Much attention is given to Olmsted’s creations on the Eastern Seaboard, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City, and the Emerald Necklace in Boston. But he is also responsible for public spaces elsewhere, most notably in the Midwest. Olmsted, ceaselessly creative, was much more than a designer of parks. He was constantly suggesting different kinds of landscapes to meet varied needs and demands.

Ever the reformer, he was also drawn to the notion that landscape architecture could serve various social engineering purposes, providing respite from teeming cities, say, or forcing people of varied backgrounds to mix and mingle. He once described his park work as a “democratic development of the highest significance.”

Here, then, is a look at some of his work in the Midwest — lesserknown than his most famous projects, but still life-changing for millions of Americans.

Jackson Park, Chicago

Recognizing that the pomp of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago had the potential to overwhelm visitors, Olmsted was intent on creating a landscape that would act as a soothing naturalistic counterpoint. First, he selected the fair’s site, singling out a parcel on the city’s South Side. Years earlier, Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — his collaborator on early works like Central Park — had designed a park for this very spot, but little of their plan had been executed.

Working solo, Olmsted set out to complete the park, which was by then chosen for fairgrounds. He created an intricate network of lagoons, so that visitors could travel through the fair on small boats. He also repurposed muck that was dredged to create the lagoons in order to bulk up a lonely little hillock into the 16-acre Wooded Island, which he planted with hemlock and other trees. During the fair, Teddy Roosevelt thought it was the ideal spot to set up his Boone and Crockett hunting club, but Olmsted said no to the future president and other exhibitors who wanted a piece of his island. He intended it, he wrote in a letter, as “a place of relief from all the splendor and glory and noise and human multitudinousness of the great surrounding Babylon.”

The famous White City — a collection of neo-Classical buildings lined with electric lights, a dazzling new invention at the time — is mostly long gone. But Olmsted’s fairgrounds, now known as Jackson Park, remain. Within its 600 acres, you can still find stretches of the original lagoons. The Wooded Island is still there, too, and it’s my favorite part of the park: an oasis of calm smack in the center of hectic Chicago.

Riverside, Ill.

Just nine miles outside Chicago is Riverside, one of America’s first true suburbs, designed in 1868 by Olmsted and Vaux. It’s a triumph of subtle social engineering, full of thoughtful design touches meant to foster a sense of community; any well-thought-out modern suburb owes a debt to Riverside. Mingling of residents is pretty much guaranteed, for example, thanks to the fact that half of the community’s 1,176 acres are set aside for commons and other green spaces. All the streets gently curve, an Olmsted signature, meant to promote “leisure, contemplativeness and happy tranquillity,” as he put it, and to provide a stark contrast to the angular street scheme and harried atmosphere of Chicago. Olmsted also named many of the roads, often to honor his literary heroes: Akenside, Carlyle, Shenstone.

Over the years, the Riverside design has also provided a canvas for houses designed by notable architects. There are two Frank Lloyd Wright houses, as well as gardener’s cottages and other structures. And there are works by modern masters, including a John Vinci-designed house from 1976. To experience fully the neighborhood and its prominent homes, arrange a tour through the Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside (708-442-7675; olmstedsociety.org).

Milwaukee Park System

Not long after completing Central Park, Olmsted — restless, ambitious, brimming with outré ideas — began trying to reimagine the very concept of a park. He started seeking ways to furnish more green space to more neighborhoods, fostering more mixing of people and more democracy. His solution: the park system. In 1868, Olmsted and Vaux started work on the world’s first park system for Buffalo (it would take another 30 years to complete). By 1893, when Olmsted went to Milwaukee (decades after his partnership with Vaux had dissolved) he had perfected the concept, having designed systems in Louisville, Rochester and Boston. Olmsted’s execution was elegant: instead of a single park, he conceived a collection of them, each boasting different attractive landscape attributes.For Milwaukee, Olmsted designed a three-park system, made up of Lake, Riverside and Washington Parks.

