2022 FSOP Guided Walking Tours
Get to Know the Seattle Olmsted Park and Boulevard System! Click on links below for more information and to sign up. Space is limited and FREE registation is required.
During this past year so many of us have been rekindling our fondness for green space and especially the city parks. Gaining a hyper appreciation for the views, natural wooded areas, and the ability to leave our homes for even a brief respite. With schools closed we have seen kids returning to parks in new ways – with family, pets or making their own field trips.
To celebrate Earth Day this year we have partnered with the very creative people at Coyote Central. Students were asked about preservation, access, and reconnecting with nature in Seattle’s Olmsted Parks. Here is a slideshow of posters created by students ages 10 – 15. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do!
Friends of Seattle’s Olmsted Parks is very pleased to lend our voice in support of the Be’er Sheva Park Capital Campaign. This project will create a beautiful and welcoming beach at the park, in the Rainier Beach neighborhood. It will also fulfill part of Olmsted’s vision for shoreline access in this neighborhood.
Community-led and designed, this decade-long dream is ready to be built, but additional funding is needed. Seeking both large and small contributions, the goal for Phase 1 is $1,000,000 by April 30, 2021. Approximately 60% of that goal has been reached to-date, with possible additional grants pending. We invite you to make contributions through this link and encourage others to add their support as well.
This community project is led by Rainier Beach Link2Lake Open Space Steering Committee, whose fiscal sponsor is the Seattle Parks Foundation.
FSOP is particularly excited about this project, not only for its improved waterfront access for an underserved neighborhood, but also for how closely it mirrors Olmsted’s vision, described well over a century ago. In 1908, Olmsted recommended a shoreline parkway be extended south from Seward Park to an expanded park at this location, which he later described as having “very notable landscape advantages.” Additionally, the Rainier Beach Link2Lake’s broader vision to create a pedestrian-friendly green corridor along Henderson Street, which would connect the park to lightrail and the Chief Sealth trail, traces Olmsted’s proposed parkway route connecting the neighborhood to Beacon Hill and other park boulevards. As Olmsted noted in his 1908 report, all these improvements would be “exceedingly valuable” for “making the lives of the people of the neighborhoods better worth living.”
Please consider giving your support for Be’er Sheva Park, especially as we look forward to 2022 and the national ‘Celebrating Parks for All People‘ effort of the Olmsted200 bicentennial.
Are you interested in becoming more involved in matters regarding our Seattle Olmsted parks and boulevards? Consider joining us!
We are currently seeking new members to serve on our Board of Directors. Board activities include consulting on park improvement projects, creating and organizing walking tours, advocating for our historic parks, and partnering with community groups to help meet shared goals. Included on our current board are landscape architects and designers, a horticulturalist, a lawyer, a business manager, retired park staff, graphic designers and community relations professionals. We seek additional individuals with expertise and/or interest in at least one of the following areas:
Terms begin in September immediately following our annual meeting on September 14, 2020, and run for three years. Our board meetings are typically held from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on the first Monday of each month. We are currently holding our meetings remotely via Zoom. As conditions allow, we will hold in-person meetings again at the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation headquarters in Denny Park (plenty of free parking available).
Friends of Seattle’s Olmsted Parks (FSOP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Seattle’s unique Olmsted landscape heritage and raising awareness of the Olmsted philosophy of providing open space for all people.
Please contact FSOP President Douglas Luetjen at friends@seattleolmsted.org if you are interested in getting more involved!
We are very excited that a further piece of Olmsted’s original design for Volunteer Park is now being restored and/or installed for the first time! ‘New’ pathways are currently being constructed, and existing paths repaved, in the park’s eastern greensward as part of mitigation efforts for the SAAM expansion project.
A gently sweeping path leading NE from the water tower to the central area of the greensward was originally proposed by John Charles Olmsted to connect these two features of the park. On-site discoveries suggest that this path did originally get built, but it was lost and disappeared over time.
A second, new path extension will formalize an existing “desire path” into the park at its SE corner. In addition, a new pathway north of the SAAM museum will replace a former walk leading through the museum’s service area to provide a cleaner, safer connection between the greensward and the park’s central concourse.
If you happen to visit Volunteer Park sometime in the next several months, you will also encounter much temporary fencing — these are in place for general safety and/or to protect the existing mature trees on-site.
For more info, please visit http://volunteerparktrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Path-Restoration-Flyer-Nov-2018.pdf
We are a proud partner of the Olmsted 200 campaign, a nationwide bicentennial birthday celebration of the democratic values and enduring influence of the visionary American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
