Richard Guy Wilson

Shaun Eyring

Ethan Carr

This diverse new collection of essays, written by scholars, practitioners, and public-land managers, considers the history of public park design, as well as the parks themselves as repositories of cultural values. In exploring the role design has played in these public spaces, the contributors look not only at noticeably planned, often urban, landscapes such as Central Park or Boston’s Back Bay Fens but also at parks such as Yosemite with naturally occurring scenic qualities, which require less development. The essays present design as encompassing not simply a park’s appearance—its buildings and landscape features—but also its functions, how it delivers a culturally significant experience to visitors. Much park design has been fed into or organized by systems promoting preservation (the National Park Service being only the most obvious example), and many of this book’s contributors stress park design’s relationship to preservation, as Americans have become aware of a natural heritage they identify with strongly and want to experience. Other essays treat such engaging topics as European influences on early American parks, the peculiar nature of U.S. regional parks, the effect of the automobile on the outdoor recreational experience, and—in an international context—parks and national identity. ContributorsTal Alon-Mozes, Israel Institute of Technology * Catherin Bull, University of Melbourne * Theodore Catton, University of Montana * Esther da Costa Meyer, Princeton University * Timothy Davis, U.S. National Park Service * Elizabeth Flint Engle, Western Center for Historic Preservation, Grand Teton National Park * Christine Madrid French, independent scholar * Heidi Hohmann, Iowa State University * John Dixon Hunt, University of Pennsylvania * Brian Katen, Virginia Tech * Richard Longstreth, George Washington University * Neil M. Maher, New Jersey Institute of Technology * Catharina Nolin, Stockholm University * Nicole Porter, University of Nottingham * Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Foundation for Landscape Studies * Katherine Solomonson, University of Minnesota * Lucienne Thys-enocak, Koç University, Istanbul

Scenery, History, and Park Design

Public Nature

Carr delves into the planning and motivations of the people who wanted to preserve America's scenic geography. He demonstrates that by drawing on historical antecedents, landscape architects and planners carefully crafted each addition to maintain maximum picturesque wonder. Tracing the history of landscape park design from British gardens up through the city park designs of Frederick Law Olmsted, Carr places national park landscape architecture within a larger historical context.

Ethan Carr

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