building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

of his two sons and of Charles Eliot. 262 However, already in the 1860s, new project
designers, such as Horace Cleveland (1814‐1900) and Robert Morris Copeland
(1830‐1874), had appeared on the horizon of the profession of landscape architect.
The same idea of the system of parks in Boston, created by Olmsted, had been
described in the analyses in Copeland’s book The Most Beautiful City in America:
Essay and Plan for the Improvement of the City of Boston published in 1872.
The tragic epilogue to the death of Downing recalls Olmsted’s stage exit from the
world of landscape project design. Downing was to see his romantic ideals
shattered by a “machine”, whereas Olmsted was to live long enough to step aside
and observe the triumph of landscape design bent to the academic requirements of
the City Beautiful movement. His frequent professional collaboration with Henry
Hobson Richardson (1838‐1886) in reality highlighted his distance from the classicist
revival of the turn of the century. Ironically, the World’s Columbian Exposition in
Chicago in 1893 definitively ended the fascinating careers of the two fathers of
American landscape and architectural design. The Exhibition was a significant event
from every point of view. If, on the one hand, it endorsed one of Olmsted and Louis
Sullivan’s (1856‐1924) highest professional recognitions, on the other it was the
farewell to the epic moments of the “avant‐garde”, to the times when the search
was for aesthetic beauty, which would mirror America.
262 The name of the firm was Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot. After the death of Charles Eliot in 1897,
Olmsted’s two stepbrothers, John Charles Olmsted (1852‐1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
(1870‐1957), founded the firm Olmsted Brothers, which remained in operation until 1980.
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