“Our plans have a breadth . . . ”: William Quentin Maxwell, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission (New York: Longmans, Green & Company, 1956), 8.
“I do not get on . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, July 2, 1861, FLOP.
“They start and turn pale . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, July 29, 1861, FLOP.
“Our army, previous to . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Report on the Demoralization of the Volunteers,” September 5, 1861, FLOP.
“an able paper, . . . ”: George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 180.
“It is no longer right . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Report on the Demoralization of the Volunteers,” September 5, 1861, FLOP.
“It is a good big work . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Bertha Olmsted, January 28, 1862, FLOP.
“1st The visitation of regimental camps, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Lewis Henry Steiner, August 12, 1861, FLOP.
“I want that as soon as practicable . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, December 21, 1861, FLOP.
“humanity ministering to wants . . . ”: William Quentin Maxwell, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission (New York: Longmans, Green & Company, 1956), 115.
“We have a girl, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, November 8, 1861, FLOP.
“They used to call it spunk . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, November 6, 1861, FLOP.
“Mr. Fred. Law Olmsted . . . ”: New York World, February 15, 1862.
“I shall go to Port Royal, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, February 24, 1862, FLOP.
“Our success is suddenly wonderfully complete,”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, April 19, 1862, FLOP.
“Yet it may all slip . . . ”: Ibid.
“The alternative is going . . . ”: Ibid.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Yeoman’s war
“As far as I can judge, . . . ”: 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), 17.
“They beat the doctors . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, May 25, 1862, FLOP.
“In little things . . . ”: 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), 187.
“At the time of which I am now writing, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, June 3, 1862, FLOP.
“You can’t conceive . . . ”: 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), 102.
“The horror of war . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, June 11, 1862, FLOP.
“Defeat! No; we have retreated . . . ”: 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), 177.
“I like him at first sight . . . ”: Ibid., n. 9, 387.
“Did I say somewhere that Mr. Olmsted . . . ”: Ibid., 205.
Chapter Thirty: “Six months more pretty certainly”
“I grew daily more yellow, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, August 30, 1862, FLOP.
“We will be as frugal . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, October 11, 1862, FLOP.
“If Jenkins or Knapp ask . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, December 27, 1862, FLOP.
“I believe that Olmsted’s sense, . . . ”: George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 276.
“He works like a dog . . . ”: Ibid., 291.
“I go west . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, February 4, 1863, FLOP.
“There will be a battle . . . ”: George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 304–5.
“He is one of the most . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, April 1, 1863, FLOP.
“Reminiscences of Cranch . . . ”: Ibid.
“If I should leave . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, April 18, 1863, FLOP.
“You have no right . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, April 25, 1863, FLOP.
“However wanting in sagacity . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, May 2, 1863, FLOP.
“I would limp . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Loring Brace, October 4, 1862, FLOP.
“I have been thinking . . . ”: Robert Fridlington, “Two Nation Portraits,” The Nation, January 3, 1966: 10.
“secure a more careful, . . . ”: “Prospectus for a Weekly Journal,” June 25, 1863, FLOP.
“at some time . . . ”: Ibid.
“The thing starts . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, June 26, 1863, FLOP.
“I think we can hold . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, July 7, 1863, FLOP.
“I am really oppressed . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, July 28, 1863, FLOP.
“I don’t believe . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, August 1, 1863, FLOP.
Chapter Thirty-One: A letter from Dana
“I am rather disposed . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, August 10, 1863, FLOP.
“one of the most gigantic . . . ”: J. C. Frémont and Frederick Billings, The Mariposas Estate (London: Whittingham & Wilkins, 1861), 27.
“I think that I shall make up my mind . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, August 12, 1863, FLOP.
“I don’t know . . . ”: Henry Whitney Bellows to Frederick Law Olmsted, August 13, 1863, FLOP.
“If the Sanitary Commission . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, August 16, 1863, FLOP.
“I think the faith . . . ”: Henry Whitney Bellows to Frederick Law Olmsted, August 13, 1863, FLOP.
“Olmsted has not a mercenary nerve . . . ”: George Templeton Strong Manuscript Diary, August 11, 1863, New-York Historical Society.
“If I should die, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, August 15, 1863, FLOP.
“A poor man . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, August 16, 1863, FLOP.
“If they will really put the management . . . ”: Ibid.
“My ambition for you, . . . ”: Henry Whitney Bellows to Frederick Law Olmsted, August 18, 1863, FLOP.
“Olmsted has completed his arrangement . . . ”: George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 350.
“We can only console ourselves . . . ”: New-York Daily Times, September 14, 1863.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Never happier
“Ever since you left . . . ”: Frederick Newman Knapp to Frederick Law Olmsted, October 14, 1863, FLOP.
