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Senior Symposia programming is developed by our board of senior advisors, but is open to participants of all ages. We regret that we can not accept cash or check payment at the door at Senior Symposia events. Unless otherwise indicated, all workshops take place from 2-4 p.m..
What people are saying about Senior Sym...
"The topic presented was impactful and eye opening!"— The Politics of Medicare: Creeping Privatization?Frederick Law Olmsted
Price range: $0.00 through $10.00
Mark Roessler, former communications manager at the Olmsted Network, will present on the “father of landscape architecture” with a brief overview of Olmsted’s work in Amherst and a video tour inside Olmsted’s home and office in Brookline, MA. Frederick Olmsted’s projects encompassed Central Park and comprehensive park systems, planned communities, and institutional campuses across North America.
Connecting urban dwellers to wilderness settings was the stated goal, but his parks had an ulterior motive. By connecting strangers to one another in a natural setting, he hoped to strengthen American democracy itself. The lecture will explore how this goal was accomplished, where the inspiration to make park-building his life’s work and lasting legacy came from, and how that vision can help us now.
He will conclude with the story of how Olmsted quit Central Park, vowing never to return to park design, and the journey he and his family went on that changed his mind.
Presented By...
As a writer, photographer,and graphic designer, Mark Roessler has been producing print and digital publications for more than 30 years, first as a freelance webmaster, later as a managing editor for The Valley Advocate, an alternative newsweekly in Western Massachusetts. Last October, his book, Fairsted, was published by Levellers Press in Amherst, MA. The book includes a photographic tour of Olmsted’s home and office in Brookline, MA, and two essays on why and how he came to build democratic spaces.
The public parks of Frederick Law Olmsted have long been a key interest and inspiration of his. As an independent journalist, Roessler is currently at work documenting all of Frederick Law Olmsted’s parks. The eventual goal is to host an online archive where anyone can visit the catalog of parks in one place.
Fairsted is Roessler’s second book on an Olmsted property. In 2021, he published a tour and history of World’s End, a property designed by Olmsted in Hingham, MA. Another book documenting Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, NY will be published in October 2026. His website panorambles.com includes interactive tours of the three very different Olmsted parks in Connecticut—Seaside, Walnut Hill and Beardsley—and he recently added a tour of Morningside Park in Harlem.
When not visiting and photographing Olmsted parks, Roessler writes historical fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War and its aftermath. His first novel, The Agent and the Aeronaut, was published by Levellers Press in 2021. A sequel is finished, and he’s at work on a third book in the series.
Roessler lives in Northampton, MA with his artist wife, student son and small, former circus dog who rules them all.
