Genius of Place Read Free

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    When war finally erupted, Olmsted’s writings from the 1850s continued to furnish a vital perspective, this time to British readers. Britain was on the fence at the beginning of the conflict, uncertain whether to side with the Union or the Confederacy. In 1861, Olmsted’s The Cotton Kingdom —an updated compendium of his collected Southern writings—was published in England. The Cotton Kingdom helped sway British public opinion toward the Union cause.

    Olmsted did eventually settle down as a landscape architect, exclusively. Demand for his designs was such that he really didn’t have a choice. But when finally forced to pick a career, he brought the sum of all the wildly varied experiences that had come before. That’s why Olmsted’s work is so gorgeous, so inspired, so dazzlingly set apart. It draws on the numerous disciplines to which he’d been exposed. When Olmsted created the landscape for the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, North Carolina, in the 1890s, for example, he looked to memories of his long-ago travels throughout the antebellum South. When he designed the grounds for the 1893 World’s Fair, he drew on his experiences in China, as a sailor, a half century earlier.
    For this book, I also wanted to bring Olmsted’s personal life into clearer focus. Previous accounts have tilted into hagiography, casting Olmsted as a kind of radiant figure—a deeply devoted husband and sweet, gentle father. Such portrayals conflate his pastoral park creations with his personal demeanor, which is a mistake. Yes, he created beauty, but he was capable of being a very hard man.
    I consulted pertinent letters from five separate archives and spent hours poring over them, deciphering the distinctive handwriting of Olmsted and various intimates, often with the aid of a magnifying glass. That furnished the grist for a more accurate and more human portrait of Olmsted. He was a great artist and a hard-driving reformer, to be sure. He also happens to have had a strained marriage and serious tension within his family. In many ways, the two things were related.
    Olmsted had a big life, but also a tough one. He faced more—much more—than his share of tragedy, even by nineteenth-century standards. He contended with the untimely deaths of children, close relations, and dear friends. He suffered various physical ailments, such as the ravages of a near-fatal carriage accident. And he endured assorted forms of psychological torment: insomnia, anxiety, hysterical blindness, and depression. “When Olmsted is blue, the logic of his despondency is crushing and terrible,” a friend once said. Olmsted spent his final days in an asylum; in a great irony, it was one for which he had earlier designed the grounds.
    But first he accomplished more than most people could in three lifetimes. As a park maker, environmentalist, and abolitionist, Olmsted helped shape modern America. This is his extraordinary story.

I
    â€œAn Enthusiast by Nature”
    GROWING UP, 1822–1851

CHAPTER 1
    So Very Young
    ON APRIL 26, 1822, John and Charlotte Olmsted welcomed a baby known variously as “Fred” and “Fred-Law.” He was born in the boomtown of Hartford, Connecticut, at a time when America itself was still in its infancy.
    There were twenty-four states then, Missouri being the westernmost, and the United States was still working out its border with the Canadian territories to the North. The country was so sparely populated that on average there were only about twelve people per square mile.
    Fred’s father had been born in 1791, during George Washington’s first term as president. Fred’s mother was born in 1800, the dawn of a new century that would bring such innovations as the train, the telegraph, the revolver, and baseball. Fred was the first child for John, age thirty, and Charlotte, age twenty-one. He was named after Frederick Olmsted, John’s older brother who