Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870-1957) received the Pugsley Gold Medal in 1953. He was the son of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and Mary Cleveland Perkins and was born on Staten Island, New York. He earned his bachelor's degree at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude and studied landscape architecture under his father. His mother, Mary Cleveland Perkins, had married first John Hull Olmsted, and their son was John Charles Olmsted.
While still a student at Harvard, Olmsted spent a summer working in Daniel Burnham’s office as the “White City” of the 1893 Columbian Exposition under his tutelage. After graduating in 1894, he studied landscape architecture as an apprentice for George Vanderbilt on site at Biltmore, the 10,000-acre estate being developed for George Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Carolina. He began his career as an assistant with his father’s firm in 1895 in Brookline, Massachusetts, which was known as Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot.
His contributions to the philosophical underpinning of the role of a National Park Service were substantial.
With his brother’s death in 1920, Olmsted became the senior partner in the Olmsted firm, then the largest office of landscape architecture in the world. In 1921 he was asked to advise on the preparation of a regional plan for the New York area. His plan for Fort Tryon Park, a natural park on the bluffs on Manhattan’s northern border overlooking the Hudson River, also dates from this period. Olmsted designed two more notable suburban communities in the 1920s: Roland Park in Baltimore and Mountain Lake Club in Lake Wales, Florida.
Olmsted had a lifetime commitment to national parks. He worked on projects in Acadia, Everglades, and Yosemite. From 1928 to 1957 he served as a member of a Committee of Experts.
In 1945 he was employed to advise and report on Recreational Resources of the Colorado River Basin in connection with the plans of the Bureau of Reclamation for the control of the water resources of that vast and scenically interesting area. Throughout the years he advised the NPS in an unofficial way as a member of citizen organizations that were solicitous for the future of “these priceless irreplaceable itances from a primitive past for the future.”