Jacques-Henri-Auguste Gréber (10 September 1882 – 5 June 1962) was a French architect specializing in landscape architecture and

urban design Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban d ...

. He was a strong proponent of the

Beaux-Arts style Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorpor ...

and a contributor to the

City Beautiful movement The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the ...

, particularly in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

and Ottawa.

Early life and education

Gréber was born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, the son of sculptor

Henri-Léon Gréber Henri-Léon Greber (28 May 1854 – 4 June 1941) was a French sculptor, and medallist. His son was the architect Jacques Gréber. Active in the United States, he produced a fountain sculpture of four equestrian statues for Harbor Hill in 1910, ...

, and attended the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centur ...

in that city.E. Delaire ''et al.'' ''Les architectes élèves de l'école des Beaux-Arts, 1793–1907'' noted in James T. Maher, ''The Twilight of Splendor: Chronicles of the Age of American Palaces'' 1975:65 note 78. He was a fine student and won several prizes during his training at the École.

Early Private Commissions

Following graduation in 1908, he left for the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, where American architects who had trained at the École hired him to help design French gardens for the large houses they built in New England. He designed many private gardens in the U.S. These include

Harbor Hill Harbor Hill was a large Long Island mansion built from 1899–1902 in Roslyn, New York, for telecommunications magnate Clarence Hungerford Mackay. It was designed by McKim, Mead & White, with Stanford White supervising the project - the largest p ...

(1910) in Roslyn, Long Island, New York for

Clarence Mackay Clarence Hungerford Mackay (; April 17, 1874 – November 12, 1938) was an American financier. He was chairman of the board of the Postal Telegraph and Cable Corporation and president of the Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company. Early life He ...

(with architects McKim, Mead & White); and at

Lynnewood Hall Lynnewood Hall is a 110-room Neoclassical Revival mansion in Elkins Park, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Vacant today, it was designed by architect Horace Trumbauer for industrialist Peter A. B. Widener and built between 1897 and 1900. Consid ...

(1913) in

Elkins Park, Pennsylvania Elkins Park is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It is split between Cheltenham and Abington Townships in the northern suburbs outside of Philadelphia, which it borders along Cheltenham Avenue roughly from Ce ...

for Peter A. B. Widener (with architect

Horace Trumbauer Horace Trumbauer (December 28, 1868 – September 18, 1938) was a prominent American architect of the Gilded Age, known for designing residential manors for the wealthy. Later in his career he also designed hotels, office buildings, and much of ...

). His greatest private commission was for investment banker

Edward T. Stotesbury Edward Townsend "Ned" Stotesbury (February 26, 1849 – May 16, 1938) was a prominent investment banker, a partner in Philadelphia's Drexel & Co. and its New York affiliate J. P. Morgan & Co. for over fifty-five years. He was involved in ...

Whitemarsh Hall Whitemarsh Hall was a large estate located on of land in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, US, and owned by banking executive Edward T. Stotesbury and his wife, Eva. Designed by the Gilded Age architect Horace Trumbauer, it was built in 1921 and demolis ...

(1916–1921) in

Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania Wyndmoor is a census-designated place (CDP) in Springfield Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 5,498 at the 2010 census. Wyndmoor has the same ZIP code, 19038, as the towns of Glenside, North Hills, ...

(also with Trumbauer). There he created the unsurpassed American example of a French classical garden in the grand manner of André Le Nôtre. As his reputation as a landscape architect began to spread, Gréber won his first public commission for the Fairmount Parkway (now

Benjamin Franklin Parkway Benjamin Franklin Parkway, commonly abbreviated to Ben Franklin Parkway and colloquially called the Parkway, is a boulevard that runs through the cultural heart of Philadelphia. Named for founding father Benjamin Franklin, the mile-long Parkway c ...

) in Philadelphia. While completing the parkway, he was also commissioned by the French government to make a systematic study of American construction practice. This would form the basis for his influential book ''Architecture in the United States'' (french: L'Architecture aux États -Unis, links=no) He returned to France in 1919, where he secured a reputation as one of France's leading urban designers. Gréber was appointed to the faculty of the Institute of Urbanism in Paris and was active in the reconstruction and expansion plans of a number of French cities in the interwar period.

Wartime Activities

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, Gréber remained in

Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its te ...

and became president of the French Society of Urbanists (french: Société française des urbanistes, links=no). As a designated spokesperson for the cause of urbanism in France, he contributed to a collection of essays in which he lauded the Vichy government for providing an orderly national planning program and centralized planning institutions. He was a prominent member of the urban planning hierarchy that oversaw the urban renewal projects of the Vichy government, and was appointed as Inspector General for Urbanism (french: inspecteur générale de l'urbanisme, links=no) in Northern France, a position requiring the consent of the Nazi Oberfeldkommandantur.

