South Lawn Improvements Create Community Recreational Spaces

Completed in 2013, re-greening of the nine-acre South Lawn transformed two large parking lots at the Richardson Olmsted Campus' south entry into a welcoming space for community gathering and recreation.  

The project is at once contemporary and Olmstedian, renewing Frederick Law Olmsted's and Calvert Vaux's original vision for pastoral surroundings and their therapeutic effects on patients of the asylum.

Designed by Andropogon Associates, a firm internationally recognized for ecologically based landscape architecture and planning, the project included:

• Planting of 125 new trees, complementing existing trees and creating open and canopied spaces with stunning views of the Richardson buildings.
• Environmentally friendly rain gardens that address stormwater drainage and improve water quality.
• An elegant granite and flagstone entry plaza in front of the Towers Building.
• A 1,300-foot pedestrian loop and improved roadway as attentive to detail as Olmsted himself.
• Relocation of the 112 displaced parking spaces.

Views of the design and development phases of the project are available in the site plan and site design planning documents.

The grounds were opened to the public for a South Lawn Celebration upon completion of this phase of the project. More than a thousand persons enjoyed a day of live music, food trucks, family-friendly activities, games, and kite flying.