Community by Design: The Olmsted Firm and the Development of Brookline, Massachusetts

In 1883, Frederick Law Olmsted moved from New York City to Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb that anointed itself the ＂richest town in the world.＂ For the next half century, until his son Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. relocated to California in 1936, the Olmsted firm received more than 150 local commissions, serving as the dominant force in the planned development of this community. From Fairsted, the Olmsteds’ Brookline home and office, the firm collaborated with an impressive galaxy of suburban neighbors who were among the regional and national leaders in the fields of architecture and horticulture, among them Henry Hobson Richardson and Charles Sprague Sargent.

Through plans for boulevards and parkways, residential subdivisions, institutional commissions, and private gardens, the Olmsted firm carefully guided the development of the town, as they designed cities and suburbs across America. Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and Jr. and their associates represented a new cohort of professionals who worked well in tandem with the wealthy, ensuring both the visual quality and the social hierarchy of the community.

While Olmsted Sr. used landscape architecture as his vehicle for development, his son and namesake saw Brookline as grounds for experiment in the new profession of city and regional planning, a field that he was helping to define and lead. Little has been published on the importance of Brookline as a laboratory and model for the Olmsted firm’s work. This richly illustrated book provides important new perspective on the history of planning in the United States and illuminates an aspect of the Olmsted office that has not been well understood.

＂Chock full of details (with hundreds of reproduced photos and plans) and meticulously researched, the book exposes the multiple webs of influence; wealth, social hierarchy, design genius and high-minded ideals that came together to guide the development of Brookline at a time when booming population and streetcars brought rapid change. The authors trace the relationships among the leading trend-setters in architecture, municipal governance, landscape design, engineering and horticulture as they converge in Brookline at the turn of the 19th century.＂ --Brookline Perspective

KEITH N. MORGAN, retired professor of art history and director of architectural studies at Boston University, is author of Shaping a New American Landscape: The Art and Architecture of Charles A. Platt and coauthor of Boston Architecture, 1975-1990. He is also editor and principal author of Buildings of Massachusetts: Metropolitan Boston and architecture editor for The Encyclopedia of New England.ELIZABETH HOPE CUSHING is a landscape historian. She has written cultural landscape history reports for the Taft Art Museum in Cincinnati, the National Park Service, and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and has contributed essays to Pioneers of American Landscape Design; Design with Culture: Claiming America’s Landscape Heritage; Shaping the American Landscape; and Drawing Toward Home. She is coauthor of Community by Design: The Olmsted Firm and the Development of Brookline, Massachusetts (LALH, 2013).ROGER G. REED is a historian for the National Register of Historic Places and the National Landmarks Program. His previous publications include Building Victorian Boston: The Architecture of Gridley J. F. Bryant.