Living Among Landmarks: The Olmsted Legacy in Chestnut Hill

A Conversation and Exhibit
Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 7pm (doors open at 6:30 pm to view the exhibit)
Springside Chestnut Hill Academy Middle School
8000 Cherokee Street

2022 is the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted—a leading cultural figure of his time and founder of the profession of landscape architecture as we know it and as it is practiced today.

Olmsted’s personal career and the practice that was his legacy flourished for more than one hundred years. He and his successors worked in virtually every state and large city in America. In Philadelphia and surrounding communities the firm secured commissions for nearly two hundred projects. At least forty of these were for clients in Chestnut Hill. Beginning in 1897, this work spanned forty years.

April 26, 2022 is Olmsted’s 200th birthday. As part of the national celebration, Chestnut Hill Conservancy will host an evening symposium, “Living among Landmarks: The Olmsted Legacy in Chestnut Hill,” featuring a conversation among current-day owners of homesteads and gardens designed by his successors in the firm of Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects. Olmsted biographer Witold Rybczynski will introduce the program. Before and after his remarks and the panel discussion, the audience will have access to a pin-up display of photos and plans of all the known projects from the Olmsted Brothers’ decades of involvement in Chestnut Hill.

Please note: this is an in-person event. Attendees will be asked to show proof of vaccination and wear a mask during the event. If the city changes its Covid restrictions, it may be switched to a virtual format.

Tickets: $10 CH Conservancy members/$20 non-members