Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., ca. 1890, Historic New England, Gift of Joseph Hudak, Olmsted Brothers, Brookline, MA
After much planning, Olmsted 200, a national celebration honoring the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.’s birth, has begun! Olmsted left a remarkable legacy as an author, social reformer, and conservationist, and, most notably, as the nation’s pre-eminent landscape architect. As he produced extremely important work here in Chicago, we are pulling out all of the stops to honor this milestone. I have helped organize Olmsted in Chicago, a series of free events sponsored by the Hyde Park Historical Society and Art Design Chicago Now, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art that amplifies the voices of Chicago's diverse creatives, past and present, and explores the essential role they play in shaping the now. I am very grateful to these project sponsors.
Original Plan for South Park, Olmsted, Vaux & Co. Landscape Architects, 1871, Chicago Park District Records, Chicago Public Library, Drawing 659.
In 1858, Olmsted and his first partner, Calvert Vaux, won a competition to design New York’s Central Park with their Greensward Plan. Just over a decade later, the pair accepted the commission to lay out Chicago’s South Park, a 1,055-acre landscape that later became known as Jackson and Washington Parks and the Midway Plaisance. Despite his disdain for the site’s flat and marshy conditions, Olmsted created magnificent greenspaces meant to be enjoyed by people of all backgrounds and economic means. Some years later, when Chicago won the honor of hosting the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Olmsted returned and played an essential role in designing the spectacular fairgrounds. After the fair, he and his sons, John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., produced the plans that would transform the White City campus back into parkland. Jackson and Washington Parks and the Midway have continued to be among the city’s most beloved public spaces ever since.
About a week ago, Yvonne Cary Carter and I took this photograph together in Jackson Park near some ofthe blossoming cherry trees. Photo by Yvonne Cary Carter.
Olmsted in Chicago’s signature project is “South Park Then and Now,” a photographic essay created by the Washington Park Camera Club [https://washingtonparkcameraclub.org/] (WPCC). Founded in 1955 in the newly-completed Washington Park field house, this is one of the oldest camera clubs in Chicagoland. The WPCC predominantly composed of African American members, has participants ranging from hobbyists to professional photographers. I first learned about the club a little more than two years ago, when I received a call from one of its members, Yvonne Cary Carter. Yvonne and I have a mutual acquaintance who had suggested that she reach out to me. During our long phone chat, I told Yvonne about the Park District’s archival photographs that have been digitized and preserved by Harold Washington Library’s Special Collections Division. She got very excited when she saw the roughly 500 historic photos of Washington Park, which are accessible online.
Members of the Washington Park Camera Club and Hyde Park Historical Society with me on a walking tour of Washington Park, May, 2021. Photo by Yvonne Cary Carter.
Inspired by the archival photos, Yvonne and other WPCC members began to plan a “Then and Now” photographic project, but it was soon put on the back burner due to COVID-19. By late-2020, Olmsted 200 events were being planned across the country, but nothing had taken shape in Chicago. I learned from the Terra Foundation that a nonprofit sponsor could qualify for support through Art Design Chicago Now, if the initiative would include a contemporary art component. Remembering Yvonne’s idea for a “Then and Now” exhibit in which members would create new photos and pair them with archival images, a lightbulb went off in my head, and I reached out to Yvonne to see if the WPCC would consider expanding their effort in honor of Olmsted 200.
While “South Park Then and Now” is mostly composed of photo pairings with an archival image on the left and a contemporary image on the right, it also includes this composite image, which looks like the ca. 1910 man and 2021 man are sharing a bench. Yvonne Cary Carter, Photographer. (The 2021 man is Duane Savage of the WPCC.)
WPCC member Fred Lott created this “Then and Now” pairing, which he titled “Love in Washington Park. Top: ca. 1900, Bottom: 2019.
Yvonne is originally from New York. She knows Central Park and Prospect Park well and loves these greenspaces. She knew that Olmsted designed those iconic parks and had heard that Olmsted was involved with laying out Chicago’s Washington Park. And so, after I told her about the national celebration to honor Frederick Law Olmsted’s 200th birthday, Yvonne went to the library. She checked out every book she could find on Olmsted, and became even more enamored with the man and his work. Before long, we organized a walking tour of Washington Park for members of the WPCC and of the Hyde Park Historical Society, the group which agreed to be the Olmsted in Chicago project sponsor. Last year in the spring, summer, and fall, we took additional tours of what was originally called South Park. I provided historical information and WPCC members shared their own memories of these parks. WPCC member Duane Savage, who moved near Washington Park with his family when he was a boy, often had the group in stitches with stories about his childhood antics in the park. (Duane took a number of photos for the “Then and Now” project, and also served as its narrator.)
