Building Eden: The Beginning of Miami-Dade County’s Visionary Park System

Building Eden: The Beginning of Miami-Dad County’s Visionary Park System is a concise and evocative introduction to the two men most responsible for the development of South Florida’s earliest parks and their beginnings as roadside improvements to what is today the nation’s third largest county park system. Building Eden tells the story of Depression-era Miami and two pivotal figures who came together to build South Florida’s most iconic parks.

Essays by editor Rocco Ceo and Joanna Lombard, the authors of Florida’s Historic Landscapes, give context to the era and motivations of the county’s first parks director, A.D. Barnes, and his leading designer and associate of the Olmsted Brothers firm, William Lyman Phillips. Original essays by Barnes and Phillips offer their own reflections, and renowned naturalist Roger Hammer brings this original narrative to the present day to provide an understanding of how and why these parks are unique.

Profusely illustrated with archival photographs, as well as new views by award-winning photographer and book designer Steven Brooke, Building Eden also features new drawings of these memorable legacy parks.