Charles A. Platt

Charles Adams Platt (New York October 16, 1861–Cornish, New Hampshire September 12, 1933 was a prominent landscape gardener and architect of the "American Renaissance" movement, who introduced formal gardens of Italianate design to complement his domestic architecture with his influential book Italian Gardens (1894). His training was as an artist of landscapes, first at theNational Academy of Design in New York and as an etcher with Steven Garrish in Gloucester, Massachusetts. and from 1880 at the Académie Julian with Gustave Boulanger and with Jules Lefebvre. In Paris Salons he exhibited his paintings and etchings, and gained his first audience, but a trip to Italy in the company of his brother truly fixed his taste. In the decade 1880–1890 he made hundreds of etchings of architecture and landscapes. He received a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900.

Related Topics:
October 16 - 1861 - Cornish, New Hampshire - September 12 - 1933 - American Renaissance - Italianate - National Academy of Design - Gloucester, Massachusetts - 1880 - Académie Julian - Gustave Boulanger - Jules Lefebvre - Paris Salon - Exposition Universelle

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Platt was a member of the group that gravitated to Augustus Saint-Gaudens at at Cornish, New Hampshire, His own garden at Cornish, made between 1892 and 1912, exemplifies a new style, essentially an Arts and Crafts setting for Beaux-Arts Neo-Georgian and Colonial Revival architecture. The influences of Reginald Blomfield's The Formal Garden in England (1892) and gardens by Gertrude Jekyll illustrated in Country Life refined his style. The impact of Platt, and of Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) can be seen in the switch among stylish Americans from country houses set in lawns with shaped beds of annuals, swept drives and clumps of trees typical of 1885 to houses in settings of gravelled forecourts, planted terracing formal stairs and water features, herbaceous borders and pergolas that are typical of 1905.

Related Topics:
Augustus Saint-Gaudens - Cornish, New Hampshire - Arts and Crafts - Beaux-Arts - Neo-Georgian - Colonial Revival - Reginald Blomfield - Gertrude Jekyll - Country Life - Edith Wharton - Pergola

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William Waldorf Astor was an early client. Platt's clients for grand country estates included Edith Rockefeller McCormick at "Villa Turicum", Lake Forest, Illinois (1912, demolished), and Mrs Sara Delano Roosevelt, for whom Platt designed a townhouse on East 65th Street in New York in 1907, where, Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "'an architect of great taste' had 'made the most of every inch of space.'" Platt turned to professional help in surveying large-scale projects from the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted. He received detailed planting plans to fill his borders from Ellen Biddle Shipman, whom he had come to know through her gardening at Cornish and and whom he had instructed in presentation drawings by a draftsman from his own office, then sent to Grosse Pointe, Michigan to plant one of his designs.

Related Topics:
William Waldorf Astor - Edith Rockefeller McCormick - Lake Forest, Illinois - Sara Delano Roosevelt - Frederick Law Olmsted - Ellen Biddle Shipman - Grosse Pointe, Michigan

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Some of Platt's gardens in their full maturity began to be open to the public at the end of the century.

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• Gwinn, Cleveland, Ohio: garden designed by Charles Platt and Warren Manning.

His more visible public work includes the Freer Gallery of Art (1918) in Washington, D.C. and the campuses of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1822 and 1927), Connecticut College for Women, Deerfield Academy, and Phillips Academy, Andover, where he designed the chapel and library and their settings.

Related Topics:
Freer Gallery of Art - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Connecticut College for Women - Deerfield Academy - Phillips Academy, Andover

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