Volunteer Park - Seattle, WA - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

Volunteer Park is significant to Seattle and the State of Washington as the most widely known and best-preserved component of a great system of urban parks and playgrounds interrelated by tree-lined boulevards and scenic drives. A product of the progressive, nationwide Parks and Recreation Movement, the system was carried out in the years before the First World War according to plans by Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects. Of numerous projects designed by the distinguished Boston firm in various parts of the state, the Seattle Park and Boulevard System, even though never wholly completed, is among the premier examples because of its scope and state of preservation. Volunteer Park was named in honor of Seattle citizens who volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Although the basic property acquisition had been made by the City as early as 1876 and certain improvements followed after 1887, formal development of the park is marked from 1903 when a landscape plan was first advanced ..by Olmsted Brothers in the form of recommendations to the City. The Olmsted Plan for Volunteer Park appears to have been implemented most intensively between 1908 and 1910. The park was complete with its conservatory by 1912.

The 40-acre parcel which was to become Volunteer Park was acquired by the City for "municipal purposes" in 1876. One of the city's earliest such acquisitions, it was purchased from J. M. Colman for $2,000. In 1885 the tract was utilized for the first time for gravesites relocated from a cemetery in the heart of town which was vacated to become Denny Park. At this stage the Capitol Hill tract was known as Washelli Cemetery, and it contained the graves of a number of Seattle's most prominent pioneers. Two years later, in 1887, the gravesites were moved again to an adjoining parcel on the north, and the tract was renamed Lake View Park. By 1893 the City Park Department had cleared about six acres on the tract. A nursery was planted, a greenhouse added, and a three-room cottage was constructed for a caretaker. By the turn of the century the park, still with an abundance of timber, had been improved with footpaths, some areas of lawn, picnic tables, and children's swings.

The first major improvement in the park was a consequence of settlement gradually making its way up Capitol Hill and the Water Department's development of the Cedar River water system. The triangular-shaped high-pressure reservoir was constructed in the southwesterly corner of the park in 1901. It was during this period that the park was renamed for the final time to honor Seattle's volunteers in the Spanish-American War.

Between 1900 and 1904 the Seattle Park Board evolved from an advisory body directed by the City Council to a working board of more independent status. During a regular election in the spring of 1904 citizens voted an amendment to the charter which delegated jurisdiction over fixed revenues to the Park Board and gave it a basis for action similar to that of park boards in metropolitan centers elsewhere. Thereafter, city park development was dramatic.

Meanwhile, Olmsted Brothers had been retained by the Board of Park Commissioners to "devise and recommend a comprehensive park system for Seattle." As early as October 19, 1903, the City Council adopted a lengthy report by the firm addressed to Board Chairman E. F. Blaine. Among comments pertaining to the existing Volunteer Park were suggestions on grading and an admonition to expand park holdings to the nearest streets on the south and west. Some additional land was acquired on this advice. The firm foresaw that even though the park was sited on a high hill, it was not sufficiently elevated above the surrounding neighborhood to maintain its openness when residential properties were developed and street trees shut out distant views. The firm suggested that an observation tower be erected at the summit of the park. Such a feature was fortuitously provided when the Water Department constructed its tower in 1906. Once complete with its architectural shell, the tower was maintained as an observation tower as well as a standpipe.

Recommendations advanced in the Olmsted Report of 1903 set the tone for future development of Volunteer Park by pointing out that because it was to be "surrounded by a highly finished style of city development" it would be best to adopt a harmonious, "neat and smooth style of landscape gardening throughout." Such treatment would be in contrast to the outlying parks of the system and those with rugged topography. For the latter parks Olmsted Brothers advised "a wild style and greater respect for the preservation of natural forest undergrowth."

The Board of Park Commissioners outlined an ambitious schedule of acquisitions and improvements to implement the Olmsted System of Parks, Boulevards and Playgrounds,, and Seattle citizens responded generously by voting several million dollars in bond issues over the six-year period between 1906 and 1912. The Board had studied park and recreation facilities of large cities across the country and was satisfied that the Olmsted system demonstrated the practicability of the small park ideal which was to provide a park or playground within a half-mile of every home in the city. The related boulevard plan projected a 50-mile chain of drives to connect many of the parks as it skirted shores of lakes or followed high ridges overlooking the water and mountains. The Olmsted system and the Park Board's successful implementation of a majority of it caused Seattle to be ranked with Chicago, Kansas City and Minneapolis among progressive American cities. Seattle's playground acreage exceeded that of any other city of the West Coast in this period, and its park area of some 1,260 acres was equaled only by that of San Francisco. It was frequently pointed out that Seattle's park area had the advantage of wide distribution with a number of tracts easily accessible to all. By 1912 Volunteer Park was one of 25 improved parks. The city also claimed 12 unimproved park sites.

During several decades before and after the turn of the century, the Olmsteds planned a number of projects for public and private clients in the State of Washington. Among the earliest of these was the unused plan which Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), the firm's founder and guiding spirit, prepared for the City of Tacoma in 1873. The Drumheller Fountain axis, an important feature of the plan which Olmsted's successors provided for Seattle's Alaska Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, has been preserved in subsequent development of the University of Washington campus. Notable among private commissions were the firm's landscape plans for the Seattle Golf and Country Club and the country estate of Chester Thorne at American Lake near Tacoma. The firm's work east of the Cascades included Spokane parks and elements of the campus plan for Whitman College in Walla Walla. The firm also did work in nearby Portland, Oregon, including designs for the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905.

Frederick Law Olmsted, named chief architect of New York's Central Park in 1868, had been responsible for a pioneer enterprise in municipal planning. Through a great many projects in various parts of the country between 1865 and 1895, ranging from residential development and exposition layout (Chicago World's Fair, 1893) to park system design and campus planning, Olmsted and his associated laid the foundations of American landscape architecture and made the public park an integral part of urban life. It was F. L. Olmsted's stepson, John Charles. (Xlrosted, who exerted the greatest influence upon the Seattle Park and Boulevard System. Roland W. Cotterill, Secretary of the Seattle Park Board, reported to a convention of the American Association of Park Superintendents in Boston, August 12, 1912, that J. C. Olmsted spent "Many weeks during the winter of 1903-1904" climbing the city's hills, studying its topography and scenic assets. Olmsted visited the city intermittently thereafter as work on several concurrent projects in the region progressed. J. F. Dawson was the firm's representative on the scene. Original drawings and other records pertaining to Volunteer Park are still held by present day members of the firm.

John Charles Olmsted evinced an early aptitude for the work of his stepfather. He received his primary education largely from private teaching as a result of his family's travels around the country. He was graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, where his father, John Hull Olmsted (d. 1857) had studied. Upon graduation John Charles entered the landscape office of his stepfather in New York and within a few years was given a financial interest in the practice. He was noted for his business ability and the capacity to keep a large number of project in progress. It was due to J. C. Olmsted's efforts that the firm's professional practice was established on a sound basis. In 1884 the office was removed to Brookline, in the vicinity of Boston, and at this time he became a full partner in F. L. and J. C. Olmsted. Following his stepfather's retirement in 1895, John Charles became the senior partner in the firm which, after 1898, was called Olmsted Brothers. He shared responsibilities with his half-brother Frederick Law, Jr., and other later partners until his death in Brookline in 1920. John Charles Olmsted is credited with an immeasurable contribution to the young science of city planning by his solutions to problems connected with park system design and by his interpretation of design matters to civic leaders. Olmsted served as first president of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the professional society founded in 1899.