John Nolen papers

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE City planner, landscape architect.

John Nolen attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Ph.D. in 1893, and for the next ten years worked as secretary of the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching. In 1903 he enrolled in the newly established Harvard School of Landscape Architecture, receiving an A.M. in 1905. He established an office in Cambridge, where he and his associates branched out into city planning as well as landscape architecture. Over the course of his career, Nolen participated in 400 public planning projects and works of landscape architecture, and replanned 50 cities in 20 states. Travel and field work were important aspects of his career. He used visual media, including glass slides, extensively. He was a frequent lecturer on city and town planning, and was active in many professional organizations, including the American City Planning Institute (later called the American Institute of Planners, now known as the American Planners Association), American Civic Association (now Urban America), American Society of Landscape Architects, American Society of Planning Officials, International Garden Cities and Town-Planning Federation, National Conference on City Planning (now Urban America), and the Town Planning Institute of England.

• 1869Born June 14, Philadelphia, son of John C. and Mathilda (Thomas)
• 1878-1884Girard College, Philadelphia
• 1885Grocery clerk
• 1886-1891Minor secretary, Girard Estate Trust Fund
• 1891-1893University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School as economics and public administration major, degree of Bachelor of Philosophy
• 1893-1903American Society for the Extension of University Teaching
• 1895Travel to Europe; Oxford, England Summer Course
• 1896Travel to Europe; April 22, married Barbara Schatte of Philadelphia; November, Secretary of the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching
• 1900Travel to Europe
• 1900-1901University of Munich
• 1903-1905Harvard School of Landscape Architecture, Master of Arts
• 1904Opened office, Harvard Square, Cambridge
• 1906Travel to Europe
• 1911Travel to Europe
• 1912Member, Metropolitan Boston Planning Commission, visited Europe with Boston Chamber of Commerce party
• 1913Honorary Doctor of Science degree, Hobart College, Geneva, N.Y.
• 1914Travel to Europe
• Judge of competition to rebuild Dublin
• 1923Travel to Europe; arranges Gottenberg exhibit, Sweden; member of Committee on the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, associated with the Russell Sage Foundation. "….new experiment in planning method. While economic and social investigators carry on their studies, a group of notable planners has been called together to guide and co-ordinate their investigations. Thomas Adams ... chairman, John Nolen Harland Bartholomew, George B. Ford, Edward Bennett, co-worker of Daniel Burnham in the Chicago Plan and Frederick Law Olmsted."
• 1926President, National Conference on City Planning; travel to Europe; September, International Housing and Town Planning Congress
• 1927Travel to Europe, Town Planning Institute meeting, London, England
• 1928Travel to Europe, International Housing and Town Planning Congress, Paris
• 1931President, International Federation of Housing and Town Planning. June 22, award by the Oberlaender Trust "to study the development of city planning in Germany, particularly the beautifying of river banks and water waterfronts" June 5-28, Russia, 1st All Union convention on City Planning Open to Foreign Specialists
• 1932President, Boston Society of Landscape Architects; May, visited International Congress of Local Authorities in London, and visited Germany
• 1933President, Federated Societies on Planning Parks
• 1935Presided over International Housing and Town Planning Conference, London
• 1937Died, February 10, Cambridge, Massachusetts

GOVERNMENT CONSULTING

• 1918Member, advisory housing committee, Emergency Fleet Corporation
• Chief, Bureau of Housing and town Planning, Army Educational Committee
• Town planner, Union Park Garden, U.S. Shipping Board
• Niagara Falls project, U.S. Housing Corporation
• 1933Since 1933, consultant in U.S. Department of Interior with assignments in National Park Service, National Resources Committee, Resettlement Administration (Greenbelt towns) and Housing Division, P.W.A.
• State planning consultant for New Hampshire, Vermont, Alabama and East Georgia Planning Council

PUBLICATIONS

• 1907Editor, Repton's Art of Landscape Gardening
• 1910Madison, a Model City
• 1911-1912Replanning Small Cities
• 1919New Ideals in Planning of Cities, Towns and Villages
• 1927New Towns for Old
• 1937Obituary, Boston Herald "Recently he had been engaged in an extensive research of American parkways systems to be published as one of the Harvard city planning studies." Nolen, John and Hubbard H.V., Parkways v. Land Values (Harvard City Planning Studies no. 11) Cambridge, Harvard University Press