Charles N. Lowrie papers

Charles Nassau Lowrie (April 8, 1869 – September 18, 1939) was an American landscape architect and designer born in Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School as a Civil Engineer in 1891 and established an architectural practice in New York City in 1896. Some of his earliest works include plans for the Edgar Allen Poe Park, Claremont Park, and the South Bronx Park in New York City and the proposed Fire Island State Park. In 1899, Lowrie was among a group of eleven landscape architects who founded the American Society of Landscape Architects. He served as Treasurer of the society from 1899 to 1909, as Vice President from 1909-1910, and as President of the society from 1910 to 1912. He was also the founder and first president of the New York Chapter of the Society. Throughout his career, Lowrie served on numerous arts and public works committees and commissions, including the ASLA committee on Parks, the City Committee on Plan and Survey, the Fine Arts Federation of New York Committee on West Side Improvement, the Mayor’s West Side Improvement Architects’ Committee, and the Park Association of New York City. He also held membership in the Century Association and the Yale Engineering Association. Additionally, in 1938, under the provision of the new Charter of New York City, Lowrie was appointed the first landscape architect to sit as a member of the Arts Commission of the City of New York.

Lowrie’s professional works included landscaping and general architectural plans for county park, state park, and city planning commissions. He designed and executed the Roosevelt Memorial Park at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and made preliminary plans for Valley Stream Park, Hempstead Park, Hanse Park, and Jones Beach for the Long Island State Park Commission. He served for 30 years as landscape architect for the Hudson County Parks Commission of New Jersey, designing and executing several parks for the county’s park system, including West Side Park (now Lincoln Park) and Pershing Field in Jersey City, Bayonne Park (now the Stephen R. Gregg Park) in Bayonne, Columbus Park in Hoboken, and West Hudson Park in Harrison. During World War I, Lowrie served as town planner for the United States Housing Corporation on its industrial housing projects in New Brunswick (NJ), New London (CT), and Alton (Ill). He was also a member of the Columbus (OH) Plan Commission from 1907 to 1908.

Lowrie worked in several capacities with schools and universities in the creation and execution of campus improvement and extension initiatives and landscaping plans. Under the New Jersey State Board of Education, he prepared plans for the New Jersey School for the Deaf and the State Normal Schools at Glassboro and Montclair. He also conducted work on the campuses of Cornell University, the Connecticut Agricultural College (now the Ratcliffe-Hicks School of Agriculture at the University of Connecticut), the New Britain Normal School (now Central Connecticut State University), and the East Stroudsburg State Normal School in Pennsylvania. He also prepared plans for the Peekskill Military Academy, the Mount Harmon School for Boys, and the Princeton Seminary.

Lowrie also drafted and executed landscaping plans and general plans for numerous private residences, estates, and partitions of privately-owned land, including for notable New York and New Jersey politicians and businessmen such as Fredrick Frelinghuysen, Jr., Garret Hobart, Jr., Louis F. Rothschild, and George W. and Jacob Gould Schurman. The estate of George W. Schurman would go on to be purchased by the Bouvier family and named Lasata, later becoming the beloved summer home of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis. In 1906, Lowrie was hired by William M. and Gertrude Divine Ritter to prepare a planting plan and designs for a teahouse for their home in Columbus, Ohio. In 1917, Lowrie was again hired by the Ritters to prepare a landscape plan for the grounds of their new home in Manchester, Vermont. Known as Yester House, the Ritter’s Vermont property is now home to the Southern Vermont Arts Center.

Lowrie died in New York in 1939 while on the staff of the New York World’s Fair and was buried in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.