Parks and Consequences—Hidden Histories of Olmsted Parks Tradition, from New York to Portland

Monday, March 14, 6PM on Zoom
and in-person at Steeplejack Brewing Company, 2400 NE Broadway

Portland Parks Foundation is hosting our first live event since 2019 inside the beautiful architecture of a former 1906 Unitarian Universalist Church-turned-brewery as two of Portland's most accomplished historians probe Frederick Law Olmsted's design and creation of Central Park in New York and John Charles Olmsted's 1903 parks plan for Portland.

The brilliance, beauty, and ecological influence of the two Olmsted's visionary work continue to be enjoyed, but they've come with other impacts: displacement of previously settled populations, exclusionary zoning, practices in design, and sanctioned parks activities. We'll look at the successes, the myths, and the influences, intended and not, in both cities and the larger American parks tradition.

Catherine McNeur, is professor of history, PSU, and author of Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City. Carl Abbott, emeritus professor of urban studies and planning, PSU, is author of Portland in Three Centuries and many other books about Portland.

Thank you for joining us in our programming experiment: Parks and Consequences—Hidden Histories of Olmsted Parks Tradition, from New York to Portland!

• Our first live event since 2019

• A new venue

• Our first hybrid live/Zoom event

We are truly grateful to our speakers Catherine McNeur professor of history, PSU, and author of Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City, and Carl Abbot, emeritus professor of urban studies and planning, PSU, and author of Portland in Three Centuries and many other books about Portland.

And special thanks to our presenting sponsor U.S. Bank and all the attendees who donated at registration!

Lastly, a correction:
As moderator, I mistakenly stated that Portland's first Parks Board members were "developers." They were, in fact, Mayor George Williams (Chairman, and variously, a lawyer and judge), Ion Lewis (architect), J.D. Meyer (a "Common City Councilor"), T.L. Eliot (Minister, Unitarian Church), and L.L. Hawkins (banker). My larger point was that Olmsted hoped that his proposed parks would be kept out of public eye so as to not spark land speculation. But in Portland, as in many cities, that wish was not fulfilled. The Oregonian published the plan soon after it was completed as the city was about to expand several-fold in private development. Meantime, Olmsted went on to work for a number of private clients, several of whom were developers. Apologies for the mistake! -- Randy Gragg, Executive Director

If you enjoyed this talk, check out our upcoming Green Dreams Lecture:

• March 28 on Zoom or live at Steeplejack Brewing Co. Beyond Recreation: Climate, Social Justice, and the Urban Landscape Ahead. Get tickets here

Presented by,

Greening Democracy: Frederick Law Olmsted, Slavery, & American Park Design with Sara Zwede

Monday, March 7 at 6pm, Zoom.
Please note: this event is live only and will not be recorded.

Frederick Law Olmsted is best known as America’s most influential public park designer. He and his firm developed parks for countless cities across the continent, from NYC's Central Park to Portland's earliest park system. But to landscape designer Sara Zewde, Olmsted helped shape democracy through his parks, and that began with his travels through, and writing on, the southern Cotton Kingdom. His widely read journalism and books helped galvanize the northern states against slavery before the Civil War.

Historians typically portray Olmsted’s journalism and landscape design as distinct chapters of his career. But to Zewde, landscape architect and professor of landscape design at Harvard University, Olmsted was simply working at “different scales” in a larger project of American social reform. His thinking, she says, encompassed everything from the “national state of democracy to what that means for a path in the park.” In the summer of 2019, Zewde retraced Olmsted’s steps to understand how his travels and observations led to the formation of landscape architecture as we know it today. She will share her research and how she applies Olmsted’s principles in her own award-winning park designs.

During the Q&A Sara Zewde recommended these three books.

• The Park and the People: A History of Central Park by Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig

• River of Dark Dreams by Walter Johnson

• Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy Transforming Nature in Early New England by Strother E. Roberts

And special thanks to our presenting sponsor U.S. Bank, to GreenWorks, and all the attendees who donated at registration!

Presented by,

What do city council candidates have to say about our parks?

We shape our city council, and afterwards our city council shapes us.

In May Portlanders will cast their first votes to reshape City Hall. With three open spots on
City Council, there’s a lot at stake. The Portland Parks Foundation wanted to provide a forum for Portlanders to learn our candidates’ views on parks, open space and urban design. With so many candidates, we needed a way to narrow the field, so we asked each candidate to submit responses to a series of questions. A jury of Parks Foundation and Portland Parks Board members scored the answers—with the candidate names hidden.

We invited the top eight scorers to participate in our e-forum on April 20, 2020. Watch a recording of the forum below. Thank you to the candidates for participating in both the Q&A and the e-forum.

Although we couldn’t include all of the candidates in the e-forum on April 20, we are able to provide their full responses to the series of questions we asked each of them.