"In partnership with Calvert Vaux, an English architect who had come to America to work with Andrew Jackson Downing, [Olmsted] won the competition (1857) for the design of New York's Central Park. Their plan in the picturesque mode excited the entire community. The immediate success of the park began a movement that in the next thirty years established large landscape-designed public open spaces in all of America's major cities. The story of Central Park is well known, but we are again reminded of its importance, origins, and effect on New York City by [this book]. Olmsted led this parks movement for the next thirty-five years, and his explanations and defenses of his park- and city-planning schemes remain pertinent and fascinating reading today. The actual landscape plans he produced are also instructive...."
—Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians