Olmsted started working on the 50 acres of grounds surrounding the capitol in 1875. It was his first major commission after the dissolution of his partnership with Vaux. Yes, Olmsted had to battle members of Congress hard, and for many years, to get approval and the necessary funds. But check out the comparison below: Olmsted’s original plan followed by a sign currently on Capitol Hill. Remarkably similar, right? For once, a timeless design hasn’t been destroyed over time.

Especially enjoyed seeing the Summer House (photo below) on the grounds. Olmsted designed this as a kind of way station for weary visitors to the nation’s capitol. That would be me; it’s above 90 degrees today. The Summer House has benches and drinking fountains. In Olmsted’s day, it even had communal metal water-cups attached to chains. “This place is a little jewel,” says Steve Livengood of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.

Fairsted, located in Brookline, Mass., is a national historic site maintained by the U.S. park service. It’s currently closed to the public and undergoing extensive renovation, as you can see in the photo below. Thanks to Alan Banks, a park ranger, for making special provisions and showing me around. Not only did Olmsted live at Fairsted for 12 years, but two of his sons carried on the landscape architecture practice here until the 1950s. This house is a mecca for landscape architects; thousands of original Olmsted firm park plans are stored here in a fire-proof, temperature-controlled vault.

The grounds surrounding the house are also notable. This was literally Olmsted’s yard. His planting scheme has been rigorously upheld; stone archways and other design touches remain intact — and even some original trees remain.

The Olmsted elm (also pictured below) was already on the property when FLO moved here in 1883. He especially loved this tree; elms always reminded him of his Connecticut boyhood. For all these many years, the tree has managed to stave off the ravages of Dutch elm disease. But now the Olmsted elm — estimated at 170 years old — is nearing the end of its natural life.

Arborists have saved samples of the Olmsted elm’s genetic material. When it dies, hopefully it will be possible to grow a clone Olmsted elm in its place. Once Fairsted is refurbished, the plan is to let the vines go wild, blanketing the house as they did in Olmsted’s day (see thumbnail of this post.) Olmsted liked having the structure of his home subsumed by nature — only fitting, since he was a landscape architect.

McLean hospital, in Waverly, Mass., proved a more somber spot to visit. Early in his career, Olmsted designed the grounds surrounding this asylum. It is where Olmsted spent the last seven years of his life. According to a previous biography, Olmsted lived in a residence here called Hope Cottage. The name has a nice, ironic ring to it. “But it’s also impossible,” archivist Terry Bragg told me. “Hope Cottage wasn’t even built in Olmsted’s day.”

More likely, according to Bragg, Olmsted lived in Proctor Hall. One thing that’s certain: On becoming a resident of McLean, Olmsted was not pleased with the way his landscaping design had been carried out. “Confound them! They didn’t follow my plan,” he said. He’d be even less pleased today. McLean — struggling with finances like so many medical facilities — has been forced to sell off whole big swaths of its grounds. One of the original residence halls was recently sold, too. A developer plans to turn it into condos.

It’s now long forgotten, but the original purpose in creating a park here was to attend to an environmental mess. By the mid-1800s century, this area was a tidal flat where Boston’s sewage pooled and festered. The city decided to try to hold a park-design contest. The winner was a local florist who proposed to turn the area into an ornamental garden — nice notion.

Only problem: the proposed parkland was a wasteland. “Not even eels could live here,” Jeanie Knox of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy told me while showing me around. (Apparently, eels are a kind of environmental bellwether. If you can’t sustain eels, you’re in real trouble.)  What’s more, the water was salty. The florist’s park plan, while lovely, simply wasn’t realistic.

Time to call in a park-making expert — Olmsted. Olmsted immediately recognized that this was primarily a sanitation issue. He consulted with city engineers to develop a proper sewage system. He devised various gates and sluices to maintain the water at a constant level. Then he designed a fitting park for the area, a kind of manmade saltwater marsh. He planted appropriate flora: salt hay and cordgrass, rushes and sedges.

