A question I often hear asked is what would Frederick Law Olmsted think if he were alive today? This is also a common debate around the Panorambles office water cooler, and it’s a question I ask myself whenever I visit one of the parks he designed. No park is exactly as he left it, of course, and I’m sure there are developments he would applaud and neglect he would scorn.
No matter how you respond to the hypothetical, though, it’s all conjecture and maybe not worth the effort. A common dodge is to say it’s impossible to know how the genius would have responded. But I think a slight tweak of the question can make it more illuminating. I’d suggest pondering:
If Olmsted were alive today and there were no public parks, would he be as successful building them?
Conferring with my Magic Eight Ball, I’m sympathetic to its assessment. “Signs point to no.”
Olmsted’s parks are all works of art. Understanding how they came to be and the struggles involved to keep them whole and maintained afterwards is a part of the Olmsted story even more overlooked than the parks themselves. For every supporter of his work, there were dozens more who thought parks were an extravagant waste of time and money.
If you weren’t a business tycoon wanting to build your hotel or casino on that prime real estate, you were a neighbor convinced the park would attract crime and riffraff. These opposing view points were as entrenched as Olmsted’s pro-park attitude, and he fought against the nay-sayers all his life. Often, he lost the battles. Sometimes, the project was given to someone else. Other times, the project was successfully completed, but soon, someone decided to turn a meadow into a golf course. Many proposed projects didn’t happen at all, or only in part, and almost none of his parks today adhere to all his principles.
Still, across the country, over 40 parks were built. Many thrive, and all take up some of the best real estate in American cities. Instead of apartments, schools, entertainment districts, businesses, or shopping, there are fields with abundant patches of shade that anyone can visit for free. By any rational measure, this is nothing short of miraculous. It’s easy to think it would never fly now.
The idea of Olmsted trying to make the same pitch today even seems absurd. “Hear me out: demolish city blocks to plant trees. It’s really just that simple.” It’s unlikely there would be any Don Draper moments for the modern Olmsted. He’d never get past the front lobby with his talk of the healing nature of wilderness. He’d be tossed out on his butt.
Or, maybe, that would have been the response a short time ago. It could be that things have shifted, and the reception would be different now… or will be in just a few years, months, or weeks.
Olmsted’s persuasive writing on the value of parks is potent stuff. But to people who had just suffered through the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in human history up until that time, public parks didn’t just sound pleasant, they sounded essential. Finally: a solution to the mess everyone was in. The whole nation was grieving. Most families had lost someone, and some entire families were lost. At the root of every death, the cause was somehow related to hatred bred from ignorance. Americans killing Americans. The country desperately needed safe places for people to meet peacefully.
Olmsted and his parks were in demand during his lifetime because everyone everywhere needed an escape from the industrial and commercial world that produced the war and threatened to be the nation’s ruin. Cities overcame objections and philanthropists gave generously to make parks happen because they all feared what would happen if they didn’t.
Increasingly, I think that if Olmsted were alive now, his message wouldn’t entirely fall on deaf ears. Maybe a new season of park-building approaches. Let us hope so.
Related
