Other Sample Greenways

Our approach is in line with a projects like the Atlanta Beltline or the Boston  Emerald Necklace designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. (1822-1903), America’s first landscape architect AND John Nolen's professor at Harvard University's School of Landscape Architecture. 

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Beginning in the 1870s, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and later, the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects (OBLA), profoundly reshaped the urban Maryland landscape. Olmsted Sr. designed the early suburb of Sudbrook Park and the four Mount Vernon Place parks; he also consulted on other Baltimore parks during the 1870s to the early 1890s.

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At the behest of the Municipal Art Society, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and OBLA produced the comprehensive 1904 Report Upon the Development of Public Grounds for Greater Baltimore, conceptualizing a park system for the Baltimore region.  The Olmsted vision for Baltimore’s park system was second only to Boston’s in size and scope.  During the next two decades FLO Jr. and OBLA staff members provided considerable assistance on specific park planning and land acquisition.  An extensive report by the Olmsted Brothers in 1926 extended the 1904 recommendations, especially projections to link the Gwynns Falls, Jones Falls, and Herring Run stream valleys with a wide variety of parks, parkways, and playgrounds. In many cases, the Olmsted firm assisted in the transformation of private estate grounds into public parks, such as in planning for Carroll, Clifton, Leakin, and Wyman Parks.

 

Smaller Olmsted-designed neighborhood parks include Latrobe and Riverside. OBLA added major recreation and circulation improvements to Baltimore’s earliest major parks, Druid Hill and Patterson. In addition, FLO, Jr., was instrumental in planning the reconstruction of Downtown Baltimore after the 1904 Great Fire and creating the City’s planning department.

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