After beginning his career as an architect in London, Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) came to the Hudson River valley in 1850 at the invitation of Andrew Jackson Downing, the reform-minded writer on houses and gardens. As Downing's partner, and after Downing's death in 1852, Vaux designed country and suburban dwellings that were remarkable for their well-conceived plans and their sensitive rapport with nature.
By 1857, the year he published his book Villas and Cottages, Vaux had moved to New York City. There he asked Frederick Law Olmsted to join him in preparing a design for Central...

Samuel Parsons Jr. (1844-1923) was one of the most well known names in the field of landscape design in the early twentieth century. A protege of Calvert Vaux, Parsons worked with the architect until Vaux's death in 1895. As superintendent of planting in Central Park and landscape architect to the City of New York for nearly thirty years, Parsons was, until his resignation in 1911, the last direct link in the city to the ideals of Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. The most widely read of Parsons's several books, The Art of Landscape Architecture (1915) was an affectionate summing up of the...

After beginning his career as an architect in London, Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) came to the Hudson River valley in 1850 at the invitation of Andrew Jackson Downing, the reform-minded writer on houses and gardens. As Downing's partner, and after Downing's death in 1852, Vaux designed country and suburban dwellings that were remarkable for their well-conceived plans and their sensitive rapport with nature.
By 1857, the year he published his book Villas and Cottages, Vaux had moved to New York City. There he asked Frederick Law Olmsted to join him in preparing a design for Central...