Stream on YouTube / Watch Tuesday, July 7, 2026 at 9 p.m. on KPBS 2
"Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America" tells the story of the man who made public parks an essential part of American life.
One of Olmsted’s allies in the “Free Niagara” movement was renowned architect H.H. Richardson. In 1880, Richardson completed work on the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, one of the best examples in America of the Richardson Romanesque architectural style. Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux designed the landscape for the 203- acre site.
Known as the father of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted was co-designer of Central Park, head of the first Yosemite commission, leader of the campaign to protect Niagara Falls, designer of the U.S. Capitol Grounds, site planner for the Great White City of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, planner of Boston's "Emerald Necklace" of green space, as well as designer of park systems in many other cities.
Olmsted’s before and after photographs of construction of the Emerald Necklace in Boston demonstrated how the system was completely engineered. The Olmsted office documented the changes over time, showing how the artful arrangement of plantings and stone transformed the landscape from a construction site to a magnificent park.
To Olmsted, a park was both a work of art and a necessity for urban life. His efforts to preserve nature created an "environmental ethic" decades before the environmental movement became a force in American politics.
In 1868 Olmsted came to Buffalo, NY and was asked to choose a site for a park. Instead, he recommended three sites to be connected by a new concept – parkways. The system he and Vaux designed became the first coordinated park system in the nation. Later Olmsted visited Niagara Falls and started the “Free Niagara” campaign, a movement to clean up, preserve and set aside parts of that landscape.
Presented by Buffalo Toronto Public Media. Distributed by APT
