All in the Family: The Olmsted Office and the Business of Landscape Architecture

Abstract

The landscape firm begun by Frederick Law Olmsted, the patriarch of American landscape architecture, and carried on by his personal and professional heirs, John Charles and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., compiled nearly a century of continuous practice. Since many of today's field and office procedures were pioneered in the Olmsteds' office, the emergence of the modern professional practice can be traced through the work of this one family firm, as it evolved at the turn of the century from the one-man office/studio of Olmsted, Sr., into Olmsted Brothers, the largest landscape architectural practice in the world.