Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for designing Central Park Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, is regarded as the pioneer of modern landscape architecture.
The Olmsted firm went on to design over 6,000 landscapes in North America under general guiding principles of creating accessible green spaces and preserving nature. A colleague of the Olmsted brothers, Emanuel Mische, went on to become the Portland Parks Superintendent in 1908 and had a hand in designing Laurelhurst, Sellwood, Kenilworth, Peninsula and Washington parks in Portland under the Olmsted school of thought.
This year’s annual Olmsted Conference, which is taking place in Portland, is focused on the theme of sustaining public landscapes. Sue Brietkopf, president of the Olmsted Network, and Jim Sjulin, longtime Portland Parks employee and board member of the 40-Mile-Loop Land Trust, both join us to discuss how this rich history and legacy of landscape architecture overlaps with Oregon’s green spaces.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for designing Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, is regarded as a pioneer of modern landscape architecture in this country. The Olmsted firm designed over 6,000 landscapes in North America and its influence went well beyond that. A colleague of the Olmsted brothers had a hand in designing some of Portland’s most iconic parks.The Olmsted Network, which champions these parks and what they stand for, is holding its annual conference in Portland later this week and weekend. Sue Brietkoph is the president of the Olmsted Network. Jim Sjulin was a longtime Portland Parks employee for nearly 30 years. He is a board member of the 40-Mile-Loop Land Trust. Welcome to both of you.
Jim Sjulin: Thank you for having us.
Sue Brietkoph: Thank you.
Miller: Sue, I want to start with the basics. What should all of us know about Frederick Law Olmsted?
Brietkoph: Well, he was very much the father of landscape architecture. It was not a thing before he got into it. So, he was working as the superintendent for Central Park in New York City, and Calvert Vaux was somebody who was interested in joining this competition for the design of the park. And Olmsted at first was like, “No, no, no, I’m not going to do that.” But Vaux was insistent and kept coming at him. And it turns out he was 40 years old, he had done many other things before, but at that point he launched himself into this whole career and he trained his two sons to also be in that line of work. And so, when he retired, his sons took over as the Olmsted Brothers firm, and then Emanuel Mische – who we’ll talk about in a little bit – was one of the partners in the firm and continued the work.
Miller: What does it mean to say that he created landscape architecture? Because we’re talking about somebody, what, 130 or so years ago, obviously there had been parks of various kinds, I mean, grassy places, places where humans could hang out together, in private spaces a lot, but also I think in some public areas. So what does it mean to say that not that long ago he invented this?
Brietkoph: Yeah, I mean, there was garden design, obviously, but when I say that he was 40 when he started this venture, he had done many things beforehand. He had been a farmer in Staten Island. He was at the founding of the Red Cross, like what was sanitation. And he also did a six-month trek through Europe where, outside of Liverpool, England, there was a park, Birkenhead. This was a new thing, where this was a park for everybody. It wasn’t just for the elite. So there was garden design. There were definitely things being designed, but the concept of landscape architecture and that parks are for all people was new.
Miller: And that is a key thing here, public parks for the masses, and for everybody, for rich people, poor people, to hang out together. Jim, can you give us a sense for what’s distinctive about an Olmsted design? What were the hallmarks of the parks that he created?
Sjulin: Well, I think in a word, it’s the naturalistic kind of style that he had, and he did pass that on to his sons and also to Emanuel Mische. We can see that style very clearly at Laurelhurst Park here in Portland, where the paths are curved and one space opens up into another for a different feel, a different experience. And generally, in a lot of the parks designed by Emanuel Mische, there’s a perimeter landscape with shrubbery that kind of pulls you away from the surrounding traffic and sounds and sights of the city. So you feel like you can really escape into this landscape that is man-made but it feels naturalistic and it feels like you’re someplace
else.
Miller: You zoom straight towards this man, Emanuel Mische. Who was he, and can you help us further understand the connections that Sue is making between Emanuel Mische and the Olmsted family?
Sjulin: So, Emanuel Mische, I think, first and foremost was a real plant geek. He was trained at the Missouri Botanic Garden in St. Louis, and then he got to spend some time, I don’t know, some form of a scholarship, at Kew Gardens outside of London. There’s no better place to go, both here in the U.S. and abroad, to receive a very broad understanding of plants from all over the place. And so he was that, and he was highly regarded in the firm as the go-to person for horticulture.
Miller: In the Olmsted Firm.
Sjulin: In the Olmsted firm, and then he certainly picked up drafting skills of some sort working alongside landscape architects in the firm. So by the time he came to Portland, he was well equipped.
Miller: He was a parks commissioner here?
Sjulin: He was the executive, the names and titles have changed over time. We call them directors now. He was park superintendent, I think.
