The Connecticut Olmsted Heritage Alliance (COHA) was incorporated in Connecticut in August 2005 in an effort to honor the heritage of Connecticut native Frederick Law Olmsted. COHA received its 501 (c) 3 status from the IRS in July 2007 and is planning to partner with others to celebrate Olmsted Day on his birthday, April 26, with an annual conference. We hope to soon be starting an inventory of the Olmsted projects in Connecticut.
The mission of the Connecticut Olmsted Heritage Alliance is to preserve the Olmsted legacy of parks and landscapes in Connecticut by advocacy, research, and public education.
Our goals are:
Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. was born in Hartford in 1822, the son of a prosperous dry-goods merchant. As a child, Olmsted and his family went on outings to enjoy the beauty of the natural scenery in Connecticut. In addition to his spending his childhood in his family’s home in Hartford, Olmsted boarded with teachers in many small towns in the state, including Collinsville, Newington, Saybrook and Ellington. He later said that these “youthful wanderings” prepared him to be a landscape architect.
Olmsted attended Yale until an eye ailment forced him to leave. He spent the next few years working in a dry-goods company in Manhattan, studying surveying and scientific farming, and running farms in Guilford and Staten Island. In 1850 he traveled to Europe with his brother and friends. He was a keen observer of the people and the landscape and published his first book about these travels. In 1852, prior to the Civil War, the New York Times hired him to report on conditions in the south and he traveled extensively throughout the region. This resulted in three volumes about his travels and in his arguing for the abolition of slavery.
In the fall of 1857 Olmsted became the superintendent of Central Park in New York City and soon after he and Calvert Vaux won the competition for the design of the Central Park. This work was interrupted by the Civil War and Olmsted’s administrative skills were put to use as the first director of the U. S. Sanitary Commission , the precursor of the Red Cross. Returning to New York after the Civil War, Olmsted finished the supervision of the construction of Central Park. Olmsted later formed his own firm and settled in Brookline, outside Boston. His home and office there, which he named Fairsted, is now a National Historic Site.
Frederick Law Olmsted died in 1903 in Massachusetts and is buried in Old North Cemetery in Hartford. After his death, his stepson, John C. Olmsted (1852 – 1920), and son, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870-1957), successfully carried on the work of the firm until the 1950’s. Because he was the first to use the term “landscape architecture” in the United States, Olmsted is known as the father of landscape architecture in the United States. His firm and the successor firms managed by his sons completed work throughout the United States and trained many other landscape architects. These firms were involved with over three hundred projects in Connecticut, including parks and parkways, private estates and homesteads, subdivisions and suburban communities, college and school campuses, grounds of institutions and public buildings, cemeteries, industrial buildings, country clubs and hotels, church grounds and arboreta. Examples include Beardsley and Seaside Parks in Bridgeport, Long Hill Estate in Middletown, the grounds of the Institute of Living in Hartford, a subdivision for worker housing for the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company, and work for the Yale Campus.
Please join us in our mission to preserve the Olmsted legacy of parks and landscapes in Connecticut by public education, research and advocacy. Connecticut’s heritage of parks, gardens, cemeteries and other landscapes designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and those who followed him help to form the character of our state and make it a place of enjoyment and inspiration for all our citizens and visitors. Your interest and contribution will enable us to continue our work. Becoming a member will also entitle you to receive the COHA News and discounts for COHA programs. For more information, please contact us by mail or though our e-mail. Thank you!
We will continue to update our website with information about our progress and news of events. For more information, please contact us by mail at:
P.O. Box 724
Ridgefield, CT 06877
or by e-mail at info@ctolmsted.org
For more information about Olmsted and what others are doing in the US, the National Association for Olmsted Parks (NAOP) has a very informative website www.olmsted.org.
A website that contains valuable information to assist local parks, www.parkspractices.org, has been developed by the City Parks Alliance and the NAOP.
For information about cultural landscapes, the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s website, www.tclf.org, contains a wide variety of information, including an innovative site “City Shaping: The Olmsteds and Louisville”. Look under “Outreach + Education.
Closer to home, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation’s website, www.cttrust.org, has much information about what is happening in our state.
Postcards images courtesy of Rudy Favretti, FASLA
