Rybczynski - A clearing in the distance: frederick law olmsted and america in the 19th cent

New Haven, 1846. ( from left to right ) Charles Trask, Charles Loring Brace, Frederick J. Kingsbury, Frederick Law Olmsted, and John Hull Olmsted.

They never get disheartened. I think Fred will be one of that sort. Many of his favorite schemes will go to naughtbut hell throw it aside and try another and spoil that and forget them both while you or I might have been blubbering over the ruins of the first.

F REDERICK J. K INGSBURY TO J OHN H ULL O LMSTED (1847)

W ITH HIS HIGH FOREHEAD , wide-set blue eyes, and unruly hair, the young Frederick Olmsted made a strong impression. A boyhood friend described him as a vigorous, manly fellow, of medium height, solidly built with rather broad shoulders and a large well formed head. If athletics had been in fashion he would have been high up in foot-ball and base-ball. In midlife he suffered a carriage accident that left him with a pronounced limp, but he remained a skilled small-boat sailor and an experienced horseman. He was a seasoned outdoorsman who hunted and fished, though not for sport. Later photographs usually show him pensive. He rarely looks directly at the camera, which gives him an air of self-containment, almost detachment. His face is generally very placid, wrote his colleague Katharine Wormeley, with all the expressive delicacy of a womans, and would be beautiful were it not for an expression which I cannot fathom,something which is, perhaps, a little too severe about it. But she added, I think his mouth and smile and the expression of his eyes at times very beautiful... there is a deep, calm thoughtfulness about him which is always attractive and sometimesprovoking.

An odd choice of wordprovoking. Olmsteds close friend Charles Eliot Norton likewise discerned this quality. All the lines of his face imply refinement and sensibility to such a degree that it is not till one has looked through them to what is underneath, that the force of his will and the reserved power of his character become evident. When I asked the landscape architect Laurie Olin how he would characterize Olmsted, his immediate answer was Tough as nails. Olin is right, of course. Although the modern image of Frederick Law Olmsted is of a benevolent environmentalist, a sort of Johnny Appleseed scattering beautiful city parks across the nation, he had indomitable energy and iron determination. As a mine manager in California, he once faced down a crowd of striking miners. (They were understandably upset because he had reduced their wages.) They tried a mob but made nothing of it, he laconically wrote to his father, and I have lost no property only time. I shall hold out till they come to my terms and dismiss all who have been prominent in the strike. He did just that. His obstinacy often got him in trouble. Many times he chose to resign positions rather than continue on a course of action he disapproved. His most famous resignationsthere were severaloccurred during the long and often frustrating construction of Central Park. But there were others. Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate, engaged him to lay out the grounds of what would become Stanford University. Olmsted prepared the plans on the understanding that, as was his practice, he would also hire his own staff to supervise the work. When Stanford, who had been governor of California and was used to getting his own way, reneged on the agreement, Olmsted walked away from the job. The university was completed without him.

Another battle of wills occurred during his tenure with the United States Sanitary Commission. The Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross, was a private organization established after the outbreak of the Civil War to administer volunteer relief efforts to the Union troops. Olmsted spent two years as its first general secretary, in charge of day-to-day operations. As fund-raising efforts intensified, hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed to the Commission, whose board felt the need to exert more direct supervision over the activities of its chief executive officer. He characteristically bridled at any attempt to curtail his freedom, and a sometimes bitter struggle ensued. One of those with whom he had run-ins was the treasurer of the Commission, George Templeton Strong. Strong, best known as the author of an exceptional set of diaries, was a prominent Wall Street lawyer and civic leader. He knew Olmsted well: both men were involved in the Union League Club and in the establishment of The Nation magazine. Some six months before Olmsteds resignation, Strong noted in his journal: He is an extraordinary fellow, decidedly the most remarkable specimen of human nature with whom I have been brought into close relations. Then, in obvious exasperation, he added: Prominent defects, a monomania for system and organization on paper (elaborate, laboriously thought out, and generally impracticable), and appetite for power. He is a lay-Hildebrand.