Articles by
lalh
YOU DID IT! ONLINE FILM FUND RAISER MEETS GOALS
In early September, LALH asked members and supporters to help fund a new LALH film, Community by Design: The Olmsted Firm and the Development of Brookline, Massachusetts. There was only one hitch: we needed to raise $10,000 within 30 days. With your help, we made our goal. Thank you! Dozens of private contributors, in addition […]
FRICK FRACAS: PRESERVATION GROUP FORMS TO SAVE RUSSELL PAGE GARDEN
An ad hoc preservation group, “Unite to Save the Frick,” is organizing to protest a proposed expansion of the Frick Collection, an art museum on Manhattan’s East side, that would destroy the museum’s intimate proportions, alter the visitor experience, and demolish a beloved garden. Known as the 70th Street Garden, the city’s only work by […]
PANEL EXHIBITION OPENS IN NEW VENUE
The LALH panel exhibition, A Genius for Place, opened at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, in early September. About sixty people turned out for the opening public reception organized and hosted by the library staff. A brief program featured remarks by Executive Director Robin Karson. Joanna Ballantine of The Trustees of Reservations followed with […]
IT’S HERE: ARTHUR A. SHURCLIFF AND THE CREATION OF THE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG LANDSCAPE
LALH and the University of Massachusetts Press are pleased to announce the publication of Elizabeth Hope Cushing’s richly illustrated biography of landscape architect and planner Arthur Asahel Shurcliff (1870–1957). Cushing’s authoritative new book illuminates how Shurcliff’s early years in Boston, his training, his early design and planning work, and his experience creating an Arts and Crafts style summer compound […]
LALH AT MARSH-BILLINGS-ROCKEFELLER NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK
LALH is in Woodstock, Vermont, at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park this week, with landscape photographer Carol Betsch, taking photographs for the forthcoming “100 Years of Design on the Land,” an exhibition of forty-five photographs from LALH books: December 15, 2014–March 6, 2015, 1285 Gallery, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, New York City. The park encompasses […]
JAMES ROSE CENTER HOSTS SUBURBIA TRANSFORMED 3.0
“One Garden at a Time: Exploring the Aesthetics of Landscape Experience in an Age of Sustainability” was the theme of this competition for landscape architects, designers, and students sponsored by the James Rose Center for Landscape Architectural Research and Design in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Winning designs by three students and six professionals flow loosely from the modernist […]
A GENIUS FOR PLACE EXHIBITION ON THE MOVE
The LALH touring panel exhibition, A Genius for Place, opens at the Jones Library, Amherst, Mass., with a public reception on Thursday, September 4 at 6:30 p.m. LALH Executive Director Robin Karson will introduce the short documentary film Fletcher Steele and Naumkeag: A Playground of the Imagination at 7 p.m. A Genius for Place runs through September 28 and is open to […]
COMING NEXT MONTH: ARTHUR A. SHURCLIFF AND THE CREATION OF THE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG LANDSCAPE
Arthur Asahel Shurcliff (1870–1957) worked in the office of Frederick Law Olmsted in Brookline, Massachusetts, for more than seven years before establishing a regional practice. An idiosyncratic and brilliant designer, Shurcliff prepared plans for towns surrounding Boston and for several industrial communities. He designed recreational spaces in and around Boston, including significant aspects of the Franklin Park Zoo […]
SPRING/SUMMER CATALOG ONLINE
The 2014 spring/summer issue of the LALH catalog is now available. Look for a new issue each spring and fall on the books page. […]
VIEW IS OUT
Just in time for beach reading, the 2014 issue of VIEW has landed in the mailboxes of LALH members. Topics in the new issue range from the academic value of landscape history to John Nolen’s legacy for New Urbanist planners. Because LALH shares each issue with organizations whose interests are reflected in the contents, members […]
VIEW 2014 IN THE MAIL!
