Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of more than one hundred parks, squares, and green spaces totaling about 11,000 acres, and is one of the largest landscaped urban park systems in the world. In City in a Park, James McClelland and Lynn Miller provide an affectionate and comprehensive history of this 200-year-old network of parks.
Originated in the nineteenth century as a civic effort to provide a clean water supply to Philadelphia, Fairmount Park also furnished public pleasure grounds for boat races and hiking, among other activities. Millions travel to the city to view its eighteenth-century villas, attend boat races on the Schuylkill River, hike the Wissahickon Creek, visit the Philadelphia Zoo, hear concerts in summer, stroll the city’s historic squares and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and enjoy its enormous collection of public art. Green initiatives flower today; Philadelphia lives amidst its parks.
Filled with nearly 150 gorgeous full-color photographs, City in a Park chronicles the continuing efforts to create what founder William Penn desired: a “greene countrie town.”
Since its founding in 1855, Michigan State University has emerged from its modest “oak opening” in the wilderness to become a large campus park. This story reflects the commitment of campus leaders since the nineteenth century to develop MSU as a beautiful and educational public resource, as well as a demonstration model, befitting the premier land-grant institution in the United States.
From early landscape gardeners influenced by Ossian Simonds and the nationally known Olmsted Brothers, to the vision of President John Hannah, the consistent intent has been to interrelate architecture and the campus park. The result is a campus whose development reflects major trends in American architecture and whose contributors include local, regional, and nationally known architectural firms. In MSU Campus—Buildings, Places, Spaces, two Michigan State University professors provide a history and way of seeing the campus by offering eight areas to explore.
Each area includes selected historical sites or markers, public art, and natural locations that complement more than one hundred extant buildings, complete with individual stylistic and historical descriptions and photographs. Historical facts about Michigan State University, suggestions for further reading, and an ample glossary of architectural terms make this book a resource for anyone who is interested in Michigan State University, art and architectural history, Michigan history, and visual culture.
The book will continue to serve as a documentary reminder of MSU’s heritage and vital institutional future long after the 2005 sesquicentennial.
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