“Odd-looking vehicles . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 79–80.
“not a town have we seen . . . ”: Ibid., 225.
“a splurgy, thick book, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick J. Kingsbury, October 17, 1852, FLOP.
“one farmer’s leg . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press, 1967), xv.
“one of our original . . . ”: Review of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, The Horticulturist, March 1852: 135.
“Here is a book of travels . . . ”: Ibid.
“natural and unprejudiced impressions . . . ”: Review of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, American Whig Review, March 1852: 282.
“our farmer observes . . . ”: Review of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, Cummings Evening Bulletin, October 23, 1852: 2.
“eminently popular, . . . ”: Review of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1852: 138.
“His sketches of landscape, . . . ”: Review of Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, The Horticulturist, January 1853: 43.
Chapter Thirteen: Charley Brace intervenes
“If you could get . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, January 11, 1851, FLOP.
“I anticipate your most . . . ”: The Life of Charles Loring Brace: Chiefly Told in His Own Letters, ed. Emma Brace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 142.
“A wild stormy day . . . ”: Ibid., 61–62.
“It does not mean, . . . ”: Ibid., 68.
“natural right, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 240.
“The law of God . . . ”: Ibid., 241.
“Before, this slavery . . . ”: The Life of Charles Loring Brace: Chiefly Told in His Own Letters, ed. Emma Brace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 117.
“Why won’t you . . . ”: Ibid., 57.
“After reading your letter . . . ”: Ibid., 112.
“shoot a man . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick J. Kingsbury, October 17, 1852, FLOP.
“observations on Southern Agriculture . . . ”: Ibid.
Chapter Fourteen: Yeoman
“I can’t write . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, February 8, 1853, FLOP.
“He [Olmsted] tenaciously . . . ”: Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 221.
“I was deeply influenced . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, February 25, 1853.
“I have raised hay, . . . ”: Ibid., April 28, 1853.
“On the other side, . . . ”: Ibid., June 14, 1853.
“intelligent gentleman, . . . ”: Ibid., February 16, 1853.
“Many people at the North . . . ”: Ibid.
“Although he probably has . . . ”: Ibid.
“No man can write . . . ”: Ibid.
“I did not intend . . . ”: Ibid., March 17, 1853.
“I shall be able . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, December 22, 1852, FLOP.
“It would only make . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, March 30, 1853.
“how, without quite destroying . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveler’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 48.
“Do you work any niggers? . . . ”: Ibid., 171.
“Louisiana or Texas, . . . ”: Ibid., 230.
“have their standard . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, April 28, 1853.
“The negroes are . . . ”: Ibid., March 30, 1853.
“Slavery in Virginia, . . . ”: Ibid.
“If I was free, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveler’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 262.
“I cannot see how . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, February 13, 1854.
“Yet, mainly, the North . . . ”: Ibid.
“Hurrah for gradual Emancipation . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, August 12, 1846, FLOP.
Chapter Fifteen: A traveling companion
“There is no city . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, September 14, 1853.
“They are generally very pretty, . . . ”: Ibid.
“decidedly the best reports . . . ”: Ibid., February 13, 1854.
“[The Times] sends . . . ”: Savannah Republican, February 22, 1853.
“designed to gloss . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, February 13, 1854.
“[My] motive for . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas; or, A Saddle-Trip on the South-Western Frontier: with a Statistical Appendix (New York: Mason Brothers, 1859), v.
“they do not seem . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, December 1, 1853, FLOP.
“We are traveling about, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Anne Charlotte Lynch, March 12, 1854, FLOP.
Chapter Sixteen: The Texas settlers
“There was also pfannekuchen, . . .: New-York Daily Times, March 31, 1854.
“Educated, cultivated, . . . ”: Ibid., April 4, 1854.
“In Neu-Braunfels . . . ”: Ibid., April 14, 1854.
“And such a State, . . . ”: Ibid., June 3, 1854.
Chapter Seventeen: Yeoman makes a decision
“a deep notch of sadness”: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 11.
“I should probably . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, March 13, 1855, FLOP.
“I regret to be left . . . ”: John Hull Olmsted to Bertha Olmsted, May 6, 1855, FLOP.
Chapter Eighteen: “Much the best Mag. in the world”
“The best writers . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, May 28, 1855, FLOP.
“I can’t well write . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edward Everett Hale, August 23, 1855, FLOP.
“I suppose that you . . . ”: Ibid.
“There can be little . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, December 9, 1855, FLOP.
