Last updated: June 5, 2024
Place
Camp Blanding
Olmsted Archives
Quick Facts
Location:
Stark, FL
Significance:
Olmsted Designed Residential Institution
MANAGED BY:
In 1917, after realizing how unprepared the U.S. was to train hundreds of soldiers needed for a world war, the government created the Committee of Emergency Construction. The Committee, which would chart the course for all war-related construction that would follow, was joined by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
The Committee’s main responsibility was selecting sites, plans, and contractors to erect training facilities for the U.S. military. With the help of civilian engineers recruited by Olmsted, site selection boards made rapid progress in finding appropriate sites for training facilitates
The Committee used cost-plus contracts, where contractors would be paid in full for all expenses, plus additional payments to allow for profit. A disagreement arose in the Committee, with some arguing that cost-plus contracts would open the doors for inefficiency and fraud.
Jr. told the Committee during the Spring of 1917 that “on the whole, the wise thing to do in the case of the cantonment work with its extraordinary urgency” would be to implement cost-plus contracts. Those cost-plus contracts would require $10,000,000 to be spent in the first three months at Camp Blanding, a new training facility in Florida.
Camp Blanding would be such a big undertaking, the Committee was scared to put anybody on the job except large, well-known contractors. A naturally wooded and swampy area, contractors were first alarmed by the area’s poor topography.
As construction began, heavy Florida rains turned unfinished roads into seas of muck, and a site with naturally poor drainage like Camp Blanding suffered. The first military groups trained at Camp Blanding faced the similar conditions Union soldiers had endured during the Civil War, with lack of proper restroom facilities. Like his father before him, Olmsted Jr. worked to eradicate these problems.
For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online
Olmsted Archives on Flickr