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May 8, 2024 · Learn about the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost parkmaker at his home in Brookline, MA. Explore his historic design office, archives, and virtual tour online or with the NPS app.
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Frederick Law Olmsted is recognized as the founder of the...
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Being a historic home, Frederick Law Olmsted National...
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Frederick Law Olmsted. National Historic Site Massachusetts...
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Frederick Law Olmsted. National Historic Site Massachusetts...
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Visit our Olmsted Archives page for more information. Please...
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Spring at Fairsted Spring 2024 Frederick Law Olmsted...
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- Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) es considerado el fundador...
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From discussion-based tours to archives open houses, we...
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Meet the Olmsted family and firm members from every era;...
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Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Site located in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) is recognized as the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost parkmaker of the 19th century.
Jul 7, 2020 · Learn about the life and work of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, at his home and office in Brookline, MA. Explore his designs for parks, estates, and communities that reflect his environmental and social vision.
Fairsted is the historic site of the first professional office of landscape architecture in the US, where Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons created plans for 6,000 projects. The site also houses a massive collection of working documents and offers tours and programs.
- Bases of Olmsted's Aesthetic Theories
- Influence of Von Zimmermann and Bushnell
- "Service Must Precede Art"
- Design Principles
- The "Pastoral" Style
- The "Picturesque" Style
- The Genius of The Place
The teachings of Price, Gilpin, and Repton and the quiet example of his father provided the basis for Olmsted's aesthetic theories; they also underlay his refusal to follow the gardening fashions of his own time. The horticultural revolution of the early nineteenth century led gardeners to neglect older theories of design and concentrate on display...
The two writers who most influenced his thought on this subject were the eighteenth-century Swiss physician Johann Georg von Zimmermann and the prominent Congregational theologian of Olmsted's own time, Horace Bushnell. In his book Ueber Die Einsamkeit, or Solitude Considered, with Respect to Its Influence on the Mind and the Heart, Zimmermann told...
When in later years Olmsted described the process by which he wished his own landscape designs to have their effect, his basis was the same theory of unconscious influence. In one classic example, he contrasted the effect of a common wild flower on a grassy bank with that of a gaudy hybrid of the same genus, imported from Japan and blooming under g...
The desire to use landscape art to met deep human needs, coupled with his conviction that the process involved must be an unconscious one, led Olmsted to insist on a whole series of design principles that differed significantly from those of the gardeners of his day. In the broadest sense, he felt that what separated his art from that of the garden...
Olmsted used the style of the Beautiful—or as he usually called it, the pastoral—to create a sense of the peacefulness of nature and to sooth and restore the spirit. The Pastoral style was the basic mode of his park designs, which he intended to serve as the setting for "unconscious or indirect recreation." The chief purpose of a park, he taught, w...
When employed the style of the Picturesque, Olmsted introduced "complexity of light and shadow near the eye" to heighten another aspect of nature—its mystery and bounteousness. To achieve a sense of mystery, he used a variety of tints and textures of foliage that made forms indistinct and created a constantly changing play of light and shadow. At t...
By heightening certain qualities of nature, Olmsted adhered to his view that the purpose of the landscape architect was to give people "greater enjoyment of scenery than they could otherwise have consistently with convenience within a given space."13 At the same time, he wanted his designs to remain true to the character of their natural surroundin...
Visit the home and office of the founder of American landscape architecture and the nation's foremost parkmaker. Learn about his design ideals, philosophy, and influence at the world's first full-scale professional office for landscape design.
Find out if there is an Olmsted landscape near you, check out our online design office tour, or learn more about the stories of the Olmsted firm!
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