Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Massachusetts, United States

5redrose503 5:00 PM Jun 25, 2022

A Real Joy
For some context, my husband is a big Olmsted fan, and I knew just a little about him going into this trip. I didn't expect this site to be one of the most fun parts of our recent trip to Boston! The site is really well organized and we had a great time spending a morning there. You can spend a pretty good amount of time walking through the house and interacting with the exhibits, and they also have a reading room and different paths through the landscaping outside. I would strongly recommend the two tours they offer - the landscape tour and the office tour. Both are short, about 30 minutes, but cram-packed with interesting information. They are definitely worth your time, whether you are a big fan or know just a little. My husband and I both learned so much about how Olmsted thought about things, how his work defined the field of landscape architecture, and how it influenced how our parks and natural sites are designed and organized in cities all over the country. If you are lucky, you can see some of the actual plans and blueprints drawn by Olmsted and his employees when they pull them out of the archives. I believe our tour guide said they do this on Saturday afternoons, but I would call to make sure.

4Rooindie 5:00 PM May 1, 2022

Reserve a spot on the office tour, don't wing it!
This is a nice spot, only takes maybe 75 minutes. There is a "landscape tour", which is really just a very short stroll and takes about a half hour. There's also an "office tour", which also takes about a half hour and has stairs. Both are worth doing. The landscape tour runs frequently, but the office tour does not. They don't sell tickets in advance, and the office tour is limited to 8 people. When we arrived, the landscape tour had just started, and as we walked by we were invited to join. I had a thought of "should I run in and sign up for the office tour", but I didn't. Well afterwards there were about twice as many people for the office tour as were allowed to go on it, only 2 of whom had reservations. They just gave the remaining tickets to the people who made eye contact first. I felt lucky we got tickets, but also bad that other people didn't. So the lesson here is to call and make a reservation. or make sure you sign up before you do the landscape tour. The inside displays are not extensive and probably won't take you long to go through; there's a video that's I think 7 minutes.