Last updated: October 31, 2023
Place
Washington National Cathedral
Olmsted Archives
Quick Facts
Location:
Washington, D.C.
Significance:
Olmsted Designed Landscape
MANAGED BY:
From 1907 to 1927, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. worked on the master plan for the 59-acre Washington National Cathedral. Olmsted’s design created a park-like setting for the Gothic Cathedral, providing open spaces, a native woodland and cultured gardens.
Olmsted designed the arrival to the Cathedral so that “the great sweeping branches of the trees seem to brush off, as it were, the dust of the city, so that one at last reaches the Cathedral cleansed in mind and in spirit.”
Olmsted’s plan included internal roadways, locations for institutional buildings, a series of open spaces and gardens, as well as a path cutting through the existing 5-acre woodland, which was later renamed to Olmsted Woods, honoring the man who had devoted so much time to the surrounding landscape.
In 1919, Olmsted spoke about the “great charm of approaching the Cathedral through and up a wooded hillside, leaving the city far behind and below. Helping one to forget the hurly-burly and busy-ness of a work-a-day world must be taken advantage of to the fullest extent.”
Olmsted designed the arrival to the Cathedral so that “the great sweeping branches of the trees seem to brush off, as it were, the dust of the city, so that one at last reaches the Cathedral cleansed in mind and in spirit.”
Olmsted’s plan included internal roadways, locations for institutional buildings, a series of open spaces and gardens, as well as a path cutting through the existing 5-acre woodland, which was later renamed to Olmsted Woods, honoring the man who had devoted so much time to the surrounding landscape.
In 1919, Olmsted spoke about the “great charm of approaching the Cathedral through and up a wooded hillside, leaving the city far behind and below. Helping one to forget the hurly-burly and busy-ness of a work-a-day world must be taken advantage of to the fullest extent.”