CALL FOR PAPERS!Symposium: Situating the Residential Projects of the Olmsted Firm
October 20 - 21, 2022
Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Oyster Bay, NY
In October 2022,
Planting Fields Foundation will host a major two-day symposium bringing together experts in the fields of landscape architecture history and practice to examine the understudied residential projects of the Olmsted firm, spanning from 1857 to 1979. Organized in conjunction with
Olmsted 200, an initiative of the National Association for Olmsted Parks and partners across the nation to mark the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, the symposium will shed light on and contribute to Olmsted's living legacy. Participants will have the opportunity to explore Planting Fields, a 409-acre extant Olmsted Brothers designed landscape and now a New York State Historic Park, as well as private Olmsted-designed properties not open to the public.
We are currently seeking proposals for presentations.
With an emphasis on the Olmsted firm's work on domestic spaces and private estates, we are calling for papers that consider the following themes:
- Patronage, taste-making, and place-making for a private context
- American landscapes and their evocation of European precedents
- The English landscape tradition and its influences on private Olmsted firm-designed properties
- Impact of the Olmsted firm on residential landscape design
- Landscape design on Long Island
- Intersection of domestic architecture and landscape design
- Adaptations of private residential gardens into public sites
- Historical positioning of the similarities and differences between Olmsted Sr. and Olmsted Brothers landscape designs and theories
- Issues of sustainability in the preservation and restoration of historic designed landscapes
- Theoretical methodologies and decision-making models for recapturing and sustaining historic landscapes
Please send a one-page abstract, CV and Bio to
research@plantingfields.org by
August 1, 2021. Submissions will be reviewed by an external committee of landscape historians.
About Planting Fields FoundationPlanting Fields Foundation strives to preserve and make relevant to all audiences the heritage of Planting Fields, an early 20th century 409-acre estate, designed as an integrated composition of the built and natural world. Founded in 1952 by William R. Coe, an English immigrant, the Foundation is a not-for-profit public educational foundation chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. Located in Oyster Bay, New York and originally landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers firm, the grounds feature 409 acres of greenhouses, rolling lawns, formal gardens, woodland trails, and outstanding plant collections. The original historic estate buildings remain
intact including Coe Hall, a 65-room Tudor Revival house designed by the architectural firm Walker & Gillette. The interior of the house is a showcase of artistry and craftsmanship and features a distinctly American aesthetic through original ironwork commissions by Samuel Yellin and murals painted by artists Robert Winthrop Chanler and Everett Shinn. Planting Fields is on the National Register of Historic Places. To learn more about Planting Fields Foundation, please visit our website at
www.plantingfields.org.
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Meredith A. Brown
Director of Museum Affairs and Chief Curator
Planting Fields Foundation
Oyster Bay NY
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