Posted on 04/27/2022 10:03:59 AM PDT by Borges
Frederick Law Olmsted would have been 200 years old today — his legacy endures.
(Excerpt) Read more at inverse.com ...
later
That’s a very good article. It makes me think about landscaping/landscape architecture in ways I hadn’t before.
He is best-known for his design of New York’s Central Park, but he is truly the father of the science of forestry management.
When George Vanderbilt purchased the 125,000 acres that would ultimately be the Biltmore estate, that land had been almost completely clear cut from the timber industry. Virtually every tree you see in that area south of Asheville was planted by Olmsted.
Olmsteds parks and thoroughfares basically set the layout for the entire North Side of the city of Buffalo.
Then 1950s and 60s progressives and Albany bureaucrats destroyed his vision - and entire swaths of the city - by putting expressways and overpasses through the heart of his parks and grand boulevards.
True genius
Olmstead planned the city of Piedmont, California. Once truly one of California’s loveliest small places.
I looked up Eaton Hall and can see why he was inspired:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/24151047@N05/9388647640
https://www.flickr.com/photos/24151047@N05/9385938011/in/photostream/
It was lovely until the liberals moved in.
The architecture at Biltmore does resemble Eaton Hall in many respects - and the horticulture even more.
Architects can design beautiful cities all they want, but if the population goes third world, then all that is being designed is the shape of the dumpster fire.
To me the best areas of New York City grew organically - gradually over time as need and resources dictated, and were not planned. A lot of the planning just literally flattened most of Manhattan and wiped out most of Manhattan’s history with it. In the Bronx and Queens the newest majpr highways divided, separated and economically destroyed thriving Middle Class neighborhoods, many of which have never recovered. Most of the large planned public housing has made perpetual blight where it stands.
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