COURTESY OF FRIENDS OF OLMSTED PARKS

Some of the features of the Olmsted Brothers' 1904 design for Volunteer Park can be detected under the mantel of snow on Jan. 3, 1916. From the same prospect 76 years later — at the ground-level door to the stairs that lead to the park observatory and parks history exhibit atop its water tower — the major part of the Olmsteds' Volunteer Park (including their soon-to-be-restored lily ponds) is screened by its own healthy landscape.

 

	PAUL DORPAT

THROUGH THE coming year we will have many reminders that 2003 is the centennial for the arrival of the Olmsted Brothers firm. To celebrate the contributions of these pioneer landscape architects, the Seattle Parks Foundation will feature monthly walking tours through 12 city parks that were shaped by the firm, the most celebrated of national activists in the progressive "city beautiful" movement of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The first tour begins at the Conservatory in Volunteer Park Saturday at 10 a.m.

In the more than 30 years that followed the 1903 introduction of its comprehensive plan for Seattle parks, the firm was involved in 37 park projects. Its influence is felt even more if we add boulevards, designs for many private local gardens, and master plans for making over the University of Washington campus as well as the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

Volunteer Park at the summit of Capitol Hill was included in the 1903 plan. This view looks north from the entrance to the water tower — another Olmsted proposal — during the snow of Jan. 3, 1916. The walkway that appears just above the three figures left of center runs between two lily pools that are planned for restoration during this centennial. In 1916 both the glass Conservatory (top center) and the charming lattice pavilion (right of center) were but four years old. The Seattle Art Museum replaced the latter in 1932. The covered bandstand (left) on the far side of the reservoir is the newest structure in this scene. It was completed in 1915 for the park's then frequent concerts.

For more information on the Olmsted Centennial, contact the Friends of Seattle's Olmsted Parks at 206-332-9915 or through its Web page, www.seattle.gov/friendsofolmstedparks.