17 November 2008

Olmsted's Buffalo

The Sunday NY Times Arts Section included an examination of the historic architecture of Buffalo, NY and how it is both underappreciated and threatened. While Frank Lloyd Wright gets the most play in the piece, Frederick Law Olmsted is featured too:

In Buffalo he realized an even grander ambition, creating a vast network of parks and parkways that he hoped would have “a civilizing effect” on the “dangerous classes” populating the American city. Flanked by rows of elm trees, the parkways were broken up by a series of gorgeous landscaped roundabouts, slowing the city’s rhythms of movement into something more majestic yet distinctly democratic.
The online version includes a slideshow that begins with an Olmsted parkway but leads on to include a great building by Burnham. It is almost as if the NY Times is endorsing my list.

No comments: