In celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted in 2022, this 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.