What is this about?

In the last days of January 1928, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. drove into the booming suburbs of Washington, D.C. His goal for the trip was to decide which of the houses in a largely Black community, known as Reno, should be seized by the Federal Government and cleared for a park.

This excursion may seem like a footnote in the career of a man who chartered American urban planning, defined landscape architecture as a profession, gave the National Park Service its mission, and developed key practices that underlie American suburbs. Trace the path that led Olmsted to this fateful survey, however, and the streets of Washington become a record of the forces and personalities that have shaped the American landscape. Moreover, to Reno’s residents, the homes and institutions were the setting for their own histories, which have been erased or misrepresented in the scarce literature that even mentions that community’s name.

Reno grew out of the chaos of the Civil War and matured into a neighborhood of around 300 economically diverse Black households by 1920. Just to the east, the visionary investor Francis Newlands hewed the slopes of Rock Creek into Chevy Chase, a model suburb for the nation's elite. When he entered Congress, he turned his ambition to the landscape of the western United States, transforming deserts into homesteads for white yeoman farmers. In turn, he believed Washington would have to be remade as the capital of this "empire at home," securing steady work for the Olmsted firm. What he did not foresee were the ambitions of Washington’s Black elite. Even as segregated suburbs encircled Reno, associates of the uncompromising activist William Monroe Trotter began to claim Reno as a fine suburb of their own. So, when the companies founded by Newlands marshaled officials and white neighbors to evict Reno in 1926, it was Trotter’s deputy James Neill that rallied the town and defeated the plan in the halls of Congress.

Throughout this period, movements that sought to tame urbanization and resource extraction were rising across the United States. The Olmsted family stood at the forefront of these tendencies, beginning with the senior Frederick's trusteeship of Yosemite, and continuing with his sons' era-defining visions for city and wilderness alike. To realize these ambitions, Frederick, Jr. co-founded an advocacy club called the American Civic Association. Although successful in creating the National Park Service to conserve valued landscapes, the ACA's goal of planning cities for health and beauty floundered. At a loss, its leaders took a gamble on a female organizer named Harlean James. She soon devised a new strategy with Olmsted: they would use D.C.’s lack of democratic government to turn it into a model of technocratic planning, matching national advocates to local interests through the patrician progressive Frederic Delano. Over three successive campaigns, they secured the authority and funding to reshape Washington according to their vision—as well as the agendas of their coalition, including the Chevy Chase companies. Consequently, it was the planning board created and staffed by the ACA’s luminaries that cleared Reno, fully aware of the racist motivations. 

The ACA had changed the world around Reno, expanding the powers of the state and redefining the idea of the public interest in a time of pronounced white supremacy. Segregation became a core policy of city planning, while the older Black elites found themselves outmatched and without recourse. The ACA's coalition spanned from muckraking public housers to titans of real estate and from foresters to housekeeping columnists. Their connections to the government were deep, working closely with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to promote planning, modernization, and homeownership across the United States. As they learned from their experiments in Washington, their ideas coalesced into spatial and resource planning on the regional and even global scale. When Delano's nephew and protégé, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, assumed the presidency, the ACA at last fulfilled their vision through the vast public works programs of the New Deal. From there, the younger generation that drew up Olmsted's notes went on to reshape D.C., lead the National Park Service, and teach in elite design schools until the 1970s. One even set the boundaries of Washington’s memory as president of the Historical Society of Washington. 

Reno was torn down under Works Progress Administration contracts and by the authority of the National Park Service. Fragments excluded by Olmsted survived until the 1950s. By then, a new generation of civil rights activists had arisen, challenging the systems established by the ACA. When the last houses fell, it was to conceal what had been done in the name of the public. 

The book will restore Reno’s name to memory, showing that its story explains those qualities that make Washington, D.C. so distinct: its leafiness, its monumentality, and the Black excellence that persists in tension with its segregated neighborhoods. Moreover, Reno’s story offers a snapshot of the question that has haunted United States from the banks of the James River to the streets of Minneapolis: 

To whom, exactly, does this land belong?