The newly acquired property features a Swiss chalet–style house, built in 1910, and includes the descendants of trees planted by Olmsted, tended for years by FOBH Board member Tina Kaasmann-Dunn. NYC Parks purchased the property from her. With her parents, she had long hoped that their family property would be preserved in perpetuity as open space and become City-owned parkland.

“Selling my family home was the hardest, most gut-wrenching thing I ever had to do,” Ms. Kaasmann-Dunn said, “but knowing that it will be preserved together with the Olmsted property gives me great comfort. Indeed, after watching the vast acreage of the original [Olmsted] farm fall to the bulldozers, and hundreds of houses be built in our woods, my parents hoped that our slice of Olmsted/heaven would be saved.”

FOBH and the Olmsted Network advocated for the addition of this property to Olmsted-Beil House Park for the protection it will provide against development and its preservation of the viewshed of the park to Raritan Bay. The new property also improves access to the park, now gained directly from Hylan Boulevard, a major
thoroughfare. The previous park entrance was through a shared-access easement with private, residential property owners.