PBS - Frederick Law Olmsted Designing America (2014)

Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America is a biography of the man who made public parks an essential part of American life.

Olmsted made enormous contributions to the American landscape and is known as the father of American landscape architecture. He was co-designer of Central Park, head of the first Yosemite commission, leader of the campaign to protect Niagara Falls, designer of the U.S. Capitol Grounds, site planner for the Great White City of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, planner of Boston's “Emerald Necklace” of green space and of park systems in many other cities. Olmsted's pioneering design of the public parks and parkway systems in Buffalo, N.Y. is the oldest coordinated system in America and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

To Olmsted, a park was both a work of art and a necessity for urban life. Olmsted's efforts to preserve nature created an “environmental ethic” decades before the environmental movement became a force in American politics. With gorgeous cinematography, creative animation, and compelling commentary Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America presents the biography of a man whose parks and preservation are an essential part of American life.

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