Top 10 Shapers of the American Landscape

Here is the list of Top 10 Shapers that I am presenting in EDA listed in alphabetic order. For comparison purposes I have linked each one to its entry in Wikipedia, but these are not definitive descriptions. And the Top 10 Shapers tag at the end will find you a few other interesting links...

Daniel Burnham

Andrew Jackson Downing

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Herbert Hoover

Thomas Jefferson

William J. Levitt

Robert Moses

 

John Muir

Frederick Law Olmsted

Gifford Pinchot

Robert Moses bio pic

If Oliver Stone make HBO's Robert Moses movie, who will he cast in the lead?
h/t Kevin B

2010 Top 10 Shapers of the American Landscape

Here is the list of Top 10 Shapers that I am presenting in EDA listed in alphabetic order. For comparison purposes I have linked each one to its entry in Wikipedia, but these are not definitive descriptions. And the Top 10 Shapers tag at the end will find you a few other interesting links...

Daniel Burnham

Andrew Jackson Downing

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Herbert Hoover

Thomas Jefferson

William J. Levitt

Robert Moses

John Muir

Frederick Law Olmsted

Gifford Pinchot

The big mover this year is William J. Levitt.  Among other things, there have been 2 notable Levittown books in the last 18 months, one a collection of essays on the Bucks County Levittown while the other is linked to a notable moment in race relations. A Levittown ad was also featured this year in Lapham's Quarterly.

End of the year Top 10 lists

So, to celebrate the end of the year and the end of the decade, many in the media are publishing their lists of Top 10 movies, or news stories, or books. A simple example would be Stephen Holden's Top 10 films of the year. He doesn't expect you to completely agree, and he probably would change it slightly by February or June, but it is a nice place to begin. Roger Ebert had to resort to 2 different lists this year. Time Magazine has a list of the Top 10 of Everything.

In our field, Arch News Now published their list of the Best Architecture Books of 2009. Daily Dose of Architecture posted their favorite posts of the year.

I've already offered my Top 10 Shapers of the America Landscape, but over the next few days we'll celebrate the change of year with our own Top 10 or Top 5 lists. In this case you should remember that "Top" is a construct that doesn't necessarily mean best or most outstanding. It can mean most notable, most biggest. Or it can just mean top. Don't read too much into it. If all that isn't enough you could just check out the List of Lists.

2009 Top 10 Shapers of the American Landscape

Here is the list of Top 10 Shapers that I am presenting in EDA listed in alphabetic order. For comparison purposes I have linked each one to its entry in Wikipedia, but these are not definitive descriptions. And the Top 10 Shapers tag at the end will find you a few other interesting links...

Daniel Burnham

Andrew Jackson Downing

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Herbert Hoover

Thomas Jefferson

William J. Levitt

Robert Moses

John Muir

Frederick Law Olmsted

Gifford Pinchot

PlaNetizen's Top 100 Urban Thinkers

PlaNetizen went all Web 2.0 and had readers vote on the top 100 urban thinkers. For each one they have a separate brief web page that gives a bio. While it is nice to see oldie but goodies like John Nolen, Vitruvius and Patrick Geddes still getting their props, it is certainly interesting to see how contemporaries like Prince Charles, Andres Duany, or Christopher B. Leinberger stack up. (the Brooks Institute is well represented) All in all, it says as much about the readers as it does the people on the list.

I was particularlyhapp to see that the readers were moderately International in the voting including some early German and Australian thinkers as well as a personal favorite, Ildefonso Cerdá Suñer.

Boston from above

Olmsted's World's End:

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Maritime Park and Ned's Park

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MVV's Children's Museum


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Peter Walker's Tanner Fuontain


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Public Garden and Boston Common


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Christopher Columbus Park


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Christian Science Plaza


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What made Burnham's plan work

As promised, the centennial of the Burnham plan for Chicago has brought lots of new commentary and reporting on the plan. Continuing the celebration, Urbanophile has written up an 8-point list of what made Brunham's plan work.

Public Land Survey System

When I described Thomas Jefferson's Public Land Survey System in EDA on Friday, I was reminded how new this is to New Jersey students who've spent very little time in the Midwest.

Not only did I find a link to the official-sounding description of the PLSS from the National Atlas, but I also found a few images that highlight the degree to which Jefferson's system really does continue to shape a significant portion of the American landscape today.

Olmsted's Buffalo

The Sunday NY Times Arts Section included an examination of the historic architecture of Buffalo, NY and how it is both underappreciated and threatened. While Frank Lloyd Wright gets the most play in the piece, Frederick Law Olmsted is featured too:

In Buffalo he realized an even grander ambition, creating a vast network of parks and parkways that he hoped would have “a civilizing effect” on the “dangerous classes” populating the American city. Flanked by rows of elm trees, the parkways were broken up by a series of gorgeous landscaped roundabouts, slowing the city’s rhythms of movement into something more majestic yet distinctly democratic.

The online version includes a slideshow that begins with an Olmsted parkway but leads on to include a great building by Burnham. It is almost as if the NY Times is endorsing my list.

The 2008 Top Ten Shapers of the American Landscape

Here is the list of Top 10 Shapers that I am presenting in EDA listed in alphabetic order. For comparison purposes I have linked each one to its entry in Wikipedia, but these are not definitive descriptions. And the Top 10 Shapers tag at the end will find you a few other interesting links...

Daniel Burnham

Andrew Jackson Downing

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Herbert Hoover

Thomas Jefferson

William J. Levitt

Robert Moses

John Muir

Frederick Law Olmsted

Gifford Pinchot

John Muir c.1900

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can read John Muir's 1900 essay on The Forests of the Yosemite Park in Atlantic Monthly. Much of it is timeless, although the mention of "the lately established system of parks and reservations" sets you back a little. And he writes about a visit from Mr. Emerson, which would have been quite the experience. He eventually visited Emerson's home turf:

But there remained many a forest to wander through, many a mountain and glacier to cross, before I was to see his Wachusett and Monadnock, Boston and Concord. It was seventeen years after our parting on the Wawona ridge that I stood beside his grave under a pine tree on the hill above Sleepy Hollow. He had gone to higher Sierras, and, as I fancied, was again waving his hand in friendly recognition.

Levitt's gift horse for New Jersey

As the "inventor" of Levittown, William J. Levitt helped America discover sprawl. He gave the Garden State the third Levittown in the country, which is now 50 years old. It helped relieve housing pressures, but it also helped gobble up farmland. Like it or not, these development patterns started in Levittowns like Willingsboro, NJ and have emanated out to much of the country. That is why he is one of the Top 10 Shapers of the American Landscape.

The original Olmsted map of Central Park

For a limited time you can see FL Olmsted's original 1858 winning Greensward Plan for Central Park. It is on display at the Arsenal in New York.

Levittowns revisited

In my lecture on the Top 10 Shapers of the American Landscape, I talk a little about the Levittowns and their impact on American suburbia. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of Levittown NY, Joel Kotkin looks back at the Levittowns, fairly fondly, and reflects on their contribution and where they have ended up.

Today's Levittown, N.Y., is still only 10% nonwhite, but Willingboro, N.J., another Levittown development (in the Philadelphia suburbs), is now majority black. Indeed, more than one in four suburbanites nationwide is a minority-group member. Along with immigrants and their offspring, African-Americans have been consistently moving to the suburbs; the percentage of blacks living in the periphery has risen to well over one in three.