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The Olmsted Legacy
Gwynns Falls Trail
Think green and thank the Olmsteds as you walk along the Gwynns Falls Trail. If it weren't for the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects firm, the City of Baltimore would not be blessed with most of its large multipurpose parks, neighborhood playgrounds, boulevards, parkways, and wooded stream valleys. Hired by the Municipal Arts Society in 1903 and 1926, the Olmsteds envisioned swaths of green tempering the area's urbanization and providing places to enjoy the outdoors. Over the years the city adopted most of the plan. Today officials, civic organizations, and volunteers from all walks of life are working together to revitalize these natural preserves and complete the plan envisioned over 100 years ago.
This valley (Gwynns Falls) …has been freer from defacement by man's activities. It is considered by all who view it as one of the best bits of scenery near Baltimore-
Olmsted Report 1926.
The 1904 Olmsted Report showed Baltimore's existing parks in green and the firms proposed parklands in orange. The firm later created plans for residential developments, labeled in purple, and participated in the siting and landscaping of significant institutions such as Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
The City and the Bay:
Early ecologists, the Olmsteds recognized that water quality and quantity are directly linked to the protection of stream valleys and watersheds. Their insights laid the groundwork for Baltimore's acquisition of lands to establish parks and reservoirs. These protected lands, in turn play a role in the health of the Chesapeake Bay by providing natural buffers that filter storm water pollutants before they reach the Bay. |