About this item
As the nation recovered from a cataclysmic war, two titans of design profoundly influenced how Americans came to interact with the built and natural world around them through their pioneering work in architecture and landscape design.Frederick Law Olmsted is widely revered as America's first and finest parkmaker and environmentalist, the force behind Manhattan's Central Park, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, Biltmore's parkland in Asheville, dozens of parks across the country, and the preservation of Yosemite and Niagara Falls. Yet his close friend and sometime collaborator, Henry Hobson Richardson, has been almost entirely forgotten today, despite his outsized influence on American architecture -- from Boston's iconic Trinity Church to Chicago's Marshall Field Wholesale Store to the Shingle Style and the wildly popular "open plan" he conceived for family homes.
About the Author
The author of more than twenty much-admired books, Hugh Howard has written about architecture and landscape, presidents and painting. In telling stories of the past, he follows the fault lines where the lives of essential characters intersect. Thus in his newest book, ARCHITECTS OF AN AMERICAN LANDSCAPE (Atlantic, January 2022) , he traces the careers of Henry Hobson Richardson, who, though dead at just forty-seven, is still regarded by many as the nation's most influential architect, and of Frederick Law Olmsted, the man responsible for introducing parks to the American city. A narrative of friendship and collaboration, the book follows the two visionaries as they reimagine the American landscape during the radical changes of the post-Civil War era. The parents of two grown daughters, Hugh and wife Betsy divide their time between homes in the Hudson Valley and New Hampshire's Upper Valley. For more, see hughhoward.com.
