Historical Note
Seattle’s park system was largely designed by the Olmsted Brothers
landscape architecture firm from Massachusetts. John Charles Olmsted created a
master plan in 1903 that laid out a 20-mile-long system of parks and boulevards
from Seward Park to Ravenna Park and west to Fort Lawton. Olmsted also
encouraged the creation of playgrounds throughout the city so that all
residents would have one within a half mile of their homes.
Seattle’s citizens were enthusiastic about Olmsted’s plan and passed
$3.5 million in bond measures to enhance the city’s parks. Within eight years,
Seattle’s park acreage had doubled, with the addition of such parks as Seward,
Ravenna, Leschi, and Green Lake. The Olmsted firm continued its work for the
city, and by 1937 had designed 37 parks and playgrounds, as well as the grounds
for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
Content Description
Through a grant from the King County Landmarks and Heritage Commission,
Friends of Seattle's Olmsted Parks (FSOP) gathered information on and copies of
Olmsted documents related to Seattle public projects, in an effort to make the
collection more accessible to researchers. The Seattle Municipal Archives was
one of the repositories chosen for deposit of the materials.
Included in the collection are copies of some of the Olmsted plans for
selected parks, including: Lincoln (on Capitol Hill), Washington Park, Cowen,
and Schmitz parks. A guide in the repository contains a plan inventory index,
showing locations of drawings at the Department of Parks and Recreation, the
Seattle Municipal Archives, and the University of Washington. The drawings were
copied from the originals at the Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline,
also known as Fairsted. Color slides were also taken of additional plans; these
have not yet been deposited at the Seattle and researchers should contact FSOP
directly at seattleolm@aol.com.
Three reels of microfilm from the Records of the Olmsted Associates
(Mss. 20,112.2) from the Library of Congress form part of the collection as
well. Reels 95, 96 and 97 contain job files for work in Seattle which includes
correspondence, memoranda, trip reports, and other material. The guide indexes
the reels to specific parks and job numbers. For a complete listing and index
of all the microfilm reels, go to the Library of Congress online catalog at
http://catalog.loc.gov/ and search for "Olmsted Associates."
The guide to the FSOP collection also contains photocopies of the
Olmsted Plan Index Cards created for each plan or drawing listing date,
draftsman, plan number, and other information. Photocopies of the Fairsted Plan
Inventory, listing plans related to each job number, for a portion of the
collection at Fairsted are also included in the Guide.
