Index for Pioneers of American Landscape Design Available Online

You can now download an index to Pioneers of American Landscape Design, a book that one reviewer described as “a volume of breadth, depth, and excellence [that] pulls together the diverse and fascinating story of American landscape design.” LALH commissioned the index to augment the book’s usefulness as a research tool.

This richly illustrated encyclopedia includes biographical essays on 160 influential American landscape architects, from Stanley Abbott (1908–1975) to Florence Yoch (1890–1972).

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to LALH, a charitable, educational nonprofit organization, so that we can continue to provide free information to lalh.org visitors. Thank you!

A Genius for Place Rated “Outstanding” New Book

The Association of American University Presses just conferred “outstanding” status on A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era. The association deems such books to have “exceptional editorial content and subject matter” and recommends them as “essential additions to most library collections.”

“Robin Karson’s lavish book will satisfy the historian, the professional landscape designer, as well as the home gardener. The clear narrative style of eight biographies of garden architects from the early twentieth century will engage a variety of readers. An abundance of beautiful black and white photographs and landscape plans help convey the sense of time and place, as well as help illustrate the designs of the Country Place Era.”––AAUP review

LandscapeLeadership.com Interviews Karson

“I found A Genius for Place on amazon.com. It was a great read, and I thought my members might enjoy hearing from the author,” says Chris Heiler, a landscape designer who also writes and publishes LandscapeLeadership.com, explaining why he recently approached Robin Karson for an interview on his new, business-oriented website for residential landscape-design professionals.

The recent interview follows a December 2007 profile of Karson and LALH in Landscape Architecture magazine.

Award Recognizes a Nolen Neighborhood

The city of Wilmington, Delaware, recently honored Union Park Gardens, a residential district designed by early twentieth-century landscape architect and planner John Nolen, with its 2008 City Life Neighborhood of the Year award. The award recognizes an effort “to solidify a sense of community and togetherness within the community as well as adding to the beauty of Wilmington.”

The news comes from Adele Meehan, a Union Park Gardens resident and president of its neighborhood association. Meehan has worked successfully to make known the neighborhood’s significant urban-design history—Nolen created it in 1918 to house World War I shipyard workers—after curiosity led her to research the origins of the orderly streets and modest and well-proportioned houses.

Meehan’s volunteer efforts, guided by the LALH reprint of Nolen’s classic book New Towns for Old (1927), have built awareness of this distinctive legacy both within her community and citywide. She is continuing to advocate for the district’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.

“John Nolen understood that the quality of the physical environment was dependent on the quality of community leadership,” notes Charles D. Warren, author of the introduction to the LALH edition of New Towns for Old. “He would have recognized Adele Meehan as a kindred spirit. His plan and her efforts have enriched Wilmington and demonstrated the long-lasting, beneficial consequences of good urban planning.”

Coming from LALH: More from the Top Ten

Call them landscape architecture’s ten greatest hits. LALH calls them the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series. With the final three scheduled for release by spring 2009, the series will be complete.

In January 2008, Frank A. Waugh's Book of Landscape-Gardening (1926) rolled out from University of Massachusetts Press in association with LALH. This is the seventh title in the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series.

Frank Albert Waugh (1869–1943) moved to New England in 1895 from his native Midwest and later came to Massachusetts Agricultural College, now the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he founded one of the nation's earliest programs in landscape architecture. Waugh was an inspiring teacher, horticulturalist, and engaging and versatile writer. He became one of the first landscape architects to promote the use of native plants in American gardens and along country roadsides.

Book of Landscape-Gardening, written in 1899, was revised three times, and the new edition is reprinted from the culminating 1926 edition. The richly illustrated book, with photos of landscapes in Europe, Japan, and the United States, achieved its popular appeal by striking a balance between well-known period examples and simple solutions that could be accomplished by the novice designer, highway engineer, estate gardener, or average homeowner. Waugh includes several useful and charmingly opinionated plant lists and an annotated bibliography on landscape design.

A new introduction by historian Linda Flint McClelland, the first in-depth treatment of Waugh, examines his contributions to the profession of landscape architecture during a period of great technological change, growing cultural sophistication, and economic prosperity.

“Waugh is one of the unsung heroes of American landscape architecture. By reissuing this long out-of-print classic and articulating Waugh's role as a designer, educator, and popularizer, Linda McClelland and LALH have done a great service to the field.”
—Tim Davis, National Park Service

Country Life: A Handbook of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Landscape Gardening (1859) by Robert Morris Copeland (1830-1874) features a new introduction by William H. Tishler. Copeland was one of a small number of American landscape practitioners who helped establish the foundations for city planning and integrated park systems. As did his colleagues Frederick Law Olmsted and Horace W. S. Cleveland, Copeland merged principles of scientific farming with landscape gardening. Although he was short-lived, his substantial accomplishments included his magnum opus, Country Life, which quickly became a bible of scientific farming and landscape gardening, and an influential tract, The Most Beautiful City in America: Essay and Plan for the Improvement of the City of Boston. Copeland also left behind several important designs for cemeteries, estates, suburbs, communities, and parks throughout New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Tishler’s new introduction analyzes the importance of the book to mid-nineteenth century Americans and also chronicles Copeland’s other important achievements, including his early concept for a metropolitan park system for Boston. Tishler is professor emeritus of landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and editor of Midwestern Landscape Architecture (University of Illinois Press in association with LALH, 2000).

Forthcoming, Spring 2009.