On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, I visited all three. Lake Park is the jewel of the bunch. I loved exploring its deep ravines, laced with walking paths that faithfully follow Olmsted’s winding courses. At certain points, clumps of trees block the view, a classic Olmsted trick. What’s in the distance, you naturally wonder? Soon enough, you encounter an intentional break in the foliage, opening up a vista. It’s only then that you realize you’re on a tall bluff, Lake Michigan spreading out endlessly before you.

In each park, people were everywhere. I paused in Washington Park to watch some hard-charging adults play soccer in a match that pitted a team called Palo Alto against one called San José. It turned out that this was an old-country rivalry; the team names were the towns in Mexico from which the players hailed.

On departing Riverside Park — untamed, rural feeling — I walked past a stand of Norway maples, some originally planted by Olmsted, and onto busy Oakland Avenue, a commercial strip that features Greek, Thai and Middle Eastern restaurants. It felt like an extension of Olmsted’s democratic vision.

Belle Isle Park, Detroit

Belle Isle is a large island park of almost 1,000 acres, situated in the Detroit River, a striking setting. Of all the parks I visited, it’s the most bittersweet for fans of Olmsted’s work: a beloved but hard-used space that retains scant traces of his original design. Over the years, various pursuits have been embraced, then forgotten, leaving behind elements frozen in time. An African animal menagerie from the 1970s now sits abandoned, its ersatz hutlike structures graffiti-tagged and in deep disrepair. In another spot, there’s an ugly parking lot, a vestige of Grand Prix auto races held, until recently, on the island.

One wonderful exception is a system of canals that runs through the park. In Olmsted’s original plan, he touted these as “highways of pleasure, in which boats would be used instead of carriages.” The canals, as built, never followed Olmsted’s exact blueprint, but they are certainly faithful to his intent, full of sinuous curves.

I took a boat tour of the canals, accompanied by Keith Flournoy, Belle Isle’s ever-resourceful park manager. (We were in a small, motorized launch, but you could get pretty much the same experience by renting a paddleboat.) We glided past weeping willows and under a series of wonderfully varied footbridges. “This is how Olmsted meant this park to be seen,” Mr. Flournoy said.

Presque Isle, Marquette, Mich.

Many people don’t realize that, in addition to his work creating parks and other urban spaces, Olmsted played a crucial role in the preservation of natural places like Yosemite and Niagara. In 1891, he traveled from Chicago, where he was working on the fairgrounds, to Marquette, then a tiny town in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Ostensibly, his purpose was to design the grounds surrounding the local millionaire mayor’s mansion, now long gone. While visiting Marquette, though, Olmsted was shown a beautiful piece of land just three miles outside town. He was asked to draw up a management plan, perhaps to suggest even how it might be turned into a proper park. Instead, he put on his environmentalist hat and wrote a letter praising the land and cautioning that it “should not be marred by the intrusion of artificial objects.” The letter was taken as gospel and to this day Presque Isle remains a slice of unsullied wilderness.

I was told to expect wildlife, so I arrived right at dawn. But I have to admit to what can be described only as a city slicker’s insecurity: What if I don’t see a single creature? Within moments of entering the park, my fears were put to rest. I saw a deer, then another and another. Soon I became aware of all kinds of chirps and squawks and trills. Apparently — I have no skills as a birder — Presque Isle, which is a peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, is a major flyway for all kinds of winged creatures, including gnatcatchers, whippoorwills, even snowy owls.

But the most amazing thing about Presque Isle is its size: a mere 323 acres — a bite-size piece of wilderness, yet endlessly interesting. I remained there all day. The highlight was watching a sunset against a backdrop of Lake Superior, Huron Mountains in the distance and a sprawling sky.

The next day, I returned to civilization. On the way to the airport,though, I just couldn’t help myself, and took one last hike through tiny, unspoiled Presque Isle. In its final report, the Olmsted firm provided a recommendation for this lovely piece of land: “Preserve it, treasure it, as little altered as may be for all time.”

JUSTIN MARTIN is the author of “Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted” (Da Capo Press).

But he was a restless, spirited man who engaged in a variety of endeavors. One of those — on the eve of the Civil War — involved Lawrence and the Bleeding Kansas struggles.