After spending almost a year working on the “South Park Then and Now” project, the WPCC posted the photo essay on-line on April 26, 2022, the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted’s birth. This photo essay is such a wonderful birthday gift. But it’s not the only one. The Olmsted in Chicago program also includes free walking tours that I will be leading this summer. Jackson Park tours will take place on June 25th from 10 a.m. to noon, and July 16th from 2 to 4 p.m.; Midway Plaisance tours will be on June 25th from 2 to 4 p.m. and August 6th from 10 a.m. to noon; and we will tour Washington Park on July 16th from 10 a.m. to noon and August 6th from 2 to 4 p.m. Registration is open, so please sign up!
WPCC member Linda Jones-Woodey paired these Washington Park Meadow images. She captioned them as follows, Left: 1910, sheep grazed in the meadow to keep it trimmed and fertilized. Right: 2021, geese fly in and keep it well fertilized.
As I can’t resist weaving some history into this blog here are some highlights from the three walking tours. While strolling through Washington Park with me, you will learn about the South Open Green, a 150-acre sheep meadow. For years, the South Park Commissioners purchased a new flock of sheep each spring and then sold them off in the fall. The commissioners employed a couple of “flockmasters” who kept the sheep from damaging the shrubbery, made sure they were protected from dogs and automobiles (once cars had appeared on park drives), and herded them into their pen to rest at midday and late in the afternoon, their daily grazing complete.
Captive Balloon and Ferris Wheel on the Midway Plaisance, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
On the Midway Plaisance tour, I will point out the exact location of the iconic Ferris Wheel. Although Olmsted & Vaux had planned a formal canal to stretch along the center of the Midway Plaisance, the linear landscape had received only minimal improvements when Chicago was selected as the site for the next world’s fair in 1890. Three years later, the Midway served as the World’s Columbian Exposition carnival area, filled with foreign villages, restaurants, and attractions including the Ferris Wheel, an engineering feat of the day. The 264-foot-tall structure had 36 cars, each of which could accommodate 60 passengers. The twenty minute ride cost 50 cents per customer — the same price as a full day ticket to the fair.
WPCC member Yvonne Cary Carter produced this “Then and Now” pairing that shows the Japanese Pavilion on Jackson Park’s Wooded Island in the mid-1930s (top), and Yoko Ono’s sculpture at the same location in 2021 (bottom).
On the Jackson Park tour, we will visit the Wooded Island, a landscape area that caused Olmsted much chagrin. Although he wanted to preserve native oak trees and keep the landform free of buildings, he and his collaborator, architect Daniel H. Burnham, were besieged with proposals for various exhibits and attractions on the island. They decided that the least obtrusive suggestion was for the Ho-o-Den, or Phoenix Hall, a traditional Japanese structure. Although the government of Japan offered the building as a permanent gift to Chicago, it was destroyed by fire in 1946. Today, Yoko Ono’s Skylanding sculpture stands on the site of the Ho-o-den.
Marc Vitali and Felix Méndez of WTTW with Harvey Cobb, Jr. of the WPCC. Photo by Yvonne Cary Carter.
Illinois House Resolution No. 654 declaring April 26, 2022 as Frederick Law Olmsted Day.
Over the last couple of weeks, Olmsted in Chicago has started to receive some media attention. Block Club Chicago published an article about the project on April 20, 2022. WTTW produced a Chicago Tonight segment about our project which first aired on April 23rd on Black Voices, and was replayed on April 26th, to mark the date of Olmsted’s actual birthday. Illinois legislators drew further attention to this milestone when they officially declared April 26, 2022 “Frederick Law Olmsted Day.”
Before signing off, I’d like to share information about several other upcoming local events in honor of the Olmsted celebration. On May 2, 2022, the Morton Arboretum will sponsor “Bringing Nature to the City: Frederick Law Olmsted, O.C. Simonds, and the Arboretum,” an in-person program with filmmaker and historian Laurence Cotton and landscape architect Susan Jacobson. On May 12, 2022, the Chicago Architecture Center will present “The Olmsted in All of Us,” with guest speaker Charles Birnbaum, President of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. A long-time colleague and good friend of mine, Charles is an excellent speaker and I plan on attending.
With a lagoon that loops around a large island, the Olmsted Brothers design for Sherman Park is reminiscent of much of their father’s work. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
On June 17–18, 2002, the National Association for Olmsted Parks and Olmsted 200 are coming to Chicago to host a series of weekend events. These will include a gala dinner at the Glessner House, where Frederick Law Olmsted sometimes stayed while in town working on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. On that Saturday, the group will gather outside of Rockefeller Chapel to hear the winning pieces in a carillon competition of music inspired by Olmsted. This will be followed by a reception and a private bus tour of parks designed by Olmsted and his sons, the Olmsted Brothers. Can you guess who will be leading that tour? Yes, yours truly!