Francis R. Kowsky

You can learn a lot about a city from its relationship to its park system. Spending a lot of time in Buffalo as a child gave me an appreciation for the city, especially its parks, yet I had no idea that most of the largest ones were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, who also designed New York City's Central Park. Kowsky presents a great history of how Buffalo came to punch above its weight in the parks department, taking advantage of its radial grid system to allocate enough land to give Buffalo a world-class park system for its time. There's good digressions into the philosophy of park-building, some discussion of how parks factored into ethnic tensions (how would parks be used by those rowdy beer-drinking Germans?), and a frank overview of the inherent compromises involved in constructing these tableaus of tamed nature. Recommended to anyone who's spent any time in Delaware Park, or who appreciates the history of public spaces in the 19th century, or is interested in Olmstead's career.… (mere)