Winner, J. B. Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape
StudiesThis award-winning book is the definitive account of the creation
and development of the country's first urban park system. Beginning in
1868, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created a series of parks
and parkways for Buffalo, New York, that drew national and international
attention. The improvements augmented the city's original plan with
urban design features inspired by Second Empire Paris, including the
first system of "parkways" to grace an American city. Displaying the
plan at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Olm-sted declared
Buffalo "the best planned city, as to streets, public places, and
grounds, in the United States, if not in the world."In this book Francis
R. Kowsky illuminates this remarkable constellation of projects.
Utilizing original plans, drawings, photographs, and copious numbers of
reports and letters, he brings new perspective to this vast undertaking,
analyzing it as an expression of the visionary landscape and planning
principles that Olmsted and Vaux pioneered. "In 1868, an invitation was
made to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the men who had designed
Central Park, to come upstate and pass their judgements on the
opportunity for Buffalo to demonstrate its civic arrival with a grand
new park. This is the story that Francis Kowsky tells, and he does so
virtually to perfection." --Landscape Journal "Kowsky reminds us that
parks are not open spaces awaiting development, and that people need
trees, meadows, expanses of water, and walking paths, and biking trails.
. . . [His} masterful book makes the visionary landscape and planning
principles Olmsted and Vaux pioneered in Buffalo clear, with the hope
that restoration efforts will once again allow it to become the best
planned city in the world." --Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide "In his
magnificent new book, with its lucid prose and deft organization, Kowsky
follows the evolution of Olmsted and Vaux's astonishing creations in
Buffalo--those 'landscapes of recreation, residence, memory, and
healing, ' as he so gracefully describes them. . . . An extraordinary
variety and abundance of illustrations fill the book, including
photographs new and old, maps, diagrams, paintings, and lithographs."
--Site/Lines
