While my folks were in town a few weeks ago for my niece's birthday, we went to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, MA. My folks are interested in Olmsted's work because as the father of modern urban landscape design, his first professional project was Delaware Park in our hometown: Buffalo, NY.
After Olmsted worked in Buffalo he went to New York and played a key role in designing Central Park. He moved to Boston in 1890 to seek refuge from the stress of dealing with the politics of public works in NYC. Once in Boston Olmsted started his design firm and, among other projects, designed the park system that surrounds Boston known as the Emerald Necklace. The office was open until 1980 when the owners moved to New Hampshire. They turned the building, all its contents, and the grounds over to the U.S. National Park Service for preservation.
| Here's some artistic renderings of the photos I took on our trip:
This is the entryway to the grounds. |  |
Here's the building.
Here's the garden Olmsted designed. It has a distinct, natural and slightly overgrown look to it.
Here's the room where the blueprints were processed.
This room is one of the few with any climate control. It's where the Park Service does some of its preservation work of the Olmsted project archives they inherited.
This is one of the older areas of the archives and it's how most of the project files were stored.
I really liked this old Remington typewriter, found in one of the offices.
This is one of the private vistas Olmsted designed next to the office where his staff could go to feel as though they were miles away from the bustle of everyday life.
This rear view of the building shows how the Olmsteds expanded it several times over the years.
Cool pictures Alan, and another good reason to visit Boston again! I just read The Devil in the White City, historical fiction tale of the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, for which Olmstead did all landscape achitecture. He also did the Biltmore Estates in NC during this period, amazing place. Oh, and Hi.
I think this dude did the Biltmore Estates as well. We were there in December and i think that was the guy. My in-laws are moving to Utah so we will probably be up to visit now that they are gone. I'll let you know when! Yahoo!
Love ya madly!
Snow