“Things are worse here . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, October 31, 1863, FLOP.
“It is my conviction . . . ”: J. C. Frémont and Frederick Billings, The Mariposas Estate (London: Whittingham & Wilkins, 1861), 27 & 3.
“The Board do not feel . . . ”: The Mariposa Company, 34 Wall Street, New York, Organized 25th June, 1863 (New York: W. C. Bryant & Company, 1863), 24.
“I don’t want the men . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to James Hoy, March 2, 1864, FLOP.
“The mob got the worst . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmste
d to James Hoy, March 5, 1864, FLOP.
“I am sadly damaged . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Henry Whitney Bellows, April 28, 1864, FLOP.
“accommodate my own work . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, March 25, 1864, FLOP.
“I have had my full share . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, March 11, 1864, FLOP.
“There is a great dearth . . . ”: Mary Cleveland Olmsted, undated fragment, FLOP.
“We went in a carriage . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, June 25, 1864, FLOP.
“He is a kind of little . . . ”: The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. V, The California Frontier 1863–1865, ed. Victoria Post Ranney (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 18–19.
“I am sitting in Olmsted’s office . . . ”: Ibid., 50.
“I never was happier, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, April 4, 1864, FLOP.
“I know of no simile . . . ”: Mary Cleveland Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, 1864, JCOC.
“We are camped . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, August 17, 1864, FLOP.
“a country still waiting . . . ”: quoted by John Lukacs, “Neither the Wilderness Nor the Shopping Mall,” New Oxford Review, April 1995: 8.
“I find the old symptoms . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, September 14, 1864, FLOP.
“I am very well . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick Newman Knapp, September 28, 1864, FLOP.
“I am going to lay out . . . ”: Ibid.
“I am for the present making money . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, March 11, 1864, FLOP.
“I look therefore . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, April 4, 1864, FLOP.
“The mining stocks here . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, July 24, 1864, FLOP.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Olmsted shortens sail
“My impression is that Mariposa . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, January 8, 1865, FLOP.
“there is a tremendous libel suit . . . ”: Edwin Lawrence Godkin to Frederick Law Olmsted, December 25, 1864, FLOP.
“a sort of bunkum message . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, January 22, 1865, FLOP.
“We have lived so very happily . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, January 18, 1865, FLOP.
“I have another landscape gardening nibble . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, January 25, 1865, FLOP.
“You must then look . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Preface to the Plan for Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California,” May 1865, FLOP.
“The brooding forms . . . ”: Ibid.
“to give an appearance . . . ”: Ibid.
“No place of burial . . . ”: Ibid.
“It is an accursed country . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, March 12, 1865, FLOP.
“I want you to prepare . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, March 1, 1865, FLOP.
“Take an interest in the Howard plan . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Mary Cleveland Olmsted, undated, FLOP.
“I was called upon to advise . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, April 4, 1865, FLOP.
“I don’t think that you are sufficiently conscientious . . . ”: Edwin Lawrence Godkin to Frederick Law Olmsted, April 2, 1865, FLOP.
“. . . singing Glory! Hallelujah! . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick Newman Knapp, April 9, 1865, FLOP.
“When Olmsted is blue, . . . ”: George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 243.
“I can hardly contain myself . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick Newman Knapp, April 12, 1865, FLOP.
“At any rate . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick Newman Knapp, April 16, 1865, FLOP.
“stupendous folly . . . ”: “Letter from Mr. Raymond, United States Commissioner,” The Mariposa Estate: Its Past, Present and Future (New York: Russells American Steam Printing House, 1868), 28.
“the fundamental mistake . . . ”: Ibid., 27.
Chapter Thirty-Four: A heavy sort of book
“I wish you could find . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, May 14, 1865, FLOP.
“There are men of high position . . . ”: Ibid.
“He has a cigar in his mouth, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Notes on the Pioneer Condition,” FLOP.
“I was not prepared to find . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Section 1, A Pioneer Community of the Present Day,” FLOP.
“I have been for some time . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, April 18, 1863, FLOP.
“I am cogitating a heavy sort of book . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, November 29, 1864, FLOP.
“Civilization is, in fact, the best . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), 288.
“Nothing is more certain, . . . ”: Horace Bushnell, Work and Play (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 229.
“You stand by me . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Wheeler Harding, October 20, 1864, FLOP.
“added more new . . . ”: Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopaedia (New York: A. J. Johnson & Son, 1877), Vol. IV, Pt.I, 79.