In 1910, the Charles River was dammed. Olmsted’s saltwater marsh turned into a freshwater marsh. That required new types of plants. Still, the Back Bay Fens (photo below) maintains much of the character of Olmsted’s original design. BTW, Olmsted dreamed up the name Back Bay Fens.

Olmsted did such a good job with the Fens that he was commissioned to design an entire intricate park system for Boston. Spent the rest of my day touring it. Olmsted suggested that this system should be called “The Jeweled Girdle” — not as winning a name as Back Bay Fens. Fortunately, an unknown someone dreamed up the far superior “Emerald Necklace.”

I especially enjoyed Franklin Park. It’s right in the middle of Boston, but wander far enough into it and you can’t even hear traffic noise. Below is Olmsted’s 99 Steps, hidden away in the so-called Wilderness section of Franklin Park.

During this era, most Americans still lived in the country where the air was clean but the infrastructure, nonexistent. Want running water? Run and fetch some from the well. Increasingly, people were migrating to cities where culture and amenities were available. But cities had their own set of ills: overcrowding, crime, filth. Riverside was to be the golden mean between the two modes of living. As an 1871 promotional brochure crows, it would combine  ”the conveniences peculiar to the finest modern cities, with the domestic advantages of the most charming country, in a degree never before realized.”

Olmsted fairly well delivered on this promise. His plan (below) called for streets laid out in sweeping, generous curves, a touch meant to impart an unhurried vibe to the residents of Riverside. The intention was to place their domestic life in stark relief to nearby Chicago, where the street scheme was angular and the mood, frenzied. The “absence of sharp corners” in Riverside’s streets, as Olmsted put it, was meant to “imply leisure, contemplativeness, and happy tranquility.”

He also built into his plan numerous greens and commons. Fully one-third of the acreage was set aside as public space. This decision had its roots in Olmsted’s earlier career as a farmer. He’d observed the cultural vacuum resulting from people living in the country at great distances apart. Ample common spaces were meant to insure that Riverside’s residents connected socially, traded information, discussed the issues of the day. 

Riverside was designed to be a genuine community. That’s why it continues to survive, thrives even, in the current era when the whole notion of suburbs has lost a great deal of its luster.

Over the years, Riverside has also proved a fitting venue for house designs by a variety of notable architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and William LeBaron Jenney.  Jenney, btw, designed the first steel-framed skyscraper. The thumbnail for this post is a water tower he designed for Riverside.

Thanks to Lonnie Sacchi, local historian par excellence, for giving me a thorough tour of this truly beautiful ‘burb.  One of the highlights: a house designed by Vaux, Olmsted’s architectural partner. This is the only house Vaux designed in Riverside. It’s one of just a handful of Vaux-designed homes still standing. Vaux’s Riverside house also happens to currently be on the market. Pricetag: $1.2 million.

The structures for the world’s fair were massive and many were designed by the premiere architects of the era such as Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham. Each huge building was dedicated to a different display — works of art from around the world, say, or the latest agricultural tools — for fair-goers to gape at.

Olmsted’s plan called for an intricate network of lagoons wending through the grounds. It was possible to travel around the fair in a gondola or in an electric launch. All the huge buildings had water entrances, too. So it was also possible to dock your boat and walk right up the steps, see below.

Alas, huge buildings such as this one were only temporary, executed in a kind of glorified papier mâché. After the fair, they were all supposed to come down — well, all except the Fine Arts Palace. Because it housed priceless paintings and sculptures from around the globe, this building was constructed in a more sturdy, fire-proof fashion.

Meanwhile, Olmsted’s landscaping was meant to be permanent. After the fair, after the paper-mâché buildings had all come down, his system of lagoons was supposed to remain and to become the central feature of Chicago’s Jackson Park.

