Marjorie Sewell Cautley (1891–1954) was an American landscape architect who played an influential yet often overlooked part in the conception and development of some early, visionary twentieth-century American communities.
Early life
Cautley's father was
William Elbridge Sewell
William Elbridge Sewell (November 16, 1851 – March 17, 1904) was a United States Navy Lieutenant Commander and the 6th Naval Governor of Guam from February 9, 1903, until he returned to the mainland United States for medical treatment on Jan ...
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
at a time when the east coast region was beginning to see a need to address the problem of housing. As the advent of the car and more sophisticated infrastructure prompted the move of many middle-class Americans to bedroom communities outside the more crowded urban areas, many designers and intellectuals saw themselves faced with the specter of unchecked, poorly designed growth. A strong interest arose in the possibilities of the Garden Cities as discrete integrations of the townscape with communal landscapes.
Cautley spent her youth in Asia and the Pacific, where her father was stationed in the Navy, yet was orphaned at twelve, at which point she was sent to live with relatives in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. While there, she studied at the Packer Institute for Collegiate Studies. She went on to receive a B. S. degree in landscape architecture in 1917 from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
, and an M.A. in City Planning from the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in 1943.
Career
She was employed shortly after her graduation from Cornell by the architect
Julia Morgan
Julia Morgan (January 20, 1872 – February 2, 1957) was an American architect and engineer. She designed more than 700 buildings in California during a long and prolific career.Erica Reder"Julia Morgan was a local in ''The New Fillmore'', 1 Febr ...
in
Alton, Illinois
Alton ( ) is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, Madison County, Illinois, United States, about north of St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 25,676 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It is a p ...
, who was best known for her designs at
Hearst Castle
Hearst Castle, known formally as La Cuesta Encantada ( Spanish for "The Enchanted Hill"), is a historic estate in San Simeon, located on the Central Coast of California. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his arch ...
. In her work with Morgan and in setting up her own New Jersey practice in 1921, Cautley was exposed to an interest in designing communal spaces. The primary project she worked on with Morgan, during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, was a hotel for war workers. Her first project undertaken as an independent practitioner – at only thirty-years old – was a public park in
Tenafly, New Jersey
Tenafly () is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census the borough had a population of 15,409,Clarence Stein and Henry Wright to take an interest in her. Stein and Wright had already been experimenting with innovative housing design, and when Cautley joined their office in 1924, they began working on a now well-known housing project in the Sunnyside neighborhood of
Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, not far from the Brooklyn neighborhood where Cautley had spent much of her childhood.
Sunnyside Gardens
Sunnyside Gardens is a community within Sunnyside, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. The area was the first development in the United States patterned after the ideas of the garden city movement initiated in England in the f ...
was built in response to the post-World War I housing shortage, and was intended for families of modest income. The great achievement of Sunnyside was its 200 ft. by 900 ft. “super-blocks,” with all the houses oriented towards rear courts. Only 28 percent of each block was developed, allowing for a large middle expanse to be devoted to community garden plots and public greensward. Some believe that Cautley should be largely credited for devising this housing configuration, although she is often only mentioned in passing in articles on the work of Stein and Wright. Cautley’s planting plans filled the rear court of each house with sycamores and flowering shrubs, enclosed by low hedgerows that delineated each parcel while still fostering a communal sensibility among neighbors.
After Sunnyside Gardens, Cautley went on to work on the Phipps Garden Apartments in Sunnyside (1930), and Hillside Homes (1935), yet her most well known commission with Stein and Wright was at Radburn in
Fair Lawn, New Jersey
Fair Lawn is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, and a bedroom suburb located northwest of New York City. As of the 2020 United States Census, the borough’s population was 34,940, which constituted a 7.7% increase from 32, ...
, where she continued to experiment with the lessons learned at Sunnyside. Cautley wrote in detail about the planting plan for Radburn in the 1930 issue of Landscape Architecture magazine. She envisioned a community with no backyards, but simply small lawns or plots that did not encumber the extended view from the porch of each house out to the large central park, which was accessible only to neighborhood residents. “A park,” Cautley wrote, “is not a rectangular bit of turf and trees with pincushion flower beds and warning signs to keep off the grass.” Instead, she envisioned it as a “large, winding strip of land” with wide pavements on either side, flanked by shade trees that would maximize outdoor activity. The park was to be planted in stages, illustrating Cautley’s vision for a community that would develop and change over time, rather than one that is fully realized at its outset. This would ultimately allow for greater sustainability. Plant materials were selected for minimal maintenance and for all seasons, with a mind for how they would appear in years to come, and each resident had the option of personalizing his or her garden with different choices of trees, hedges, and shrubs. In her designs, Cautley was sensitive to the need for a greater sense of ownership within the community, as well as an appreciation for what she saw as the rapidly disappearing natural landscape of New Jersey.
After her tenure with Stein and Wright, Cautley accepted the position as landscape consultant to the State of
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...
in 1935, and went on to oversee the construction of ten state parks, including Kingston and Wentworth parks. At the same time, she taught extensively at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
. Cautley was also a prolific writer, publishing often in ''Landscape Architecture, House and Garden, American City'', and the ''
Journal of the American Institute of Planners
The American Planning Association (APA) is a professional organization representing the field of urban planning in the United States. APA was formed in 1978, when two separate professional planning organizations, the American Institute of Pla ...
''. In 1935, she published ''Garden Design: The Principles of Abstract Design as Applied to Landscape Composition'', and later went on to write a masters thesis in urban planning at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
on “How Blighted Areas in Philadelphia and Boston Might be Transformed” (published in American City, 1943). Throughout this time (from 1937 onwards) she was fighting a severe illness, which ultimately took her life in 1954. She received no obituary in ''Landscape Architecture'' magazine, the premier journal of the profession at the time.
*Birnbaum, Charles A. ''Pioneers of American Landscape Design''. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.
*Cautley, Marjorie Sewell. ''Planting at Radburn''. Landscape Architecture, vol. 21 (October 1930).
*Martin, Michael David. ''Returning to Radburn''. Landscape Journal, vol. 20, no.1 (2001).
*Rappaport, Nina. ''Sunnyside Gardens''. Metropolis, vol. 10, no. 10 (July 1991). Marjorie Sewell Cautley's Honorary Street Sign Acknowledges Her Garden City Landscape Designs *Allaback, Sarah. ''Marjorie Sewell Cautley: Landscape Architect for the Motor Age''. Library of American Landscape History, 202