Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his partner Calvert Vaux, beginning with Central Park in New York City, which led to numerous other urban park designs including Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey, and Forest Park in Portland, Oregon.
Olmsted's projects encompassed comprehensive park systems, planned communities, and institutional campuses across North America. His works included the country's first coordinated system of public parks and parkways in Buffalo, New York, the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts, the Grand Necklace of Parks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and parks for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He designed one of the first planned communities in the United States, Riverside, Illinois, and created master plans for universities including University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago. Notable individual projects included the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, Mount Royal Park in Montreal, Quebec, Walnut Hill Park in New Britain, Connecticut and landscape work for the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
In 1883, Olmsted established his landscape architecture and planning consultancy at Fairsted in Brookline, Massachusetts. The firm was carried on and expanded by his sons, Frederick Jr. and John C., under the name Olmsted Brothers. Beyond design work, Olmsted was an early leader in the conservation movement, contributing to the preservation of Niagara Falls, the Adirondack region, and the National Park system. During the Civil War, he served as head of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, organizing medical services for the Union Army. The quality of his work was widely recognized by contemporaries; Daniel Burnham said of him, "He paints with lakes and wooded slopes; with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills; with mountainsides and ocean views...." His work continues to influence landscape architecture in the United States.
