![]() John Marshall Memorial Park at Judiciary Square in Washington, D.C. ![]() Back in Massachusetts, another major project of this era at the Mystic River Reservation, a nature preserve just north of Boston, served as an “early example of the firm’s ability to meld its interest in history with state-of-the-art environmental science” according to a firm timeline. Other early projects outside of New England included a pair of major visual impact assessments, one for the Chevron Oil Refinery near her native Elizabeth in Perth Amboy, New Jersey (1975) and the other for Bell Station on Lake Cayuga in New York’s Finger Lakes region (1981). Pavilion for Expo ’67 in Montreal, where Johnson collaborated with Buckminster Fuller and Cambridge Seven Associates. An early major non-domestic project was the landscape of the U.S. Johnson & Associates or CRJA from 1970 through 2011-worked extensively in Boston and environs, projects located further afield have been integral to the practice for much of its long history. In 1966, Johnson returned to Harvard GSD, this time in the role of professor within the Planning Department, where she taught until 1973.Īlthough her growing firm-known as Carol R. Two years later, following a brief turn with The Architects Collaborative, Johnson established her own landscape architecture practice, which largely tackled residential commissions and was based out of her Cambridge apartment for the first several years of its existence. Although Johnson knew little about landscape architecture at the time, the trio, as recounted by TCLF, encouraged her to pursue a career in the field and she ultimately did, graduating from Harvard GSD in 1957. Following her studies and a subsequent bicycle tour around Europe, Johnson worked at a commercial plant nursery in Bedford, Massachusetts, where she met three landscape architecture students-John Frey, Pat Manhart, and Eric Desty-who were attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design. It was at Wellesley, on the college’s 720-acre Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.-designed campus, that Johnson formed her earliest memories of “living in a consciously designed landscape,” per an article published in tribute to Johnson by TCLF. (© Alan Ward/ Courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation)īorn in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Johnson graduated from Wellesley College in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Kennedy Memorial Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “More than just gardens and campus landscapes, Carol Johnson created the first woman-owned practice of significant size, stature and influence operating in the urban realm helping to shape and revitalize cities,” Birnbaum told AN. Birnbaum, president and CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, interviewed Johnson for an extensive oral history of her life and career. The park is currently in need of various forms of maintenance and was included in Landslide 2020: Women Take the Lead, the latest edition of TCLF’s comprehensive annual report spotlighting imperiled landscapes. Kennedy Memorial Park, a five-acre green space nestled along the Charles River in Cambridge that opened to the public in May 1987. She was 91.Īfter establishing a landscape architecture practice in an era when licensed women landscape architects were virtually nonexistent in the United States, Johnson went on to dramatically expand her eponymous firm while overseeing the design of numerous public parks, waterfront revitalization projects, and college campuses in and around-but not exclusively to- Boston. Johnson passed away on December 11 in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. During a year in which women-designed landscapes have been both celebrated and the threats against them drawn attention to, Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit The Cultural Landscape Foundation ( TCLF) broke the news that trailblazing landscape architect and educator Carol R.
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