Back to All Events

Architects of an American Landscape: Richardson and Olmsted

Hosted by Glessner House, AIA Chicago, Illinois American Society of Landscape Architects | Click here for more info and a link to purchase tickets

This Zoom presentation will provide a dual portrait of America’s finest landscape designer and her first great architect, Henry Hobson Richardson – and their immense impact on America.

Olmsted is widely revered as America’s first and finest landscape architect and environmentalist, the force behind Manhattan’s Central Park, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, and the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition, as well as the preservation of Yosemite and Niagara Falls. Yet his close friend and sometime collaborator, Henry Hobson Richardson, has been almost entirely forgotten today, despite his outsized influence on American architecture–from Boston’s iconic Trinity Church to Chicago’s Glessner House and Marshall Field Wholesale Store. Individually they created much-beloved buildings and public spaces. Together they married natural landscapes with built structures in train stations and public libraries that helped drive the shift in American life from congested cities to developing suburbs across the country.

Author Hugh Howard reveals how these two men created original all-American idioms in architecture and landscape that influence how we enjoy our public and private spaces to this day.

Co-sponsored by AIA Chicago and the Illinois American Society of Landscape Architects.

The program will be recorded, and all attendees will receive a link afterwards which will remain active for seven days. $12 per person

For more about all of the great events being held around the state and beyond, visit olmsted200.org