Book Description

The final chronologically arranged volume in the series, it will present the last stage of Olmsted's career, with a firm that included his former students Henry Sargent Codman and Charles Eliot as new partners. During this time Olmsted concentrated his energies on his two last great commissions: one was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 on the site of the Chicago South Park that he and Vaux had designed in 1871, with subsequent redesigning of Jackson Park and the Midway; the other was the extensive Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. There will also be correspondence concerning the development of the park systems of Louisville, Kentucky, and proposals for park systems in Milwaukee and Kansas City. The volume will present some of the remarkable retrospective letters he wrote to Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer and his son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. It will conclude with several undated and unfinished writings on the history and principles of landscape design.