CHAPTER VI
PARKS AT HOME AND ABROAD

1861

This Article on parks, which Olmsted wrote in late 1860 and early 1861 for the New American Cyclopaedia, is significant both for what it tells of Olmsted’s concept of the purpose and history of parks and for what it shows of his personal knowledge of Old World parks. It demonstrates that he had given careful thought to the history of the park movement in England. In particular, he had examined the eighteenth-century revolution in taste that caused the formal, geometric style of gardening to be replaced by the informal, picturesque style.

In the article, Olmsted expresses distinct reservations about the landscape art practiced by early English advocates of the picturesque style, but he also identifies several British writers on the subject whose teachings he valued highly. His assessment of British parks draws much of its authority from the fact that he had visited most of the estates and parks mentioned in the article.

Olmsted also shows here his extensive first-hand knowledge of Continental parks, many of which he had visited during his trips of 1850, 1856, and 1859. His long critique of the Bois de Boulogne indicates the difference between the approach of its designers and his own. His descriptions of the boulevards of Brussels and of the Boulevard de l’Imperatrice in Paris make it clear that these were the prototypes for his concept of the “parkway,” with its separate ways for different modes of travel—pedestrian path, bridle path, carriage drive, and wagon road—all divided by rows of trees. Moreover, his comments on Italian garden design, ancient and modern, show that by 1861 his own observations and experience had led him to formulate the basic principles that would later underlie his design of the grounds surrounding large buildings and his approach to landscape work in areas with a semiarid climate.

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Olmsted’s assessment of the parks and the park movement in the United States reveals his low opinion of the parks existing at that time and his belief that Americans were being forced to satisfy their strong need for rural pleasures and “gregarious” activities in such inappropriate places as cemeteries. His statement on Central Park, however, points out several elements of that design which he believed had been particularly successful.