Frederick Law Olmsted was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the United States. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his partner Calvert Vaux. Olmsted and Vaux's first project was New York's Central Park, which led to many other urban park designs, including Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey. He headed the preeminent landscape architecture and planning consultancy of late 19th century United States, which was carried on and expanded by his sons, Frederick Jr. and John C., under the name Olmsted Brothers.

Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City that was the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the sixth-largest park in the city, containing 843 acres (341 ha), and the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 million visitors annually as of 2016.