Central New York

Cultured Wilderness and Wild Culture:

Noted landscape architect and urban planner Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., laid out Highland Park, part of one of four park systems that he designed and implemented in the US (the others are in Boston, Buffalo, and Louisville)…the park was founded as an arboretum for the display of a collection of exotic—as well as native—trees and shrubs donated by the nursery firm of Ellwanger and Barry…To an extent this is an open-air museum, illustrating a certain historic biome, which can no longer exist unaided. At the water tanks, however, there is no discernible orderliness in the arrangement or succession of imagery produced, apparently, by individuals perhaps more or less motivated by an anarchic attitude or even ideology.