Important North American Landscape Architects

Pioneering Designers of the American Environment and Landscape

Oct 25, 2009

Among the best known are Frederick Law Olmsted and Thomas Jefferson. Other names might be less familiar but have left their unmistakable stamp on our environment.

Landscape architecture is both a feat of engineering and an art form. Those whose imaginations and technical expertise have left their permanent influence on North American cities and residences include the well-known and the nearly forgotten.

The rise of the middle class and the Industrial Revolution transformed the concept of a residence's landscape "face" from nearly non-existent prior to 1800, to the great landscape vistas of Newport, RI, Saratoga Springs, NY, and other urban enclaves of North America.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Jefferson was truly a Renaissance Man whose brilliant mind was in constant pursuit of new ways to improve his environment. He was not only a statesman and President of the United States, he was an architect, a farmer, an inventor, and a landscape designer as well as horticulturist.

The landscape design of Monticello, his own home, was finally finished after Jefferson designed the estates of several friends. Heavily influenced by the neo-classicism of the late 18th century, Jefferson used many of the elements of English and French gardens he saw as Ambassador to France, combined with the natural vistas and native plants of his Virginia home.

Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852)

Considered by some to be the "father" of American landscape gardening, Downing produced few grand landscapes and concentrated on the small land-holdings of middle class homes. His books on American gardening design, the architecture of country houses, and essays on rural landscaping detailed his theories on natural plantings that blended in with the landscape. He believed fully in the functionality of gardens. Well before Frank Lloyd Wright was born, Downing spoke to the role of the front porch which connected the indoor life with the natural habitat.

It was Downing who first envisioned a major park for the city of New York, to provide healthy outdoor experiences for a crowded and unhealthy populace. This park was later realized by Frederick Law Olmsted. Downing died young (36) but his descendent John Downing still operates the Downing and Associates Company.

Frederick Law Olmsted ((1822-1903)

Olmsted considered himself an environmental planner, although most people consider him the founder of landscape architecture. Influenced by many of the great estates of England, he incorporated natural elements into his urban designs. He designed many city parks, including the most famous - Central Park in New York City. Olmsted was a champion of the "City Beautiful" movement, and the leading landscape architect of the post-Civil War generation.

Among his early interests were "scientific" farming, and he had short careers as a merchant seaman and a newspaper correspondent. Appointed as the Superintendent of Central Park in its early design stage, he met with Calvert Vaux who had been collaborating with Andrew Downing on a design for the park. When Downing died, Olmsted was asked to complete the design with Vaux.

Olmsted and Vaux also worked on the designs of Prospect Park, Chicago's Riverside subdivision, Buffalo, NY's park system, and the Niagara Falls reservation. In 1883 he left New York and relocated to Massachusetts where he designed the "Emerald Necklace", a series of parks in Boston and its immediate suburbs. His last major project was the design of the "White City", the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

Frederick Gage Todd (1876–1948)

Todd, born in Concord, NH, was the first resident landscape architect in Canada. His projects ranged from Vancouver, B.C. to St John's, Newfoundland. Todd began his career as an apprentice with Olmsted's landscape design firm in Brookline, MA. He moved to Montreal, Quebec, in 1900.

His first report on future urban planning for Ottawa in 1903 led Todd to establish the first landscape practices and guidelines on a formal basis; he designed and completed Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg and Wascana Park in Regina.

Between 1907 and 1912 Todd designed three major garden city projects in British Columbia; Shaughnessy Heights and Point Grey in Vancouver, and Port Mann on the Fraser River. These are just a few of the urban parks and city plans Todd carried out across Canada; he was elected president of the Quebec Horticultural Society in 1939, and died in Montreal at the age of 71.

Luis Barrigán (1902-1988)

Renowned as one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, the Mexican Luis Barrigán was equally gifted as a landscape architect. His fascination with modernism and Art Deco was instilled on his first trip to Europe in the 1920s, but did not directly impact his designs in Mexico until he met Le Corbusier and the landscape architect, Ferdinand Bac, in Paris on his second trip. During the 1940s, Barrigán developed a uniquely Mexican vernacular for landscape design using native plants to take full advantage of the local terrain. Nearly forgotten, however, by the late 1960s, Barrigán was lifted from obscurity by a retrospective exhibition by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1975. A few years later he won the Pritzker Prize for architecture. This recognition gave him a few years of public acclaim and admiration before his death in 1988 in Mexico City.

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