Olmsted Park
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Olmsted Park (originally Leverett Park) was renamed for its designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, after his death in 1903. It is a linear park in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, and a part of Boston's Emerald Necklace of connected parks and parkways.
Olmsted Park can be roughly divided into two parts. In the south, bordering Jamaica Park, it includes athletic fields and three ponds: from the south, a small kettle pond called Ward's Pond, the tiny Willow Pond, and the much larger Leverett's Pond. The northern section of the park, above Route 9, is a narrow corridor through which the Muddy River flows on its way to the Charles River. The northern edge of Olmsted Park connects to the Back Bay Fens.
Olmsted, who had made a reputation designing New York's Central Park, suggested in 1880 that the swampy and brackish Muddy River be included in Boston's park plan. Beginning in 1890, the river was dredged into a winding stream, a large swamp converted into Leverett's Pond, and Ward's Pond was connected with a small outflowing stream.
Following completion of the Emerald Necklace Master Plan in 1991, a number of improvements have been made in Olmsted Park. Riverdale Parkway, originally designed as a carriage road, was transformed into a bicycle and pedestrian path in 1997. The Allerton Overlook at the foot of Allerton Street in Brookline was recreated, footbridges re-pointed, and a boardwalk placed at the south end of Wards Pond. In 2006, Brookline restored Olmsted's "Babbling Brook", resetting stones, clearing out invasive knotweed, defining the streambed, and replanting trees and shrubs to inhibit future invasives growth.
Today, the park is a popular walking and bicycling route for many residents of Boston and Brookline, and is particularly well known to the many employees and students of the Longwood Medical and Academic Area which adjoins it. The park forms the western edge of the Boston neighborhood Mission Hill.
