CHAPTER X
FEBRUARY 1881-DECEMBER 1881

During the time period of this chapter, Olmsted rented his house in Manhattan and moved his family permanently to Brookline, Massachusetts. Two reports of these months deal with new aspects of the developing Boston park system. The report of May 17 examines the proposed site in West Roxbury for the principal park of the system, and the report of December 29 contains Olmsted’s first description of the linear system of parks and parkways running from Charlesbank and Boston Common to the West Roxbury park. In addition, the letter to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., encourages the movement in suburban Quincy to reserve the area of Merry Mount for park purposes. The letter to John Sterling marks the beginning of Olmsted’s planning in Detroit of the park on Belle Isle.

In the letter to Edward Clark, Olmsted provides his fullest explanation of the process by which he planned the West Front terrace and other terraces of the U.S. Capitol. On a similar theme, his letter to Barthold Schlesinger sets forth his doctrine of terraces as applied to private residences. The letter to Charles Eliot Norton of October 19 is an impassioned statement of his continuing efforts to discover and publicize a comprehensive and coherent definition of landscape design. Other letters to Norton chart the development of the Niagara reservation campaign. The letter to Cornelius Agnew explores issues of private and public space in a community, as applied to a summer colony being designed at Montauk by the firm of McKim, Meade and White.

The assassination of President James Garfield in the summer of 1881 moved Olmsted to write the article “Influence,” containing a concise and forceful review of his experience with the politics of patronage during his [524] years on Central Park. This he submitted to his friend George W. Curtis, president of the Civil Service Reform Association, for use in a new campaign.