The New Student's Reference Work/Olmsted, Frederick Law

Olm′sted, Frederick Law, an American landscape-gardener, was born at Hartford, Conn., April 26, 1822. He studied engineering at Yale, and followed farming and gardening for a few years. Becoming interested in landscape-gardening, he traveled on foot through England in 1850 and in 1855 through France, Italy and Germany, to study parks and ornamental grounds. He published Walks and Talks of a Farmer in England, A Journey in the Slave States, A Journey Through Texas and A Journey in the Back Country, after a tour through the south and west. He is best known as the superintendent, with Mr. Vaux, of the laying out of Central Park, New York, and of the grounds around the capitol at Washington. He has also designed parks and public works at Chicago, Buffalo, Brooklyn, Boston, Milwaukee and Montreal, and acted as commissioner of Yosemite Park. He planned the laying out of Jackson Park, Chicago, for the Columbian Exposition. He was appointed by Lincoln on the commission to inquire into the sanitary condition of the United States army, serving three years (1861-63). He died on Aug. 28, 1903.