During the early 1850s, Olmsted made a name for himself as a journalist. He worked for a startup newspaper: The New York Daily Times (it would later drop the “Daily”). And he had an incredible assignment: Travel across the South, treating the region as a foreign correspondent would. Olmsted’s dispatches — penetrating, balanced, humane — were eagerly read by Northerners looking for a window into the Southern mindset and intentions. Along the way, given all that he witnessed, Olmsted became a fervent abolitionist.

In 1855, a man named James Abbott arranged a meeting with Olmsted. Abbott was one of the many people who had moved to Kansas under the aegis of the New England Emigrant Aid Co. This was an outfit that relocated farmers with free soil leanings, paying their passage to Kansas from states such as Connecticut and Maine. Abbott was now an officer with a militia, bent on making sure that if Kansas gained statehood it would be as a free state. Abbott was on a trip back East soliciting funds to purchase weapons for his militia.

During visits to Hartford, Conn., and Providence, R.I., Abbott had already raised enough money to buy 100 Sharps rifles, also known as Beecher’s Bibles. In New York, he connected with Olmsted and dubbed him acting commissioner of his free state activities. Olmsted raised more than $300 for Abbott’s cause from fellow Eastern abolitionists including Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune and coiner of the term Bleeding Kansas.

Ever diligent, Olmsted decided to talk with an expert before purchasing weapons for Abbott’s militia. He consulted a veteran of European warfare, a man who had fought under Garibaldi during the turmoil that gripped Italy in 1848. In this expert’s opinion, Abbott’s militia already had enough Beecher’s Bibles and other assault weapons. What was needed was a defensive weapon to stave off attacks.

So Olmsted went to the New York State Arsenal and used the money he’d raised to purchase a mountain howitzer and ammunition. Olmsted recognized that he was involved in a dangerous activity. To keep Abbott apprised, Olmsted sent him a series of letters employing code (such as “H” for howitzer). Abbott referred to Olmsted as a “prompt and energetic friend of Kansas.”

Olmsted’s howitzer was mounted in front of the Free State Hotel, on the future site of the Eldridge Hotel. When Lawrence was sacked on May 21, 1856, (an attack that preceded Quantrill’s raid) the weapon was seized by a marauding band of South Carolinians. But the free-state militia got the cannon back as part of a prisoner exchange. It saw “prominent service” — in the words of one scholar — during the ensuing Civil War, and was ultimately retired to the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society.

That’s quite a tale for a howitzer. And it’s yet another fascinating episode in the life of Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect, journalist, abolitionist and friend of Kansas.

Justin Martin, who was raised in Lawrence and Overland Park, is author of “Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted” (Da Capo). He lives in Forest Hills Gardens, N.Y. His father, Rex Martin, is an emeritus philosophy professor at Kansas University.

They also seem quintessentially modern, requiring not only technological know-how but also the ability to navigate a maze of conflicting interests — city councils, government regulators, commercial developers, and the public. And the notion of artificially returning a piece of land to its original state seems very much the product of a contemporary sensibility. It may come as a surprise, then, that the first wetlands restoration project happened more than a century ago — and it happened in the center of Boston.

Frederick Law Olmsted didn’t use the term “wetlands restoration” when he crafted a plan for the park now known as the Back Bay Fens. But just the same, that’s what he created. The history of this piece of land offers vital insight into our ever-thorny relationship with nature — and shows that the current thinking about how to reshape our urban landscape has far deeper roots than we imagine.

In Colonial times, the area now called the Fens was a salt marsh, a beloved staple of New England’s natural scenery. There’s even an old map of Boston where the area is labeled “salt meadow.” At high tide, the overflow from the Charles River washed across flats generously dotted with stands of salt grass. At low tide, the water’s flow reversed; away it ebbed in intricate rivulets. But as the city prospered, fresh land was needed to accommodate a growing population. As Boston spread out from its original tiny peninsula, whole neighborhoods such as the Back Bay and the South End were created by landfill.

