I know Frederick Law Olmsted never picked up an electric guitar or smashed his hotel room to smithereens. Still, sometimes I like to think of him as a rock god who produced not parks, but albums. To my mind, at least, he was as brash, innovative, and influential as the likes of, say, David Bowie, minus the mascara.
Not being a landscape architect myself, imagining Olmsted’s career and output as vinyl on a shelf helps give me a sense of his parks each as different periods in his artistic career. Each park is a complete thought built on top of his catalog of previous work. All parks are collaborations with other incredibly talented artists who introduced their own melodies and rhythms to the work. Some hung around for several albums, some only played on a few tracks.
This perspective is especially helpful in understanding Central Park’s giant significance to Olmsted’s career. Yes, it’s the park that launched him and made everything else possible. But it also helps me understand how one masterpiece can sometimes overshadow a career. Don McClean probably wrote more songs than “American Pie,” but that’s the one not to perform if you’re opening for him.
To me, if all you know is Central Park, it’s like not knowing the Beatles beyond “Love Me Do.” Olmsted only got better after his first park. You really need to get past your fixation on his early work.
Like Lennon and McCartney, Olmsted and Vaux agreed from the outset that they would share credit for any design they worked on together, regardless of their actual contributions. This has often led folks to think the two men started out more or less as equals. In terms of expertise and previous portfolio, Vaux had been playing venues with an established group (the Downing Brothers Band) for years before Olmsted even knew he could carry a rhythm.
In my alternate reality, Andrew Jackson Downing was the Elvis Presley of the early park movement. Only in his twenties and drawing from many different sources and inspirations, Downing created something wholly American in landscape design. Not just new, but a little shocking and unnerving. This guy was brash: forget Europe’s pomp and circumstance, it was okay to be a little wild. He wasn’t just out to sell shrubs and fruit trees from his Newburgh nursery he ran with his brother; he thought public parks would change the world and how it worked. When the mayor of New York City finally agreed to buy land for a major park, Downing sneered at him. That’s not enough land for what he had in mind. Get more.
If Downing hadn’t died in a steamboat accident, he likely would have been called to build Manhattan’s park.
Instead, the design was done by a well-respected civil engineer who had been trained at West Point, Egbert Viele. He served in the Mexican-American War, and now was conducting topographical surveys in New Jersey and New York. He had done the initial survey of the future park, and when it came time to break ground, his restrained plan for Central Park was adopted. He envisioned a formal park that relied on symmetry and lots and lots of flower beds. Think: brass marching band playing polka.
Olmsted, as superintendent, was hired to execute this plan and to educate the public on the correct use of the park once constructed. He was fine with his role, and did not dream of the limelight. Though he and Viele did not get along, Olmsted loved his job and didn’t think he could do better.
Vaux, though, had been in Downing’s band for a few years before the steamboat accident took their frontman. He didn’t like Viele’s park design, either, and he hatched a cunning plan. Let there be a competition: like a battle of the bands, best plan won. Vaux asked Olmsted, Viele’s assistant, to jam with him, their plan blew the roof off the auditorium to a standing ovation, and rock and roll history was made.
But here’s the thing: Vaux asking Olmsted to perform with him was a little like Elton John asking the stage manager to join him on keyboards. Even if the newbie could play a little, it was highly unlikely he was stage-worthy. And Olmsted couldn’t play a single instrument and had never, ever performed anywhere. Not even an open mic. Still, Vaux was certain Olmsted was the man for the job. Why? How?
The two men were only acquaintances before they partnered. But both admired Andrew Downing deeply and owed their careers to him. When Olmsted published his first article in Downing’s magazine, The Horticulturalist, there’s a likelihood Vaux and Olmsted may have met in passing in the magazine’s offices.
I picture it like a musician in a rush hearing only a few notes of Charlie Parker or Jimi Hendrix playing.
When Olmsted and Downing talked parks, it was the same, beautiful language. The saw parks as a way to make democracy a tangible, astounding experience. They could almost taste it. Vaux could only listen. He had nothing to add. Sure, he could strum along and keep perfect time, but when these two spoke about the healing power of nature and outdoor community, people stopped what they were doing and listened.
There were strategic reasons for Vaux asking the park’s superintendent to partner with him, of course, but I think Vaux saw something in Olmsted that even Olmsted didn’t quite understand.
It’s a little like the play/movie, Amadeus. Instead of Salieri loathing Mozart, though, he did everything in his power to elevate the other, more brilliant musician. Without Vaux, we really never would have had Olmsted, and our rockstar could be temperamental at times. Initially, Vaux had his work cut out for him, keeping Olmsted producing new work after Central Park.
But Vaux succeeded, and Olmsted produced more than two dozen other parks across the country. His sons added hundreds more.
If his parks were going to work as democratic spaces, they could not be formal and manicured. They needed to appear to be wilderness. Everyone needed a setting where they felt free to explore at will, without any sense of hierarchy. They needed a place to defy division and find the common ground.
But to enjoy how Olmsted developed as an artist, you simply have to get past his earlier work and visit his other parks.
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