Descriptive summary
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creator:
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Manning, Warren H. (Warren
Henry) (1860-1938) |
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title:
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Papers
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dates:
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1882-2007, n.d. |
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extent:
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138.43 linear
ft. (70 document boxes, 2 half-document boxes, 30 lantern slide
boxes, 5 card file boxes, 3 oversize boxes, 63 tubes, and 14 map
case drawers) |
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collection number:
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MS 218 |
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repository:
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Special Collections Department, Iowa State University.
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Administrative
information
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access:
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Open for research
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publication rights:
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Consult Head, Special Collections Department
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preferred
citation:
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Warren H. Manning Papers, MS
218, Special Collections Department, Iowa State
University Library.
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Biographical
note
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The
career of the landscape architect Warren H. Manning (1860-1938)
looms large in the period between the era of Frederick Law Olmsted
and the mid-twentieth century. Manning exercised a pivotal role in
the development of American landscape architecture.
Warren Manning was trained
by one of the leading nineteenth-century New England practitioners
of landscape horticulture--his father, Jacob Warren Manning
(1826-1904)--and by the foremost landscape architect of the era, the
"father" of the profession in America in popular perception,
Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. (1822-1903). Manning joined the firm of
Frederick Law Olmsted in Brookline, Massachusetts, as planting
supervisor in 1888. Because of his superior horticultural
knowledge, Manning assumed an ever-widening role in the firm's
work. In his eight-year tenure with Olmsted, Manning worked on 125
projects in 22 states, including the World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago in 1893, and municipal park work in Boston, Buffalo,
Chicago, Trenton, Rochester, and Washington, D.C.
In 1896 Manning began his
own practice as an independent landscape designer. Manning's office
(at various times in Boston, Billerica, and Cambridge,
Massachusetts) provided an apprenticeship setting for a group of men
and women who charted significant directions for twentieth-century
landscape planning and design. They included Albert D. Taylor,
Fletcher Steele, Wilbur D. Cook Jr., Marjorie Sewell Cautley, and
Helen Bullard, among others.
Manning was a pioneer in two principal areas: resource-based design
and planning, and community-based participatory design. He was a
founder of the American Society of Landscape Architects, which first
met in New York in 1899 with 11 charter members. Manning was a very
important national publicist for landscape architecture and town
planning. His client list included not only the captains of
industry of his age--including James Tufts, Cyrus H. McCormick,
William G. Mather, Frederick Pabst, August and Adolphus Busch, Frank
Seiberling, and Joseph Pulitzer--but also many government agencies
and community groups.
Manning
developed an environmental planning model based on the concept of
gathering and organizing discrete types of environmental data, such
as soils and vegetative cover, in mapped form, using gridded maps in
particular. Similar mapping and overlay analysis is quite common
today. What began as regional mapping evolved into what Manning
termed the National Plan, a document representing an early attempt
to provide a statistical profile of the entire country. The
principal contribution of Manning's National Plan (1919) was the
concept of a land classification system that could be used by
governmental units to control the exploitation of natural resources
and to evaluate scenic beauty. Manning's national planning work was
undertaken on his own initiative. It was an inspiration for the
more structured efforts of the National Resources Planning Board
during the Roosevelt administrations. |
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Collection description
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The
collection (1882-2007, n.d.) contains material related to Manning's
work on the National Plan, speeches, articles, reports, client
lists, drawings and plans from more than fifty of Manning's
projects, glass lantern slides, and photographs.
Series 1, Personal Papers
(1900-1985, n.d.)
consists of materials relating to the National Plan, including
correspondence, committee files, typescript drafts, individual state
plans, research data and notes, maps and graphs, blueprints and
study briefs. The principal contribution of Manning's National Plan
(1919) was the concept of a land classification system that could be
used by governmental units to control the exploitation of natural
resources and to evaluate scenic beauty. There are also a small
number of addresses and speeches made by Manning, as well as
articles and publications, related to landscape design. The
remainder of the series contains articles by authors other than
Manning, including T. H. Abel, A. P. Davis, Egbert Hans, and William
E. Smythe, client lists, and a lantern slide list.
Series 2,
Drawings (1891-1929, n.d.) comprises the bulk of the Manning
collection and includes aerial perspectives, drawings, floor plans,
maps, planting plans, site plans, sketches, and surveys. The
locations vary through the East and Midwest, and include Milwaukee
Parks (Wisconsin), the University of Minnesota, Rock City Amusement
Park (New York), Cleveland Museum of Art, the Mackinac Island State
Park commission (Michigan), Oak Hill Cemetery (Youngstown, Ohio),
Asheville University (North Carolina), and Western Reserve Academy
(Ohio).
Series 3,
Lantern Slides (ca. 1900-1930, n.d.)
consists of over 2000 black and white lantern slides. The images
are largely botanical and also include international landscape
architecture settings as well as sketches and drawings. An example
of locations includes Arizona, Italy, Massachusetts, Mt. Rainer,
North Carolina, Puerto Rico,
Series 4,
Lantern Slide Photographic Prints (ca. 1900-1930, n.d.) contains approximately 1000 photographic
prints on a wide variety of subject matter. Included are city
planning for numerous towns, colleges, factories, fair grounds,
forestry and lumbering, gardens, park plans and views, planting,
specimen plants, specimen shrubs, specimen trees, and waterfronts.
The cyanotype and gelatin prints are approximately 3 X 5 in size,
and are pasted onto index cards (4 X 6).
Series 5,
Photographs and Clippings (1883-1927, n.d.) contains several thousand black and white
images, including those of a variety of dwelling structures,
historic houses, building materials, bird basins, drains, city
monuments, lawns and shrubs, monuments, stables, wells, window and
roof gardens, and stepping stones. There are a variety of
sizes, and the prints are pasted onto cardboard
and/or heavy paper.
Series 6, Printed Materials (1882-2007, n.d.)
includes a number of articles written and published (1882-1928) by
Manning on the subject of landscape design. There are also several
folders of articles (1899-1998) written about Manning and his career
that appeared in the Landscape Architecture Quarterly; the
Architectural Review; American Gardening; The Canadian
Horticulturalist; and Popular Gardening. |
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Organization
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The collection is organized
into the following series:
Series 1, Personal
Papers, 1900-1985, n.d.
Series 2, Drawings, 1891-1929, n.d.
Series 3, Lantern Slides, ca. 1900-1930, n.d.
Series 4, Lantern Slide Photographic Prints, ca. 1900-1930, n.d.
Series 5, Photographs and Clippings,
1883-1927, n.d.
Series 6, Printed Materials, 1882-2007, n.d.
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