The Man Who Built Forward Better

Olmsted had the rare ability to take the long view. “I have all my life been considering distant effects and always sacrificing immediate success and applause to that of the future.

By background and temperament, he was a generalist, and he always resisted the specialist’s narrow attitude toward design. If we are to really build back better, we need to take a similar approach.

It is important to remember that Olmsted was not an environmentalist in the modern sense; he was a humanist. He advocated preserving selected wilderness areas not for their own sake but because of their effect on people. “The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it, tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it,” he wrote, ... See more

Olmsted’s varied experiences produced a uniquely qualified individual: one able to think on a large scale, to digest vast amounts of information, and to organize large and complicated projects. Not least, thanks to his firsthand study of diverse landscapes, Olmsted developed an artistic eye alert to the details of scenery, not only its overall effe... See more

While he was consumed with the administrative details of the work he undertook, he was always aware of the Big Picture. He had the anthropologist’s ability to stand back, gather information, and make independent judgments based on the facts. This was perhaps his strongest character trait. Whether he was laying out a university or a municipal park s... See more