Buffalo's Olmsted Parks

Buffalo’s parks, circles, and parkways grew from the City Beautiful movement of the late 1800s, which sought to improve the blighted conditions of many industrial cities and make them more livable through better design. In this system, circles served as hubs collecting traffic from major streets through adjacent neighborhoods, parks provided natural features such as pools, meadows, and woodlands, and parkways created separate circulation paths for different types of transportation. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned Buffalo’s parks as an interconnected system of parks and parkways extending through the heart of the city, with green corridors linking the parks to almost every neighborhood and circles placed at major intersections. He believed access to green space for all city residents was essential to their physical and psychological well-being.

Buffalo, New York · United States