VIEW ships next week! Read about this issue at lalh.org/magazine. VIEW is the annual news magazine of LALH, published each summer and mailed to thousands of individuals, organizations, and libraries. Featuring articles about recently published and forthcoming LALH books, VIEW also profiles the preservation successes that LALH books inspire. LALH supporters receive a print subscription of VIEW as a benefit of […]
2014 PRESERVATION HERO
LALH has named Craig Barrow III of Savannah, Georgia, the 2014 Preservation Hero. “In his conscientious stewardship of his ancestral property, Wormsloe, Craig has demonstrated extraordinary respect for history as well as future generations,” said LALH Executive Director Robin Karson. Barrow said he was “overwhelmed by this honor.” Read the full profile of Barrow here or in […]
FORTHCOMING: LANDSCAPES OF EXCLUSION
The state parks movement sought to expand public access to scenic places throughout the nation. But in the South, severe racial restrictions, known broadly as “Jim Crow” laws, barred African Americans from using state parks. When the New Deal of the 1930s spurred a massive wave of park expansion, the National Park Service built segregated […]
HINTS FROM PRINCE PÜCKLER
A beautiful new edition of Hermann von Pückler-Muskau’s classic Hints on Landscape Gardening has just been released by Birkhäuser and the Foundation for Landscape Studies. The large-format volume includes the full set of lavish color prints originally published as a companion piece to the wry, highly opinionated text that took the landscape gardening world by […]
ARTHUR A. SHURCLIFF GETS A JACKET
The jacket design for the forthcoming book Arthur A. Shurcliff: Design, Preservation, and the Creation of the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape by Elizabeth Hope Cushing is now off the drawing board. Scroll down to read an excerpt from the introduction. “The first formally trained generation of American landscape architects emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, […]
MANY WAYS TO CELEBRATE OLMSTED IN APRIL
In much of the country April marks the real start of spring, when many city dwellers most appreciate their parks. The timing is perfect to celebrate Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture and the parks movement in particular, who was born on April 26, 1822. Throughout the country (and in Montreal), Olmsted parks […]
WISTARIAHURST TO HOST A GENIUS FOR PLACE PANEL EXHIBITION
On Sunday, May 18, the LALH panel exhibition, A Genius for Place, opens at Wistariahurst historic house museum (238 Cabot St.) in Holyoke, Mass., with a public reception at 1:00 p.m. The show runs through August 18 and is open to the public during the museum’s regular visitor hours. Visit the Wistariahurst website or call 413-322-5660. […]
FOR LALH, A PRODUCTIVE SEASON
Long, cold winters can be great incubators of indoor projects. Such was the case for LALH: • Authors and editors will soon send two new books to press, John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner by R. Bruce Stephenson, and Arthur A. Shurcliff: Design, Preservation, and the Creation of the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape by Elizabeth […]
OLMSTED DOCUMENTARY PREMIERES IN MASSACHUSETTS
Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America, a long-awaited documentary about America’s most influential landscape architect, premieres next month in Olmsted’s adopted home state of Massachusetts. LALH Executive Director Robin Karson and LALH Vice President Ethan Carr consulted on the one-hour film for filmmakers Larry Hott and Diane Garey of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, which coproduced it with […]
FULL CIRCLE: UGA HOSTS LALH EXHIBITION
From March 20 to April 28, the University of Georgia hosts a new LALH exhibition, Writing the Landscape: Books, Films, and Exhibits from the Library of American Landscape History. On view at the Circle Gallery, College of Environment + Design in Athens, the exhibition constitutes an LALH retrospective of sorts, featuring highlights from the body of work […]
BEST PLANNED CITY PHOTO EXHIBITION BY ANDY OLENICK
An exhibition of photographs by Andy Olenick, runs through April 30 at the Buffalo Niagara Visitor Center in the Market Arcade (617 Main St.). The show features photos of Buffalo’s Olmsted park system and other projects in the city that Olmsted and his associates designed. For more information call 716-852-2356 or click on visitbuffaloniagara.com. Olenick’s photographs appear in […]
NEW YEAR, NEW WORKS FROM LALH
LALH has two new books and a new film in development, slated for release in 2014—watch the lalh.org/blog for dates: Arthur A. Shurcliff: Design, Preservation, and the Creation of the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape, a book by Elizabeth Hope Cushing, examines how various influences on landscape architect Arthur A. Shurcliff (1870–1957)—his early years in Boston, his training, and […]
LALH BOOKS WIN FLS AWARDS
Two LALH books—one recently published and one forthcoming—received awards from the Foundation for Landscape Studies: The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System (2013) by Francis R. Kowsky, was recognized with the FLS J. B. Jackson Book Prize. Past recipients of the prestigious prize include Mission 66 and A […]
NOW SHOWING: THE BEST PLANNED CITY IN THE WORLD
