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Ellen Biddle Shipman
Ellen Biddle Shipman (née Ellen Biddle; November 5, 1869 – March 27, 1950) was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style. Along with Beatrix Farrand and Marian Cruger Coffin, she dictated the style of the time and strongly influenced landscape design as a member of the first generation to break into the largely male occupation.
Commenting about the male dominated field to The New York Times in 1938, she said "before women took hold of the profession, landscape architects were doing what I call cemetery work." Shipman preferred to look on her career of using plantings as if she "were painting pictures as an artist." Little of her work remains today because of the labor-intensive style of her designs, but there exist preserved spaces, including the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University, often cited as one of the most beautiful American college campuses.
Ellen was born in Philadelphia, and she spent her childhood in Texas and the Arizona Territory. Her father, Colonel James Biddle, was a career Army officer, stationed on the western frontier. When the safety of his family was threatened, he moved them to the McGowan farm in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She attended boarding school in Baltimore, Maryland, where her interests in the arts emerged and by her twenties she had already started drawing garden designs.
When she entered the Harvard annex, Radcliffe College, she met a playwright attending Harvard named Louis Shipman. They left school after one year, married, and moved to Plainfield, New Hampshire, in the Cornish Art Colony, which included Maxfield Parrish and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The colony is said to have been landscaped by artists who were not architects, but had artistically trained eyes and an awareness for the aesthetics of repose, which gave rise to a collection of some of the finest gardens in the country. Shipman took strongly to the Cornish style, one that focused on geometric patterns and colonial plantings, and with it created her own style – a style which did not go unnoticed.
Shipman's colleague and fellow member of the Cornish Art Colony, Charles A. Platt, was an artist and architect known for his interest in Italian gardens. Platt recognized Shipman's talents. He did not know much about horticulture, but was highly respected and thought of as "the man who could design both house and garden for a country estate", for he had recently made a trip to Italy and wrote a book about the gardens there.
By the time the Shipmans divorced in 1910, Ellen Shipman was well on her way to establishing herself as a talented garden designer nationwide. She and Platt played off their mutual requirements: Platt needed Ellen for her knowledge of horticulture and Ellen needed Platt for his knowledge of drafting and design. Shipman was also heavily influenced by Gertrude Jekyll's brilliant use of borders, as well as memories of her grandparents’ farm. By 1920 she was working independently of Platt, though they continued to collaborate on his residential projects.
Among Shipman's earliest collaborations with Platt was the Cooperstown, New York estate of Fynmere in 1913, owned by the Cooper family on the edge of the village. This project, for descendants of William Cooper, provided significant visibility for Shipman. While the stone mansion was demolished in 1979, a few elements of the landscape work survive. Shipman also designed the adjoining Cooper estate of Heathcote, which is extant today in private hands. A similar task was undertaken at the Gwinn Estate in Cleveland, where she was asked by Platt to aid him and Warren H. Manning in their garden designs. It was finished in 1912, one of her earliest projects, and one where her job was largely planting oriented, filling the designs of Platt with lush flower arrangements. The courtyard gardens of Manhattan's Astor Court Building were another Platt-Shipman collaboration. Platt and Shipman's 1915 design for the Parmelee estate, The Causeway, in Washington D.C. included a Wild Garden surrounding the mansion and formal gardens. It featured mature trees, large clumps of plants such as rhododendron, walking and riding paths, stone bridges and a pond. This, and a substantial one-acre Wild Garden at Longue Vue House and Gardens, are the only surviving examples of Shipman's Wild Gardens. Much of grounds of the Causeway, now called Tregaron Estate, is open to the public as the Tregaron Conservancy.
Seen in many ways as Platt's protégé, Shipman was asked on various occasions to rework one of his gardens, including Platt's first major commission, High Court Archived 2016-08-22 at the Wayback Machine. Located across the road from Platt's own house in Cornish, New Hampshire, Anson Goodyear hired Shipman to revitalize the plantings and reconfigure the garden walls.
