ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors wish to give special thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their longtime support of the Olmsted Papers and the contributions they made to the preparation of this volume. We also wish to express our gratitude to the Henry Luce Foundation and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation for their contribution to the funding of this volume.

We wish to thank the many members of the staff of The American University, our sponsoring institution, who assisted in processing the grant proposals and administering the grants that made preparation of this volume possible. Special thanks are due to Professor Roger H. Brown for his strong support of the Olmsted Papers project during his time as chairman of the History Department.

Numerous research assistants contributed welcome energy and perseverance to the process of finding the necessary sources for identifying and explaining Olmsted’s statements in the text of this volume. Kevin Corbitt, Susan Hines, Jennifer Altenhofel and Cindi Smith provided this assistance while holding the Olmsted Research Fellowship in the Department of History, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Significant contributions were made as well by Kenneth W. Stringer, Jr., Julie Berebitsky, and Jodi Allison-Bunnell.

Tina Raheem made a major contribution to the volume by transcribing the texts. Former associate editors of the project David Schuyler and Jane Turner Censer made valuable suggestions for improving the introduction and annotation. We very much appreciate the time spent by Charles C. [xviii] McLaughlin and other members of the advisory board in reviewing the introduction and other sections of the volume.

Other assistance has come from many different places. Tina Hummel provided us with information concerning Olmsted and Birkenhead Park, while information on Olmsted’s partnership with John C. Olmsted was provided by Arleyn A. Levee.

We wish also to acknowledge the assistance provided us by the staff members of numerous institutions, including Kurtzie Gonzales of the Cincinnati Park Board Library, Julia Sniderman of the Chicago Park District, Sara Cedar Miller of the Central Park Conservancy, and the staff of the Archives Municipales of Montreal. A special tribute is due to Rex Wasserman, landscape architect and archivist in the office of the Administrator of Prospect Park in Brooklyn: his enthusiasm for the historical record of the park was always encouraging, and we will greatly miss his help as we work on future volumes.

We have benefitted from the assistance and good will of many persons for gathering the illustrations published in this volume. Once again we have been most fortunate to have Herbert Mitchell make available to us his collection of visual materials for the New York and Brooklyn parks. Important help was provided us by the staff of the Municipal Archives of the City of New York, and the Prints and Photographs Division and Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress.

Finally, our work would not be possible without access to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, maintained by the National Park Service in Brookline, Mass., and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. To Rolf Diamant, superintendent of the Olmsted Site, we wish to express our appreciation for his dedication to preserving and making available the rich archive of material in his charge. We are particularly grateful for the assistance for our research at the site provided by Joyce Connolly and Linda Genovese. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Research Facilities of the Library of Congress for supplying us with a research carrel over many years, and to the staff of the Manuscript Division for the assistance they give for our research in the papers of Olmsted and his firm that are in their holdings.