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Subscribe NowHappy Birthday, FLO: Celebrating a Landscape Legacy
Happy Birthday, FLO: Celebrating a Landscape Legacy April 24 saw a ripple of events throughout the country marking the 191st birthday anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903). Noteworthy among them was the opening of the newly restored garden at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida, designed by Olmsted Brothers in the […]
Exhibition Traces Designers’ Dreams for Australia’s “Ideal City”
Exhibition Traces Designers’ Dreams for Australia’s “Ideal City” A decade after Australia’s official federation in 1901, the government launched an international competition for the design of its new capital, Canberra—an “ideal city” that would reflect the new country’s aspirations. In 1912, the government declared a winner: Walter Burley Griffin, a Chicago-based architect and landscape architect. […]
September Conference Celebrates Rebels with a Cause
September Conference Celebrates Rebels with a Cause Whether they created public plazas or private retreats, each of the eight landscape architects featured in the LALH conference “Masters of Modern Landscape Design” asserted a distinct artistic vision. What they shared, from Dan Kiley and Garrett Eckbo to Ruth Shellhorn and Lawrence Halprin, was assertiveness itself—the boldness […]
HUMBOLDT’S NEW CURRENT
The practice of contemporary landscape architecture is fundamentally Darwinian in the sense that it relies upon systematic and quantitative observations of natural history for many of its design decisions. These observations often include temperature, rainfall, the chemical composition of the soil and air, the relationship between topography and plant and animal assemblages, and speculations on […]
Time for a New VIEW
Time for a New VIEW In June LALH members will receive the 2013 issue of VIEW—and make no mistake, this is the largest and most comprehensive issue to date. Don’t miss out on articles on topics such as the new LALH book Community by Design, a study of the Olmsted firm’s impact on the Boston suburb […]
HISTORIC SITES IN THE UNITED STATES: PAST AND PRESENT
Historic parks and monuments have suffered an overall decline in visitation over the last 30 years. This may not be true of all destinations, particularly those most popular with tourists. But according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 25% of Americans reported visiting a historic site in 2008, down from about 38% in […]
FIRST MODERN LANDSCAPE: STEELE’S NHL
The landscape composition of Camden Library Amphitheatre and grounds was a coup for Steele, won because he shared an office with the library architect. The amphitheatre is a remarkable composition created under a directive to employ as many local laborers as possible and use local and native materials. Shaped from 1929 to 1932, it was […]
LALH Launches Community by Design
LALH Launches Community by Design In 1883, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. moved from New York City to Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb that persistently resisted annexation by the nearby metropolis. For the next half century, the Olmsted firm served as the dominant force in the planned development of this rural enclave and received more than […]
Steele’s Amphitheater Becomes National Historic Landmark
Steele’s Amphitheater Becomes National Historic Landmark On Monday, March 11th, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior announced that Camden Amphitheater, one of Fletcher Steele’s few public projects, is one of the thirteen National Historic Landmarks designated this year. The outdoor theater lies behind the Camden Public Library, overlooking the harbor on West Penobscot Bay. It […]
Central Park Hosts Morrison Lecture, LALH Film
Central Park Hosts Morrison Lecture, LALH Film Native plants enthusiasts, transplanted Midwesterners pining for the prairie, and anyone curious about a naturalistic approach to landscape design will find much of interest at a lecture by Darrel Morrison, FASLA, and screening of the LALH film, Designing in the Prairie Spirit: A Conversation with Darrel Morrison. In the […]
Landscapes of Exclusion Wins Coffin Grant
Landscapes of Exclusion Wins Coffin Grant William E. O’Brien, associate professor of environmental studies at Florida Atlantic University, has received a 2013 David R. Coffin Publication Grant from the Foundation of Landscape Studies for the forthcoming book Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South, a volume in the LALH Designing the […]
LALH Welcomes Sarah Allaback
LALH Welcomes Sarah Allaback An architectural historian, Allaback previously worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey, the Historic American Engineering Record, and as a consultant for the National Park Service. She is the author of The First American Women Architects (University of Illinois Press, 2008), “Mission 66 Visitor Centers: The History of a Building Type” […]
By-Laws
BY-LAWS OF LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE HISTORY, INC. ARTICLE I: Section 1. Name and Location The name of the corporation shall be Library of American Landscape History, Inc. The principal place of business of the corporation shall be 150 Fearing Street, Amherst, Massachusetts. Section 2. Purposes and Powers of the Corporation As set forth in […]
New Bits and Hot Bytes at LALH.org
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 […]
“Dearest Nettie . . . .”
