Last updated: June 7, 2024
Place
McLean Asylum
Olmsted Archives
Quick Facts
Location:
Belmont, MA
MANAGED BY:
What started as a successful hospital in Somerville, Massachusetts had grown crowded from all the railroad tracks, factories, and slaughterhouses around the area. A “once bucolic campus found itself an island in an industrial wasteland.” Unsure where to relocate, the Board of Trustees hired Frederick Law Olmsted to choose their new site.
Evaluating various properties with an eye towards their atmospheric, structural, and moral conditions, in 1872 Olmsted landed on 107-acres of land in nearby Belmont. In a report to the Trustees, Olmsted wrote that “the wooded land of Belmont, judiciously thinned to groups and glades, opened by walks of long curves and easy slopes, would, by the time your buildings were ready for occupancy, afford what is chiefly wanted in this respect better than it would be possible to provide it, with the most generous use of all available means, in many years, either at the Arlington, Waltham or any other locality with which I am acquainted in the suburbs of Boston."
Olmsted saw a clear advantage of the site, with the large numbers of well-grown trees that would spark a picturesque interest in the landscape. At McLean, Olmsted argued for villagelike groupings of cottages as opposed to a centralized hospital, as popularized by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride at the Pennsylvania Hospital in the 1850s. Olmsted thought this would make the landscape look more like a college campus, and less like a hospital.
While the Trustees endorsed Olmsted’s plan, he was not hired to lay out the grounds. He would return to McLean at the end of his life, not for work, but to be institutionalized, as his family felt they could no longer care for him. Arriving in Belmont, Olmsted looks around and says “they didn’t follow my plans. Confound them.”
Source: "McLean Asylum," Olmsted Online
For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online
Olmsted Archives on Flickr
Evaluating various properties with an eye towards their atmospheric, structural, and moral conditions, in 1872 Olmsted landed on 107-acres of land in nearby Belmont. In a report to the Trustees, Olmsted wrote that “the wooded land of Belmont, judiciously thinned to groups and glades, opened by walks of long curves and easy slopes, would, by the time your buildings were ready for occupancy, afford what is chiefly wanted in this respect better than it would be possible to provide it, with the most generous use of all available means, in many years, either at the Arlington, Waltham or any other locality with which I am acquainted in the suburbs of Boston."
Olmsted saw a clear advantage of the site, with the large numbers of well-grown trees that would spark a picturesque interest in the landscape. At McLean, Olmsted argued for villagelike groupings of cottages as opposed to a centralized hospital, as popularized by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride at the Pennsylvania Hospital in the 1850s. Olmsted thought this would make the landscape look more like a college campus, and less like a hospital.
While the Trustees endorsed Olmsted’s plan, he was not hired to lay out the grounds. He would return to McLean at the end of his life, not for work, but to be institutionalized, as his family felt they could no longer care for him. Arriving in Belmont, Olmsted looks around and says “they didn’t follow my plans. Confound them.”
Source: "McLean Asylum," Olmsted Online
For more information and primary resources, please visit:
Olmsted Research Guide Online
Olmsted Archives on Flickr