Flooded and Muddy

Roofscape's garden in Boston's Fenway has been flooded since Hurricane Irene struck coastal New England a glancing blow in late August.

... Work in progress.

Olmsted's Green Ribbon . 3 | Greenways

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The Emerald Necklace consists of a dozen linked green 'jewels', its parks and parkways, which are almost contiguous. The first three - Boston Common (1634, 50 acres), the Boston Public Garden (1837, 24 acres) and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall (1865, 8.7 acres) - already existed when Olmsted was first consulted in 1875 by the Boston Parks commissioners about possible public park sites within the city. But it was his idea to link the existing and proposed parks together into one continuous greenway or Green Ribbon.

The Necklace currently comprises half of Boston's park acreage and half of the city's population of over a half million live within its watershed. But, although few people know it, a major part of it is missing. Looking at a map of the Emerald Necklace as it now exists, you'll notice that its shape is a lot more like a dogleg than a dog collar. The missing link that would have completed the Necklace was what Olmsted called the Dorchesterway in his master plan.

The Dorchesterway was to be a linear park, similar to the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, running from Franklin Park down Columbia Road in Dorchester to the Dorchester Marine Park, then continuing along the harbor via the Strandway (now William J. Day Boulevard) to Castle Island at Pleasure Bay in South Boston. This part of the plan was never implemented because Columbia Road was already very densely developed by the late 1800's. Some form of this plan may eventually come into being, which might additionally include a link from Castle Island back to Boston Common to truly complete the Necklace.

Olmsted's Green Ribbon . 2 | Greenways

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Olmsted moved with his family to Boston from Manhattan in 1883 specifically to design and manage the building of this massive civic project. To do this he established the world's first professional landscape architecture firm at Fairsted in the leafy Brookline hills.

Boston without the Emerald Necklace would be as unimaginable as New York City without Central Park - and amazingly Olmsted designed and built both of them. Central Park, his first commission, launched his career as a landscape architect in 1857 and the Emerald Necklace concluded it upon its completion in 1896, after almost 20 years of tireless work. In between he also designed and built many other parks, park systems, parkways, landscapes and planned communities around the country and in Canada.

We take as a given the parks and park systems within the cities of this country, but it wasn't always so. Boston Common, for example, was established in 1634 by the Puritans, primarily to graze cattle and hang criminals and Quakers. For 200 years the Common was the only public park within the booming city of Boston, until the creation of the Public Garden in 1837. Public parks are an invention of the modern mind, and most especially of Olmsted's.

As we see daily, Boston is a city always under construction, a work in progress, constantly reinventing, tearing down and rebuilding itself. One fairly changeless constant over the past century, however, has been the Emerald Necklace. It looks somewhat different from Olmsted's original designs, but it's still intact and if he returned today for a visit he would find its main features quite recognizable. In short, it has stood the test of time, when time has swept away so much of the American urban landscape.

... Continued from yesterday, 1/5/10. Olmsted's Green Ribbon continues tomorrow, 1/7/10.

Olmsted's Green Ribbon . 1 | Greenways

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Frederick Law Olmsted arguably did more to shape this country than any other American in our history. And shape we also mean in the literal and physical sense - by sculpting the landscape of the United States. A contemporary described his work this way.

An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes; with lawns and banks and forest covered hills; with mountain sides and ocean views.

Boston especially has been shaped by Olmsted's visionary painting. One of his last and most important projects was the Emerald Necklace, which he referred to as the Green Ribbon. The Necklace, as it's now known, is an interconnected park system stretching for 7 miles and over 1,100 acres throughout the city from bustling Boston Common out to bucolic Franklin Park in Roxbury.

... Olmsted's Green Ribbon continues tomorrow, 1/6/10.