The core of the collection is the set of historic drawings from the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. It also contains copies of the complete set of Maryland-related documents in the “Olmsted Associates, 1863-1971, Records Collection” at the Library of Congress, contributed by The Friends of Maryland’s Olmsted Parks & Landscapes (FMOPL). Included in the Collection are publications on Olmsted projects by FMOPL and other sources. FMOPL acts as the curator of this collection and continues to provide intellectual access to the material. For more information on the FMOPL, please visit:

Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks and Landscapes

History
Beginning in the 1870s, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and later, the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects, profoundly reshaped the urban Maryland landscape. Olmsted Sr. designed the early suburb of Sudbrook Park, the four Mount Vernon Place parks, and consulted on other Baltimore parks during the 1870s to the early 1890s.

At the behest of the Municipal Art Society, Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects (OBLA), with Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., providing leadership for the firm, issued the 1904 Report Upon the Development of Public Grounds for Greater Baltimore, conceptualizing a park system for the Baltimore region. The Olmsted vision for Baltimore’s park system was second only to Boston’s in size and scope. During the next two decades FLO Jr. and OBLA staff members provided considerable assistance on specific park planning and land acquisition. An extensive report by the Olmsted Brothers in 1926 confirmed the 1904 recommendations to link the Gwynns Falls, Jones Falls, and Herring Run stream valleys with a wide variety of parks, parkways, and playgrounds. In many cases, the Olmsted firm assisted in the transformation of private estate grounds into public parks, such as in planning for Carroll, Clifton, Leakin, and Wyman Parks. Smaller Olmsted designed neighborhood parks include Latrobe and Riverside. OBLA added major recreation and circulation improvements to Baltimore’s earliest major parks, Druid Hill and Patterson. In addition, FLO, Jr., was instrumental in planning the reconstruction of Downtown Baltimore after the 1904 Great Fire and creating the City’s planning department.

During the first decades of the twentieth century Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., also served as landscape architect for residential communities whose development was being undertaken by the Roland Park Company. Applying principles that respected the local topography and combined privacy with appropriate linkage to surroundings, the result was the creation of residential communities like Roland Park, Guilford, and Homeland, which continue to be some of the area's most distinctive.