Greenscapes: Olmstead's Pacific Northwest by Joan Hockaday

often benefitedAmerican expansion. Britain's attention to Ireland's famine weakened its hand in thedebate overOregon; Mexico went through five presidents during theMexican War. He also gives significantattentionto Native populations. Americans and Europeans, for example, could not understand the Samoans' governmental structure.And Native interests repeatedly went unheeded, be theyNative Hawaiians, Chamorros inGuam, orTlingits in Sitka,Alaska. These slights were not forgotten ? Hawaiian objections have been recorded as recently as 2007.Nugent shares many additional intriguinginsights. Washington, D.C.'s, humid ityhastened Lord Ashburton's deliberations with Secretary of StateDaniel Webster in the summer of 1842. Nugent characterizes William Henry Seward as eloquent but not profound ? "more salesman than theoretician" (p. 251). Nugent's description of thePacificNorthwest is almost poetic, and he reminds readers of demographic conditions, to help explain why white American expansion overwhelmed that of Europeans and Native Americans. There are some concerns.Nugent included theperspectives ofNative populations and for eigngovernments,butmore voices ofAmerican settlerscould have strengthenedhis assertions. He maintains, for example, thatAmericans believed theydeserved Trans-Appalachia and thatCanadians would welcome them during the War of 1812, but he includes littlesupport ing material. Also, Iwonder what roleNugent believes anxiety played in spurringAmerican expansion. That is, to what extent was expan sionmotivated by the spectersoffinancial peril or vulnerability to attack?He mentions that Andrew Jacksonwanted Florida forreasons of self-defense,but he does not emphasize trade concerns during the War of 1812. Does he see anxiety as playing an ongoing role?Also, while Nugent providedmany helpfulmaps with long, substantive captions, portions of thework are not assiduously footnoted. These concerns, however, are minor. With Habits ofEmpire,Walter Nugent has made a valuable contribution to thehistoriography of an important but neglected erawhile making a compelling case that, ifone wants tounder standAmerican foreignpolicy in the twenty firstcentury,attention to thenineteenthwould be timewell spent. Elizabeth Kelly Gray Towson University GREENSCAPES: OLMSTEAD'S PACIFIC NORTHWEST byJoan Hockaday Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2009. Illustrations, photographs, bibliography, index. 196pages. $29.95 paper. Among northwesterners interested in urban planning and parks, thename John C. Olmsted isa sortof philosopher's stone thatbestows a golden aura on anyproject thatcan be associ atedwith hiswork. Active professionally from 1875tohis death in 1920,Olmsted isone of the key figures in the history of American park development and landscape design. Carrying on the tradition and familyfirmofhis famous father,Frederick Law Olmsted, JCO (as he was sometimes known) made numerous trips to Oregon andWashington in the first two decades of the twentieth century to consult with park boards, world's fair organizers, col lege presidents, subdivision developers, and private property owners. JoanHockaday has now given us a detailed and careful summary of JCO'smany Oregon, Washington, and Idaho projects. The main source is his own letters home to his wife Sophia. He was a faithfulcorrespondent, and the surviving letters number in the thousands. Hockaday quotes extensively from these letters, giving readersanOlmsted-eye view of thedaily life of a consulting landscape architect.We get a feel for the challenges of conducting a professional practice, fromnavigating thepoli Reviews 483 tics of park boards to tactfullycorrecting the misguided preconceptions ofwealthy clients. We observe JCOmissing train connections in Corvallis (he had to get a carriage ride over to Albany), bouncing over bad roads in primi tive automobiles, walking hour afterhour to get a feel for the contours and possibilities of undeveloped tracts,and searching for reliable stenographers to type up his field notes and reports to clients. In Oregon, Olmsted sketched the basic layout for theLewis and Clark Exposition and outlined a park systemduring a single 1903visit. His report to thePark Board opened with a set of general principles forpark planning thathad influencefarbeyond thecity. Olmsted also had a significantimpactonMcMinnville (now Lin field)College and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University), designed the Westover Terrace district inNorthwest Port land, and did work invarying detail for many of Portland's most prominent citizens. In total,Olmsted's impress onWashington is greater than thaton Oregon ? the general scheme and many detailed layouts forSeattle parks, theAlaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition grounds (now theUniversity of Washington), Spokane parks, Whitman College, and a raftof private commissions and projects. The book reflects the balance, with two chapters on Oregon, threeon Seattle, one on Spokane...

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