THIRTEEN And WLIW21 Show THE OLMSTED LEGACY April 20

A new documentary, The Olmsted Legacy: America's Urban Parks, airing on Wednesday, April 20 at 7 p.m. on WLIW21 and later that same evening at 10 p.m. on THIRTEEN, explores the formation of America's great city parks, including Prospect and Central Parks, through the eyes of 19th Century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

The Olmsted Legacy: America's Urban Parks is a film by Rebecca Messner, George deGolian and Michael White and a presentation THIRTEEN for WNET, one of America's most prolific and respected public media providers.

The voices of actors Kevin Kline as the voice of Frederick Law Olmsted, and Kerry Washington as the film's narrator, are featured in the one-hour documentary.

The film traces the life of Olmsted: his early struggles in school, his personal tragedies and his unorthodox career path, which included stints as a New York Times correspondent to the Confederate states, the manager of a California gold mine and General Secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War.

"The man was a workaholic by today's standards," recounts Rebecca Messner, the film's director. "He spent the latter half of his life devoting nearly every waking minute to creating restorative green spaces for overworked city dwellers."

Throughout his working life, Olmsted and his firm carried out more than 500 commissions, nearly 100 of which were public parks. The film explains how these 19th Century parks were the first real urban parks in America and explores what makes them so distinctive: the broad, pastoral meadows, the use of water and the underlying engineering that helps a manmade setting look so completely natural. The film also describes how, as a New York City parks superintendent, Olmsted fell into his first design project with Calvert Vaux: Central Park. And how, influenced by a stint in California's vast open spaces, he refined some of his design notions to create Prospect Park.

Using Olmsted's own words, voiced by Klein, the film weaves together his engaging and poignant personal story with those of the lasting masterpieces he created. It is noted that Olmsted considered these parks to be vital democratic spaces in cities, where citizens from all walks of life could intermingle and be refreshed.

Executive Producer is Mike Messner. Director and writer is Rebecca Messner. Editor is Emma Joan Morris. Director of Photography is Teague Kennedy. Interview subjects include: Alan Banks, Adrian Benepe, Charles Beveridge, Doug Blonsky, Michael Dukakis, Margaret Dyson, Betsy Shure Gross, Morrison Heckscher, Arleyn Levee, Sara Cedar Miller, Witold Rybczynski, Tupper Thomas. Executive in Charge for WNET is Stephen Segaller.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/WM Photos

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