The latest LALH film, The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System, is now available online! Based on scholarship from Francis R. Kowsky’s book , the new film tells the story of the nation’s first park system. Like other films in the North America by Design series, The Best Planned City […]
NEW PANEL EXHIBITION OPENS AT UMASS AMHERST
In February, the LALH traveling exhibition, A Genius for Place, makes its debut in a new format of free-standing panels at the W. E. B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, runs from February 3 through May 10. A public opening reception on March 5, […]
LECTURE AND A FILM WITH DARREL MORRISON
On Thursday, January 9, landscape architect Darrel Morrison lectures and screens the LALH film Designing in the Prairie Spirit: A Conversation with Darrel Morrison, as part of the Winter Enrichment lecture series at the University of Wisconsin Madison Arboretum. The event, which starts at 9:00 a.m. at the arboretum Visitor Center (1207 Seminole Highway), is open to the […]
LALH LAUNCHES BOOK CATALOG
The first issue of the LALH catalog is now available. Look for a new issue each spring and fall on the books page. […]
LALH Elects New President
LALH Elects New President In October, the LALH board of directors elected Daniel J. Nadenicek, ASLA, Dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia, as its new president. “Dan is a highly respected author and landscape studies scholar, and he has been an engaged board member and advocate for LALH for […]
Photographing New York State Waterfalls
Photographing New York State Waterfalls Fearing that the galloping growth of American cities and industry would consume unique natural scenery, landscape architect Warren H. Manning (1860–1938) persuaded his wealthy clients Robert H. and Laura Treman of Ithaca, New York, to conserve a number of waterfalls and gorges for future generations. In a short time, these […]
Lecture and Film Premiere: SRO for Buffalo
Lecture and Film Premiere: SRO for Buffalo In late October, a standing-room-only crowd turned out at The Arsenal in Central Park for a lecture and premiere of the film The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System. LALH and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation cohosted […]
Olmsted Papers Volume VIII Has Landed
Olmsted Papers Volume VIII Has Landed Ethan Carr, FASLA, associate professor of landscape architecture at University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the nation’s leading Olmsted scholars, edited the most recent volume of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, published in early November. Volume VIII: The Early Boston Years, 1882–1890, chronicles a significant period in Olmsted’s […]
Join LALH at ASLA Expo, Get New Member Bonus
Join LALH at ASLA Expo, Get New Member Bonus Stop by booth #314 on November 16–17 at the 2013 ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Boston. Become a member of LALH on the spot and get a $10 discount on any LALH book in the ASLA bookstore across the aisle. It’s all happening at the Boston Convention […]
REMEMBERING JAMES VAN SWEDEN (1935 – 2013)
Landscape architect and LALH advisor James van Sweden, FASLA, died September 20 at his home in Washington, D.C., at age 78. Along with his partner, Wolfgang Oehme, co-founder of Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, van Sweden designed public gardens, parks, memorials, private gardens, and campuses. Legions of landscape architects and home gardeners adopted the firm’s style, which […]
Indy Conference Illuminates Modernist Masters
Indy Conference Illuminates Modernist Masters At the September LALH conference, Masters of Modern Landscape Design, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), presenters discussed the work of modernist landscape architects including the relatively famous rebels—Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, and James Rose—and others less well known, such as A. E. Bye and Ruth Shellhorn. For several presenters and participants, […]
Big Apple Hosts Premiere of Best Planned City Film
Big Apple Hosts Premiere of Best Planned City Film Francis R. Kowsky’s new LALH book, The Best Planned City in the World, tells the story of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s park system for Buffalo—the most extensive in the world. What better place to launch the new LALH short film than Central Park, where […]
New Paperback, New Catalog a Click Away
New Paperback, New Catalog a Click Away Next month, LALH launches its first electronic book catalog. The new catalog will be published each spring and fall, in time for holiday giving. All “What’s New” subscribers will receive a copy—watch for an email in October. The premiere issue of the catalog features the new, paperback edition […]
A Genius for Place Panel Exhibition Coming to UMass
A Genius for Place Panel Exhibition Coming to UMass The new panel version of A Genius for Place exhibition will soon hit the road in a new, modular format. Designed to be flexibly configured, the exhibition can occupy 300 to 1,000 square feet, or more, perfect for public libraries, botanic gardens, and house museums. A […]
What’s New at lalh.org
