Teaching with Historic Places

Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses historic places in National Parks and in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom.

Here you’ll find place-based educational resources relating to Frederick Law Olmsted.

Other educational resources include our Suggested Reading List, Professional Development opportunities, and our Good Neighbors program.

 

Emerald Necklace

The Emerald Necklace: Boston's Green Connection

When landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted delivered his lecture Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1870, Boston was an overcrowded, noisy, and dirty city. Concerned with the health and happiness of Bostonians restricted to these unhealthy surroundings, the city hired Olmsted to design a park system. The series of parks he designed over the next several years is known as the Emerald Necklace. Each unique "jewel" in the Emerald Necklace—from lovely waterways to botanical gardens to peaceful meadows to tree museums—plays a vital role in linking the citizens of Boston together through nature.

View the Lesson Plan.

 

Arnold Arboretum

Boston's Arnold Arboretum: A Place for Study and Recreation

Discover how the first arboretum in the United States became part of the burgeoning urban park movement in the second half of the 19th century.

View the Lesson Plan.