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Ellen McGowan Biddle Shipman papers

 Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: 1259

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION

Correspondence, bills, orders, vouchers, subject files on landscaping and garden ornamentation, lectures, articles, printed material, a broadside. Photographs, planting plans, and oversize drawings and blueprints of gardens and landscape designs by Ellen Shipman.

Also material regarding the Lord and Schryver: Shaping our Cultural Landscape exhibit in 2011 at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.

Also Angell, Nicholas B. (June 1, 2011) “Letter No. 3, The Young Ellen Biddle Shipman, our Grandmother, and her Family, 1863-1893.” Copy of a letter to his grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews from Nicholas Biddle Angell, EBS’s grandson (son of her daughter, Mrs. Montgomery Angell), about the Biddle family and her early life. Has 14 pages of text, plus 10 un-numbered pages of scanned photographs, including those of the young EBS. #1259m in Box 34.

Dates

  • 1914-1946

Creator

Language of Materials

Collection material in English

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1869 to General James Biddle and the former Ellen McGowen, Ellen McGowen Shipman went on to become one of the leading landscape architects of the first half of the 20th Century. Shipman left Radcliff after one year and married Louis Shipman an aspiring playwright. The two lived for a time in Plainfield, New Hampshire near the Cornish Artist Colony that had grown up around the sculptor Augstus Saint-Gaudens. It was here that Shipman was influenced by a group of artist gardeners and also where she would meet the landscape architect Charles Adams Platt. After her marriage dissolved in 1910, Shipman went on to collaborate with Platt for a number of years, eventually creating her own practice and moving to Beekman Place in New York City in 1920. While the 1920s were the busiest for Shipman, with commissions decreasing dramatically in the depression years of the 1930s, Shipman would design gardens from her townhouse overlooking the East River for the next 30 years. The majority of her designs were done in the English style but she is most noted for her use of "painting" the landscape with plants and flowers as well as her use of border plantings to create a sense of private space. It is unfortunate that since many of her commissions were for grand estates and her plantings particularly labor intensive to maintain, many had disappeared within her own lifetime and very few of have survived to the present day. Examples of her existing gardens include the Edison and Ford Winter Estate in Fort, Myers, Florida and Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio. Ellen McGown Shipman died in March, 1950.

Extent

25.6 cubic feet. (25.6 cubic feet.)

209 mapcase folders. (209 mapcase folders.)

Abstract

Correspondence, bills, orders, vouchers, subject files on landscaping and garden ornamentation, lectures, articles, printed material, a broadside. Photographs, planting plans, and oversize drawings and blueprints of gardens and landscape designs by Ellen Shipman.

SERIES LIST

Series I. Photographs Boxes 1-7, 12-17

Series II. Correspondence Boxes 8-10

Series III. Articles, Manuscripts, and Printed Materials Boxes 10-11, 18; Map Case Folder 196, Map Case Item 1

General Notes and Drafts for an Unpublished Book Posters

Series IV. Project Files Map Case Folders 1-201; Map Case Items 2-17

General

Contact Information:
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections 2B Carl A. Kroch Library Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3530 Fax: (607) 255-9524 rareref@cornell.edu http://rmc.library.cornell.edu
Compiled by:
RMC Staff
Date completed:
N/A
EAD encoding:
Peter Martinez
Date modified:
Marcie Farwell, November 2016
Status
Completed
Author
Compiled by RMC Staff
Date
August 2006
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Repository Details

Part of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections Repository

Contact:
2B Carl A. Kroch Library
Cornell University
Ithaca NY 14853
607-255-3530
607-255-9524 (Fax)