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Dissertation: "Women as Force in
Landscape Architecture, 1893-1942"
Thaisa way, STUDENT ASLA
School
of Architecture, Art, & Planning, Cornell University
Advisors: Leonard Mirin, Daniel
Krall, ASLA, and Herbert Gottfried
Narrative Summary:
Project Title: A Dissertation on “Women as Force
in Landscape Architecture, 1893-1942”
Women and men from diverse backgrounds practiced the emerging
profession of landscape architecture between 1893 and 1942 shaping
its form and identity. Their practices reflected the multiplicity
of their experiences as nurserymen, painters, engineers, gardeners,
and writers. However, traditional historic narratives of designed
landscapes in the United States have failed to reveal the complexity
and depth of the early profession focusing instead on a narrow canon
comprised of men described as if in a trajectory from Frederick
Law Olmsted to Thomas Church. While these accounts are not inaccurate,
they overlook a critical element in the history, namely, that women
as designers, writers, and critics actively engaged in and shaped
the discipline at the same time as the practice emerged as a profession.
The project presented here, in the form of a dissertation, offers
a reading of American landscape architectural history focused on
women as “force” in the profession between 1893 and
1942, subsequently revealing a rich diversity of practices during
this significant early period.
The year of 1893 saw the World’s Fair in Chicago where the
work of Frederick Law Olmsted’s office was lauded as a critical
success establishing landscape design as a fine art. The year was
marked by the appearance of Mrs. (Marianna Griswold) Van Rensselaer’s,
Art Out-of-Doors: Hints on Good Taste in Gardening. This was the
first important book for the public in which the emerging profession
of landscape architecture was described and defined. Her book remained
a part of the education of landscape architects at Harvard and other
programs well into the twentieth century. The breadth of practice
Van Rensselaer described was embraced by men and women in the following
decades as they actively shaped the profession of landscape architecture.
Practioners came with a wide variety of backgrounds and training
which in turn informed the new profession. Practice between the
1890s and the 1930s was comprised of diverse project types, from
private small gardens to campus plans to large public parks to museum
landscapes. The wide breadth reflected the porous nature of the
profession in its early years.
However, such diverse practices were no longer evident by the mid-1940s
when landscape architecture attained its status as a licensed profession.
The pedagogy of design was increasingly focused on the skills associated
with architecture and engineering. At the same time as landscape
architecture was becoming grounded in the professional community,
opportunities for women’s participation were being dramatically
curtailed and design approaches limited to those within the mainstream
of professionals. In 1942 the Cambridge School of Landscape Architecture
and Architecture for Women was officially closed and soon thereafter
the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women shut down.
Within a decade the breadth of opportunities for women’s education
and professional participation that had been available earlier became
fewer and farther between. Women almost literally dropped from the
professional scene in the 1940s and 50s as did many of the practitioners
who had approached design with a viewpoint different from those
in leadership within the professional association. The period from
1893 to 1942 framed a dramatic growth and then decline in the diversity
of practice alongside the opportunities for women in landscape architecture.
It is this period that frames the research presented here.
Having established a chronological framework, a method was established.
In order to create an area of speculation for this research the
inquiry is grounded in the concept of constellations as developed
by Martin Jay and Gwendolyn Wright. This approach encouraged a consideration
of both how individuals remained distinct and how they shared the
experience of being women. Jay used the term “constellation
of figures to depict “a specific milieu, at once local, national,
and transnational….[drawing] the term from Walter Benjamin
and Theodor Adorno to suggest elements (or people) at once juxtaposed
and changing; a definite pattern unit[ing] them but it overlaps
with other patterns and has no inherent or totalizing essence.”
The idea of constellations allows difference to be discussed in
broader terms in order to reveal trends, biases, and influences
in the cultural landscape of the profession and the society. The
profession chosen by a large group of women can thus be juxtaposed
with their experience as women within a specific time period and
a shared geography. The shared experiences as female landscape architects
are explored both in their differences and similarities to those
of male landscape architects. These experiences are understood within
the social traditions and structures which place men and women in
distinct relationships with social and economic powers through different
modes of access to education, training, and authority.
The research for this dissertation focused on two constellations,
one within the other. The larger comprises a community of approximately
two-hundred women who practiced design, wrote about design, or photographed
landscape designs between 1893 and 1942. Building on the work of
previous researchers including Catherine Brown, Dorothy May Anderson,
Donna Palmer, and Charlene Brown among others, a large assortment
of information about these women was collected, from the mention
of a project to extensive notes and references. It included women
who were members of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
as well as those who chose to operate less formal practices. The
variety of approaches to practice, by men and women, is impressive.
This larger constellation framed the dissertation and established
a foundation of descriptive materials.
As a counterpoint to this larger group, a smaller constellation
comprises five landscape architects considered successful by contemporary
standards. Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950), Beatrix Jones Farrand
(1872-1959), Marian Cruger Coffin (1876-1957), Annette Hoyt Flanders
(1887-1946), and Marjorie L. Sewell Cautley (1891-1954). The success
of these women is reflected in the number of projects completed
as well as the breadth of project types. They were recognized by
their colleagues as evident in their election to membership in A.S.L.A..
Ellen Shipman, the only one not to become a member, was considered
a ‘Dean of Women Landscape Architects’ by House
and Garden. These five women represent two generations of landscape
architects. Alongside the larger association of women, these practitioners
constituted a professional norm and force between 1893 and 1942.
The analysis of the research was divided into three main thematic
explorations. The first domain was education and training or tracing
how women trained to become, and then practiced as, professional
landscape architects. The dissertation argues that how women and
men pursued the profession differed and that this difference was
necessarily reflected in their respective practices. Thus the ways
in which different programs for women’s professional training
shaped practice was explored in some depth. The opportunities for
women to gain professional education in agriculture colleges and
then in specialized schools such as the Cambridge School shaped
the evolution of women’s professional practice. In turn, professional
women as employers played a critical role in both the development
of the field and the training of other practitioners. Most women
hired primarily women
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