Following are transcript excerpts from a 2001 PBS program titled “Is it Time for Olmsted again?” on the show “Think Tank with David Wattenberg”.
There were three guests:
Charles Beveridge, editor of “The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted” and co-author of “Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing the American Landscape”
Witold Rybczynski, professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century”
Robert Fishman, professor of history at Rutgers University and author of “Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia.”
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MR. RYBCZYNSKI: Well, one thing to understand about Olmsted is that he wasn’t a trained professional. He became a professional landscape architect, but he was very much self invented. And what goes into making that man is, I think, crucial to understanding him. He was a journalist, he was a farmer, as you said, he was a person who traveled around the country, knew the United States very well. And he brings to this new profession that he really invents in some ways, a great background. And so the richness of what he does has to do with the experiences that he brings. He was really 40 years old when he fully decided to engage himself in this profession.
MR. WATTENBERG: Charles, you agree with that?
MR. BEVERIDGE: Yes, I certainly agree with all of that. But, the number of experiences of Olmsted had, and the social and political thinking that he put into the question of where America was, and where American society was going to go was something that was with him always. He tried a variety of different careers that gave him a variety of different experiences, so that by the time he began to be simply a landscape architect he had a whole social, and indeed psychological set of purposes that had to do with what he wanted American society to become, and he simply chose one of, in fact, many possible routes that he, in fact, began to experiment with, to carry out his ideas.
MR. WATTENBERG: So he was -- had aspects of being really an applied political philosopher, is that fair?
MR. FISHMAN: Yes, I think he was. And to me what’s so remarkable about Olmsted, and valuable about him is that at a time in the 19th Century that we think of as every man for himself, of pure individualism, that he was at the heart of these great collective works of art.
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MR. WATTENBERG: What was Olmsted’s vision, and is it relevant today?
MR. FISHMAN: Well, I think the first thing that comes out so strongly for me, from Central Park, and the other parks, is a democratic vision. You know, even in the mid-19th Century, New York was already probably the most diverse single settlement in the whole world. And here Olmsted and the other backers of Central Park said, we are going to create this wonderful work of art for everyone. And Olmsted was very decided about that democratic vision. And nothing pleased him more than to visit the park on a Sunday, and see people of all ethnic groups, of all classes, using it together.
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MR.RYBCZYNSKI: … I would say that he -- Olmsted saw the suburbs as an absolutely positive force. I don’t think he ever imagined that we would all be living there. I think he saw the suburbs as a place where some people would live.
MR. WATTENBERG: Only half of us live there, not all of us.
MR. RYBCZYNSKI: Now it’s about three-quarters. But, in his day it was probably one quarter. I mean, so it’s hard for me to see what he would say, because I think his view of the suburbs was a place for a relatively small number of people to live. He always assumed that the majority of working Americans would live in the cities.
MR. BEVERIDGE: I think that’s hard to tell. I mean, the question is what was the promise of American life. It expressed itself in many different ways, and I think one of the promises that he hoped to see was one where as many people as possible could live in their free standing houses, with some space around it for that individual family. He was terribly concerned about community, and it’s expressed by building parks and park systems, and parkways. He’s also very concerned about domesticity, because in his light the getting Americans outdoors, getting a house where -- what he calls open air apartments, that have some extra space by which they can cultivate aesthetic sense, and create an individual space that increases their own individuality are all elements of this theme of domesticity that was almost as important to him as community.
MR. WATTENBERG: And he designed some of the earliest suburbs, didn’t he?
MR. BEVERIDGE: Yes.
MR. WATTENBERG: Where?
MR. BEVERIDGE: Well, the outstanding one is Riverside, six miles west of the loop in Chicago. And the one example, 1500 acres of a large community that really carried out and saw put on the ground many of his design principles.
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MR. FISHMAN: The point, I think you have to look at the matter historically. When Olmsted planned these great late 19th Century suburbs, what he was looking for was an alternative to the crowded city that would really exclude any contact with nature. That was the great fear at that time, that you would have this immense unnatural city that would literally drive people crazy. So you had to have this daily contact with nature, that the suburb brings.
As Witold and Charles said, he never imagined the suburbs growing to be essentially huge regions. In fact, the suburbs have become our cities. And if you look at what Olmsted wanted from nature, he wanted an alternative, he wanted that sense of repose, and that’s exactly what we’re losing in these suburban areas. The problem is what I, in fact, would call dumb growth, the kind of fragmented, low density growth, that destroys the countryside without creating any real community, any real sense of place. And I think Olmsted would have hated that.
MR. WATTENBERG: The smart growth people, as I have sensed it, when you get down to specific remedies, they are looking for more mass transportation, and for more people living in cities, or in apartments outside of cities, rather than sprawl. Is that basically where you come out?
MR. FISHMAN: Yes, exactly.
MR. WATTENBERG: What do you guys think of -- what would Olmsted say about Fishman?
MR. FISHMAN: If he took notice of me at all.
MR. RYBCZYNSKI: One of the things that struck me about Olmsted was, while he was visionary, he was also very pragmatic, and he doesn’t -- you never hear him sort of complaining about why do people want to live in cities. He just accepts that people in the 19th Century are going to build these huge cities, and he’s trying to make them function better. But, he never talks about -- at least I haven’t read anything where he talks about let’s fragment the city, let’s create satellite towns, or anything like that. And I think he would be much more pragmatic than Bob about facing the problem, rather than trying to rebuild America, he would accept that this is how we want to live, and he would try to make it work better.
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