What’s New at lalh.org With the page turn into September comes a new Place Study on the lalh.org website. The place: Yellowknife, in subarctic Canada. Learn how landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander accomplished her “invisible mending” in the fragile terrain surrounding the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly Building. Photographs by Etta Gerdes capture the region’s ethereal light. More […]
Sign up for What’s New
Subscribe to our mailing list Join our mailing list and receive our bi-monthly newsblast with information and stories about our organization and the landscape architecture community. * indicates required Email Address * First Name * Last Name * Organization How did you hear about LALH? FacebookTwitterGoogle+Google searchA friendOther Interest in LALH Mailing Address Address Line […]
LALH Names 2013 Preservation Hero
LALH Names 2013 Preservation Hero “For working to restore the Olmsted and Vaux park system in Buffalo, N.Y., during trying times . . . . For understanding that parks remain crucial to human well-being in urban life . . . . For using restored parks to bring back neighborhood pride and civic involvement . . […]
Buffalo Celebrates New LALH Book in Gala Style
Buffalo Celebrates New LALH Book in Gala Style The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy’s annual summer gala included the launch of the new LALH book, The Best Planned City in the World. Author Francis R. Kowsky signed copies and greeted fellow Buffalonians. Best Planned City is the first title in the LALH series Designing the American Park. […]
Register Now for “Masters of Modern Landscape Architecture” Conference
Register Now for “Masters of Modern Landscape Architecture” Conference Whether they created public plazas or private retreats, each of the eight landscape architects featured in the upcoming LALH conference, “Masters of Modern Landscape Design” asserted a distinct artistic vision. What they shared, from Dan Kiley and Garrett Eckbo to Ruth Shellhorn and Lawrence Halprin, was […]
John T. Whatley Joins LALH Board of Directors
John T. Whatley Joins LALH Board of Directors Moved by the sharp decline in honeybee populations, John T. “Ted” Whatley recently took up bee keeping in his garden in Austin, Texas. “There is so much to learn,” he says. It is a statement that those who spend time in Whatley’s company hear often. This spring, […]
New VIEW Covers More Ground
New VIEW Covers More Ground The LALH annual magazine, VIEW, landed on subscribers’ doorsteps in early July, and readers are already sending compliments. “SUPERLATIVE does not suffice,” a reader in Mississippi writes. “Best VIEW ever? Best VIEW yet?”This year’s issue not only contains more pages with elegant images and articles by practitioners as well as […]
Explore Browning Ranch at lalh.org
Explore Browning Ranch at lalh.org “This is one of my favorite places,” says Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, bending to dip her hand in a spring welling up from an unseen limestone cavern beneath the parched soil of Texas’s Hill Country. “I used to come here when I was a little girl and sit for hours.” In […]
MEDIA KIT: Masters of Modern Landscape Design
September Conference Celebrates Masters of Modern Landscape Design Indianapolis Museum of Art, September 28-29, 2013 Whether they created public plazas or private retreats, each of the eight landscape architects featured in the upcoming LALH conference “Masters of Modern Landscape Design” asserted a distinct artistic vision. What they shared, from Dan Kiley and Garrett Eckbo to […]
MEDIA KIT: Best Planned City in the World
Moving Earth to Create Heaven The Best Planned City in the World Looks at the Rise of the Revolutionary Buffalo Park System It’s hard to imagine the world’s major cities without their public parks. The greatest examples, such as London’s Hyde Park, the Tuileries Garden in Paris, and Central Park in New York City, are defining […]
Best Planned City Slated for June Release
Best Planned City Slated for June Release On the heels of Community by Design, published in April, comes the first book in the LALH Designing the American Park series, The Best Planned City in the World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System by Francis R. Kowsky. Beginning in 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert […]
A Gift for Naumkeag’s Landscape
A Gift for Naumkeag’s Landscape The Trustees of Reservations, a nonprofit preservation and conservation organization in Massachusetts, recently received a $1 million challenge grant to be spent solely on restoring the landscape at Naumkeag—the Choate estate in Stockbridge, a National Historic Landmark property owned and managed by The Trustees. The Trustees must raise a match […]
Happy Birthday, FLO: Celebrating a Landscape Legacy
Happy Birthday, FLO: Celebrating a Landscape Legacy April 24 saw a ripple of events throughout the country marking the 191st birthday anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903). Noteworthy among them was the opening of the newly restored garden at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida, designed by Olmsted Brothers in the […]
Exhibition Traces Designers’ Dreams for Australia’s “Ideal City”
Exhibition Traces Designers’ Dreams for Australia’s “Ideal City” A decade after Australia’s official federation in 1901, the government launched an international competition for the design of its new capital, Canberra—an “ideal city” that would reflect the new country’s aspirations. In 1912, the government declared a winner: Walter Burley Griffin, a Chicago-based architect and landscape architect. […]
