Frederick Law Olmsted

Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his senior partner Calvert Vaux, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City.

Other projects that Olmsted has been involved in include the country's first and oldest coordinated system of public parks and parkways in Buffalo, New York; the country's oldest state park, the Niagara Reservation in Niagara Falls, New York; one of the first planned communities in the United States, Riverside, Illinois; Mount Royal Park in Montreal, Quebec; the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts; the Emerald Necklace of parks in Rochester, New York; Belle Isle Park, in the Detroit River for Detroit, Michigan; Presque Isle Park in Marquette, Michigan; the Grand Necklace of Parks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cherokee Park and entire parks and parkway system in Louisville, Kentucky; the 735-acre (297 ha) Forest Park in Springfield, Massachusetts, featuring America's first public "wading pool"; the George Washington Vanderbilt II Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina; the master plans for the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University near Palo Alto, California; and Montebello Park in St. Catharines, Ontario. In Chicago his projects include: Marquette Park; Jackson Park; Washington Park; the Midway Plaisance for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition; the south portion of Chicago's "emerald necklace" boulevard ring; Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey; and the University of Chicago campus. In Washington, D.C., he worked on the landscape surrounding the United States Capitol building.