“I am much worried . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, November 8, 1855, FLOP.
“singularly fair, . . . ”: Review of A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, North American Review, July 1856: 278.
“the most complete . . . ”: Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Anti-Slavery Literature,” Independent, February 21, 1856: 57.
“Mr. Olmsted observes . . . ”: Review of A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, Household Words, August 23, 1856: 138.
Chapter Nineteen: Abroad
“What I chiefly hope . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Joshua Dix, August 3, 1856, FLOP.
“How Ruffianism in Washington . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, July 10, 1856.
“I would not like to have . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Joshua Dix, August 3, 1856, FLOP.
“there should be no more purchases . . . ”: The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. II, Slavery and the South 1852–1857, ed. Charles E. Beveridge and Charles Capen McLaughlin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 389, n. 4.
“one of the partners . . . ”: Mary Cleveland Olmsted to John Charles Olmsted, August 17, 1916, JCOC.
“Owing to the pressure . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas; or, A Saddle-Trip on the South-Western Frontier: with a Statistical Appendix (New York: Mason Brothers), iii.
“my best book . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, June 17, 1893, FLOP.
“First: Slavery educates, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas; or, A Saddle-Trip on the South-Western Frontier: with a Statistical Appendix (New York: Mason Brothers, 1859), xvi–x
vii.
“Any further extension . . . ”: Ibid., xxviii–xxix.
“The German colonies . . . ”: Review of A Journey Through Texas, North American Review, April 1857: 565.
“The time to guard . . . ”: T. H. Gladstone, The Englishman in Kansas: or, Squatter Life and Border Warfare (New York: Miller & Co., 1857).
“The creditors exonerated Curtis . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick J. Kingsbury, April 26, 1857, FLOP.
“I am delighted to hear it, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Passages in the Life of an Impractical Man,” undated. FLOP.
HITTING HEADS
Chapter Twenty: A change in fortune
“For the past sixteen years . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the President of the Commissioners of the Central Park, August 12, 1857, FLOP.
“a practical farmer, . . . ”: Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992), 128.
“I desire very simply . . . ”: The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. III, Creating Central Park 1857–1861, ed. Charles E. Beveridge and David Schuyler (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 78.
“The subscribers earnestly recommend . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscape Architect, 1822–1903, ed. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Theodora Kimball (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), opp. 120.
“having had time . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Hull Olmsted, September 11, 1857, FLOP.
“on the whole, . . . ”: Ibid.
“I shall try the frank, . . . ”: Ibid.
Chapter Twenty-One: The colonel meets his match
“I have got the park . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, January 14, 1858, FLOP.
“It appears we are not . . . ”: John Hull Olmsted to Frederick Law Olmsted, November 13, 1857, FLOP.
“In his death . . . ”: John Olmsted to Frederick Law Olmsted, November 28, 1857, FLOP.
“I have never known . . . ”: John Hull Olmsted to Frederick Law Olmsted, November 13, 1857, FLOP.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Mr. Vaux
“living with my partner . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, January 14, 1858, FLOP.
“Being thoroughly disgusted . . . ”: M. M. Graff, The Men Who Made Central Park (New York: Greensward Foundation, 1982), 15.
“I was just in mind . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, June 11, 1893, FLOP.
“There was something else . . . ”: Ibid.
“If successful, I should not . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, January 14, 1858, FLOP.
“We do not find . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, May 13, 1858.
Chapter Twenty-Three: A brilliant solution
“broad reaches of park . . . ”: Andrew Jackson Downing, “The New-York Park,” The Horticulturist, August 1851: 347.
“but by no means . . . ”: Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, “Description of a Plan for the Improvement of the Central Park, GREENSWARD,” FLOP.
“The great charm . . . ”: Calvert Vaux, Villas and Cottages (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1864), 51.
“winter gardens of glass, . . . ”: Andrew Jackson Downing, “The New-York Park,” The Horticulturist, August 1851: 347.
“Buildings are scarcely . . . ”: Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, “Description of a Plan for the Improvement of the Central Park, GREENSWARD,” FLOP.
“the established character . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, April 30, 1858.
It has been suggested . . .: See, for example, M. M. Graff, Central Park, Prospect Park: A New Perspective (New York: Greensward Foundation, 1985), 29.
“Together they had all . . . ”: Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, “Frederick Law Olmsted,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 46, no.6, October 1893: 863.
Chapter Twenty-Four: A promotion
“I was technically not . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, November 26, 1863, FLOP.
