The Olmsted Family: Walking Through History

Fredrick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape design, is known as the designer of Central Park, widely regarded as his crowning achievement.  But did you know that of the thousands of parks, college campuses, and other landscape gems created under the Olmsted name across the world, Central Park was his first project. Reading about his life, I was struck by the struggles he had early on (some would say failures) and the random path taken to get the Central Park assignment.

As a young man, he dropped out of Yale University and tried farming on Staten Island before he went on a family sponsored walking tour of England in 1850. This six-month walking tour was  life changing. He paid a visit to Liverpool’s Birkenhead Park, a rare public park, open to all. There, Olmsted concluded that park access should be a right of all Americans. “I was struck,” he wrote, “that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable to this People’s Garden.”

His path to success was unusual to say the least and it led to the family landscape business which he handed off to his sons.  It was the sons who designed the Union County Park system and Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey and South Mountain Reservation for that matter. 

The Union County vision was for an interconnected park system that would include Warinanco Park in the eastern part of the county and Cedar Brook and Green Brook Parks in the west.  Many parks were created, to be connected by paths, many of which would follow rivers and streams.  The paths were mostly not started and it is not until recent times that the East Coast Greenway Alliance and local partners are making the full Olmsted vision come true. 

On January 20, Freewalkers will walk through four Olmsted parks in the middle of the county. We will experience what is typical of Olmsted design, both passive and active features, especially in Nomahegan and Echo Lake parks.  We will also walk on the East Coast Greenway for much of the walk.  So some of the old and some new.  This walk is free and open to the public.  You are welcome to join us. 

Sources – Wikipedia, https://olmsted.org/frederick-law-olmsted/life/