NYC BOOK AWARD 2002
A Modern Arcadia
Susan L. Klaus

Located in Queens, fifteen minutes from Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station, Forest Hills Gardens is a leading example of England's garden city transplanted onto American soil. The commuter suburb drew national attention when plans for its development were announced by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1909, and the thriving community continues to provide a parklike haven for more than 6,000 residents.

Susan L. Klaus offers a richly illustrated account of the collaboration between architect Grosvenor Atterbury and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., who drew on his father's visionary concepts as well his own ideas about what makes a community work. As Americans continue to struggle with the dual challenge of containing sprawl and creating livable communities, A Modern Arcadia provides a timely analysis of one of the most successful places ever built in the United States.

"Susan Klaus's Modern Arcadia is an important book in the history of city planning, a well-researched history of the creation of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York, the Russell Sage Foundation's early twentieth-century model commuter suburb. Klaus positions her subject in the context of the garden cities movement in Europe and America, showing how the design team led by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., created a leafy community that a hundred years later remains one of the city's pleasantest neighborhoods." - Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

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