CHAPTER III
DECEMBER 1890-MARCH 1891

As 1890 drew to a close, Olmsted addressed a number of matters he had put aside temporarily while finalizing the firm’s position with the World’s Columbian Exposition. His letter to Charles A. Roberts expresses the importance of community in laying out the Lake Wauconda resort. In a poignant letter to Elizabeth Baldwin Whitney, whom he had courted almost forty years earlier, Olmsted describes her importance in his intellectual development and eventual success. Olmsted’s letter to William Noble, meanwhile, shows his openness to women entering the professional ranks of landscape gardeners, as he recommended the employment of Elizabeth Bullard to take up her deceased father’s position as superintendent of parks in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Writing to Frank Baker, Olmsted argues for the potential of the National Zoo in merging beauty of scenery and the exhibition of animals while also cautioning against the effects that sporadic federal funding would have on the zoo’s development. To the citizens of Marblehead, Massachusetts, Olmsted recommends the creation of a road close to the shoreline before escalating real estate values make the option an impossibility. As 1890 drew to a close, Olmsted looked back to his efforts with the U.S. Sanitary Commission, donating a large collection of materials related to his time there to the Library of the Massachusetts Commandery of the Loyal Legion. In his introductory letter for the collection, written to Arnold A. Rand, Olmsted explains the significance of the commission and his hopes for what its legacy will be.

Many of the letters in this chapter illuminate the refinement of plans for the World’s Columbian Exposition in early 1891. In letters to Daniel Burnham, Clarence Pullen, Frederick J. Kingsbury, and Henry Van Brunt, leading [237]up to and following the week-long meeting in Chicago in January with the architects and planners of the fair, Olmsted outlines his vision for the grounds and his hope to transform “a desert place of drifting sand and water” into a site worthy of a world’s fair. His memorandum of March 1891 outlines his plans for the lush planting for the lagoon district that would prove so successful. Other letters show Olmsted’s attempts to ward off unwelcome intrusions and alterations to parks in Boston, Brooklyn, and New York, and his special attention to Biltmore’s Approach Road, where, as his letter to James Gall, Jr., reveals, he hoped to create a luxuriant, mysterious effect for visitors arriving at Vanderbilt’s estate.