Guy Lowell

Guy Lowell (August 6, 1870-February 4, 1927) was an American architect and landscape architect. He was the son of Mary Walcott (Goodrich) and Edward Jackson Lowell, and a member of Boston's well-known Lowell family. In this role as Percival Lowell's third cousin, became the sole trustee of the Lowell Observatory after his cousin's death. His combined practice of architecture and landscape design was perhaps sparked by his father-in-law, Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of the Arnold Arboretum.

Related Topics:
Architect - Landscape architect - Lowell family - Percival Lowell - Lowell Observatory - Charles Sprague Sargent - Arnold Arboretum

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Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1892, and received his degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894. He then studied landscape and horticulture at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and architectural history and landscape architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, with diplome in 1899. In the middle of these studies he married Henrietta Sargent on May 17, 1898.

Related Topics:
Harvard College - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - École des Beaux-Arts

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Returning to the United States, Lowell opened his own practice in Boston. He was successful immediately. By 1906, he had opened a branch office in New York, and later split each week between New York and Boston. His commissions included large public, academic and commercial buildings, and many distinctive residences, country estates and formal gardens, as well as the Charles River esplanades in collaboration with Charles Eliot, but he is perhaps most famous for his design of two public buildings, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1906-09, plus later additions) and the New York County Courthouse on Foley Square in Manhattan (1912-14 and 1919-27), Lowell Lecture Hall at Harvard, and academic buildings at Phillips Andover Academy, Simmons College, and Brown University.

Related Topics:
Boston - Charles River - Charles Eliot - Boston Museum of Fine Arts - New York County Courthouse - Foley Square - Manhattan - Phillips Andover Academy - Simmons College - Brown University

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Lowell published several books including American Gardens (1902), Smaller Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1916), and More Small Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1920). He also contributed to American Gardens, a photographic magazine. Lowell died in the Madeira Islands.

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