Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted was a farmer, journalist and traveler before he and the architect Calvert Vaux won the 1858 competition to design Central Park with their Greensward plan. Almost nothing you see in the park was there before them: the meadows, lakes and woods were designed and built, and the roads that cross it were sunk below the lawns so a walker never has to look at traffic. He went on to invent the profession of landscape architecture in America.

His parks run through our walks well beyond New York. In Montreal, the Kondiaronk Belvedere sits inside Mount Royal Park, which he designed and which opened in 1876. In Seattle, the 1903 parks plan that put a park on the point at Gas Works was drawn by the firm his son and stepson carried on after him. In Central Park, enter near the Pond at the southeast corner and walk to Gapstow Bridge for the classic view back toward Midtown.