It’s 1933 and Wisconsin is emerging from The Great Depression. Thanks to FDR’s New Deal program, federal dollars are beginning to flow into communities around the country, including Milwaukee, where visionary leaders years before had hired Frederick Law Olmsted, most famous for designing New York’s Central Park, to create a network of parks for the growing city. Olmstead believed that landscape architecture could serve various social purposes, including providing relief from crowded cities and encouraging people of varied backgrounds and social status to engage in community. Olmstead once described his park work as a “democratic development of the highest significance.”