Last updated: May 24, 2024
Place
Boston and Albany Railroad
Olmsted Archives, Job #00647, Boston, MA
Quick Facts
Before his work in the City Beautiful movement, Frederick Law Olmsted would first take part in the Railroad Beautiful movement, and the challenges a landscape architect faces when designing for those viewing their landscape from a train.
Olmsted would get to tackle those challenges in the 1880s, when the Boston and Albany Railroad hired him to design the grounds for several stations, and work with B&A to establish a landscape beautification program for other stations.
Work for the B&A Railroad would provide Olmsted the opportunity to work on train stations and their grounds with several friends: H.H. Richardson and Charles Sprague Sargent. Olmsted had already worked closely with Sargent on the design of the Arnold Arboretum, and was a good friend of Richardson’s. Another connection was that Sargent had been serving on the Board of Trustees for B&A since the 1860s and had been a Harvard classmate of Richardson.
Before Richardson’s death at the age of forty-seven, he had completed nine stations. His successor firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge completed another twenty-three. Of the Olmsted/Richardson collaboration, Wellesley Farms is their best surviving example. An entrance drive curving around a tranquil pond, ornamented with red oaks, white pines, forsythia and rhododendrons.
Source: "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-1894," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online
Olmsted Archives on Flickr
Olmsted would get to tackle those challenges in the 1880s, when the Boston and Albany Railroad hired him to design the grounds for several stations, and work with B&A to establish a landscape beautification program for other stations.
Work for the B&A Railroad would provide Olmsted the opportunity to work on train stations and their grounds with several friends: H.H. Richardson and Charles Sprague Sargent. Olmsted had already worked closely with Sargent on the design of the Arnold Arboretum, and was a good friend of Richardson’s. Another connection was that Sargent had been serving on the Board of Trustees for B&A since the 1860s and had been a Harvard classmate of Richardson.
Before Richardson’s death at the age of forty-seven, he had completed nine stations. His successor firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge completed another twenty-three. Of the Olmsted/Richardson collaboration, Wellesley Farms is their best surviving example. An entrance drive curving around a tranquil pond, ornamented with red oaks, white pines, forsythia and rhododendrons.
Source: "Architecture for the Boston & Albany Railroad: 1881-1894," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online
Olmsted Archives on Flickr