Reflecting upon a day’s immersion at the Lincoln Home in Springfield, IL, the impact and meaning grips me with more power than I realized. Interacting with so many people, from the visitors to frontline Park Rangers to Supervisors to the Director of History and Education to the superintendent, brought multiple moments of fun-filled exchanges that…
Category: History
Cuyahoga Valley National Park: July 21
Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, located between Cleveland and Akron, is a most amazing natural wonder for many reasons. Beginning with the geological history, there are a number of intriguing features. First, the glacial action carved such contours that the Cuyahoga River begins to the East of the North end of the park, from underground…
Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site And Botanical Gardens: July 19
A final day in New York, before moving west toward Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, and it has been filled with inspiring moments from history at the Theodore Roosevelt (T.R.) Inaugural Site in Buffalo. Although I have visited Niagara Falls two times, I had never been to the city where Olmsted and Vaux designed one of…
Niagara Falls: July 18
Visiting once more the majestic, picturesque, overwhelming power of Niagara Falls, so many thoughts flowed through my mind after the performance of the Olmsted Play. In some uncanny way, the approach to presenting the play was grasped by the power of the relationship between H.H. Richardson and Olmsted. My mind kept going back to the State…
On the Road: From Albany to Niagara Falls
On the road West through central New York, I was fascinated with the rolling hills and valleys, the fields with cows grazing peacefully, the land which Olmsted visited to be trained as a “scientific farmer,” which was his first immersion as a potential career. I reflected back on my years at Cornell, beginning with research…
Albany State House: July 16
As I walked up to the State House in Albany, New York, it was growing ever large and more imposing. My response was one of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of its size. Somehow I felt I was entering a time long in the past. As “Olmsted,” I was grasped by the fact that these were the…
On the Road: From Boston to Albany
Driving through the Berkshires on a magnificent summer day was exhilarating as I realized “Passages to Yosemite” was now a real experience. After two wonderful send-offs at the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, I was now truly ‘on the road.’ My mind recalled the large number of young people, along…
Report from Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site: July 15
Day two of “Passages to Yosemite” brought me to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (FLONHS) in Brookline, Massachusetts. This was the home and office of Olmsted and his family from 1883 to 1898, when Olmsted was placed into the McLean Asylum. Olmsted had worn himself out after a lifetime of such dedicated work and…
Dispatch from ENC Visitor’s Center: July 14, 2015
Amidst a hot and humid environment, “Olmsted” had the opportunity to speak and enter into dialogue with a group which was mostly composed of The Green Team, a group of teenage young people working with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. These city kids were from neighborhoods throughout Boston, although the high majority were minority youth people…
Dispatches From Olmsted 