The Frederick Law Olmsted Park - Newport, Rhode Island - Olmsted Designed Parks on Waymarking.com

Stoneacre, these three acres opposite Vernon Court on Bellevue Avenue (America's most elegant street), are named for the mansion designed in 1884, by architect William Potter for John W. Ellis, which once occupied this site. Potter recommended Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) to his client as a "garden designer". Stoneacre became Olmsted's first commission after he named the new profession - "landscape architecture". The Stoneacre mansion was demolished in 1963 and the grounds lay dormant for decades thereafter, it is the last privately held open space on Bellevue Avenue. Stoneacre was purchased in 1998, by Judy and Lawrence Cultler with the vision to create a memorial park honoring Frederick Law Olmsted, America's first and most noted landscape architect.

For this site, Olmsted conceived of a "parklike" setting with a variety of exotic trees to protect the Ellis family from viewers. Stoneacre was furnished with native and exotic trees including London Plane, Fern Leaf Beech, Japanese Maple, Zelkova, European Linden, English Oak, and Tulip Trees, as well as Silver Maple, Cumumber, and Sweet Gums. Man made earthen forms and contours were designed to give a rolling perspective and a more interesting perspective to the overall site which had been flat prior to Olmsted's designs.

Lucius D. Davis opined on Stoneacre in Gardens and Gardening (Dec 1895), "The design was almost wholly for park effects and it was pretty thoroughly carried into execution". In 1980, Richard Champlin in Newport History, ('Newport Estates and their Flora') also commented on the parklike design, "To surround his "Bellevue Avenue villa, John Ellis aimed at creating a park furnished with trees both native and exotic...a notable specimen of Cucumber trees stands near Bellevue Avenue...this subdued member of the magnolia clan puts forth dozens of bluish greenish blossoms from top to bottom... Not so the evergreen equidistant from Bellevue which strikes the eye with a startling contrast in needles, dark, glossy, blue-green above and gleamingly silver white beneath. This Yeddo spruce (Picea jezoensis) hails from Japan. Viewed in full sunlight, it displays the contrasting hues on a grand scale up and down its height...Along the Victoria bound...grow trees with special significance in Rhode Island. Also from Japan, these Zelkovas first came to this counry through the efforts of a Bristol physician, Dr. George Hall, who practised in Japan during the early part of the nineteenth century..."It is said that these Zelkovas are the oldest extant and the largest examples in the United-States.

Olmsted designed the nations most beloved parks and grounds including New York Central Park, the United States Capitol, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the Biltmore, Winterhur, Detroit's Belle Isle, Boston's Franklin Park, Newport Master Plan, and many estate grounds. He conceived of Boston's first park system - The Fenway, known as the Emerald Necklace. Olmsted's office went on to create the National Parks System and designed a plethora of campus plans including Standford University. Frederick Law Olmsted was a social activist and reformer, an artist and engineer and a man of epic vision. His work during the thirty years following the Civil War created an American landscape which is enjoyed today and for forevermore.

Judy and Lawrence Cutler, founder of the National Museum of American Illustration at Vernon Court, honor Olmsted's legacy with his design for a small private park as a perpetual memorial to America's first landscape architect, The Frederick Law Olmsted Park. Frederick Law Olmsted Park