Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) is best known as the father of landscape architecture, with Central Park his greatest achievement.Footnote ¹ Olmsted did more, however, than “just” design some of America's greatest parks (as well as model suburbs, the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and other public spaces, Stanford University, and the Biltmore Estate). As detailed by journalist Justin Martin, Olmsted transformed the country's social and political landscape as well.

Martin's biographies of Alan Greenspan and Ralph Nader were critical and commercial successes. In Genius of Place Martin occasionally demonstrates a keen grasp of the obvious that one wouldn't expect from such a seasoned writer. He notes, for example, that Olmsted was one of only two children born to Charlotte Olmsted “before she died” (17). For the most part, however, his writing is lively and the story never flags, even as Martin provides considerable historical context for the large variety of occupations Olmsted undertook (including sailor, journalist, farmer, leader of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, and gold mine supervisor) before turning full time, at the age of forty-five, to pioneering the field of landscape architecture.

For scholars of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, it is this last career that is the most significant, as Olmsted crafted “a series of designs that would literally change the face of America” (286). Olmsted grasped early the need for spaces dedicated to recreation in crowded cities designed only for work and housing. Parks offered urban society a safety valve: a place for the masses to play, to meditate, to commune with others and with nature. Parks were vital to healthy urban living, offering what Olmsted called “a suggestion of freedom and repose which must in itself be refreshing and tranquilizing to the visitor coming from the confinement and bustle of crowded streets” (273). He was particularly proud of the fact that the tens of thousands who visited Central Park every day came from all walks of life. He termed Central Park, like the other public spaces he designed, “a democratic development of the highest significance” (153).

Martin's determination to present Olmsted within the context of his times illuminates Gilded Age excesses and attitudes. He reveals, for example, how the corruption of the Tweed Ring extended into Central Park, causing what Olmsted called “great injury” in the form of debts, bogus contracts, damage by careless workers, and the installation of inappropriate structures (306). New York's governor Alonzo Cornell strenuously objected to Olmsted's efforts to preserve Niagara Falls, whose banks were overrun with pulp mills, flumes, piers, and gaudy amusement parks: “I don't see that it [Olmsted's plan to have the state purchase and protect the surrounding lands] will make any difference—the water will run over the falls all the same” (348). Preservation and conservation were foreign concepts to most Americans, who still celebrated their nation as one of limitless land and resources, making Olmsted's accomplishments all the more impressive.

Olmsted dedicated himself to preserving places of beauty for the edification and pleasure of all, rather than limiting access to an elite few. As one of the earliest tourists to visit Yosemite Valley, he foresaw that “in a century the whole number of visitors will be counted in the millions” and urged that “Yosemite should be held, guarded and managed for the free use of the whole body of the people forever.” Termed a “proto-environmentalist” by Martin, Olmsted insisted that “the establishment by the government of great public grounds for the free enjoyment of the people . . . [should be] justified and enforced as a political duty” (267).

It is one thing to philosophize on the need for natural beauty in a country whose cities and industries were growing at a fever pitch, but something else to actually create the kind of places of enjoyment and democracy in action envisioned and promoted by Olmsted. Martin's detailed descriptions of Olmsted's parks, suburbs, private places, and public grounds reveal the designer's genius in providing not only “artistry” but conferring “societal benefits” (324). Olmsted's designs (listed in an appendix) range from the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California, to Chicago's Jackson Park, to Mount Royal in Montreal, Quebec. He directly influenced many of the next generation of architects and conservationists, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Gifford Pinchot, but his greatest legacy continues in the widespread recognition of the positive role that landscapes can play in society.

Martin poignantly reveals the hardships of nineteenth-century living (especially the limits of medical knowledge) and their catastrophic effects on Olmsted. He suffered not only the early deaths of his mother and beloved brother, but also the loss of two children. At the age of thirty-eight he was in a carriage accident that left one leg two inches shorter than the other. Far more painful and limiting, however, were what Martin called Olmsted's “bouillabaisse of symptoms,” which included periods of frantic activity followed by bouts of depression, a sequence with no treatment then, but recognized today as the hallmark of bi-polar disorder. Olmsted's pettiness, occasional cruelty, and tendency to pick fights and nurse hurts exhausted and exasperated even his friends and family, as did his penchant for working non-stop for days. Olmsted's mind raced, and he found it nearly impossible to focus on any single project for long, becoming “increasingly prone to both despondency and panic” (206).

Olmsted's father had been a director of an insane asylum, and it was Olmsted's worst fear that he end up in such a place. That fear that was realized in 1898 when his family committed Olmsted, then in his seventies, to the McLean Asylum, whose grounds he had designed. He died there five years later.

Although Martin's notes reveal his extensive primary research, the lack of a bibliography is a frustrating omission. What Martin does provide, however, is an unflinching, and yet not unsympathetic, account of a brilliant yet tormented man who significantly shaped the landscapes, and thinking, of fin de siècle America.