Olmsted

[ohm-stid, -sted]

Olmsted, Frederick Law, 1822-1903, American landscape architect and writer, b. Hartford, Conn. Although his Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England had appeared in 1852, Olmsted first attained fame for journalistic accounts of his travels in the American South during the early 1850s. In these works, published in book form as A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), A Journey through Texas (1857), A Journey in the Back Country (1860), and Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom (1861), he painted vivid pictures of the evils of slaveholding society. During the Civil War he served as secretary to the U.S. Sanitary Commission and pioneered various concepts of public health.

When Central Park in New York City was projected (1856), Olmsted and Calvert Vaux prepared the plan that was accepted two years later, and Olmsted superintended its execution. The well-planned public park was a new departure, which Olmsted developed in many other parks and cities, e.g., Prospect Park, Brooklyn, N.Y.; South Park, Chicago; Mt. Royal Park, Montreal; park systems in Buffalo and Boston; and the grounds of the Capitol, Washington, D.C. One of his most spectacular achievements was the laying out of the grounds for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which he afterward redesigned as Jackson Park. Olmsted also took an interest in the creation of college campuses, e.g., Berkeley (1864), and state and national parks. In addition, he designed parkways and was involved in city planning.

His son, Frederick Law Olmsted, 1870-1957, b. Staten Island, N.Y., grad. Harvard, 1894, was also a landscape architect and city planner. He studied with his father and began practice in 1895. He taught (1900-1914) Harvard's first course in landscape architecture. As a city planner he served on many committees and government boards. In 1901 he was influential in the plan for beautifying Washington, D.C.

See F. L. Olmsted's Forty Years of Landscape Architecture: Central Park, ed. by F. L. Olmsted, Jr., and T. Kimball (1928, repr. 1973); The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, ed. by C. C. McLaughlin and C. E. Beveridge (5 vol., 1977-97); biographies of the elder Olmsted by L. W. Roper (1974) and W. Rybczynski (1999); studies by J. G. Fabos et al. (1968), E. Barlow (1972), and C. E. Beveridge and P. Rocheleau (1995).

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Olmsted, Frederick Law

(born April 26, 1822, Hartford, Conn., U.S.—died Aug. 28, 1903, Brookline, Mass.) U.S. landscape architect. He traveled throughout the American South in the 1850s and won fame for several books describing its slaveholding culture. During an extended vacation in Europe, he became profoundly impressed with English landscaping, which he described in Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (1852). In 1857 he was hired as superintendent of New York City's newly planned Central Park. With the architect Calvert Vaux (1824–95), he won a competition to design the park, and he became its chief architect in 1858. The result was a nature-lover's paradise incorporating lawns, woods, ponds, and meandering paths; it represented one of the first attempts in the U.S. to apply art to the improvement of nature in a public park. Other Olmsted parks include Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York City; a Niagara Falls, N.Y., park project; an extensive system of parks and parkways in Boston; and the World's Columbian Exposition (later Jackson Park) in Chicago. As chairman of the first Yosemite commission, he helped secure the area as a permanent public park.

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Frederick Law Olmsted

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Olmsted, Illinois

Olmsted is a village in Pulaski County, Illinois, along the Ohio River. The population was 299 at the 2000 census.

Geography

Olmsted is located at (37.180733, -89.086431).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.7 square miles (4.5 km²), of which, 1.7 square miles (4.4 km²) of it is land and 0.04 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (2.33%) is water.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 299 people, 139 households, and 85 families residing in the village. The population density was 178.0 people per square mile (68.7/km²). There were 173 housing units at an average density of 103.0/sq mi (39.8/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 80.94% White, 18.06% African American, 0.33% Native American, 0.67% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.67% of the population.

There were 139 households out of which 23.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.5% were married couples living together, 11.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 38.8% were non-families. 36.7% of all households were made up of individuals and 20.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.15 and the average family size was 2.79.

In the village the population was spread out with 21.4% under the age of 18, 7.0% from 18 to 24, 24.4% from 25 to 44, 26.4% from 45 to 64, and 20.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 43 years. For every 100 females there were 76.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.8 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $19,833, and the median income for a family was $32,188. Males had a median income of $26,875 versus $23,750 for females. The per capita income for the village was $13,615. About 16.9% of families and 21.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 32.8% of those under the age of eighteen and 16.9% of those sixty five or over.