Forty Years in a Cultural Landscape Practice

Abstract

Landscape architect Marion Pressley describes her forty-year career as a cultural landscape practice. Before the term “cultural landscape” was coined, Pressley discovered cultural landscapes in the diverse commissions she acquired throughout the U.S. She uses case studies from her government work supported by the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and the National Park Service to explain how she took on the challenge of preserving the integrity of historical landscapes while providing vital, contemporary design solutions. Her firm’s Master Plan for Rockwell Park in Bristol, Connecticut, was an important early example of the government-funded cultural landscape report, and her study of Washington Square in Philadelphia set a precedent for comprehensive cultural landscape reports resulting from the Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) process. Pressley also set the standard for cultural landscape work for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and house museums, such as Wistariahurst, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and Steepletop in Austerlitz, New York. Two ongoing projects—Brookline’s Emerald Necklace parks and Pittsburgh’s Point State Park—were central to the development of Pressley’s “reality-based” preservation principles for cultural landscapes. Pressley is adamant about the need to preserve the historical legacies of landscapes while also designing, and maintaining, places relevant to today’s users.