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241 The origins of this book go back forty years, to the time when I was a doctoral student preparing my dissertation on the nineteenth-century architect Frederick Clarke Withers, an associate of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. In the course of my research, I met Charles Capen McLaughlin and Charles Beveridge, who together were beginning the publication of the Olmsted Papers in the Library of Congress. I can remember telling them over lunch in a Capitol Hill restaurant that I had accepted a position teaching art history at Buffalo State College. They both responded by saying that the plans Olmsted made for Buffalo were his proudest accomplishment. As a youngster, I had come many times to Buffalo with my parents to spend time with relatives who made visiting their hometown a great pleasure. I was unaware, however , of the Olmsted legacy of parks, streets, and neighborhoods that the city possessed. When I became a resident, I found that most natives were also unfamiliar with the extensive influence that Olmsted, together with Vaux and Olmsted’s sons and associates, had had in shaping the city. Nor were many people there aware of the progressive-minded civic leaders who in the late nineteenth century had endorsed the designers’ plans. Over the course of my career, I came to know and admire the achievement of which Olmsted had been so proud. Historic photographs revealed to me a city that was once as renowned for its parks and residential neighborhoods as for its industry and commerce . In addition, from time to time I would come upon towering American elms which reminded me that at Olmsted and Vaux’s command, thousands of that now depleted species once sheltered Buffalo’s thoroughfares . Certainly the investment that Buffalo’s Gilded Age generation made in parks and boulevards ranked among the earliest instances in America of large-scale civic improvement. Later generations ignored much of that investment, but important elements of it remain. This book commemorates my personal journey through the early history of the Olmsted cityscape. I hope that it will convey to both my fellow citizens and those who have yet to visit what an exemplary model of well-arranged urban life Olmsted’s Buffalo represented. I second what the playwright A. R. Gurney has said about his native city: “If you walk around town . . . you can get a sense of a century and a half of a particular kind of American life. Buffalo was, and still is, both a small town and a big city, and if you want to know what Booth Tarkington was trying to write about, or what Acknowledgments 242 Acknowledgments Charles Ives was trying to make music about, or what Fitzgerald sometimes dreamed of getting back to, go to Buffalo, because it’s all still there.” I owe many people a debt of gratitude for the generous assistance they gave me in the preparation of this book. It is with pleasure that I extend special thanks to Charles E. Beveridge, series editor of The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted; Marie Bogner, visual resource curator, Buffalo State College; Joan K. Bozer, longtime advocate for Buffalo ’s parks; Stanton Broderick, creator of the Olmsted in Buffalo website; Daniel Dilandro, college archivist, Butler Library, Buffalo State College; Brian Dold, associate landscape architect, Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy; Anne Dykstra, photographer, Niagara Power Project; Monica Pellegrino Faix, executive director, Richardson Center Corporation; Margaret Hatfield, librarian, Butler Library, Buffalo State College; Thomas Herrera-Mishler, executive director, Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy; Susan Joffe, director of public information, Buffalo Psychiatric Center; Patrick Kavanaugh, historian, Forest Lawn Cemetery; Arleyn Levee, landscape historian and preservation consultant specializing in the work of the Olmsted firm; James Mendola, MLS, collector of postcard views of Buffalo parks; Martha Neri, MLS, archives manager, Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy; Patricia O’Donnell, principal, Heritage Landscapes; Paul Pasquarello, supervisor, photographic operations, New York Power Authority; Thomas J. Riegstad, professor of English emeritus, Buffalo State College; Greg Robinson, landscape architect, Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy; Dale Rossi, collector of stereo views of Buffalo and an authority on the photographers who made them; David P. Schuyler, Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of the Humanities and professor of American studies at Franklin & Marshall College; Catherine Schweitzer, executive director, Baird Foundation; Cynthia Van Ness, librarian , Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society; Martin Wachadlo, the leading authority on Buffalo’s historic architecture; and Terry Lasher Winslow, associate librarian , local history department, Niagara Falls, N.Y., Public Library. I am particularly grateful to...

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