OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



105 



Thus for more than forty years, he was 

 in active practice, and, during all that 

 period, he was concerned with large and 

 important undertakings. His remark- 

 ably extensive experience was also not- 

 ably varied, for he was called on to de- 

 sign areas for a great diversity of uses. 

 Hundreds of private estates, large and 

 small, in all parts of the country, and the 

 grounds of many institutions — of uni- 

 versities, schools, and colleges (includ- 

 ing Smith and Mt. Holyoke, and Ohio 

 State University) — of industrial plants, 

 asylums, sanitariums, libraries, state 

 Capitols, town halls and exposition build- 

 ings, were developed by him — several of 

 these on the Pacific Coast. With his 

 partners, he was concerned in the design 

 of the grounds of the World's Fair in 

 Chicago, 1893, and, as one of the de- 

 signers of the layout of this great epoch- 

 making exposition, he received one of the 

 commemorative medals issued to certain 

 participating artists. He was similarly 

 concerned with the plans for the Seattle 

 Exposition, 1909 ; the Lewis and Clarke 

 Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1906; and 

 the Canadian Industrial Exposition at 

 Winnipeg, Manitoba — all this besides his 

 unique work on public playgrounds and 

 parks. 



He always, and conspicuously regard- 

 ed Landscape Architecture as a profes- 

 sion rather than as a business ; yet, and 

 largely for that reason, on the business 

 side he was successful ; and it is said 

 that more than any other he established 

 the professional practice of his firm up- 

 on a sound business basis, — a basis, in 

 fact, that has influenced the organization 

 of the businesses of many other firms of 

 landscape architects in this country. 



Some further appreciation of the in- 

 dustry and success of his firm in the 

 years when he was its active head, may 



i)e gotten from the fact that during this 

 period their professional jobs, as shown 

 by a recent count for the purposes of this 

 minute, numbered about three thousand 

 five hundred. While it would be impos- 

 sible to determine now with how many 

 of these he had directly to do (and there 

 were many for the design of which he 

 was in no degree responsible) the pro- 

 fessional responsibility for these resting 

 primarily with his partner or partners, it 

 seems clear that in his active connection 

 with the business continuously almost 

 from its beginning, the proportion of 

 those jobs in which he had a hand must 

 have been a comparatively large one. 



Among other notable powers and pro- 

 fessional characteristics, he had an extra- 

 ordinary visual memory, the utmost inde- 

 pendence of thought, great fertility of 

 resource, a pains-taking care for the de- 

 tails of his schemes, a thorough knowl- 

 edge of his materials including plants, 

 and exceeding skill in their arrangement. 

 His fertility of ideas and professional re- 

 sourcefulness are well illustrated by two 

 of his better-known jobs, the houselots 

 for the employees of the National Cash 

 Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, which, 

 even when uniform in area, were given 

 ingeniously varied interest and livable in- 

 dividuality, and the famous group of 

 Southside Playgrounds in Chicago, 

 where, with the need of providing similar 

 elements in each case, every area has its 

 own complete and functional individual- 

 ity born of a skilful utilization of space 

 and adaptation to differences in area and 

 local need. By no means the least evi- 

 dence of his power in this latter case lay 

 in the remarkable shortness of time — not 

 more than two or three days^within 

 which these varied solutions were de- 

 veloped and the plans forwarded to Chi- 

 cago. 



