Boston Flora

Tag: Community by Design

  • Wednesday, March 11, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – The Brookline Troika: Olmsted, Richardson, Sargent and the Planning of a “Model Community”

    The Massachusetts Historical Society presents The Brookline Troika: Olmsted, Richardson, Sargent and the Planning of a “Model Community” on Wednesday, March 11, at their offices at 1154 Boylston Street, with a reception at 5:30 and lecture at 6:00.  Keith Morgan, Director of Architectural Studies at Boston University is the featured speaker.

    Derived from the recently publish book, Community by Design: The Olmsted Office and the Making of Brookline, Massachusetts, this lecture will explore the close and dynamic relationship of the country’s leading landscape architect, architect, and horticulturalist in the evolution of Boston’s premier suburb. These three men lived within easy walking distance of each other in the Green Hill section of Brookline and used their private residences and landscapes as teaching and professional spaces as well. Their friendships and (occasional) conflicts informed the character of the suburban development for a community that called itself “the richest town in the world” and believed that its model was worthy of emulation.

    Keith N. Morgan is a Professor of the History of Art & Architecture and American & New England Studies at Boston University, where he has taught since 1980. He currently direct BU’s Architectural Studies Program and is a former national president of the Society of Architectural Historians. Written in collaboration with Elizabeth Hope Cushing and Roger Reed, Community by Design was published in 2013 by the University of Massachusetts Press for the Library of American Landscape History and received the Ruth Emery Prize of the Victorian Society in America.

    This series has been made possible by the generous underwriting of Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects and is cosponsored by the Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum. $10 fee (no charge for Fellows and Members of the MHS, Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Nichols House Museum.) Register online at https://dnbweb1.blackbaud.com/OPXREPHIL/EventDetail.asp?cguid=76FBBAD5-59FC-442D-8347-A5AE40DBF561&eid=50859&sid=28E3AC1C-BE75-4D62-BB6E-EC1C9D0EE6AB

  • Thursday, October 25, 6:00 pm – The Brookline Troika: Olmsted, Richardson, and the Planning of the Model Suburb

    Join The Arnold Arboretum for a glimpse into Brookline’s past — the shaping of its public parks and parkways, private estates, and planned housing developments, as influenced by the Olmsted Office. On Thursday, October 25, beginning at 6 pm, architectural historian Keith Morgan, one of three co-authors of the newly published Community by Design: The Role of the Frederick Law Olmsted Office in the Suburbanization of Brookline, Massachusetts, 1880–1936, will present a selection of the firm’s approximately 150 Brookline commissions that were created over the course of a half century. He will discuss the networks of individuals, institutions, and municipal authorities that worked with the firm on the boulevards, subdivisions, institutional grounds, and private estates that define the character and qualities of Brookline, with particular attention given to the planning theories of Olmsted, Jr. Reception to follow. The event will take place in the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum.
    Free, but registration requested at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.  Co-sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, the Friends of Fairsted, and the Library of American Landscape History.