Parks for the People A Story About Frederick Law Olmsted Book

Frederick Law Olmsted is famous as the man who designed Central Park in New York City, as well as other famous parks. He is one of the men who invented the profession of landscape architecture before it was even a thing. According to this book, when FLO began, parks were barely a thing. That is, public parks, where anyone could go to enjoy green space, rich or poor, were barely conceived of. Rich people in Europe had deer parks reserved for their private hunting pleasure, and lots of people had green space in their back yard, but the new urban poor had nothing.

When Fred was a boy, rambling in the woods and fields was his greatest joy. He hated sitting still for school. His love of the outdoors at first seemed to make him unfit for any career. He worked as a clerk in a New York shipping business. He went to sea as a sailor. He tried farming. He published several books. He worked as manager of a mine in Colorado. Ever restless, he kept moving on.

His friend Calvert Vaux asked him to help create a design for New York’s Central Park. The two men’s design was accepted, and they went to work turning a marshy, rocky bunch of farmland into an oasis of natural beauty.

The work wasn’t seamless. Fred was hired, fired, re-hired, and re-fired. The financial overseer was penny-pinching and micro-managing, and caused Fred severe stress. Fred always had to fight for his vision of an open natural park against men who wanted a built-up park with money-making amusements. The partners of Olmsted and Vaux had had friction between them. Although they had a business partnership, Fred got the greater glory, and the men eventually separated.

The name of Frederick Law Olmsted did go down in history as better known than that of Calvert Vaux. Perhaps both men deserve the fame equally, but FLO will be remembered as a man who helped to change the world for the better. Now it is almost unthinkable that a major city will not provide its citizens with green spaces, and the denser the concrete and steel canyons have grown, the greater the need for those parks. I love parks more with each passing year, and I am grateful that Frederick Law Olmsted devoted his life to tirelessly creating and promoting them.

This short book, intended for young people, is notable for having a picture on almost every page.