CHAPTER 1
APRIL 1880-AUGUST 1890

The documents in this chapter illustrate the varied projects undertaken by the Olmsted firm as the 1890s began. The letters to J. J. Albright and Olmsted’s “Plans for Small Places” demonstrate his engagement with smaller, even modest, private estates, while the two letters to James Gall, Jr., and reports on the forest and scientific collections reveal his aspirations for Biltmore’s importance to landscape design and scientific inquiry. In letters to W. C. Barry and George Elliott, Olmsted showed his attentiveness to the appropriateness of architectural structures in public parks, seeing in the proposed Highland Park pavilion an opportunity for simultaneously providing scenic vistas and the fresh air believed necessary to prevent urban diseases. The letter to Archie Campbell Fisk regarding a Denver-area hotel and resort presents Olmsted’s principles for dealing with the challenging climate of the semiarid West. New projects were also emerging—parks and a residential subdivision in Trenton, New Jersey, for civic leader Edmund C. Hill; a pleasant suburban community in northern New Jersey for James R. Pitcher; a long-term plan for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, under the leadership of John M. Wilson; and, potentially, a new park system for Olmsted’s hometown of Hartford, Connecticut, where his half-brother Albert Henry Olmsted still lived. But with these varied projects came frustrations. Letters to Ariel Lathrop and Leland Stanford highlight his discontent with, and resignation from, the firm’s engagement with Stanford University. Finally, Olmsted’s letter to his son Rick marks the start of two critical projects for Olmsted’s final years: his supervision of Rick’s education and the firm’s involvement in planning the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.