Capitol idea

On Tuesday of this past week, one of the architects on the Capitol restoration project was in Oregon. He went to look at cherry trees. Back in Utah, another architect was assigned to research lawns. He was examining drought-resistant varieties.

It may seem a little early to start worrying about landscaping. After all, the $200 million renovation of the Utah State Capitol is going to take four years. For four years there will be trucks and all sorts of equipment rumbling around Capitol Hill, and the grass will become mud and the trees closest to the Capitol on the south, east and west sides will probably have to be removed. The whole place will be a mess.

And yet, according to Cory Shupe, a planner with the firm MGB+A, landscape architects really don't have any time to waste. Not if they want to make the grounds look like they are supposed to look. Shortly after the renovation is finished the grounds must be stately and inspiring in some parts — and informal and inviting in other parts.

There's no time to waste. Not if the landscape architects want to realize, finally, the dream that was first drawn up nearly 100 years ago.

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Frederick Law Olmsted was the father of landscape architecture in this country. He's the one who made up the term, "landscape architecture." He's the one who designed Central Park, back in the days of the Civil War.

Biographers Charles Beveridge and Paul Rocheleau give Olmsted full credit for inventing the urban parkway and for having amazing vision. But they also point out that Olmsted's nephew, John C., made his own amazing contributions and has been largely overlooked.

It was John C. Olmsted who first designed Utah's Capitol Hill.

Beveridge and Rocheleau explained that John became his uncle's protege at an early age. It seems that John's father, who was also named John, made a deathbed request of his brother. Please look after my wife Mary, he said. And Frederick Law Olmsted took the request seriously. A few years after his brother's death, he married his brother's widow.

Frederick Law Olmsted was a good stepfather/uncle to Mary's two children. He took John into his architectural firm and trained him. Meanwhile, Mary and Frederick had a son of their own, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.

Frederick Sr. wanted his son to take over the firm but Frederick Jr. was only in his early 20s in 1895, when Frederick Sr. felt his health failing. John, on the other hand, had been with the firm for 20 years and his uncle's partner for 10 of those years. Historians speculate that it fell to John to finish Frederick Jr.'s training.