Landscape Gardens on the Hudson, A History

by Robert M. Toole

Landscape Gardens on the Hudson is a new look at the 19th-century American golden age of grand designs and great estates, and features the designed historic landscapes of New York's Hudson River Valley including Hyde Park (Vanderbilt), Sunnyside, Olana, Clermont, Lyndhurst, Montgomery Place, Locust Grove, Wilderstein, Springside, Idlewild, Blithewood, Millbrook, Kenwood, The Point, Philipse Manor, Van Cortlandt Manor, and The Pastures (Schuyler Mansion). The Hudson Valley's role in the mid-1800s as the birthplace of American landscape architecture is explored through the romantically designed grounds of the valley's historic estates and the works of the father of American landscape design, Hudson Valley native Andrew Jackson Downing. Downing was a Hudson Valley native and America's leading landscape gardener in the antebellum years. His protégé, Calvert Vaux, coined the term landscape architect and later teamed with Frederick Olmsted on the design of Central Park (1858), a triumph of romantic landscape design and the inspiration for nearly every American public park created in the subsequent 150 years. Landscape gardening is a hidden but unequaled historic resource along the Hudson River, exhibiting some of the most significant designed 19th-century landscapes in America. Landscape Gardens on the Hudson is the first comprehensive study of the development of these landscapes and the important role they played in the cultural underpinnings of the young United States a legacy that continues today with the design of America's urban parks and nearly every rural or suburban home. The text is illustrated with over 140 period and contemporary images, including plans, photographs, bird's-eye views, paintings and engravings, many in color.

Genres: History

192 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2010