150 Years of Olmsted

A positive aspects of living in Buffalo is the Olmsted Park System. Olmsted and his partner Vaux were invited to Buffalo in 1868 to design the park and it is the oldest in the country. Olmsted apparently believed parks were places where city dwellers could enjoy scenery designed to “refresh and delight the eye, and through the eye, the mind and spirit.” While the park remains, much of it has been radically altered due to several highway systems placed through the park, a golf course, and many of the trees dying from Dutch Elm disease a few decades ago. Non the less, the core and the spirit of the park remains and inspired me this summer to learn more about Olmsted parks. We were able to visit four different parks (5 if you include Buffalo) and they included Central Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Mount Royal in Montreal, and the Niagara Reservation in Niagara Falls. For those of you interested in art photos of landscape, architecture, history, and/or Olmsted, you would appreciate the photo book Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James. The book is edited by Phyllis Lambert and includes and introduction by John Szarkowski, was sponsored by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and published by MIT. Each of the photographers in the book approach the subject very differently and provide a fascinating point of view of the many different Olmsted parks. I found Aberdeen, Washington born Friedlander's busy, unique landscapes particularly fascinating. Interesting enough, Friedlander will be showing 40 images from his project A Ramble in Olmsted Parks, from January 22 - May 11, 2008 at Metropolitan Museum of Art. I am assuming that many of the images he did for Viewing Olmsted will be included in the show. If you have the chance, I would highly encourage you to see the show. How can you miss with a coupling such as Friedlander and Olmstead.

The Met exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of Lee Friedlander Photographs: Frederick Law Olmstead Landscapes.

While staying in the upper east side this summer, we managed to walk the entire circumference of Central park and see a good portion of the interior. While it was my fifth time to the park, it was by far the most exhaustive exploration to date. A big hit with the boys was the turtle pond directly across the park from the Met, and at the base of Belvedere castle. I made this time lapse while waiting for the family to come out of the rest room. You have to use your time wisely with two kids!

Time lapse of Bethesda Fountain, Dennis DeHart, 2007