Frank Morse Button (August 14, 1866 - August 3, 1938) was an American landscape architect, known for his impactful designs in the City of Coral Gables, Florida. He was born in

Brandon, Vermont Brandon is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,129. History On October 20, 1761, the town of Neshobe was chartered to Capt. Josiah Powers. In October 1784, the name of the town was chang ...

and attended the

University of Vermont The University of Vermont (UVM), officially the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, is a public land-grant research university in Burlington, Vermont. It was founded in 1791 and is among the oldest universities in the United ...

where he received a degree in civil engineering in 1887. Button was a part of the Army Corps of Engineers from 1889 to 1899, where he worked on various projects, including the 1893

Chicago Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

where he was responsible for laying the pilings for the facsimile battleship ''Illinois''. In 1903, he joined the landscape firm of

Ossian Cole Simonds Ossian Cole Simonds (November 11, 1855 – November 20, 1931), often known as O. C. Simonds, was an American landscape designer. He preferred the term 'landscape gardener' to that of 'landscape architect'. A number of Simonds' works are listed o ...

, working on projects such as the Charles Deering estate at Buena Vista and Lincoln Park in Chicago. He was the first registered landscape architect in Florida and named a Fellow of the

American Society of Landscape Architects The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is a professional association for landscape architects in the United States. The ASLA's mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowship ...

in 1910. After the death of his wife, Button and his daughter moved to Florida, where he was hired by Coral Gables founder George Merrick as the master planner for Coral Gables at a fee of $1 an acre, and completed the first comprehensive map of the city in July 1921. His design for the city included parkways, canals, gardens, fountains, and recreational facilities and incorporated the use of native plants alongside tropical and imported specimens. Button also directed the landscaping of all the streets, plazas, parkways and parks in Coral Gables, and his close participation in field-work led to his untimely death in 1938 when he fell into the path of a truck while supervising the planting of Ficus trees in the median of

Bird Road Bird Road, co-signed State Road 976 (SR 976) from the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike (SR 821) in Westwood Lakes, Florida to U.S. Route 1 ( SR 5) in Miami, is a main east–west road running south of downtown Miami in Miami-Dade Count ...

. The Coral Gables Historic Preservation Board created a 2-sided historic bronze marker honoring Frank Button for his significant role in the creation of the City of Coral Gables. It was placed in Alhambra Plaza at the intersection of Alhambra Circle and Granada Boulevard and unveiled at the City's annual Arbor Day Celebration on April 29, 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Button, Frank Morse 1866 births 1938 deaths 19th-century American architects 20th-century American architects Architects from Florida American landscape architects