“Dearest Nettie . . . .” During his frequent travels to project sites across the country, Warren Manning wrote hundreds of letters to his wife, Henrietta Hamblin Pratt Manning—“Nettie,” to him. In his unpublished autobiography, he wrote that she was “the daughter of a leading citizen and business man,” and, as his spouse, “was not […]
Wormsloe Foundation, Billings Book—A Match Made in History
Wormsloe Foundation, Billings Book—A Match Made in History Progress on the forthcoming LALH book about railroad tycoon/ philanthropist/ conservationist Frederick Billings (1823–1890) recently gathered steam, propelled by a $12,500 grant from the Wormsloe Foundation. The book appears in the LALH series Critical Studies in the History of Environmental Design, which examines the conversion of land […]
Modern Landscape Design Conference to Launch New Series
Modern Landscape Design Conference to Launch Series “Our grave is on axis in a Beaux Arts cemetery,” wrote the modernist landscape architect James C. Rose (1913–1991). Always the gleeful iconoclast, Rose, with Harvard classmates Dan Kiley (1912–2004) and Garrett Eckbo (1910–2000) bucked Beaux Arts formalism in the 1930s to explore the spatial and artistic forms […]
Antonia Adezio’s Gift
Antonia Adezio’s Gift When the founding executive director of the Garden Conservancy, Antonia Adezio, stepped down in December after twenty-three years, she left more than a hundred conserved gardens, a national membership organization with a network of engaged volunteers, a thriving Open Days program, a West Coast base in the San Francisco Bay Area, and […]
NEW BOOK SERIES: DESIGNING THE AMERICAN PARK
“Designing the American Park,” a new series within the Library of American Landscape History, launches this year with the publication of Frank Kowsky’s, The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System. The new series will be based on the conviction that park landscapes are among the richest of cultural […]
DESIGN BY THE COMMUNITY
The Mission is drier and warmer (and flatter) than anywhere else in San Francisco, which makes getting around fun, but something more compelling is in the air in this distinctive place. Walking down 24th Street last week, I wondered what Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. or John Nolen would make of this neighborhood—deemed the most vibrant […]
New Directions in the American Landscape Winter Conference
New Directions in the American Landscape Winter Conference Heads up, landscape architects, garden designers, and home gardeners interested in designing with native plants: Don’t miss the 24th-annual New Directions in the American Landscape Winter Conference, coming up in January. Under the theme “Critical Interactions: Ecological Research into Landscape Design,” this year’s program includes the LALH […]
REFLECTIONS ON OUR 20TH
The morning after celebrating LALH’s twentieth anniversary at the Boston Athenaeum, we found ourselves standing in the Dell of Mount Auburn Cemetery, under a soft, dark October sky. At that moment, at least to me, it felt that the very roots of LALH could be traced back to this silent and moving place. Mount Auburn, […]
MANITOGA
Russel Wright’s Song of Nature & Design Garrison, New York From 1942 to 1976 renowned mid-century modern designer Russel Wright shaped a former quarry and remnant woodland into a forest garden for experiencing nature and aesthetic effects. The design approach developed a series of paths, each with specific effects articulated for seasons, time of day, […]
WELCOME TO THE LALH BLOG
Welcome to the new LALH blog, featuring a rotating cast of practitioners and landscape historians. Please feel free to add your comments. Renowned landscape architect, Patricia M. O’Donnell, FASLA, AICP, ICOMOS, IFLA, and principal of Heritage Landscapes LLC, Preservation blogs about her thoughts and discoveries as she works at Manitoga in Garrison, New York. Landscape […]
Dan Kiley, a Winter Tramp in Plan
Dan Kiley, a Winter Tramp in Plan Before the future landscape architect Daniel Urban Kiley entered Harvard in 1936, he worked in the office of Warren H. Manning in Billerica, Massachusetts. One snowy January day, Kiley recorded a snowshoe “tramp” that he and Manning made through Billerica with a few others, and the document recently surfaced during […]