The Famous Park In New York City

Karina Castillo
Eng:112
11/09/2017


One of the Designer of Central Park


          American Landscape Architect Frederick Law Olmsted who designed a succession of outstanding public parks, beginning with Central Park. He was Born at Hartford, connecticut on April 26, 1822. His mother died when he was almost four years old. His father remarried at 1827 He design many park and one of them was Central Park also called "The Big Apple" In Manhattan, New York City. He left his home when he was seven years old, because he was tutored by and board with a series of ministers. As he was about to enter Yale College in 1837,  he got sumac poisoning when he was fourteen years old, and the infection weakened his eyes and kept him from the usual course of studies. This affecting his study and he couldn't continue on to university.

          He spent the twenty years gathering experiences and skills from a variety of endeavors that he eventually utilized in creating the profession of landscape architecture. He worked In New York dry-goods store and took a year-long voyage in the china trade. He studied surveying and engineering, chemistry, and scientific farming and ran a farm on Staten Island from 1848 to 1855. Olmsted published his first book in 1852 Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England.

         On June 13, 1859, Olmsted Married Mary Cleveland (Perkins) Olmsted.  He adopted her three children (his nephews and niece), John Charles Olmsted, Charlotte Olmsted (Bryant) and Owen Olmsted. Frederick and Mary had two children together who survived infancy: a daughter, Marion (born October 28,1861), and a son Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Their first child, John Theodore Olmsted was born on June 13, 1860, and died in Infant

         Between 1856 and 1860 he publish three volumes of travel account and social analysis of the south. As I read during his career Olmsted firm carried out more than 500 commissions. They included 100 public parks and recreation grounds, 200 private states, 50 residential communities and subdivision and campus design for 40 academic institutions. Olmsted was a prolific author, despite the difficulty he experienced in expressing his ideas in writing. Six thousand letters and reports that he wrote during his landscape architecture career have survived, dealing with 300 design commissions.

         He believed that it was the purpose of his art to affect the emotions. This was especially evident in his park design, Where he created passages of scenery in which the visitor would become immersed, experiencing the restorative action of the landscape by what Olmsted termed an "Unconscious" process. He died in Belmont, MA on August 28, 1903.



Work Cited

Biography Editors "Frederick Law Olmsted"  The Biography May 24, 2016   https://www.biography.com/people/frederick-law-olmsted-9428434 Web Nov 06, 2017.


Rich, Nathaniel "When Park Where Radical "  Theathantic  Sept, 2016         https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/better-than-nature/492716/  Web Nov 10, 2017.