Soon the city surrounded the salt marsh. Residents began tossing in garbage, and the marsh quickly transformed into a waste dump. Native plants such as sedge grass mostly died, and what was left behind was ugly, murky, swampy, and — on a hot summer day — olfactory torture. A 19th-century account describes it as “being without a single attractive feature. A body of water so foul that even clams and eels cannot live in it.”

To fix up this malodorous mess, the Boston park commission held a contest in 1878, soliciting proposals from the public. There were 23 entries. The less-than-impressive winning submission came from a florist, who suggested simply superimposing an ornamental garden onto the swampland. American Architect and Building News described the design as “childish.”

The city paid the florist the $500 prize he was due and sent him packing. It was time to call in Olmsted.

By this time, Olmsted was well established as the pioneering landscape architect behind Central Park, the US Capitol grounds, and dozens of other green spaces throughout America. Upon surveying this misbegotten stretch of the Back Bay, he quickly grasped what it had once been, and what it was capable of being again. This was a salt marsh — now a particularly vile specimen — but a salt marsh nonetheless. Turning this boggy land into a traditional park, he was sure, made no sense at all. Instead, Olmsted made a radical suggestion: Why not restore it to its original wetlands condition?

As innovative a thinker as he was, it’s hard not to see a bit of personal psychology at work here as well. This commission had come at a painful time for Olmsted, both personally and professionally. For most of the past three decades, he had been living in New York, but his projects in the city were drying up. A few years earlier, he had also lost his beloved father. He’d then engaged in a bruising estate battle with his mother-in-law. Returning to his native Hartford to live was simply out of the question.

Olmsted had vivid memories of salt marshes from boyhood “loitering journeys” he’d taken with his father through New England. This project, then, amounted to creating a sliver of landscape memory — his own and Colonial Boston’s — right in the middle of the city.

On Oct. 24, 1878, Olmsted presented his preliminary plan to the Boston park commissioners. They accepted it immediately. But Olmsted knew it would be more than a simple park project, and he requested a meeting with the city engineer. The city engineer brought along the superintendent of sewers, and the three men huddled for four hours. Olmsted had vast experience with landscape projects and, unlike the naive florist, he recognized this wasn’t as easy as planting flowers on top of the swamp. This was an engineering challenge. When he was convinced that the plan was technologically feasible, he agreed to move forward.

As a first step, intercepting sewers were built to catch refuse. Gates were installed to regulate the flow between the marshland and the Charles River, which was then still a tidal estuary where saltwater and freshwater mixed. Once the engineering infrastructure was worked out, Olmsted focused on wetlands restoration. He designed a creek, dredged out of muck, to following a meandering, sinuous path — more “natural” than nature. As for plantings, he experimented with dozens of salt-tolerant varieties to see what would take hold. The records are hazy, but it appears that he introduced plants such as tamarisk, a species native to Asia that made its first appearance in America during the 19th century. Olmsted — no native-plant purist — was more interested in capturing the essence of the salt marshes he fondly remembered from boyhood than in replicating nature down to the last detail.

As a final step, Olmsted insisted on naming his creation. The commissioners favored “Back Bay Park.” But Olmsted had taken pains to convey that this was not a park in any ordinary sense. True, he designed paths way up on embankments. But the idea was for visitors to view the salt marsh from a distance — to look, not touch. Olmsted owned a dictionary published in 1706, which he consulted when looking for suitably old-fangled terms. He suggested “fens,” an arcane word for a soupy piece of land. The name stuck, and today is spread throughout the vicinity — most prominently in the name of Fenway Park.

The Back Bay Fens was a smashing success. The commissioners asked Olmsted to design a whole series of interconnected parks, what became the Emerald Necklace. Flush with work, Olmsted finally felt comfortable leaving New York City, and moved to Brookline. He’d found a way to return to New England, after all. Olmsted would operate his landscape architecture firm out of Brookline for the rest of his life.

The Fens has changed greatly since Olmsted’s day. In 1910, the damming of the Charles River turned a salt marsh into a freshwater marsh, requiring a whole new planting scheme. More recently, Olmsted’s creek has grown choked with invasive phragmites, a tall reed that spreads like aquatic kudzu and crowds out other plants. In some places, those sinuous curves are no longer visible. But an $80 million project is about to begin that will eradicate the invasives, reshape and replant the shorelines, and attend to the serious flooding problems in some other waterways in the Emerald Necklace.

