ABSTRACT
Among the many fields in which he excelled, Frederick Law Olmsted, as a noted journalist, travelled through the pre-Civil War Southern states from 1852 to 1856, reporting on the social abuses of apartheid to the New York Daily Times. In 1855, Olmsted became the managing editor of Putman's Monthly Magazine, and in 1866 he was to become one of the founders of The Nation, a national intellectual monthly. Olmsted also was a 'scientific' farmer, from 1844 to 1852, utilizing new agricultural methods and advancing horticultural cultivars on his successive farms at Hartford, Connecticut, and Staten Island. Olmsted's ability to make every natural feature a design asset enabled him to produce brilliant regional parks and solve many urban problems at once. In his 1894 Chicago Fair plan, Olmsted managed to create a master plan that responded perfectly to the widely divergent design philosophies of the Prairie and Classical schools of design.
