Olmsted at 200: what is an Olmsted landscape?
Date
7:30 PM | Prix fixe dinner
Location
Sponsor
Admission
Open to Coffee House and Salmagundi members
Free to attend
Reservations for dinner required; card payments only
Featuring
Tupper Thomas
Fredrick Law Olmsted was born on April 26, 1822. He would grow up to be the founder of the field of Landscape Architecture in this country. His life and work changed the way that cities developed across this country. He was a visionary, a workaholic, an inspired manager. He first partnered with Calvert Vaux on all his NYC parks (Central, Prospect, Morningside, Riverside, Ft Greene, Eastern Parkway, and Ocean Parkway). Then he spread out to develop parks all over the country from Maine to California as well as many private landscapes.
My talk will cover some about his life but more on why his work and his designs were so important. I will have slides about the design elements that made his work so excellent that his public parks are as usable and necessary today as they were in the late 1800’s.
— Tupper Thomas
About the Speaker
Tupper Thomas was the founding president of the Prospect Park Alliance and the first Prospect Park Administrator from 1980 to 2011. Prospect Park is 580 acres and was designed by Olmsted and Vaux in 1867. During her tenure park usership increased from 1.4 million visitors to over 10 million. A large capital program restored acres of landscape, buildings and sport facilities. The park’s first community committee was started and a significant volunteer program.
From 2014 through 2016, she served as the Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks. She received a BA from Goucher College and a MS in urban planning from Pratt Institute. She was an early board member of the National Association for Olmsted Parks, a founding board member in the City Parks Alliance, and the Heart of Brooklyn and served as the chair of all three Boards.