September Conference Celebrates Rebels with a Cause
September Conference Celebrates Rebels with a Cause Whether they created public plazas or private retreats, each of the eight landscape architects featured in the LALH conference “Masters of Modern Landscape Design” asserted a distinct artistic vision. What they shared, from Dan Kiley and Garrett Eckbo to Ruth Shellhorn and Lawrence Halprin, was assertiveness itself—the boldness […]
Time for a New VIEW
Time for a New VIEW In June LALH members will receive the 2013 issue of VIEW—and make no mistake, this is the largest and most comprehensive issue to date. Don’t miss out on articles on topics such as the new LALH book Community by Design, a study of the Olmsted firm’s impact on the Boston suburb […]
LALH Launches Community by Design
LALH Launches Community by Design In 1883, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. moved from New York City to Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb that persistently resisted annexation by the nearby metropolis. For the next half century, the Olmsted firm served as the dominant force in the planned development of this rural enclave and received more than […]
Steele’s Amphitheater Becomes National Historic Landmark
Steele’s Amphitheater Becomes National Historic Landmark On Monday, March 11th, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior announced that Camden Amphitheater, one of Fletcher Steele’s few public projects, is one of the thirteen National Historic Landmarks designated this year. The outdoor theater lies behind the Camden Public Library, overlooking the harbor on West Penobscot Bay. It […]
Central Park Hosts Morrison Lecture, LALH Film
Central Park Hosts Morrison Lecture, LALH Film Native plants enthusiasts, transplanted Midwesterners pining for the prairie, and anyone curious about a naturalistic approach to landscape design will find much of interest at a lecture by Darrel Morrison, FASLA, and screening of the LALH film, Designing in the Prairie Spirit: A Conversation with Darrel Morrison. In the […]
Landscapes of Exclusion Wins Coffin Grant
Landscapes of Exclusion Wins Coffin Grant William E. O’Brien, associate professor of environmental studies at Florida Atlantic University, has received a 2013 David R. Coffin Publication Grant from the Foundation of Landscape Studies for the forthcoming book Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South, a volume in the LALH Designing the […]
LALH Welcomes Sarah Allaback
LALH Welcomes Sarah Allaback An architectural historian, Allaback previously worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey, the Historic American Engineering Record, and as a consultant for the National Park Service. She is the author of The First American Women Architects (University of Illinois Press, 2008), “Mission 66 Visitor Centers: The History of a Building Type” […]
By-Laws
BY-LAWS OF LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LANDSCAPE HISTORY, INC. ARTICLE I: Section 1. Name and Location The name of the corporation shall be Library of American Landscape History, Inc. The principal place of business of the corporation shall be 150 Fearing Street, Amherst, Massachusetts. Section 2. Purposes and Powers of the Corporation As set forth in […]
New Bits and Hot Bytes at LALH.org
New Bits and Hot Bytes at LALH.org With each passing month LALH.org is hitting a new stride—another new film, a dedicated YouTube channel, rotating bloggers, and more frequent postings of this LALH e-newsletter. Watch for a new Place Study, featuring the Buffalo Park System, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The subject of […]
“Dearest Nettie . . . .”
“Dearest Nettie . . . .” During his frequent travels to project sites across the country, Warren Manning wrote hundreds of letters to his wife, Henrietta Hamblin Pratt Manning—“Nettie,” to him. In his unpublished autobiography, he wrote that she was “the daughter of a leading citizen and business man,” and, as his spouse, “was not […]
Wormsloe Foundation, Billings Book—A Match Made in History
Wormsloe Foundation, Billings Book—A Match Made in History Progress on the forthcoming LALH book about railroad tycoon/ philanthropist/ conservationist Frederick Billings (1823–1890) recently gathered steam, propelled by a $12,500 grant from the Wormsloe Foundation. The book appears in the LALH series Critical Studies in the History of Environmental Design, which examines the conversion of land […]
Modern Landscape Design Conference to Launch New Series
Modern Landscape Design Conference to Launch Series “Our grave is on axis in a Beaux Arts cemetery,” wrote the modernist landscape architect James C. Rose (1913–1991). Always the gleeful iconoclast, Rose, with Harvard classmates Dan Kiley (1912–2004) and Garrett Eckbo (1910–2000) bucked Beaux Arts formalism in the 1930s to explore the spatial and artistic forms […]
Antonia Adezio’s Gift
Antonia Adezio’s Gift When the founding executive director of the Garden Conservancy, Antonia Adezio, stepped down in December after twenty-three years, she left more than a hundred conserved gardens, a national membership organization with a network of engaged volunteers, a thriving Open Days program, a West Coast base in the San Francisco Bay Area, and […]