Ever since he was a young man, long before designing parks ever came into the picture, Frederick Law Olmsted wanted to understand and explain to the outside world what it meant to live a life in a democratic land.
He thought and wrote about the topic often and bristled at European authors, like Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope, who came over for a few months and returned with nothing nice to say.
When Olmsted wrote about what made up a democratic life in America, though, he didn’t get into a discussion about elected officials, checks and balances, or the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution. He wrote about how everyday people connected with one another on a daily basis. Though I don’t think he would have put it this way, he didn’t see America as a nation of laws, so much as a nation of people—very different people who all needed to get along and work together. The nation could not be strong, if our communities did not sustain everyone.
He grew to believe that rather than guard against bad behavior with law enforcement, it was preferable to cultivate good behavior with an abundance of parkland and well-planned cities.
When Olmsted considered how to improve the nation after the Civil War—how to integrate freed slaves into the country and end the slavery mindset in America—he did not run for office. At one point, he was even nominated to be Vice President, but he quickly declined. Though he claimed to not have sufficient experience, I think he refused because he thought he could do more to improve American democracy as an artist and park builder than as a politician.
Olmsted thought America’s democracy ran far deeper than the moments citizens spent in the voting booth. While critical to a successful democracy, being able to vote was and is no defining distinction—monarchists with a parliamentary government also vote for their leaders. So do Communists and Socialists. So, what makes living in the American democracy any different?
Olmsted believed that democracy in America was found in the actions of everyday people going to school and making a living. Not always, but quite often during these pursuits, Americans had a knack for treating total strangers with dignity and kindness. Class, race, nationality, gender—none of it was a prerequisite for being considered an equal. He designed parks across the country for the express purpose of cultivating that impulse.
You don’t even have to look very hard to find his parks are still operating as intended. Go see for yourself, and bring a blanket and a picnic.
You might sit on a shady hill in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park and watch the point between the brownstones and the projects where the community blends and has created generations of musicians, filmmakers, and writers. Wandering over the Agassiz Bridge in Boston’s Back Bay Fens, you might share a moment with a Red Sox fan, college student, tourist, or Bostonian as a mammoth snapping turtle suns itself beneath you. Or, if you happen to be in Buffalo, NY on any old Tuesday night in late June, you might see an entire neighborhood gather on the parkway outside their homes to enjoy a free concert.
I think that since Olmsted’s time, America has let politicians con them into conflating the federal government with American democratic values. Many people even mistake politicians (past and present) as the wellspring from which these values originate, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Watching a real, live Humpty Dumpty happen in our nation’s capital is as alarming as it is dismaying.
But I think Olmsted’s life and work provides the good news: our government is not our democracy. Our democracy is us. From what I’ve seen visiting his parks this summer, the democracy is still holding strong.
All the king’s men, and all the king’s horses won’t be able to reassemble our world as it once was. As a people, though, we can rebuild and make an America even more beautiful and compassionate than it was before. Following Olmsted’s principles and enjoying his parks, maybe we can even create a government that truly reflects the democratic principles we aspire to live by today, rather than what might have been legal precedent 250 years ago.
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