Thanks to Julia Bachrach of the Chicago Park District for showing me a remnant of the White City still visible today (photo below). From the Clarence Darrow Bridge (called the Brazil Bridge during the fair), there’s a view across one of Olmsted’s original lagoons to what is today the Museum of Science and Industry. It was once the Fine Art Palace — the fair’s sole sturdy building.

What a view! A vestige of 1893 here in 2010. Of course, it requires a bit more imagination to gaze out across this scene and to picture people traveling the lagoons on brightly colored boats, taking a spin on the world’s first-ever ferris wheel, and being amazed, simply amazed, by what modernity had to offer.

During the 1870s & ’80s, Olmsted was deeply involved in efforts to preserve Niagara Falls. A portion of what Olmsted called for got done. During this era, the Niagara riverfront was lined with sawmills and bustling with carny style amusements. These blights to the waterfront were removed, at least.

What Olmsted wasn’t able to accomplish: getting a buffer of undeveloped land set aside to surround the falls. Thankfully, the current view of the falls isn’t marred by any sawmills. But look around and you’ll still see hotels, casinos, and office towers looming in the near-distance. The Canadian side is usually deemed more tasteful. But I have to say: both sides are pretty much equal when it comes to breaking the feeling that you’re in a beautiful natural place. 

One can only wonder what Niagara Falls would be like if Olmsted had fully gotten his way. Picture this amazing waterfall nestled in the middle of a wilderness park. You could take a bus or drive in a certain distance — just like Yosemite, say, or the Grand Canyon — then walk to the falls via trails. Imagine hiking along, this roaring sound in the distance, and then you’d come to a lookout point  – and there she falls!

BTW, on my visit to the falls today I went to the Three Sisters Islands, a favorite spot of Olmsted’s. The islands are in the headwater rapids before the water plunges over the falls. You can walk from island to island using a series of footbridges. At certain points, the view remains remarkably unspoiled (photo below), much as it was in Olmsted’s day. 

Visiting this spot makes me thankful for the measure of preservation Olmsted achieved. Visiting the nearby falls I was struck as always by how truly awe-inspiring they are — but also left thinking about what might have been.

Today, I met with Tupper Thomas, the outgoing administrator of Prospect Park. Thomas is outgoing in more ways than one, btw. She’s outgoing in the sense that her boundless enthusiasm has helped rescue the park from the ravages of ’70s-era neglect. She’s also outgoing from the standpoint that she’s about to retire after 30 years service. She will be missed.

One of her innovations has been harnessing the power of volunteerism. This has proved a great counterweight to shrinking city  appropriations, which have forced cuts in the park’s workforce and maintenance capabilities. But as Thomas explained to me, volunteers are picking up the slack. There are a  large number of neighborhood volunteers that do everything from weeding to sprucing up playgrounds to painting benches to garbage pickup. There are also what might be described as affinity-group volunteers. The Brooklyn Bird Club, for example, plants foliage specifically to provide food and homes for birds. Various baseball and soccer leagues take steps to maintain their fields. There are also assorted corporate volunteers such as Goldman Sachs. These companies dispatch groups of employees to spend days working in the park.

“I think Olmsted would like what we’re doing,” Thomas told me. “He and Vaux designed Prospect Park to be used by the diverse citizens of Brooklyn. Now, we have the whole community helping take care of the park. It would appeal to his democratic instincts.”

After meeting with Thomas, I enjoyed a tour of the park, courtesy of Christian Zimmerman and Amy Peck. Here’s a picture of the Long Meadow — Prospect Park’s classic feature, nearly a mile of undulating, unbroken turf — as viewed through Endale Arch.

Legend has it that Olmsted walked to the top of a steep hill, lifted his finger and pointed down toward the bay, declaring, “This is the spot.” Is it ever. In his day, one would have had an incredible view of two bustling boom towns, Oakland and San Francisco. I had an amazing view of the same two cities — now all grown up — on my visit today.

