Dan Kiley was no ordinary gardener. His landscape designs alongside Mid-century masters such as Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, I.M. Pei, and Kevin Roche were, by many accounts, the beginning of Landscape Modernism. His distinct brand of design took the fundamentals of French garden design to new places, giving them a Modernist sensibility, free from the rigidity of classical thought.
Dan Kiley at United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO. Photograph courtesy Aaron Kiley.
Banneker Park, Washington, DC. Photograph © Frank Hallam Day, 2013. All photos courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation unless otherwise noted.
Miller Garden, Columbus, IN. Photograph © Millicent Harvey, 2013.
Inspired by thinkers like William Blake and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Kiley was born in Boston in 1912 and apprenticed for Olmsted acolyte Warren Manning before a stint at Harvard’s landscape architecture program and then the National Parks Service in New Hampshire and later Washington, D.C. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers from 1943–45 — as an architect, he oversaw the layout of the courtroom for the Nuremberg trials — which afforded him the opportunity to travel around Western Europe. After the war, Kiley brought this formative experience back to the East Coast, where he subsequently made his name as a Modernist landscape architect.
In Kiley’s elegant works, you can find hedges, allées, and other tropes made into unconventional new places. They connect nature and humans in the most Romantic sense, but with refined and resolved Modernist sensibility. Architect Jacquelin Robertson said that his Dulles Airport, outside Washington, DC, was, “in some ways the most lyrical piece of large-scale landscaping that I know of in this country.”
Rockefeller University, New York, NY. Photograph © Benjamin Dimmitt, 2013.
Currier Farm, Danby, VT. Photograph © Peter Vanderwarker, 2013.
Ford Foundation Atrium, New York, NY. Photograph © David Leventi, 2013.
Like architecture, these mid-century works have come under threat, both from the course of history, but also from the ephemeral nature of flora itself. The Cultural Landscape Foundation honored Kiley as the focus of the 2013 Landslide initiative, an effort to raise awareness about the stewardship of his designs. Some are in good hands, such as the Miller House and Gardens, in Columbus, Ind., which is taken care of by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Unfortunately, not all of his work have been so lucky — which is why the awareness program is so important.
As part of Landslide program, The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley is a traveling photography exhibition that includes 45 newly commissioned photographs of 27 of his more than 1,000 designs (some of which can be viewed below). The show will be on view at the Center for Architecture in New York from March 26 – June 20, 2015.
Hamilton Garden, Columbus, IN. Photograph © Millicent Harvey, 2013.
© David Johnson
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, MO. Photograph © David Johnson, 2013.
United States Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO. Photograph © Brian K. Thomson, 2013.
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX. Photograph © Alan Ward, 2013.
Kiley Garden, Tampa, FL. Photograph © Maria Bevilacqua and Frederick Pirone, 2013.
Kimmel Residence, Salisbury, CT. Photograph © Neil Landino Jr., 2013.
Kusko Residence, Williamstown, MA. Photograph © Paul Warchol, 2013.
Agnes R. Katz Plaza, Pittsburgh, PA. Photograph © Richard A. Stoner, 2013.
© Roger Foley
Patterns, Wilmington, DE. Photograph © Roger Foley, 2013.
All photographs courtesy of the Cultural Landscape Foundation unless otherwise noted.