Guns and Green Spaces: Frederick Law Olmsted's Impact on Kansas
City In his new book, Genius of Place, biographer Justin Martin
says that Frederick Law Olmsted “may well be the most important
American historical figure that the average person knows least
about.” If the average person, indeed, knows him at all, it’s
most likely for Olmsted’s famous design of New York’s Central
Park or possibly the U.S. Capitol Grounds. But as Martin, a
former Kansas Citian, shows, there was a lot more to Olmsted
than his green grounds. “Fred-Law” (as his family sometimes
called him) was born in Hartford, Conn., in 1822 – a time when
Missouri was the westernmost state and middle names were fairly
uncommon. The first three decades of his life would take him
through a series of wildly divergent and fascinating careers
before he more or less fell into the role of America’s premier
landscape architect. This Wednesday, September 7, 2011, at the
Central Library, Martin returns to Kansas City to discuss not
only Olmsted’s impact on th