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Ellen Biddle Shipman
Ellen Biddle Shipman (née Ellen Biddle; November 5, 1869 – March 27, 1950) was an American landscape architect known for her formal gardens and lush planting style. Along with Beatrix Farrand and Marian Cruger Coffin, she dictated the style of the time and strongly influenced landscape design as a member of the first generation to break into the largely male occupation.
Commenting about the male dominated field to The New York Times in 1938, she said "before women took hold of the profession, landscape architects were doing what I call cemetery work." Shipman preferred to look on her career of using plantings as if she "were painting pictures as an artist." Little of her work remains today because of the labor-intensive style of her designs, but there exist preserved spaces, including the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University, often cited as one of the most beautiful American college campuses.
Ellen was born in Philadelphia, and she spent her childhood in Texas and the Arizona Territory. Her father, Colonel James Biddle, was a career Army officer, stationed on the western frontier. When the safety of his family was threatened, he moved them to the McGowan farm in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She attended boarding school in Baltimore, Maryland, where her interests in the arts emerged and by her twenties she had already started drawing garden designs.
When she entered the Harvard annex, Radcliffe College, she met a playwright attending Harvard named Louis Shipman. They left school after one year, married, and moved to Plainfield, New Hampshire, in the Cornish Art Colony, which included Maxfield Parrish and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The colony is said to have been landscaped by artists who were not architects, but had artistically trained eyes and an awareness for the aesthetics of repose, which gave rise to a collection of some of the finest gardens in the country. Shipman took strongly to the Cornish style, one that focused on geometric patterns and colonial plantings, and with it created her own style – a style which did not go unnoticed.
Shipman's colleague and fellow member of the Cornish Art Colony, Charles A. Platt, was an artist and architect known for his interest in Italian gardens. Platt recognized Shipman's talents. He did not know much about horticulture, but was highly respected and thought of as "the man who could design both house and garden for a country estate", for he had recently made a trip to Italy and wrote a book about the gardens there.
By the time the Shipmans divorced in 1910, Ellen Shipman was well on her way to establishing herself as a talented garden designer nationwide. She and Platt played off their mutual requirements: Platt needed Ellen for her knowledge of horticulture and Ellen needed Platt for his knowledge of drafting and design. Shipman was also heavily influenced by Gertrude Jekyll's brilliant use of borders, as well as memories of her grandparents’ farm. By 1920 she was working independently of Platt, though they continued to collaborate on his residential projects.
Among Shipman's earliest collaborations with Platt was the Cooperstown, New York estate of Fynmere in 1913, owned by the Cooper family on the edge of the village. This project, for descendants of William Cooper, provided significant visibility for Shipman. While the stone mansion was demolished in 1979, a few elements of the landscape work survive. Shipman also designed the adjoining Cooper estate of Heathcote, which is extant today in private hands. A similar task was undertaken at the Gwinn Estate in Cleveland, where she was asked by Platt to aid him and Warren H. Manning in their garden designs. It was finished in 1912, one of her earliest projects, and one where her job was largely planting oriented, filling the designs of Platt with lush flower arrangements. The courtyard gardens of Manhattan's Astor Court Building were another Platt-Shipman collaboration. Platt and Shipman's 1915 design for the Parmelee estate, The Causeway, in Washington D.C. included a Wild Garden surrounding the mansion and formal gardens. It featured mature trees, large clumps of plants such as rhododendron, walking and riding paths, stone bridges and a pond. This, and a substantial one-acre Wild Garden at Longue Vue House and Gardens, are the only surviving examples of Shipman's Wild Gardens. Much of grounds of the Causeway, now called Tregaron Estate, is open to the public as the Tregaron Conservancy.
Seen in many ways as Platt's protégé, Shipman was asked on various occasions to rework one of his gardens, including Platt's first major commission, High Court Archived 2016-08-22 at the Wayback Machine. Located across the road from Platt's own house in Cornish, New Hampshire, Anson Goodyear hired Shipman to revitalize the plantings and reconfigure the garden walls.