Miller: So he ran Portland Parks.
Sjulin: He did.
Miller: But at a time when Portland Parks, when he arrived, based on the list of the parks that he had a hand in creating, it was a much smaller park system than we know today. So what parks did he either create or have a hand in creating that we know today?
Sjulin: Well, Laurelhurst has already been mentioned, Mount Tabor, Peninsula Park, Kenilworth Park, the Rose Gardens and Circle at Ladd’s Circle, Sellwood Park. He had a hand in Washington Park design. He wasn’t the only designer there. And he had a hand in Columbia Park design as well.
Miller: Am I right, he also had a hand in the Wildwood Trail of Forest Park?
Sjulin: John Charles Olmsted, who was in Portland beginning in 1903 and developed a plan for the park system, actually had in mind a park system that was interconnected with parkways and boulevards; and one of the parkways that he envisioned was a parkway that ran off into the Northwest Hills, and we enjoy that.
Actually, I think the plan, as I was reading the plan again, really only thought that they would get a mile or so into the forest, but he did recommend that the city set aside a primeval forest on the east face of the Tualatin Mountain, which we all know and enjoy today as Forest Park. Did he imagine that Leif Erikson Drive would go 11 miles? I think he would be very pleased if he came back to Portland to see what we’ve done.
Miller: But just to go back to that list you mentioned, I mean, the incomplete version of it includes Laurelhurst, Peninsula, Mount Tabor, Sellwood, and others. It’s really hard to imagine Portland without Emanuel Miche’s contributions.
Sjulin: That’s exactly right.
Miller: I mean, people say that about Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City. Can you imagine New York City without Frederick Law Olmsted or these parks, but I feel like you could easily say that about Emanuel Mische in Portland. It’s just as fair.
Sjulin: I think so, absolutely. And he recommended some things that – well, excuse me, here again I’m doing it – John Charles Olmsted recommended some things…
Brietkoph: You forget John Charles!
Sjulin: I know! John Charles…
Miller: Who is John Charles Olmsted?
Sjulin: OK, do you want me? Go ahead...
Brietkoph: He’s the eldest brother of the Olmsted brothers. There was Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. who was younger, about fifteen years younger, and John Charles, who came, as Jim said, in 1903 to Portland and envisioned how the city would be. And not all of it, most of it didn’t come to fruition.
Sjulin: He wrote the plan.
Miller: Oh, and he wrote a plan that you have a copy of it right here.
Sjulin: For your viewers.
Miller: What was his vision for Portland?
Sjulin: Well, clearly, John Charles Olmsted was impressed, gobsmacked maybe, by the Portland landscape at the time.The river running through the city, the steep lands on the west side of the city, the rivers, many of them had not been put in concrete tubes. So Balch Creek ran all the way into Giles Lake, for example.Tanner Creek ran into downtown Portland. So he saw all of this and he saw opportunities for parks in key situations. He saw the opportunities for all these parkways that would connect the parks, and he really believed that a park system was manifestly more valuable and useful if they were connected by parkways.
So, not everything happened, because of lack of money, and Portland was growing like gangbusters at the time, the price of land went up. But the voters did pass a bond measure in 1907, and in 1909, a whole bunch of parks were purchased, including Peninsula, Laurelhurst, Kenilworth, and Sellwood Parks, just to name four.
Miller: Sue, why do you think that the Olmsted’s vision for parks has held up?
Brietkoph: That is a great question… and if they didn’t, then I’d be out of a job, so there’s definitely that part. But I think they are enduring landscapes because it’s the idea of being ensconced in nature.You are completely submerged when you’re in parts of an Olmsted landscape.They’re places for people to gather. They’re hallmarks of democracy because they’re a place where people can gather for protest or for conversation, to come together. And as we were talking about before, the idea of parks for all people, that they were where people can mix with those other than themselves.
So there’s that piece, and then the actual design of them is just incredibly striking.You don’t have a lot of straight lines. Everything is curvilinear. There’s a lot of hide and then reveal, almost rooms set up in different landscapes so that you can have a more private experience in this public space.
Miller: We’ve talked about some of the most famous parks. Are there spaces in the portfolio that might surprise people?
Brietkoph: It’s kind of amazing, you mentioned at the start that there are 6,000 designs. Not all of them came to fruition, but with 4,000 having come to fruition in some way, shape or form, you start to see Olmsted everywhere. I live in Washington D.C., and I was driving to the airport a few days ago, and along the George Washington Parkway, which is in Virginia, I look over and, I’m like, this looks very Olmsted-y, you know, and I looked it up because I hadn’t been familiar with it, and it is. The trees were very large and it was a parkway designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. The trees were large and spread out, there’s just a vast green space. It was just very calming to look out over it and it’s just like that vibe.