“What are the habits, . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Frederick Newman Knapp, December 13, 1867, FLOP.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Calvert Vaux doesn’t take no for an answer
“Your paper needs . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edwin Lawrence Godkin, June 10, 1865, FLOP.
“I do know that . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Samuel Bowles, September 26, 1865, FLOP.
“The union of the deepest sublimity . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove,” FLOP.
“It is necessary . . . ”: Ibid.
“It is but sixteen years, . . . ”: Ibid.
“The enjoyment of scenery . . . ”: Ibid.
“Your plans . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, March 12, 1865, FLOP.
“Never say die, . . . ”: Calvert Vaux to Frederick Law Olmsted, May 10, 1865, FLOP.
“I shall tell . . . ”: Calvert Vaux to Frederick Law Olmsted, May 12, 1865, FLOP.
“There is no other place . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, June 8, 1865, FLOP.
“Mr. Vaux has made . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Edward C. Miller, June 26, 1865, FLOP.
“I feel it no less . . . ”: Calvert Vaux to Frederick Law Olmsted, June 3, 1865, FLOP.
“If I don’t wholly adopt . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, August 1, 1865, FLOP.
“The art is not gardening . . . ”: Ibid.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Loose Ends
“drive the San Franciscans . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Calvert Vaux, August 1, 1865, FLOP.
“YOU ARE CHOSEN”: Frederick Law Olmsted to James Miller McKim, September 7, 1865, FLOP.
“I have no intention of accepting . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, August 28, 1865, FLOP.
“I should be satisfied . . . ”: Calvert Vaux to Frederick Law Olmsted, July 21, 1865, FLOP.
“I decline.”: Ibid.
“as if I had just come out from a cold bath . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to John Olmsted, August 28, 1865, FLOP.
“No funds here yet . . . ”: Howard Potter to Frederick Law Olmsted, September 22, 1865, FLOP.
A MAGNIFICENT OPENING
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Olmsted and Vaux plan a perfect park
“an easy affair . . . ”: Calvert Vaux to Frederick Law Olmsted, July 8, 1865, FLOP.
“the feeling of relief . . . ”: Olmsted, Vaux & Co., “Preliminary Report to the Commissioners for Laying Out a Park in Brooklyn, New York: Being a Consideration of Circumstances of Site and Other Conditions Affecting the Design of Public Pleasure Grounds,”
Landscape into Cityscape: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Plans for a Greater New York City, ed. Albert Fein (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), 98.
“for people to come together . . . ”: Ibid., 101.
“These trees are in two principal divisions . . . ”: Ibid., 107.
“Although we cannot have . . . ”: Ibid., 106–7.
“taking a very irregular course, . . . ”: Ibid., 115.
“. . . in a park, . . . ”: Ibid., 101.
“principal natural entrance,”: Calvert Vaux to Frederick Law Olmsted, January 9, 1865, FLOP.
“the three grand elements . . . ”: Olmsted, Vaux & Co., “Preliminary Report to the Commissioners for Laying Out a Park in Brooklyn, New York: Being a Consideration of Circumstances of Site and Other Conditions Affecting the Design of Public Pleasure Grounds,” Landscape into Cityscape: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Plans for a Greater New York City, ed. Albert Fein (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), 111.
“a meditation on post–Civil War . . . ”: Laurie Olin, “Form, Meaning, and Expression in Landscape Architecture,” Landscape Journal, Fall 1988: 163.
“A scene in nature . . . ”: Olmsted, Vaux & Co., “Preliminary Report to the Commissioners for Laying Out a Park in Brooklyn, New York: Being a Consideration of Circumstances of Site and Other Conditions Affecting the Design of Public Pleasure Grounds,” Landscape into Cityscape: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Plans for a Greater New York City, ed. Albert Fein (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), 104–5.
“should be a pleasure-ground . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted, “Preliminary Report in Regard to a Plan of Public Pleasure Grounds for the City of San Francisco,” March 31, 1866, FLOP.
“I like the plan myself, . . . ”: H. P. Coon to Frederick Law Olmsted, June 29, 1866, FLOP.
“We have put four hundred men . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Eliot Norton, July 15, 1866, FLOP.
“We felt a little cheated . . . ”: Frederick Law Olmsted to Charles Eliot Norton, September 12, 1866, FLOP.
“enlarge the scale . . . ”: Olmsted, Vaux & Co., “Report of the Landscape Architects & Superintendents,” January 1, 1867, FLOP.
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Metropolitan
“[Olmsted’s] reputation is such . . . ”: The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. VI, The Years of Olmsted, Vaux & Company, 1865–1874, ed. David Schuyler and Jane Turner Censer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), n. 4, 79.
A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent Page 50