Calvert Vaux

Landscape designer and architect, born in London, UK. Emigrating at 25, he designed country houses and published Villas and Gardens (1852). A pioneer in the public parks movement, he joined (1857–72) Frederick Law Olmstead, and together they produced the winning design for New York City's Central Park. He later designed Ottawa's parliament grounds, which influenced Canadian landscape design.

Calvert Vaux (December 20, 1824 – November 19, 1895), was an architect and landscape designer. He is best remembered as the co-designer (with Frederick Law Olmsted), of New York's Central Park.

Little is known about Calvert Vaux’s childhood and upbringing.

Vaux (pronounced vokes) attended a private primary school until the age of nine. He trained Vaux until the age of 26 and as a result, Vaux became a very skilled draftsman.

In 1850, Vaux exhibited a collection of his continental landscape watercolors, and it was this gallery that captured the attention of American landscape designer and writer Andrew Jackson Downing. Vaux readily accepted the job and moved to the United States.

Downing and Vaux worked together for two years, and during those two years, he made Vaux a partner. Vaux’s work on the Smithsonian inspired an article he wrote for The Horticulturalist (Downing was the editor of this publication), in which he stated his view that it was time the government should recognize and support the arts. Vaux took over the company and his later work in Central Park was to be a fitting memorial to his late partner.

In 1854, he married Mary McEntee, the sister of Jervis McEntee, a Hudson River School painter. Also in 1857, Vaux published “Villas and Cottages,” which was an influential pattern book that determined the standards for “Victorian Gothic” architecture.

In 1858, he made a smart political move and collaborated with Olmsted designing Central Park.

In 1865, Vaux called upon Olmsted and they decided to create a partnership. As Olmsted, Vaux and Company, they designed one of the first suburbs of Chicago called the Riverside Improvement Society in 1868. They were also commissioned to design a major park project in Buffalo, New York, which included The Parade (now known as Martin Luther King Jr. Park), The Park ( now the Delaware Park), and The Front (which is simply Front Park now). Vaux designed many structures that were to beautify the parks, but most of these have been demolished. In 1871, they designed the grounds of the New York State Hospital for the Insane in Buffalo, New York.

In 1872, Vaux dissolved the partnership and went on to building architecture, in a partnership with George Kent Radford and Samuel Parsons, Jr. On a foggy November 19, 1895, he drowned in an accident while he was visiting his son, Downing Vaux, in Brooklyn. Throughout his lifetime, Vaux, while on his own and through various partnerships, designed and created dozens of parks across the country. He introduced new ideas about the significance of public parks in America during a hectic time of urbanization. He favored naturalistic, rustic and curvilinear lines in his designs, and his design statements contributed much to today’s landscape and architecture.