A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent

by Rybczynski, Witold

  “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.