Developing Landscape Architecture for the Twentieth Century: The Career of Warren H. Manning

Abstract

Landscape architect Warren H. Manning (1860-1938) created an important practice that bridged the period between the popularity of ornamental horticulture and the rise of Modernism in the United States. He absorbed and transformed the experience of his apprenticeship with Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. to bring new expressions to the practice of landscape architecture in the twentieth century. Manning's office, like Olmsted's, became an apprenticeship setting for many significant practitioners of the twentieth century. His career was expansive in geographical and professional scope. Among the products of his diverse practice that this article focuses on are Manning's interests in larger-scale resource-based planning and design methodologies that culminated in the National Plan of 1919, and Progressive Era-inspired attempts to develop community participation that culminated in several important city planning efforts. By establishing these foci the article also seeks to enlarge the historiographic context for research into the development of landscape architecture during the period. This historiographic context suggests emerging scientific, political, social, and other non-formalistic trends that begin to explain the specific disciplinary and professional character of landscape architecture in the early twentieth century, and hence illuminate the specific character of Modernism in landscape architecture as distinct from other arts.