Gertrude Kuh

Last updated
Gertrude Kuh
Born
Gertrude Eisendrath

(1893-09-11)September 11, 1893
Racine, Wisconsin, United States
DiedSeptember 1977 (aged 83–84)
NationalityAmerican
Other namesGertrude Deimel
Gertrude Deimel Kuh
Gertrude Eisendrath Kuh
Alma materLowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture
Occupationlandscape architect
Spouse(s)Mr. Deimel
George Kuh

Gertrude Kuh (1893–1977) was an American landscape architect who worked primarily in the Chicago area.

Contents

Education and personal life

Gertrude Eisendrath was born September 11, 1893, in Racine, Wisconsin, to Benjamin David Eisendrath and Frances Eisendrath. Her family moved to Chicago when she was six. She began her college education at Sweet Briar College in Virginia but quickly transferred to the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture in Groton, Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1917. [1]

Sweet Briar College

Sweet Briar College is a women's liberal arts college in Sweet Briar, Virginia, United States, about 12 miles (19 km) north of Lynchburg. The college is on 3,250 acres (13,152,283 m2) in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, on the former estate of the college's founder, Indiana Fletcher Williams. Sweet Briar was established in 1901 as the Sweet Briar Institute and opened its doors in 1906. The college is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award the Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts in Teaching, and Master of Education; as of June 2018 it is on "warning" status due to its fiscal-year 2017 finances.

Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture

The Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture is the shorthand name for a school that was founded in Groton, Massachusetts in 1901 for women to be trained in landscape architecture and horticulture. Under its original name of Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture, Gardening, and Horticulture for Women, the college was one of the first in the world to open the profession to women. In 1915 it was renamed the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women, and in 1945 it was absorbed into the Rhode Island School of Design as the Lowthorpe Department of Landscape Architecture.

After college, Kuh undertook an apprenticeship with the landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman in Massachusetts. In 1921, she returned to Chicago. [1]

Ellen Biddle Shipman American landscape architect

Ellen Biddle Shipman was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style. Along with Beatrix Farrand and Marian Cruger Coffin, she dictated the style of the time and strongly influenced landscape design as a member of the first generation to break into the largely male occupation.

In 1942, Gertrude married George Kuh, whose ex-wife was Chicago art curator and gallery owner Katharine Kuh. [1] She had been previously married to Jerome Deimel; who died in 1926. [2] She had a son, John (b1926-d2018), with Jerome Deimel. [3]

Katharine Kuh American art critic

Katharine Kuh was an art historian, curator, critic, and dealer from Chicago, Illinois. She was the first woman curator of European art and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Career

Over a career spanning some forty years, Kuh designed over 400 landscaping projects and gardens. Although she never took on partners, she had two associates, Mary Long Rogers and Edith Antognoli. [1]

Little is known about her early work (prior to 1950) since Kuh discarded most of the records of these projects. [1] Between 1950 and her retirement in the 1970s, Kuh designed some 250 landscaping projects about which somewhat more is known, mostly for private residences in and around Chicago, Lake Forest, Winnetka, Glencoe, and Highland Park, Illinois. [1] She worked on both plantings for new construction and redesigns of existing landscaping. [1] She was designing in an era when many large estates were being broken up into smaller parcels, and she became known for her skill at helping these small plots maintain a sense of spaciousness and privacy through such techniques as clustering trees and shrubs, planting trees with strong sculptural lines that signaled grandeur, and using color schemes that skewed towards green. [4]

Kuh died in September 1977. Her papers are held by the Art Institute of Chicago and include letters from Shipman and an oral interview with Kuh's son John. [1] In November 1997, the Art Institute of Chicago mounted "The Modern Midwestern Landscape," an exhibition featuring her work and that of fellow landscape architect Franz Lipp. [5]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Beatrix Farrand American landscape architect

Beatrix Cadwalader Farrand was a landscape gardener and landscape architect in the United States. Her career included commissions to design about 110 gardens for private residences, estates and country homes, public parks, botanic gardens, college campuses, and the White House. Only a few of her major works survive: Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden on Mount Desert, Maine, the restored Farm House Garden in Bar Harbor, and elements of the campuses of Princeton, Yale, and Occidental.

