Last month the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced the 11 most endangered historic places in America. This marks the 20th anniversary of the Trust's annual list. This year's list includes several public spaces and parks of particular interest to members. The full list is below:

• Brooklyn’s Industrial Waterfront, New York
• El Camino Real National Historic Trail, New Mexico
  
• H.H. Richardson House, Brookline, Massachusetts
• Hialeah Park, Hialeah, Florida
  
• Historic Places in Powerline Corridors (Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware) 
  
• Historic Structures in Mark Twain National Forest, Missouri
• Historic Route 66 Motels, Illinois to California
  
• Minidoka Internment National Monument, Jerome County, Idaho
• Philip Simmons Workshop and Home, Charleston, South Carolina
  
• Pinon Canyon, Colorado
• Stewart's Point Rancheria, Sonoma County, California

Visit the National Trust's site for more information, and be heartened by reading about its 11 Most Recent Successes [scroll down].

[Photo of Stewart's Point Rancheria, CA, by Bambi Kraus]

The tulips are coming back to a 1920s park, The Baltimore Sun reports. The reporter describes the gem with famed lineage as "a sylvan sliver in the unlikeliest of places."

Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted came up with the idea for the park as he drafted ideas for Baltimore's overall green space in 1905, but it was Thomas Hastings, another esteemed architect, who designed it years later.

The Great Depression left the park colorless, but it's on its way to a revival close to a century later.

Almost 150 years after Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux finished Washington Park, Chicago is set to unveil some alterations and improvements - or not, depending on who you ask - to help lure the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune does a straight reporting version of the anticipated plans for an amphitheater.

A temporary stadium would be built before the amphitheater. Look for the plans, and for Kamin to get critical, after next week's unveiling.

It's been a long while since we've had the opportunity to link to one of Beth Dunlop's gorgeous columns in The Miami Herald, but her most recent column, an impassioned call to save the Hialeah race track, is a must-read. The track, which was once designated a wildlife sanctuary for its famous flock of flamingos, is described by James E. Bassett, the retired president and board chairman of another of America's historic tracks, Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Kentucky , as a former "jewel of Southern racing, with the elegant landscaping, its magnificent architecture and its safe and comforting track for the horses.''

''Nothing matches Hialeah for those long vistas, the softly-waving pine trees, the drama of the flamingoes,''  Nancy Stout, the photographer and author of the book Great American Thoroughbred Race Tracks, tells Dunlop.

So what is the future of this neglected jewel? Well, if the track's owner has his way, "3,760 residential housing units, many of them in high-rise apartment buildings, along with almost one million square feet of retail shopping." The good news for preservationists is that the zoning for the plan is not in place, nor are the requisite regional approvals for a large-scale development. Hialeah's Historic Preservation Board has publicly opposed the plan, and the state's historic preservation board has expressed its serious misgivings. The bad news: The public doesn't seem to care what happens to Hialeah one way or another.

Clearing debris and replacing trees in the heavily damaged Olmsted Parks system in Buffalo, New York, will cost an estimated $2 million, The Buffalo News reports. FEMA may reimburse the city for much of the debris removal in the park, but it is unlikely to pay for any reforestation efforts, Jonathan M. Holifield, chief director of the Buffalo Olmsted Conservancy, tells the paper. The Conservancy is collecting donations through its Park ReLeaf efforts, and HSBC Bank USA said its charitable arm will contribute $50,000 to the effort.

Columbia, South Carolina, is looking to connect several districts throughout the city that are seeing strong but distinctly disparate growth by "embarking on an estimated 10-year, multimillion-dollar effort to turn the area bounded by Calhoun, Taylor, Marion and Barnwell streets into a destination garden district," The State reports. Historic Columbia has hired South Carolina native Jim Cothran, FASLA, a landscape architect, author, and expert on historic gardens, to plan the expanded garden district. The effort has the enthusiastic support of Mayor Bob Coble, who told the paper, "connecting the city through green spaces, gardens and parks is very important. This could be an excellent connection between areas of the city that have historically been divided. It’s a tremendous step forward and deserves the city’s support. It’s perfect." Hmmm... he sounds like another South Carolina mayor we know and love.

Last month, Buffalo, New York, experienced a freak snowstorm that damaged the city and has fairly well devastated its six parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, according to Art Voice, a Buffalo newsweekly. According to the paper, Mayor Byron Brown predicts that 3,000 to 12,000 trees will have to be removed from the Olmsted parks. The good news, the Buffalo Olmsted Park Conservancy says, is "the trees will be replanted. The reforestation will not try to alter what was done by Olmsted." In addition, the University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning will be documenting the damage to the parks in GIS and 3-D simulations to help set the priorities for reforestation.

Think of it as a nationwide charrette. The National Parks Service announced yesterday that it has begun a "major planning effort to improve the National Mall experience," and has set up a web site to collect suggestions from the public about what should be done to spruce up the nation's front yard. This will be a long-term process, but the time to get involved is now, so if you have suggestions, start registering them now by clicking here--and be sure to note that you are a landscape architect. (It's a bit confusing--download and read the National Mall Plan Questions document, then click on "Comment on document" in the left-hand navigation.)

Also, if you're in the Washington, DC, area, you can attend the November 15 NPS symposium "Future of the National Mall," which will include experts in the fields of landscape architecture, city planning, turf management, and related industries. The symposium, which is open to the public, will be held at the Naval Heritage Center at the U.S. Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington, DC. The Dirt is guessing that's when we'll really start to see this thing take shape.

LAND Online will have more on the National Mall planning effort in the November 13 issue.

A federal judge has approves the $17.6 million sale of the historic Highland Park estate formerly owned by convicted insurance executive Michael Segal after preservationists and developer Orren Pickell agreed on preserving the estate's Prairie-style Tudor Revival mansion and grounds designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen, the Chicago Tribune reports. Segal had submitted the Jensen landscape for national preservation status prior to being convicted of massive fraud. According to that submission, the landscape includes a large meadow, a deep ravine with layered rock work, and a path leading around the ravine to a bluff by Lake Michigan, the paper reports.

That, according to Preservation magazine, is the prevailing sentiment among developers as they rush to urbanize early suburbs in places like Arlington, Virginia; Queens, New York; and Sherman Oaks, California. The magazine details developers' efforts to purchase and raze garden apartments in rapidly growing areas and replace them with high-rise apartment buildings. According to the magazine, Sherman Oaks has been successful in  saving the 1940s-era Chase Knolls complex by designating it a Historic-Cultural Monument, but is still fighting to save other garden complexes. In July, preservationists lost a bid to save sections of Buckingham Village in Arlington, which will give way to luxury townhouses and apartments.