The Olmsted Influence in TCLF's Eighteenth Annual Silent Auction

Capping a year of programming by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) commemorating the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., this year’s Silent Auction includes several items representing or honoring the body of work of Olmsted, Sr., and his successor firms. Works of photography by Jeffrey Milstein, Stanley Greenberg, and Alan Ward beautifully capture features of New York City’s Central Park, Boston’s Arnold Arboretum and Asheville, North Carolina’s Biltmore estate. The work by Greenberg includes as a bonus a signed copy of his recently published book Olmsted Tree, a collection of stunning black and white photographs of mature trees in Olmsted parks around the country.

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Two seminal works on Central Park, the design of which launched the career of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and his collaborator Calvert Vaux, are available in the auction, both inscribed. Saving Central Park: A History and a Memoir, by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, is an inspiring narrative of one woman’s heroic efforts to rescue the iconic landscape from a state of serious decline.The Park and The People: A History of Central Park, by Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig, offers an "exemplary social history" (Kirkus Reviews) of Central Park's people―the merchants and landowners who launched the project; the immigrants and African-American residents who were displaced by the park; the politicians, gentlemen, and artists who disputed its design and operation; the German gardeners, Irish laborers, and Yankee engineers who built it; and the generations of New Yorkers for whom Central Park was their only backyard. In tracing the park's history, Blackmar and Rosenzweig give us the history of New York, and bring to life larger issues about the meaning of the word "public" in a democratic society. A third publication, Frederick Law Olmsted: Plans and Views of Public Parks, is also available and inscribed. Edited by renowned scholars Charles E. Beveridge, Lauren Meier, and Irene Mills, this text illuminates Olmsted’s vision through sketches, preliminary and final plans, historic photographs, and paintings of over seventy public park projects including parkways, park systems, recreation areas and scenic reservations.

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A rare archival piece, the Report of the Department of Parks, City of Seattle: 1923-1930, bears the stamp of the Olmsted Brothers firm, dated October 22, 1931, offering bidders the opportunity to acquire a bona fide piece of Olmsted history. If contemporary interpretation is more your fancy, Elena Saporta’s rendition of the 1895 Plan for Jackson Park by Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot, colorized and printed on Habotai silk, brings new life to the historic plan.

As TCLF’s President and CEO has proclaimed in talks throughout the country this year, there is a bit of Olmsted to be found in all of us. These works spanning several decades, styles, and mediums, attest to the power and reach of Olmsted, Sr.’s, vision and influence. In this bicentennial year, TCLF celebrates the artists, writers, and landscape architects who have been inspired by the Olmsted legacy and shared the gifts of their discovery with us.  Be inspired by these works and others made available exclusively through TCLF’s Eighteenth Annual Silent Auction.