Postwar Activities

Following the war, Gréber was invited by

Prime Minister of Canada The prime minister of Canada (french: premier ministre du Canada, link=no) is the head of government of Canada. Under the Westminster system, the prime minister governs with the confidence of a majority the elected House of Commons; as su ...

William Lyon Mackenzie King William Lyon Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was a Canadian statesman and politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Canada for three non-consecutive terms from 1921 to 1926, 1926 to 1930, and 1935 to 1948. A L ...

to return to Ottawa and continue his work on a master plan for the city and surrounding region that he had started from 1937 to 1939. This would culminate in the ''General Report on the Plan for the National Capital'' (1946–1950) or ''

Greber Plan The General Report on the Plan for the National Capital (1946–1950), or Gréber Plan, was a major urban plan developed for Canada's National Capital Region in 1950 by Jacques Gréber, commissioned by the Federal District Commission of Ottawa, On ...

'' that would reshape the city in the postwar era.

Major works

Gréber is best known for the 1917 master plan for the

in Philadelphia; for his work as master architect for the 1937 Paris International Exposition; and for the

for Ottawa and the surrounding

National Capital Region A capital region, also called a capital district or capital territory, is a region or district surrounding a capital city. It is not always the official term for the region, but may sometimes be used as an informal synonym. Capital regions can exis ...

. The latter, produced between 1937 and 1950 (with an interruption during the Second World War), included expansion of urban parks, a series of parkways, and a greenbelt surrounding the city. The plan incorporated the construction of a national cenotaph and surrounding plaza area. In anticipation of the 1926 sesquicentennial of the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...

, Gréber created a plan for a mall north of

Independence Hall Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, where both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers. The structure forms the centerpi ...

in Philadelphia. This included a "Great Marble Court" surrounded on 3 sides by arcades (with each arch representing a U. S. state) and a pavilion at its center to house the Liberty Bell. It was not carried out; Independence Mall was created in the 1950s under a different plan. He also collaborated with fellow French-American architect

Paul Cret Paul Philippe Cret (October 23, 1876 – September 8, 1945) was a French-born Philadelphia architect and industrial designer. For more than thirty years, he taught at a design studio in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylv ...

on Philadelphia's

Rodin Museum The Rodin Museum is an art museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that contains one of the largest collections of sculptor Auguste Rodin's works outside Paris. Opened in 1929, the museum is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. T ...

in 1926. He was not always popular with the press: a Philadelphia newspaper dubbed him "Jack Grabber". In France, between the world wars, Gréber worked on urban plans in

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the N ...

Belfort Belfort (; archaic german: Beffert/Beffort) is a city in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in Northeastern France, situated between Lyon and Strasbourg, approximately from the France–Switzerland border. It is the prefecture of the Terri ...

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...

(1930),

Abbeville Abbeville (, vls, Abbekerke, pcd, Advile) is a commune in the Somme department and in Hauts-de-France region in northern France. It is the chef-lieu of one of the arrondissements of Somme. Located on the river Somme, it was the capital of ...

, and Rouen,

Neuilly Neuilly (, ) is a common place name in France, deriving from the male given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as we ...

Montrouge Montrouge () is a commune in the southern Parisian suburbs, located from the centre of Paris. It is one of the most densely populated municipalities in Europe. After a long period of decline, the population has increased again in recent years. ...

,Maher 1975:65 mentions Paris, Neuilly, Montrouge, Marseille, Ottawa and Philadelphia. among others. But he is not as well-known today in France as he is in North America. File:Lynnewood Hall entrance 1916 LOC 11876.jpg, Gardens of

( Peter A. B. Widener mansion),

Elkins Park, PA Elkins Park is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It is split between Cheltenham and Abington Townships in the northern suburbs outside of Philadelphia, which it borders along Cheltenham Avenue roughly from Cen ...

(Photo: 1916). File:View to the Museum by Jacques Greber 1918.jpg, "View to the Museum" (1918).

, looking northwest from 20th Street. File:Ottawagreenbelt.PNG,

Greenbelt A green belt is a policy and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges, which h ...

surrounding

Ottawa, Ontario Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

(1950).

Notes

External links

Web site about Clarence H. Mackay and Harbor HillGréber's bronze fountain from Lynnewood Hall
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greber, Jacques 1882 births 1962 deaths Architects from Paris 20th-century French architects 20th-century American architects Officiers of the Légion d'honneur