Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

Frederick L. Olmsted prepared at Roxbury Latin School, and graduated from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1894. His father [Frederick Law Olmsted] was a famous landscape architect (he laid out Central Park); and Frederick followed in his footsteps, and became even better known. His office and his house were both in Brookline, and he lived there all his active life.

In 1898 he was appointed landscape architect for the Metropolitan Park System of Boston, a post he retained till 1920; and a few years later—originally by appointment of President Theodore Roosevelt—he became involved with plans for the extension and elaboration of the original City of Washington laid out in 1790 by Major L’Enfant. He was on one commission after another in this connection, so that he has been characterized as “the longest continuing influence of any single individual on the growth of the Capital.”

He was one of the incorporators of the American Academy in Rome, and a member of its Council until 1949. He was persuaded by President Eliot to develop at Harvard the curriculum for the first course of study in landscape architecture offered at any American university; and for 15 years he taught a good deal of it himself.

He was an intense, nervous man with a restless spirit that drove him hard; but he was full of talent and always aware of the limits of the possibility of things. He was wonderfully inspiring to work with, but one needed some patience and perseverance. He was not a good speaker, and he knew it; but as a critic peering over the drafting boards he was marvellously quick to visualize a design and grasp the significance of the topographical features. He had an uncanny power of concentration, arrived at conclusions rapidly, expressed them laconically. He harbored within his frame the virtues and some of the limitations of the best Bostonians: the impatience with verbiage, irrelevancy, and delay; the skeptical approach to bruited discoveries of new truths; a stealthy pleasure in living frugally.

George W. MartinMember profile currently not available; contact Archivist for information on this Centurion
1958 Century Association Yearbook