Set against the backdrop of post-World War II America, the book explores the challenges faced by national parks as visitor numbers surged while funding stagnated. It details the launch of "Mission 66," a significant ten-year initiative aimed at revitalizing the National Park Service. With contributions from environmental and architectural historians, the narrative highlights a pivotal era in the evolution of the national park system, offering a richly illustrated account that appeals to all who appreciate these treasured landscapes.
Ethan Carr's forthcoming book, Boston's Franklin Olmsted, Recreation, and the Modern City, documents the design and history of Frederick Law Olmsted's most mature expression of urban park design. In this comprehensive study, Carr affirms Franklin Park as one of great works of nineteenth-century American art. Left unfinished when Olmsted retired in 1895, Franklin Park failed to attract visitors in large numbers until its completion in 1912, when the Franklin Park Zoo was constructed at the entrance. But during the decades following WWII, neighborhoods surrounding the park experienced “white flight.” Once it was perceived as a place used primarily by people of color, Franklin Park was all but abandoned by city officials. Consequently, the park suffered a drastic decline in both maintenance and numbers of visitors. Since the 1980s, historians have described Franklin Park as unfinished, obsolete, or a casualty of changing trends in public recreation. Carr disagrees, offering a persuasive argument that the park's decline was not a consequence of its design but of a lack of stewardship on the part of the city, an example of institutionalized racism. His book culminates with an afterword by the landscape architect Gary Hilderbrand about the Franklin Park Action Plan, a comprehensive, community-based initiative led by Reed Hilderbrand intended to galvanize and support a revitalization of the Olmsted masterpiece.