“What artist so noble . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, May 20, 1858, FLOP.
“He shall be the chief . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, May 18, 1858.
“The time will come . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, May 31, 1858, FLOP.
muslin banners reading . . .: Henry Hope Reed and Sophia Duckworth, Central Park: A History and a Guide (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1967), 20.
“very full and thorough . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, May 13, 1858.
“Your successor at the helm . . . ”: George E. Waring Jr. to Frederick Law Olmsted, October 17, 1859, FLOP.
“It is one great purpose . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, May 31, 1858, FLOP.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Frederick and Mary
“Don’t let Mary suffer . . . ”: John Hull Olmsted to Frederick Law Olmsted, November 13, 1857, FLOP.
“I feel just thoroughly . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, September 23, 1859, FLOP.
“full particulars of its construction, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, December 28, 1859, FLOP.
“I find that the simplicity . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Sir William Jackson Hooker, November 29, 1859, FLOP.
“In hollow lanes . . . ”: Uvedale Price, Essays on the picturesque, as compared with the sublime and the beautiful, vol. I (London: J. Mawman, 1810), 25.
“the best private garden . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, December 28, 1859, FLOP.
“standard formula of artificial water, . . . ”: Nigel Everett, The Tory View of Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 39.
“public and private grounds . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, December 28, 1859, FLOP.
“greatly improved health . . . ”: Ibid.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Comptroller Green
“Few landscapes present . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscape Architect, 1822–1903, ed. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Theodora Kimball (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), 66.
The accompanying text . . .: The Central Park: Photographed by W. H. Guild, Jr. with descriptions and a historical sketch by Fred. B. Perkins (New York: Carleton, 1864).
“Much better than any other public work . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, December 8, 1860, FLOP.
“to act as treasurer, . . . ”: Edward Hagaman Hall, “A Short Biography of Andrew Haswell Green,” Ninth Annual Report, 1904, of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society (Albany, N.Y., 1904), 154.
“It is quite expensive . . . ”: Andrew Haswell Green to Frederick Law Olmsted, November 12, 1860, FLOP.
“The best conceptions of scenery, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, January 22, 1861, FLOP.
“Only as they were leaving, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, October 21, 1860, FLOP.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: King Cotton
“I will not here conceal . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 6–7.
“I do not see . . . ”: Ibid., 7.
“I do not now say . . . ”: Ibid., 8.
“It would be presumptuous . . . ”: Ibid.
“No more important contributions . . . ”: Review of A Journey in the Back Country, The Atlantic Monthly, November 1960: 635.
“Olmsted’s ‘Journey in the Back Country’ . . . ”: Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 211.
“rebuke and allay . . . ”: Review of A Journey in the Back Country, North American Review, October 20, 1860: 571.
“a new edition . . . ”: Review of A Journey in the Back Country, London Times, December 8, 1860.
; “Though the lameness . . . ”: Katharine Prescott Wormeley, The Other Side of War; with the Army of the Potomac. Letters from the Headquarters of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia in 1862 (Boston: Ticknor & Company, 1889), 62–63.
“tranquillity and seclusion— . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry H. Elliott, August 27, 1860, FLOP.
“I hope I shall have been . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, October 21, 1860, FLOP.
“I know your time . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Andrew Haswell Green, December 28, 1860, FLOP.
“Have the bridges . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, January 22, 1861, FLOP.
“Instead of $100 . . . ”: Ibid.
“If either of those gentlemen . . . ”: Ibid..
“Have you heard . . . ”: Ibid.
“With such an arrangement . . . ”: Ibid.
“the able superintendent . . . ”: “Central Park in Spring,” New York World, March 11, 1861: 7.
“He is precisely the man . . . ”: Henry Whitney Bellows, “Cities and Parks,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 1861, 422.
“No! you dare not make . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveler’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 7.
“an indispensable work . . . ”: Ibid., Arthur M. Schlesinger, “Editor’s Introduction,” ix.
“Events multiply . . . ”: quoted by Geoffrey C. Ward, The Civil War: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 42.
“I have, I suppose, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, June 1, 1861, FLOP.
“I do ask . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, March 28, 1861, FLOP.
“I have made no definite . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, June 26, 1861, FLOP.
“The appointment is a great honor . . . ”: Mary Cleveland Olmsted to John Olmsted, June 22, 1861, FLOP.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: A good big work
“Mr. F. L. Olmsted . . . ”: Henry Whitney Bellows to James Miller McKim, August 18, 1865, FLOP.
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