most significant early examples of scenic preservation. These endeavors were not mutually exclusive, and in fact park design and scenic preservation were […]
Post:
The University of Chicago recently unveiled its plan to locate the Obama Presidential Library in either Washington or Jackson Parks, both of which were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 1870s. Promoting the plans as a way of invigorating the South Side and even adding to the city’s park land, University […]
Post:
New Bits and Hot Bytes at LALH.org With each passing month LALH.org is hitting a new stride—another new film, a dedicated YouTube channel, rotating bloggers, and more frequent postings of this LALH e-newsletter. Watch for a new Place Study, featuring the Buffalo Park System, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The subject of […]
Book:
A volume in the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series Samuel Parsons Jr. (1844–1923) was one of the most well known names in the field of landscape design in the early twentieth century. A protégé of Calvert Vaux, Parsons worked with the architect until Vaux’s death in 1895. As superintendent of planting in Central Park and landscape […]
Preservation Hero:
“The landscape of a city can shape your imagination,” Frank Kowsky says as he reminisces about growing up in Washington, DC, amid its broad, leafy streets and elegant traffic circles. Frank remembers spending many boyhood afternoons in the Olmsted firm’s Rock Creek Park, and even back then he was struck by the meandering park’s wild, […]
Films:
Featuring LALH author Francis R. Kowsky, this film explores the development of the nation’s first park system, designed for Buffalo by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1868. Drawing national and international attention, their scheme carefully augmented the city’s original plan with urban features inspired by Second Empire Paris, including the first system of […]
Preservation Hero:
For thirty-six years, Sara Cedar Miller has taken photographs of one of the great works of American art. Now the Central Park Conservancy’s historian emerita, she joined its staff as a photographer in 1984, when the park was at its nadir, and her images of the rampant destruction and neglect became a call to arms […]
Post:
“Buffalo seemed to have a future without limit as its residents looked westward. To the east, of course, it was doomed always to play second fiddle to its cross-state rival, New York. But Buffalo’s leaders, particularly in the business community, made the best of the situation by carefully studying some of the breakthroughs coming out […]
Post:
Big Apple Hosts Premiere of Best Planned City Film Francis R. Kowsky’s new LALH book, The Best Planned City in the World, tells the story of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s park system for Buffalo—the most extensive in the world. What better place to launch the new LALH short film than Central Park, where […]
Post:
Best Planned City Slated for June Release On the heels of Community by Design, published in April, comes the first book in the LALH Designing the American Park series, The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System by Francis R. Kowsky. Beginning in 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert […]
Book:
A volume in the series Designing the American Park Beginning in 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created a series of parks and parkways for Buffalo, New York, that drew national and international attention. The improvements carefully augmented the city’s original plan with urban design features inspired by Second Empire Paris, including the first system […]
Preservation Hero:
In any given week, the landscape architect and urban planner Patricia O’Donnell might be working with team members on community park research, preparing historically grounded plans for a significant civic landscape, and speaking at an international conference on heritage and climate change. Among the most vocal landscape architects of her generation, for more than four […]
Author:
Samuel Parsons Jr. (1844–1923) was one of the most well-known names in the field of landscape design in the early twentieth century. A protégé of Calvert Vaux, Parsons worked with the architect until Vaux’s death in 1895. As superintendent of planting in Central Park, where he defended Olmsted and Vaux’s vision against repeated incursions, and […]
Adviser:
Francis R. Kowsky, FSAH, is SUNY distinguished professor emeritus at Buffalo State College. He has written numerous articles on nineteenth-century American architects, including A. J. Davis, Frederick Clarke Withers, and H. H. Richardson. Kowsky has a long-standing interest in the early years of the American park movement and the roles that Andrew Jackson Downing, Frederick Law […]
Exhibition:
In spring 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted met Calvert Vaux at his Manhattan office to divide the $2,000 fee they had earned after winning the Central Park design competition. At the time, Vaux told his friend that after the park was done they could “carry on the business that it would inevitably lead to.” Vaux’s prediction […]
Post:
A beautiful new edition of Hermann von Pückler-Muskau’s classic Hints on Landscape Gardening has just been released by Birkhäuser and the Foundation for Landscape Studies. The large-format volume includes the full set of lavish color prints originally published as a companion piece to the wry, highly opinionated text that took the landscape gardening world by […]
Preservation Hero:
“Buffalo has been such a discovery,” says Mexican-born landscape architect Thomas Herrera-Mishler five years after moving with his family from Wellesley, Massachusetts, to work for the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy. “It has turned out to be such an interesting place, with so much to offer,” says Herrera-Mishler, who is now the organization’s president and CEO. Frederick […]
Place Study:
Buffalo, New York At the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, Frederick Law Olmsted displayed a map of Buffalo accompanied by a series of delicate watercolors he had commissioned to illustrate the Buffalo Park System: scenes of the Terrace at the Front, Spire Head House, and the Parade, among four other views. The text accompanying the map, […]
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