Archives West Finding Aid

Through a grant from the King County Landmarks and Heritage Commission, Friends of Seattle's Olmsted Parks (FSOP) gathered information on and copies of Olmsted documents related to Seattle public projects, in an effort to make the collection more accessible to researchers. The Seattle Municipal Archives was one of the repositories chosen for deposit of the materials.

Included in the collection are copies of some of the Olmsted plans for selected parks, including: Lincoln (on Capitol Hill), Washington Park, Cowen, and Schmitz parks. A guide in the repository contains a plan inventory index, showing locations of drawings at the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Seattle Municipal Archives, and the University of Washington. The drawings were copied from the originals at the Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, also known as Fairsted. Color slides were also taken of additional plans; these have not yet been deposited at the Seattle and researchers should contact FSOP directly at seattleolm@aol.com.

Three reels of microfilm from the Records of the Olmsted Associates (Mss. 20,112.2) from the Library of Congress form part of the collection as well. Reels 95, 96 and 97 contain job files for work in Seattle which includes correspondence, memoranda, trip reports, and other material. The guide indexes the reels to specific parks and job numbers. For a complete listing and index of all the microfilm reels, go to the Library of Congress online catalog at http://catalog.loc.gov/ and search for "Olmsted Associates."

The guide to the FSOP collection also contains photocopies of the Olmsted Plan Index Cards created for each plan or drawing listing date, draftsman, plan number, and other information. Photocopies of the Fairsted Plan Inventory, listing plans related to each job number, for a portion of the collection at Fairsted are also included in the Guide.