Genius of Place

I'm part way through a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted called Genius of Place, by Justin Martin, and already it has gone from being a book I was going to skim and return to the library to one I'm willing to pay to finish. (It's overdue and can't be renewed.)

Olmsted was not only a renowned landscape architect; he was also a farmer, writer, publisher, abolitionist and world traveler. Thanks to a loving and well-heeled father who supported his ventures both emotionally and financially, Olmsted evolved from a lost young man to an apostle of place. His medium was the landscape. His message was beauty.

I'm not even halfway through the book yet — Central Park is barely a gleam in Olmsted's eye — but I'm already looking for clues to what shaped him. One is that he knew places from the inside out.

"He'd walked all over Connecticut as a child; he'd walked all over England a few years back," Martin writes. "Now he was intent on completing his tour of the South; he didn't want to miss anything."

I'm with Olmsted on this one: When you don't want to miss anything, it's best to walk.


Above: A view that Olmsted made possible.