Landscape for Living (1950) is an influential manifesto on modernism in landscape design by Garrett Eckbo (1910–1996), one of the most highly respected American modernist landscape architects. This new edition features an introduction by David C. Streatfield.

During and after his experience as a graduate student at Harvard (1936–38), Eckbo railed against the Beaux-Arts system of landscape design, arguing instead for an approach that would address contemporary social and economic challenges.

Published when Eckbo was forty years old, Landscape for Living synthesizes fourteen years of writing, thinking, and professional work and presents a theoretical approach to achieving what Eckbo identified as the “total landscape.”

Streatfield’s new introduction chronicles Eckbo’s life up to 1950, well into his early career as a landscape designer, prolific author, and committed social activist, interpreting Eckbo’s text as a reflection of this history. Streatfield is professor emeritus of landscape architecture at the University of Washington and author of California Gardens: Creating a New Eden.

Forthcoming, spring 2009.

The new edition of The Art of Landscape Architecture (1915) by Samuel Parsons Jr. includes an introduction by Francis R. Kowsky. A protégé of Calvert Vaux, Parsons (1844–1923) worked with the architect until Vaux’s death in 1895. As superintendent of planting in Central Park and landscape architect to the City of New York for nearly thirty years, Parsons was, until his resignation in 1911, the last direct link in the city to the ideals of Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.

The most widely read of Parsons’s several books, The Art of Landscape Architecture (1915) was an affectionate summing up of the theories and built work that had inspired America’s first generation of landscape architects. Parsons illustrated his book with photographs depicting a wide range of landscapes, including several of the park designed by the German landscape gardener Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau.

A new introduction by Francis R. Kowsky explores Parsons’s contributions to the nascent profession of landscape architecture, his championing of the work of Pückler-Muskau, his defense of Olmsted and Vaux’s vision for Central Park, and his own landscape designs.
Francis R. Kowsky is professor emeritus of architectural history at Buffalo State College and author of Country, Park, and City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux.

Forthcoming, spring 2009.

LALH Plans New Book on George Dorr

The life of conservationist George Bucknam Dorr (1853–1944), founder and superintendent of Acadia National Park, spanned nearly a century, from the decade before the Civil War to the final months of World War II. A forthcoming biography by Ronald H. Epp will explore Dorr’s connections with the powerful institutions, private philanthropists, and policy makers of his day.

Epp traces the roots of Dorr’s conservation principles through his extensive travels, his family associations with such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his interactions with his alma mater, Harvard University.

His research draws upon sources including Dorr’s extensive published work, particularly The Story of Acadia National Park. The biography also will trace how Dorr developed leadership skills from the models he observed as a descendant of powerful Brahmin families. The abundant images in the book will include Dorr’s photographs of Mount Desert Island and those of the renowned landscape photographer Herbert Wendell Gleason. 

Where Is Ellen Shipman Buried?

LALH recently received two calls in a single week from researchers wanting to locate the grave of landscape architect Ellen Shipman (1869­–1950). Collective sleuthing revealed that she is buried in bucolic Gilkey Cemetery, in Plainfield, New Hampshire.

In 1903 Shipman and her husband bought the John Gilkey farm, an eighteenth-century homestead, and, after renovations, renamed it Brook Place. Plainfield is near Cornish, home to the art colony that included Charles Platt and many other artists associated with the American Renaissance.

Mount Auburn Cemetery Welcomes New President

Speaking of cemeteries, a spokesperson for Mount Auburn Cemetery announced that David P. Barnett, Ph.D., has been named the cemetery’s new president and CEO. After a year-long national search, the cemetery concluded that the best person for the job was already on the staff.

Starting out as the director of horticulture, in 1993, Barnett worked in positions of increasing responsibility at Mount Auburn, America’s first “rural” cemetery and a National Historic Landmark. “I am honored and excited to lead Mount Auburn at this critical juncture in its history,” said Barnett. “This vibrant institution is a national leader in preservation, horticulture, and cemetery services, creatively building on a tradition of innovation and excellence.”

Barnett is past president of the American Public Gardens Association, a former board member of the International Society of Arboriculture, New England Chapter; and is currently Second Vice President of the Horticultural Club of Boston. Before coming to Mount Auburn, Barnett was assistant director at Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay, New York.

(A new edition of Blanche M. G. Linden’s award-winning history, Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery, was released last year.)

Research Query: Manning Mystery Archives

LALH Manning Research Project Coordinator Mackenzie Greer seeks information about materials disbursed by Warren Manning and his executors.

LALH recently learned that Albert Davis (A. D.) Taylor (1883–1951), former associate of the Warren H. Manning firm, was given two groups of construction photographs, one before Manning’s death, in 1938, and the other by his estate’s executor shortly after his death.

The photographs, five hundred in all, covered numerous estates, including those of William G. Mather, Cleveland, Ohio; J. H. Wade, Cleveland and Gates Mills, Ohio; Galen Stone, Marion, Mass.; A. B. and A. A. Houghton, South Dartmouth, Mass.; and George Bullock, Oyster Bay, N.Y.

These images do not appear in finding aids for any of Taylor’s archives that LALH Manning researchers have reviewed to date. Greer would be grateful for any information about the location of these photographs, should they still survive.

Greer is also looking for information regarding Arthur Sylvester, a landscape architect also employed by Manning, who took over the firm after Manning’s death and moved the business to Concord, N.H. Sylvester retained many plans and documents from Manning’s archive, but LALH’s efforts to trace them have been unsuccessful so far.

Please send any information to Mackenzie Greer at mgreer@lalh.org. Thank you.