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1. MikeT
   Member

   Here is another item from today's newspaper (the other was the suntimes Lincoln) that reminded me of Riverside. When I saw the picture (see link below), I immediately thought that it looked like RIverside and a look that I had already imagined in this forum space (the rickshaw).

   I looked at the caption, and sure enough those were the same Olmsted curves that we know so well - but in NY's Central Park (which I have never been to).

   http://www.imagestation.com/8521640/3931509094

   tell me if there are any problems seeing the picture, btw.

   And, here is another spot on the forum where I imagined a rickshaw in Riverside; of course, we do not have to develop Harlem to have the rickshaws; we can have them now-ish.

   +but we DO have harlem and ogden. Maybe this area can be the commercial gateway into RIverside; we can have staging and parking there and the horse and buggy and those mackinaw island style rickshaws can bring people into the universal studio set at the center. Going down burlington will get better and better and until the open space is birthed from the stonehenge of charm at the center of town takes our visitors' breaths away. They'll say, "John, we have to buy here". "and great schools? all the more better". That was my phenomenological experience I was recounting. Just add Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King as the strings explode when you enter the cbd, and its collection of charming cotswold style buildings, including the IVY covered, flower boxed VC, I mean the Village Crossing.

   http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic.php?id=226&replies=16#post-3563

   Posted Monday Mar 12, 2007 21:45 #

2. Catherine
   Member

   MikeT, I'm sorry, do you not know that Olmsted created Central Park? And it is marvelous. I was last year walking along the lakefront in Milwaukee through a park I had never been in before. Before long, I said to my husband - based on my experience of Central Park - this is Olmsted. Sure enough, we found the sign identifying it as Lake Park, designed by FLO. Another time I discovered he designed two parks I grew up and one my father grew up on in a New England town (Fall River - downtown also ruined by bright light developers in cahoots with government geniuses. FLO also numerous estates in US, a hand in Lincoln Park and Golden Gate Park. An American Master, certainly. And here we have a whole town that he designed, in the hands of people of questionable ability and taste. There oughta be a law.

   Posted Tuesday Mar 13, 2007 00:22 #

3. MikeT
   Member

   There seems to be a certain 'look and feel' to Olmsted landscapes. Part of his genius, like a mozart piece, is how accessible the designs are - how much one, even one naive to landscape architecture, can 'get it'. My sister in law's cousin, now living in LA, came by our place just for a visit and said they would settle here if they came to live in chicago - which they are considering - they were so impressed with Riverside.

   Mind you - they were visiting my place, which is the center of town. They saw the quiet tranquil man-made center which opened up to the thunderous array of Nature with the River as the focal point.

   Olmsted is an artist who spoke to the 'modern man' and woman!. He saw how people were leaving Nature and the farms to go to the city and he saw the importance for the soul of a continuing sense of glimpsing, or sensing, nature.

   I knew FLO did CP, but I never visited CP in NY.

   Here is Burnham calling Olmsted an artist, from this link

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted

   A quotation from Olmsted's friend and colleague architect Daniel Burnham could well serve as his epitaph. Referring to Olmsted in March, 1893, Burnham said, "An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes; with lawns and banks and forest covered hills; with mountain sides and ocean views." (quoted from Larson's The Devil in the White City)

   Whether our town leaders or EDC commissioners like it or not, the OLMSTED heritage and connection and legacy is Riverside's distinguishing feature, Riverside's 'brand distinction'.

   You want great schools in a suburban setting, try Clarendon Hills; closer in, try Lagrange and OP.

   But Riverside has great schools in a close in suburban setting par excellence, AND was designed by Olmsted, something none of our peer communities can lay claim to.

   Keep it.
   Preserve / maintain it.
   Polish it. expose it.
   improve it.
   remove stuff that is not olmsted that accumulated over the centuries and replace with olmsted stuff.
   don't add more litter - of all kinds.

   oh - tell people about it.

   People will come.

   Posted Tuesday Mar 13, 2007 09:50 #

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