The plan consisted of smaller parks dispersed throughout the city and larger parks connected by a series of boulevards. Budget constraints prevented the city from hiring the firm to design all of the parks in the system, but they did commission plans for Volunteer Park.
Designed in the naturalistic, pastoral American romantic style closely associated with the Olmsted firms, Volunteer Park is a passive recreation urban park and a city-wide destination for visitors and residents. It crosses a perpendicular view axis running west from the museum across the reservoir to the city and mountains beyond. Along this view axis, the formal landscape descends in symmetrical terraces from the concourse to the reservoir. Place is marked incorrectly on map.
Content may violate guidelines. Content is inaccurate. Share this Place. The standpipe was completed in at about the time discussions around adding a playground for older children began. The plan had included the area for small children at the northwest corner of the park, but playground advocates wanted to add room for gymnastic apparatus, other equipment, and space for older children's games.
Olmsted revised grading plans and added a terrace of level land in the southwest corner of the park. He revised the landscape plan to include swings, climbing equipment, a giant slide, and teeter-totters in The playground was never installed at that location, however, because neighbors complained to the park board about the noise the children would make. Instead, it was shifted up to the northwest corner, where it would be farther from homes.
The revised plan also incorporated vehicular access at 11th and 12th avenues from E Prospect Street. The park department carried out the plans and the park was largely complete by , including the installation of the conservatory at the north end of the concourse and the addition of a set of tennis courts in the northwest corner a second double court was added in During the park's development, Olmsted weighed in on suggested additions to the park.
First, in April , the Washington State Art Association asked the park board to place a byfoot Museum of Arts and Sciences in Volunteer Park, either in the lawn north of the reservoir or at the north end of the concourse, between the Seward statue and the cemetery, where Olmsted had left space for a conservatory. The park commissioners referred the question to the Municipal Plans Commission, which was planning a civic center in the Denny Regrade area as part of the effort to develop the Plan of Seattle commonly referred to as the Bogue Plan.
In October, the commission and Olmsted determined it would be better to put such a building with similar facilities in the civic center near Lake Union. Olmsted wrote to board president John T. Heffernan that, while his sympathies lay with the museum's intentions, he could not approve the placement of a museum, particularly one so large, in a landscape park because of the negative impact it would have on the park's character and visitors' experiences.
Soon after the pergola and concert grove were constructed, local musicians began to ask for a new, larger, more traditional bandshell. Olmsted explained why such a structure would not be appropriate for the pergola and suggested, if the park board deemed it necessary, that they build it in the former playground space in the southwest corner of the park. The musicians rejected that space, and after further discussion, chose the lawn north of the reservoir for a Carl Gould-designed wooden bandshell.
It was built in and served as the park's primary performance space until it was torn down due to deterioration in The next structural changes to the park came in the s. In , a memorial to Judge Thomas Burke , who died in , was built on the southeast side of the reservoir.
Artist Hermon A. MacNeil designed the bas-relief monument and Carl Gould designed the surrounding stepped plazas with bench walls. The park is home to a number of other memorials.
On the north side of the museum there is the "Schwagerl Rock," placed in honor of early Seattle park superintendent Edward O. On the water tower, a plaque has been placed in memory of L. Youngs, a significant water department superintendent. A copper beech was planted near a monument to the volunteer soldiers of the Spanish-American War near the park entrance at 14th and Prospect to commemorate the bicentennial of George Washington's birth.
Other trees were planted to honor Anna Clise, who donated her orchid collection to the conservatory and served the community in myriad ways, and the Grand Army of the Republic and its Women's Auxiliary Corps. A third structure designed by Gould, the Seattle Art Museum , was constructed in the park in John Olmsted had died in and the Olmsted Brothers firm was not active in Seattle in the early s, so when Richard Fuller , head of the Seattle Art Institute, and his mother, Margaret Fuller, offered funds for construction of an art museum in the park, the city accepted.
The Art Moderne-style building built in place of the pergola and concert grove along the concourse was home to the Seattle Art Museum for 60 years, before the majority of its collections moved to a new downtown museum.
Landscape Architect Noble Hoggson designed the landscape surrounding the museum, including the stone plaza extending from the museum to the concourse.
From its earliest years, Volunteer Park has served as a gathering place for Seattle residents. The bandshell draws crowds for a wide variety of musical performances.
When Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis into Seattle in , the Seattle Times reported that 30, schoolchildren greeted him in Volunteer Park. From the s to the s thousands attended annual Easter sunrise services in the park. A temporary stage structure replaced the Gould bandshell after it was demolished in It hosted a "Be-In" in April that featured bands, dancing, and impromptu drum circles, along with some entrepreneurial Girl Scouts selling cookies.
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