Miller: I also wonder if, at this point, a number of generations on, they’ve trained us in terms of… I mean, people clearly responded at the time, but I wonder if now, as Americans, we see these landscapes and they scream, “wonderful park” to us because they have defined parks for so many of us.
Brietkoph: You’re right. And even beyond those 4,000 landscapes there was the Olmsted influence over landscape architecture, it’s just kind of undisputed. So, yes, there are different ways that things have happened over time, but that is American landscape.
Miller: I wanna turn, Jim, to what you were talking about earlier. That the idea from one of the sons who came here and said, “We should have all these parks and they should be connected.” Is that different from the 40-Mile-Loop Land Trust for which you’re a board member? Is that the same basic idea?
Sjulin: It is the same basic idea. And in fact, what happened was that in the late ‘70s there was a meeting in Portland, several meetings, I believe, convened by Oregon State Parks, who was concerned because of the fuel shortage and expensive or non-existent, not enough gasoline to go around… that there was a need to have parks, local parks, accessible parks, parks that people could get to, because people weren’t going out in the state as much at the time. So this group of people had, again, I think a short series of meetings, but our former parks director brought in the Olmsted plan of 1903, and he said, “Look at this.” And so that was really the inspiration for the creation of the 40-Mile-Loop.
The 40-Mile-Loop is a 150-mile-long system that connects Portland with Gresham, with Troutdale, and with Fairview, and even goes through a bit of Milwaukie, as well, but 150 miles. So, we’re 70% done with what’s funded with the 150-mile-long system. The Olmsted Parkway System didn’t fare quite as well, because, again, Portland was developing very rapidly, and he didn’t have the support he needed from maybe the development community or politicians to actually knit that parkway system together completely.
Miller: Sue, when you look nationwide at all of these Olmsted designed or influenced parks, the members of your organization or coalition, what do you see as the biggest challenges that come up over and over in 2026?
Brietkoph: It’s interesting, because it is the same thing, from the Central Park Conservancy, which is probably the largest annual operating budget of all of the conservancies and friends groups we work with, down to a little all-volunteer-run friends group. It is labor issues, funding is a huge one, encroachment has been, since the history of parks, an issue.
Miller: Encroachment meaning nibbling at the edges?
Brietkoph: Exactly, exactly. Or, in a linear park system, like in Boston, this isn’t happening exactly in Boston, but taking one of the parks in a linear park system.
Miller: The Emerald Necklace.
Brietkoph: The Emerald Necklace, yes, in Boston. So the issue that we’ve had there is that in Franklin Park, on one side, the city is determined to build a professional women’s soccer stadium on that side of the park, and I love women’s soccer. I don’t have a problem with that. The problem that I have is that it cuts off access to that park. So the footprint of it, there was an existing stadium that was torn down that was mostly used by the Boston Public Schools. And to build this larger soccer stadium with a footprint that includes restaurants, bars, T-shirt shops, what have you, it will cut off access for a primarily immigrant community of color. And the parks are so directly correlated with health, mental health, with economic mobility, with economic impact, so you’re kind of destroying that for this neighborhood.
Miller: It’s interesting, because, Jim, what Sue was talking about there, is in a sense, if I understand correctly, a kind of the economic or governmental push to go in the exact opposite direction that you’re trying to go, with the 40-Mile-Loop.You’re trying to get more land preserved, or more connectivity. And Sue is talking about the nationwide challenge of maintaining the connectivity that’s already there. What’s your overall pitch to people, whether in the Portland metro region or around the country, for why connectivity is so important?
Sjulin: Well, for one, wouldn’t it be great if our own Marine Drive Trail were completed? We’re close, but we still have important gaps. Recently we’ve closed some of those gaps, and I think people are starting to see what Marine Drive Trail could be, as an example. So for us, it’s preserving the opportunity to acquire those gaps and make the system complete. So much more valuable if there’s a consistency to the system, so that you don’t have to worry about going on street at Marine Drive, for example,
Miller: And just briefly, we have 30 seconds left. You have all these parks people coming from all around the country soon. What are you as a Portlander most excited to show these people of your city?
Sjulin: Well, I want to make sure that they see the niche designed parks. I want to make sure they see Terwilliger Parkway. I want to make sure that they see that we’ve preserved green spaces alongside Johnson Creek, and I’d love to show them 40-Mile-Loop. Too much to do in a three-day conference.
Miller: And make sure that they have their raincoats as well, because the rain is coming.
Sjulin: No.
Miller: Jim and Sue, thanks very much.
Brietkoph: Thank you.
Sjulin: OK, thank you very much.
Miller: Jim Sjulin is a board member of the 40-Mile-Loop Land Trust. Sue Brietkoph, president of the Olmsted Network.
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