Olmsted Parks In New Jersey

A historic overview of the parks the Olmsted companies created in New Jersey primarily for the county park commissions in Essex, Union, and Passaic counties. Son and stepson of the creator of New York’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and John Charles Olmsted, continued with their father’s naturalistic style of landscape architecture, with 20th-century modifications, into the 1960s. Illustrated with more than 200 historic and contemporary photographs, vintage postcards, and Olmsted sketches and plans, this survey chronologically details the development of each park or reservation as it was transformed from former farmland, swamp, forest, or a previous park. Included are the gems of Branch Brook Park in Newark, Cadwalader Park in Trenton, Warinanco Park in Roselle, and Brookdale Park in Montclair and Bloomfield. Discover the Olmsted legacy in some of the most magnificent public parks in New Jersey