Like the modern restoration efforts that echo the idea he hatched more than a century ago, Olmsted’s project was an act of approximation. It’s impossible to return a once-wild place to a pristine state. And, as Olmsted’s twisting watercourse suggests, when humans intervene in a natural setting, it’s hard to resist the urge to subtly improve on the original. We can see the impulse in walking trails added to restored wetlands, or in plans for mosquito management. We want the wetlands, but we can do without their inconveniences.

In cre­ating the Back Bay Fens, Olmsted addressed this same issue — how true to nature should we be? — and drew his own highly personal conclusions. With the Fens set to undergo a multiyear, multimillion-dollar refurbishment, the issue is about to be addressed anew in a complex, 21st-century city. Once again, a great deal of high-tech intervention will be required — a natural environment sought through unnatural means — and the end result will be an approximation, as always. But it’s also sure to remind us that there’s real beauty in the human act of trying to reclaim what’s been lost.

Justin Martin is the author of a new biography, ”Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted” (Da Capo).

Michael Dorf’s City Winery is trying to fill that void by arranging for fresh-off-the-vine grapes to be express-shipped to Manhattan from the Finger Lakes, California, Oregon, even Chile. Customers who purchase certain memberships can make an entire barrel of wine under the tutelage of a master vintner. City Winery is also an event space: It both hosts its own concerts and tastings, and rents out the venue for private parties, wedding receptions and the like.

Mr. Dorf, 49, is a veteran impresario. In 1987, he founded the Knitting Factory, a legendary downtown venue, now defunct, where hipsters swilled warm beer from plastic cups and caught acts like Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo at the outset of their musical careers. But he resigned under pressure in 2003 after battling with investors over a variety of issues, such as the proper strategy for running the sideline record label. (The investors declined to comment.)

Mr. Dorf spent a few years licking his wounds and casting about for his next opportunity. By the time he hit his 40s, he was married with kids and he’d become a wine aficionado.

“I wanted to create something based on where my head was at,” he said, “and for a crowd that was a little older and more mature.”

As recently as 2002, fortified kosher wine was made on the Lower East Side, but Manhattan has no tradition of producing high-toned vintages. Mr. Dorf planned just such an operation. In 2008, he leased a 21,000-square-foot space at Hudson Square—but his timing was terrible.

One of the first events on his new business’s calendar was a holiday party for Lehman Brothers. By Christmas 2008, the company didn’t even exist anymore, a victim of the massive economic meltdown.

“My business plan was to sell barrels to bankers,” Mr. Dorf said, “but I was forced to re-evaluate everything.”

City Winery still sells its memberships to produce barrels of wine, which range from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on the type of wine and the process involved in making it. But the ever-resilient Mr. Dorf has also placed greater emphasis on holding concerts and selling wine by the glass.

His enterprise has turned out a bit like one of those bars that brews beer on premises, storing it in huge vats. In this case, customers can get wine fresh from the barrel. Offerings cost roughly $10 a glass and boast clever names, such as SoHo Vignon Blanc and NY City Cab. Not surprisingly, the 300-seat concert venue features acts for a mature, wine-quaffing crowd, such as Allen Toussaint and Rickie Lee Jones.

“It’s the Knitting Factory for grown-ups,” Mr. Dorf explained.

“Michael is not afraid to get knocked down,” said David Pakman, a partner at Manhattan venture capital firm Venrock, who has teamed up with Mr. Dorf for several ventures over the years. “He simply finds a fresh angle.”

Mr. Dorf is certain that City Winery—projected to post $10 million in revenues in 2011, a 25% gain—is a scalable business. He’s opening a location in Chicago, and he’s looking at Miami, London and other major cities where there are oenophiles but no nearby vineyards.

The entrepreneur gives heavily to charity. He donates about 8% of his product to auctions that raise money to help New York City public schools, battle diseases such as leukemia and assist other causes.

—Justin Martin

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.