Charles Adams Platt was a prominent American artist, landscape gardener, landscape designer, and architect of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture.

Michael Robert Van Valkenburgh is an American landscape architect and educator. He has worked on a wide variety of projects in the United States, Canada, Korea, and France, including public parks, college campuses, sculpture gardens, city courtyards, corporate landscapes, private gardens, and urban master plans.

Sophia Hayden American architect

Sophia Hayden was an American architect and first female graduate of the four-year program in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eleanor Raymond was an American architect.

Mary Almy (1883–1967) was an American architect, and a partner at Howe, Manning & Almy, Inc., one of the first architecture firms founded by women in the United States and specializing in domestic architecture. She studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1917-1919.

Rose Ishbel Greely was an American landscape architect and the first female licensed architect in Washington, D.C.

Marian Cruger Coffin One of the first American women to work as a professional landscape architect

Marian Cruger Coffin was an American landscape architect who became famous for designing numerous gardens for members of the East Coast elite. As a child, she received almost no formal education but was home-tutored while living with her maternal relatives in upstate New York. Coffin was determined to embark on a career despite the social problems that it would cause for a woman of her class and enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied between 1901–4 as one of only four women in architecture and landscape design.

Lois Lilley Howe was an American architect and founder of the first all female architecture firm in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ann Beha is an American architect. She is founder and partner of Ann Beha Architects in Boston, Massachusetts. Beha's leadership is marked by work with strong historical, cultural and educational content, designing buildings which serve the public and expand the client's vision.

Gertrude Lempp Kerbis was an American architect. She worked for and studied under some of the most significant modernists of her day, including Carl Koch, Walter Gropius, and Mies Van Der Rohe. She played a leading role in designing several major examples of American modernism, including the Lustron house, the US Air Force Academy, and the O'Hare International Airport rotunda. She founded the Chicago Women in Architecture group in 1973.

Jane Weinzapfel is an American educator and architect. Together with Andrea Leers, Weinzapfel created the Boston-based architecture firm Leers Weinzapfel Associates which was the first woman-owned firm to win the American Institute of Architects Architecture Firm Award in 2007. In 1994, she was elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.

Doris Cole American writer

Doris Cole,, is an American architect and author. She was a founding principal of Cole and Goyette, Architects and Planners Inc. She is the author of From Tipi to Skyscraper: A History of Women in Architecture. which was the first book on women in architecture in the United States.

Mabel Keyes Babcock (1862–1931) was one of America's early women landscape architects. She taught at Wellesley College and the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture before going on to become Dean of Women Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gertrude Sawyer was one of the earliest American women architects to practice in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., area.

Jane Silverstein Ries (1909–2005), also known professionally as Julia Jane Silverstein, was an American landscape architect who was the first woman licensed in Colorado as a professional landscape architect. For her landscape work as well as her efforts to preserve and restore historical sites, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame and a foundation was established in her name that awards scholarships in her field and supports an annual lecture series.

Cary Millholland Parker (1902–2001) was an American landscape architect based in Washington, D.C.

Anne Whiston Spirn is an American landscape architect, photographer and author. Her work promotes community-oriented spaces that are functional, sustainable, meaningful, and artful. Spirn is Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. She is the 2001 winner of the International Cosmos Prize.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Gertrude Kuh (1893-1977) Papers". Finding aid, Art Institute of Chicago website. Accessed Oct. 24, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Landmark Nomination for 1427 Waverly Road — Public Hearing". Historic Preservation Commission, Aug. 13, 2013, p. 27.
  3. ↑ Steyskal, Irene. "23 Gardens to Be Opened to Tour Visitors". Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1948.
  4. ↑ Rodkin, Dennis. "Planted in History". Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1995.
  5. ↑ "Art Institute Showing Works of Landscapers" [ dead link ]. The Beacon News, Oct 9, 1997.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.