ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors are grateful to Charles Beveridge, Series Editor, for all his help with this volume. The Frederick Law Olmsted Papers publication project began in earnest in 1972, the sesquicentennial of Olmsted’s birth. In that year founding editor Charles Capen McLaughlin hired Charles E. Beveridge as associate editor. Charlie Beveridge has in the years since guided the project, working with a succession of editors, and has shared his vast knowledge of Olmsted’s life and work with us. Charlie made the preliminary selection of documents for this volume, advised us on illustrations, and reviewed the introduction and annotation we have written. His expertise at every step of the process has been essential to the completion of this volume. That the previously published volumes have garnered consistently high reviews is testament to his high standards. We are grateful for everything Charlie has given to the series, and to us, as a mentor and friend.

The editors are grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its longtime support of the Olmsted Papers and especially for the preparation of this volume. This volume also received substantial support from other foundations and individuals, including the C. E. and S. Foundation, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, Jean McKee, Victoria Post Ranney and George A. Ranney, Jr., Mimi Batchelder-Brown, and Susan Klaus, as well as significant funding from individuals and foundations who prefer to remain anonymous. We are especially indebted to Caroline Loughlin, both for her unstinting financial support of the Olmsted Papers and for her reading of the introduction and the first chapters of this volume before her declining health and death deprived us of one of the strongest supporters of the preservation of the humanly created landscape.

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The National Association for Olmsted Parks is the sponsoring institution of the Olmsted Papers Project. Its staff, especially former executive director Iris Gestram, has provided fiscal sponsorship and administration of the Olmsted Papers and this volume. Other longterm supporters of the Olmsted Papers Project that we wish to acknowledge include: the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Barkley Fund, Friends of Fairsted, Furthermore: A Program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Hubbard Educational Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Trust for the Humanities, and the Seattle Foundation.

Franklin & Marshall College generously provided office space, computer support, and funding for student research assistants while serving as the sponsoring institution of the volume. The college has also supported our research travel, paid for reels of microfilm, and defrayed the cost of the images that we publish in this volume. Former Provost Ann Steiner and Vice President for Planning and Vice Provost Alan Caniglia proved especially supportive, as were our colleagues in American Studies. Many Franklin & Marshall librarians also offered valuable research assistance, including Thomas A. Karel, Meg Massey, and Christopher Raab. Several research assistants at Franklin & Marshall provided valuable assistance in editing this volume. Jill Schwartz, Molly Winik, and Micah Wood all conducted research that contributed to our annotations of the letters and helped immensely in the proofing of the texts and annotation. Shannon Ricchetti, Erin Moyer, and Leah Brenner were indispensable as we tackled the proofs and prepared a long and complicated index. Jeff Schlossberg deserves special mention, as he joined the project at the beginning and has been part of our team ever since. His contributions to our effort have been so significant that he joins the editors on the title page.

The research staff at Biltmore proved especially helpful to the editors as we worked on documents related to the Estate. Landscape and Forest Historian Bill Alexander and Archivist Jill Hawkins located documents and plans, provided biographical information on Biltmore employees, and offered valuable assistance in identifying places on the estate that Olmsted mentioned in letters and reports. They also contributed many of the illustrations related to Biltmore that appear in this volume and supported the volume’s request for funding from The Biltmore Company.

A number of other scholars contributed to the volume’s completion. Arleyn Levee’s research on John Charles Olmsted was especially helpful to the editors, and she generously gave of her time in responding to questions that required trips to the John Charles Olmsted Papers at Harvard. Daniel Bluestone, Neil Harris, and Timothy Gilfoyle were especially helpful in matters related to Chicago and the World’s Columbian Exposition. Francis R. Kowsky provided valuable information regarding Calvert Vaux and Olmsted’s work in Buffalo. Alan Lessoff offered insights into the Olmsted firm’s involvement in the planning of Washington, D.C., in the 1890s. Michael Miscione provided [xxxi]assistance in identifying New York sites mentioned by Olmsted. Keith Morgan generously shared his knowledge of the Olmsted firm’s presence in Brookline and of the life and career of Charles Eliot. We have also acknowledged, in the annotation, individuals who have provided helpful information on specific documents.

We are grateful to our friends Bill Alexander, Michael Birkner, Ethan Carr, Jane Turner Censer, and Neil Harris for their comments on the introduction. The editors also acknowledge the many libraries, archives, and research institutions that aided in the project’s completion. Stephanie Coleman at the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago found valuable material related to the firm’s work on the World’s Columbian Exposition and provided excellent illustrations for the volume. Jennifer Fauxsmith of the Massachusetts State Archives identified birth and death information for many people mentioned in the volume. Tom Hill, Museum Curator for Hot Springs National Park, scanned and sent copious materials related to the firm’s work there. Kristen Swett found a number of documents and illustrations related to the firm’s work in Boston at the City of Boston Archives. Ines Zalduendo at the Frances Loeb Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Design helped locate and photocopy valuable materials from the John Charles Olmsted Papers and the Papers of Charles Eliot that were essential to the completion of the volume. Suzanne Christoff and Lin Conley of the U.S. Military Academy Archives, Tim Garrity of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, Richard Gardner of Gardner History & Preservation, Mary Soom at the University of Buffalo, and James J. Holmberg of the Filson Historical Society were among the many others who aided our research.

The editors are also grateful to several individuals and institutions who aided in providing illustrations for the volume: Kevin Abing at the Milwaukee County Historical Society; Angela Hoover at the Chicago History Museum; Bruce Laverty at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia; Lauren Meier, who acquired numerous scans for her work on Supplemental Series 3 of the Olmsted Papers Project; William Tyre and John Waters at the Glessner House Museum; Lauri Perkins at Winterthur; and Lois White at the Getty Research Institute. Lois White deserves special acclaim: she went through four boxes of manuscripts before finding, in the final folder of the fourth box, the Getty’s August 1890 Olmsted sketch plan for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Her effort exemplifies that of so many others who have been enormously helpful in every stage of the research and writing of this volume.

Finally, our work would not have been possible without the records maintained by the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, National Park Service, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the American University Archives, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. At Fairsted, the Olmsted National Historic Site, archivists Michele Clark and Michael Dosch, under the leadership of Supervisory Archivist Jill Trebbe, answered many questions and provided many of the images reproduced in this volume. Susan McElrath [xxxii]and Melissa Lindberg, archivists at the American University Archives and Special Collections, helped us access the Olmsted Papers research materials in that collection. Dr. Alice Lotvin Birney, Literary and Cultural Historian, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, and the staff in the reading room, provided us with considerable assistance with the Olmsted Papers and the Olmsted Associates Records.

To all we are deeply grateful.