CHAPTER V
JANUARY 1877–OCTOBER 1877

This was a time of intensifying political pressures in New York, both at the state and local levels. In early 1877 came a second round of opposition in the state legislature to the plans for the New Capitol of Olmsted, Eidlitz and Richardson, leading to investigations by legislative committees. Olmsted’s address to one of these on March 6, 1877, was his most extensive review of the ongoing controversy and defense of himself and his colleague architects. "To the Public” is a draft for a counterappeal to the architectural profession that apparently was not carried out. The issue became a moot point when the state legislature in May 1877 directed that the New Capitol be completed "in the Italian renaissance style of architecture, adopted in the original design,” and not in the Romanesque style proposed by the advisory board.

Olmsted continued to be involved in the management of Central Park, as indicated by his letter to William Martin on the adverse effects of crowds attending the dedication of the statue of the writer Fitz-Greene Halleck. At the same time, Olmsted and J. J. R. Croes continued their planning for the Bronx: the report to Martin of March 20, 1877, spells out their innovative proposal for a rapid transit system for the area that would secure both speed and safety by complete grade separation of the system’s tracks from city streets. Letters to H. A. Nelson deal primarily with proposals to place inappropriate structures on Mount Royal, while the letter to John C. Olmsted describes Olmsted’s poorly attended speech in Montreal in October. To his wife, Mary Perkins Olmsted, he reports on events in New York during the railroad strikes of 1877 during a summer whose intense heat brought on a crisis in his own health.

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