Making History

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Frederick Law Olmsted’s Staten Island Farm Is Crumbling as Parks Department Lies Fallow

A dilapidated farmhouse bedecked with exterior virtues from the same hands that influenced many of the city’s greatest parks might soon become available to the public.

Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for Central and Prospect parks, among so many others, once remade a Staten Island farm to fit his vision of urban pastoral, according to The Times. Perhaps that claim to fame alone is enough to yield renovations from the city. But then again, probably not. Read More

From Indolence to Immortality: A Map of Olmsted’s Career

A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century , by Witold Rybczynski. Scribner, 480 pages, $28.

Plagued by political infighting and haphazard design, the chronically delayed Hudson River Park is a reminder that a great park requires more than a strip of open land. Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th-century Read More