Genius of Place by justin Martin

“As a boy Olmsted had read SOLITUDE, a book by Swiss physician Johann Georg Zimmermann that discussed the powerful ability of scenery to ease a person’s melancholy. Growing up in Hartford, Olmsted had also been exposed to the ideas of the Reverend Horace Bushnell. Bushnell frequently preached about something called ‘unconscious influence.’ This was the reverend’s term for the striking ways that people’s spiritual states can be shaped by their environments. Bushnell had been the Brace family’s minister, though not the Olmsted’s—stepmother Mary Ann Olmsted considered his views too radical. But Olmsted was familiar with Bushnell and even once asked Brace to send him some of the minister’s writings on ‘unconscious influence.’”

-Justin Martin, 2011