Frederick Law Olmsted – författare

Early in the year 1854 Frederick Law Olmsted, a young New England journalist, crossed the Louisiana border and set off on horseback into the teeth of the Texas winter. In A Journey through Texas he recounts his travels along the Old San Antonio Road through East Texas' piney woods, the dry prairies further west, the chaparral of South Texas, the coastal prairies, and the rich bottomlands around Houston and Galveston.Olmsted does not romanticize the discomforts of his trip-the monotonous food, crude housing, wet and dry northers, rough companions-yet his book reflects a sense of limitless possibility for this new and open country. The cultured Easterner remembers in relentless detail the squalor and brutality met with in parts of East Texas, but he writes fondly of the civility and cleanliness of the German settlements around New Braunfels.In his introductory "A Letter to a Southern Friend," omitted in earlier reprints, Olmsted sets forth his views opposing the extension of slavery into the West and promoting free-soil agriculture for frontier states.The remarkably versatile Olmsted is best known as the founder of landscape architecture in America and for works including Central Park and Stanford University.In his Foreword, Larry McMurtry calls A Journey through Texas an "intelligent, lively, readable book, packed with keen observation and lightened by a delicate strain of humor."

"The park throughout is a single work of art, and as such, subject to the primary law of every work of art, namely, that it shall be framed upon a single, noble motive, to which the design of all its parts, in some more or less subtle way, shall be confluent and helpful."-Frederick Law Olmsted For decades Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) designed parks and park systems across the United States, leaving an enduring legacy of designed public space that is enjoyed, studied, and protected today. Olmsted's plans and professional correspondence are a rich source for understanding his remarkable contribution to the quality of urban life in this country and the development of the profession of landscape architecture. His writings also provide a unique record of society and politics in post-Civil War America. Historians, landscape architects, conservationists, city planners and citizens' groups continue to turn to Olmsted for inspiration in their planning and protection of public open space in our cities. This latest volume of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted presents the record of his last years of residence in New York City.It includes reports on the design of Riverside and Morningside parks and Tompkins Square in Manhattan, as well as his comprehensive plan for the street system and rapid transit routes of the Bronx. It records his continuing work on Central Park and presents his final retrospective statement, "The Spoils of the Park." In addition, the volume contains an annotated version of the journal in which Olmsted recorded instances of political maneuvering and patronage politics in the years prior to his dismissal from the New York parks department in 1878. Later chapters chronicle the early stages of his planning of the Boston park system-the Back Bay Fens, Arnold Arboretum, and Riverway. Other major commissions, each with its own political complications, were the grounds of the U. S. Capitol, the completion of the new state capitol in Albany, the designing of a park on Mount Royal in Montreal, and construction of the park system of Buffalo, N. Y. The volume also presents Olmsted's commentary on issues of the times including Reconstruction policy and Civil Service reform.The Olmsted Papers project is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Trust for the Humanities, the National Association for Olmsted Parks, as well as private foundations and individuals.

"An indispensable work for any student of the Old South. The book is not merely indispensable; it is challenging and controversial."—New York TimesFor decades Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) designed parks and park systems across the United States, leaving an enduring legacy of designed public space that is enjoyed, studied, and protected today. His plans and professional correspondence offer a rich source for understanding his remarkable contribution to the quality of urban life in this country and the development of the profession of landscape architecture. Olmsted's writings also provide a unique record of society and politics in post–Civil War America. Historians, landscape architects, conservationists, city planners, students, and citizens' groups continue to turn to Olmsted for ideas about the development and conservation of green spaces in urban areas.The Olmsted Papers project is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Trust for the Humanities, the National Association for Olmsted Parks, as well as private foundations and individuals.

For decades Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) designed parks and park systems across the United States, leaving an enduring legacy of designed public space that is enjoyed, studied, and protected today. His plans and professional correspondence offer a rich source for understanding his remarkable contribution to the quality of urban life in this country and the development of the profession of landscape architecture. Olmsted's writings also provide a unique record of society and politics in post-Civil War America. Historians, landscape architects, conservationists, city planners, and citizens' groups continue to turn to Olmsted for inspiration in their planning and protection of public open space in our cities. This latest and seventh volume of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted presents the record of his last years of residence in New York City. It includes reports on the design of Riverside and Morningside parks and Tompkins Square in Manhattan, as well as his comprehensive plan for the street system and rapid transit routes of the Bronx. It records his continuing work on Central Park and presents his final retrospective statement, "The Spoils of the Park."In addition, volume seven contains an annotated version of the journal in which Olmsted recorded instances of political maneuvering and patronage politics in the years before his dismissal from the New York parks department in 1878. Later documents chronicle the early stages of his planning of the Boston park system-the Back Bay Fens, Arnold Arboretum, and Riverway. Other major commissions, each with its own political complications, were the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, the completion of the new state capitol in Albany, the designing of a park on Mount Royal in Montreal, and construction of the park system of Buffalo, New York. The volume also presents Olmsted's commentary on issues of the times including federal Reconstruction policy and civil-service reform. The Olmsted Papers project is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the National Trust for the Humanities, the National Association for Olmsted Parks, as well as private foundations and individuals.

Before he became America's foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was by turns a surveyor, merchant seaman, farmer, magazine publisher, and traveling newspaper correspondent. In 1856–57 he took a saddle trip through Texas to see the country and report on its lands and peoples. His description of the Lone Star State on the eve of the Civil War remains one of the best accounts of the American West ever published. Unvarnished by sentiment or myth making, based on firsthand observations, and backed with statistical research, Olmsted's narrative captures the manners, foods, entertainments, and conversations of the Texans, as well as their housing, agriculture, business, exotic animals, changeable weather, and the pervasive influence of slavery.  Back and forth from the Sabine to the Rio Grande, through San Augustine, Nacogdoches, San Marcos, San Antonio, Neu-Braunfels, Fredericksburg, Lavaca, Indianola, Goliad, Castroville, La Grange, Houston, Harrisburg, and Beaumont, Olmsted rode and questioned and listened and reported. Texas was then already a multiethnic and multiracial state, where Americans, Germans, Mexicans, Africans, and Indians of numerous tribes mixed uneasily. Olmsted interviewed planters, scouts, innkeepers, bartenders, housewives, drovers, loafers, Indian chiefs, priests, runaway slaves, and emigrants and refugees from every part of the known world—most of whom had "gone to Texas" looking for a fresh start. He also observed the breathtaking arrival of spring on the prairie and the starry nights that seemed to prove the truth of the German saying "The sky seems nearer in Texas."