New-York tribune., 1903-08-30
FREDERICK Law OLMSFBD.

The great merit of the late Frederick Law
OImsted was to have given notable impetus
many years ago to the now familiar movement
toward the creation of beautiful pleasure
grounds out of the natural undisciplined re-
sources of American landscape lingering in
urban places. He had numerous competitors
when, with Mr.. Vaux, he submitted plans for
the making of Central Park. and he had them
in other enterprises later in his career, but OF
those who survive him in the crowded ranks of
landscape architects to-day scores would ac-
knowledge Indebtedness to his example and all
would do him honor, for he was a great man
in his sphere. All over America, from the At
antic to the Pacific, he practised his profession,
and wherever he labored he left models of land
scape gardening behind him. They were models
in a sense which it is well to point out at this
time. The formal garden of Europe, the stately
lines of Italian and French pleasaunces. took
this country captive a few years ago. The per
COLA, for example, has become as common in
the United States as on the Continent, if not
commoner. Mr.. Olmsted knew all about this
sort OF thing. He had studied II in his young
manhood, and might have dreamed Of rivalling
the old garden builders of the South or the
grandiose achievements OF LIE Notre, in France
If they had seemed to him meet for emulation
in his native land.
But from the start he realized that the genius
OF America, its climate and topography, its
sylvia and its fora, i'll adapted to the work
ing out of such almost architectural schemes as
befit the sunny hilsides of Italy and France
at least in works on an heroic scale. In the
public parks which will chiefly perpetuate his
name he Stunned the purely formal style of
the South as he Stunned the whimsicalities of
the English topiarist Those things he felt were
legitimate in private gardens, and might even
be adapted, If judiciously handled, to some such
occasion as that provided by the Chicago fair
ten years ago Nevertheless he believed that
the public park should be In America what he
and Mr. Vaux made our own delightful domain
and what he made the Fens in Boston-a place
put in such shape as to be of practical use to
pedestrians and loungers as we'll as to riders
and drivers, but left with as much of wild
nature about it as possible. If he knew the
value of velvet lawns and ordered shrubbery,
he knew also the value of undsturbed trees and
tangled thickets. This blending of system and
untutored grace is the secret of the old flower
gardens of our Colonial ancestors, and It is good
to have it kept alive through one generation
after another Mr. Olmsted recognized its i'm
portance; he perceived that it had Influenced the
evolution of all the really beautiful parks in
the world, and he was faithful to it in his many
undertakings.
He will be remembered for having done more
than most other single workers OF his time to
make parks and gardens public necessity. He
will be remembered with the more gratitude be-
cause inseparable from the park and garden as
he understood them for America is the uncon-
ventional charm that belongs to the most char
acteristic American landscape.