Fletcher Steele
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
landscape architect
Landscape architect
A landscape architect is a person involved in the planning, design and sometimes direction of a landscape, garden, or distinct space. The professional practice is known as landscape architecture....
credited with designing and creating over 700 gardens from 1915 to the time of his death.
Steele was born John Fletcher Steele in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to a lawyer father and pianist mother, graduated from Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
in 1907, and promptly joined the young landscape architecture
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve environmental, socio-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and geological conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions...
program at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
where Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was an American landscape architect best known for his wildlife conservation efforts. He had a lifetime commitment to national parks, and worked on projects in Acadia, the Everglades and Yosemite National Park. Olmsted Point in Yosemite and Olmsted Island at Great Falls...
was one of his professors. In 1908 Steele left Harvard to accept an apprenticeship with Warren H. Manning
Warren H. Manning
Warren Henry Manning was an influential American landscape designer and promoter of the informal and naturalistic “wild garden” approach to garden design...
.
In 1913 Steele embarked on a four month tour of Europe to study European designs. Upon his return to America, he opened his own practice. His early garden plans are generally in the English Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...
style of Gertrude Jekyll
Gertrude Jekyll
Gertrude Jekyll was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA and contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines.-Early life:...
, Reginald Blomfield
Reginald Blomfield
Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield was a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period.- Early life and career :...
, and T. H. Mawson, but ornamented with Italianate detailing such as balustrades, hedges, urn
Urn
An urn is a vase, ordinarily covered, that usually has a narrowed neck above a footed pedestal. "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation for high-style dining rooms of the late 1760s...
s, statuary, stone pineapples, and flights of water steps. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Steele served in the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
in Europe. After war's end he regularly returned in summers.
His conversion to an Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
style began in 1925 when he visited the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes
Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes
The International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts was a World's fair held in Paris, France, from April to October 1925. The term "Art Deco" was derived by shortening the words Arts Décoratifs, in the title of this exposition, but not until the late 1960s by British art critic...
(the 'Art Deco Exposition') and saw its examples of cubist gardens with mirrors, concrete and coloured gravel. By 1930 Steele was writing with enthusiasm of André Véra, Tony Garnier (architect)
Tony Garnier (architect)
Tony Garnier was a noted architect and city planner. He was most active in his hometown of Lyon.Garnier is considered the forerunner of 20th century French architects...
, and Gabriel Guevrekian
Gabriel Guevrekian
Gabriel Guevrekian was an architect and landscape designer. Primarily an architect Guevrekian is best known for his contributions to landscape architecture...
.
Steele's designs and writings of this period were influential during the stylistic transition from Art Deco to Modernism. He helped shape Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
through younger design students at Harvard, notably Dan Kiley
Dan Kiley
Daniel Urban Kiley was a noted American landscape architect in the modernist style.- Life and career :Kiley was born in Boston, Massachusetts...
, Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo was an American landscape architect notable for his seminal 1950 book Landscape for Living.-Youth:...
, and James C. Rose
James C. Rose
James C. Rose was a prominent landscape architect and author of the twentieth century. Born in rural Pennsylvania he, his mother and older sister moved to New York after his father’s death. Rose was a high school dropout, but this didn’t stop him from being accepted into Cornell University as an...
, to who Steele showed the possibilities of modern art and the creativity inherent within the design process. Kiley later wrote that "Steele was the only good designer working during the twenties and thirties, also the only one who was really interested in new things." Eckbo noted that "Fletcher Steele was the transitional figure between the old guard and the moderns. He interests me because he was an experimenter." Steele's own designs, however, were sufficiently removed from the Modern style so that his works were generally out of fashion until the modern era had passed.
Steele is noted for a number of major works including Naumkeag
Naumkeag
Naumkeag is a 44 room, shingle-style country house located at 5 Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, USA in the Berkshires. It is now operated by The Trustees of Reservations as a nonprofit museum....
, Ancrum House, Whitney Allen House, Standish Backus House, Turner House, Lisborne Grange. His most famous work by far is Naumkeag
Naumkeag
Naumkeag is a 44 room, shingle-style country house located at 5 Prospect Hill Road, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, USA in the Berkshires. It is now operated by The Trustees of Reservations as a nonprofit museum....
.
These projects were not all viewed with high regard at the time, and only relatively recently have historians begun to appreciate Steele's impact on garden design and landscape architecture.
Steele is interred in the Mount Hope Cemetery
Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester
Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, founded in 1838, is the United States' first municipal rural cemetery. Situated on 196 acres of land adjacent to the University of Rochester on Mount Hope Avenue, the cemetery is the permanent resting place of over 350,000 people...
in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
. His papers are archived in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, the Rochester Historical Society and in the Franklin Moon Library, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry is an American specialized doctoral-granting institution located in the University Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, New York, immediately adjacent to Syracuse University...
, Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
.Images from the Steele manuscript collection can be found in the SUNY D-Space digital repository.
Selected writing
- Design in the little garden, Boston, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924.
- The House beautiful gardening manual; a comprehensive guide, æsthetic and practical, for all garden lovers, both those who are still planning their gardens on paper and those who have had gardening experience, including plant lists compiled with the help of horticulturalists in all sections of the country, and an introductory chapter on garden design by Fletcher Steele, Boston, The Atlantic monthly press, 1926.
- Gardens and people, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1964.
External links and Sources
- www.gardenvisit.com
- GoldsmithBirdhouses.com Birdhouse reproduction from Fletcher Steele design