Thanks to Barbara Smith and Dennis Evanosky, Mountain View docents, for showing me around and filling me in on this place’s rich history. There are 174,000 people buried here, including chocolate baron Domingo Ghirardelli and C.O.G. Miller, founder of Pacific Gas & Electric. Julia Morgan, the prolific architect, managed to stake out one the best spots… or rather plots. The Hearst Castle at San Simeon is her best known work so clearly she had a feel for dramatic settings. Visitors to the Mountain View often sit on the benches that surround her tomb, soaking up the view. (Photo below is from that vantage.)

No, I was looking for Bear Valley, near Yosemite. I tried programming the town name into my GPS, but it spit out directions for a place hundreds of miles away — the ski resort. Still, I was pretty sure this other Bear Valley – Olmsted’s Bear Valley — still existed.  Finally, I found someone who could direct me to it. She told me to set out on Highway 49 toward  Coulterville. “Keep an eye out,” she warned me. “Blink and you’ll miss it.” I figured if I reached Coulterville, I might also start to doubt  that this other Bear Valley really existed anymore.

Fortunately, I found Bear Valley — Population 230, stoplights 0 — on the first pass. The place has sure changed since it was a mining boom town. Oso House, a fine hotel once owned by John Charles Fremont — burned down. The brothels — long gone for lack of interest. The mines themselves — shuttered years ago. But I came across one business that I recognized from Olmsted’s letters, Simpson & Trabucco.

It was a trading post when Olmsted lived here in the 1860s. And it was still open. I stopped in and met the new owner, Martin Taylor, a one-time painting contractor who recently bought the business and moved his family up here from Morro Bay. He told me he’s hoping for a quieter life. Of course, his name is neither Simpson nor Trabucco. He kept the name, he told me, because it has a lot of history.

And that was Bear Valley, pretty much. I bought a Coke, got back in my rental car, and continued on Highway 49 through one of the most stunning mountain passes I’ve ever seen. It made me really appreciate why Olmsted — and now Mr. Taylor late of Morro Bay — fell in love with this part of the country.

I’m on a West Coast swing, currently visiting Yosemite — a natural wonder that owes a giant debt to Olmsted. While he was supervising a goldmine in the Sierra Nevada range at the tail-end of the Civil War, Olmsted fell in love with Yosemite. When U.S. Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax visited the valley, Olmsted arranged to meet up with him. As a one-time journalist, Olmsted was a canny guy and he knew that Colfax would be traveling with an entourage of reporters.

Olmsted prepared an impassioned speech about the necessity of preserving wilderness spaces such as Yosemite. Remember, this was before the national park system even existed. Olmsted delivered his speech to the Colfax party  (pictured below; Olmsted is 2nd from left, bottom row) in August of 1865. Sure enough, the reporters’ accounts included mentions of Olmsted’s plea. In fact, some of them  wrote books. Speaker Colfax — himself a journalist by training — even wrote a book about the excursion.

In a now legendary episode, the idea for a national park system was born in 1870 around a campfire at a different natural wonder — Yellowstone. But this campfire gathering was picking up on a notion that had been building for some time. Olmsted’s earlier address to the Colfax party, publicized in a collection of articles and books, helped send the idea of wilderness conservation ricocheting through American culture.

Things came full circle, when after years of mismanagement by the state of California — and thanks to the tireless efforts of John Muir — Yosemite itself became a national park. Of course, nearly a half century earlier Olmsted had been a voice in the wilderness … quite literally.

BTW, during my visit, I  was awestruck by Yosemite Falls. This was one of Olmsted’s favorite features as well. During a visit in 1864, he put great effort into positioning a group of tents for his friends and family on the valley floor. He wanted to make sure that Yosemite Falls was perfectly framed. Tie back the flaps and a tent dwellers’ view was a triangle, precisely bisected by a line of crashing water in the distance. It was akin to his partner Vaux’s ever-artful archways framing Central park scapes as if they were living paintings.

During my visit, unfortunately, didn’t get to contemplate the falls through the frame of a perfectly positioned tent opening. Took a snapshot instead…