building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Greensward. The 800 acres of rough land, ponds and pastures, which the city
administration had made available, were transformed into a modern urban park.
However, the work by Vaux and above all by Olmsted represented something more,
at a time when the city of New York was about to reach a decisive moment in its
town planning congestion. Lewis Mumford effectively explained the significance of
this effort> “[...] But Olmsted had done something more than design a park, battle
with politicians ‐ he resigned at least five times – struggle with insolent and rascally
city appointees, and protect his plantations against vandals: he had introduced an
idea ‐ the idea of using the landscape creatively. By making nature urban, he
naturalised the city” 260 . In May 1863, when relationships with the park Board of
Commissioners began to deteriorate due to their “political” interferences, Olmsted
and Vaux handed in their resignation. On this occasion, the two designers used the
title of Landscape Architect in an official document for the first time. 261 From then
on until the 1870s, the intricate events to construct and manage the park only help
to reconstruct the thread of events, rather than to really understand the project.
To paraphrase some of Olmsted’s thoughts, Central Park was not an isolated event
in the general context; on the contrary, it was created by a close consideration of
the context which had generated it. Olmsted did not see the park as an element to
correct the development of the city. Localisation and size had to depend on careful
urban analyses. Olmsted began with these thoughts in mind and continued with a
very large number of projects throughout the United States. His first experiences
gave rise to the idea of Parkways, green systems and landscapes designed to allow
parks to communicate with each other and with the towns which supported
landscape design interventions
The Central Park project also introduced innovative ideas concerning the natural
site topography, which Olmsted held in great respect. He demonstrated that the
260 MUMFORD, Lewis, The Brown Decades, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1971 [first ed.
1931], p. 40 (Italian translation by Francesco Dal Co, Architettura e cultura in America, dalla guerra
civile all’ ultima frontiera, Venezia, Marsilio, 1977, pp.78)” […] Olmsted had done something more
than design a park, battle with politicians ‐ he resigned at least five times – struggle with insolent and
rascally city appointees, and protect his plantations against vandals: he had introduced an idea – the
idea of using the landscape creatively. By making nature urbane he naturalized the city”.
261 NEWTON, Norman T., Design on the Land. The Development of Landscape Architecture,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 273
159