Landscape Gardener
Centurion, 1898–1920
Born 14 September 1852 in Geneva, Switzerland
Died 24 February 1920 in Brookline, Massachusetts
Buried Walnut Hills Cemetery
, Brookline, Massachusetts
Proposed by Clarence King and George E. Waring Jr.
Elected 7 May 1898 at age forty-five
Archivist’s Note: Nephew and adopted son of Frederick Law Olmsted; half-brother of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.; nephew of A. H. Olmsted
Century Memorial
In John Charles Olmsted his profession found a worthy successor to that other distinguished landscape architect and Centurion, Frederick Law Olmsted, whose nephew and adopted son he was and whose work he carried on. He had prepared himself for it by a thorough study of natural history, botany, and landscape art; his knowledge of which, along with his artistic imagination, was embodied in his subsequent designing of such well-known pleasure grounds as the Essex County Park, the South Parks of Chicago and the new parks of Boston, Rochester, Louisville, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Spokane, besides scores of grounds for institutions and private estates. His high achievement was the designing and construction of the grounds for that wonderful achievement of imaginative American art, the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. Most of the people who admired Olmsted’s work did not know, what was well known to his professional associates, his uprightness and loyalty to the highest principles of his art, which led him more than once to reject a profitable undertaking because it demanded sacrifice of his professional convictions.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1921 Century Association Yearbook
