Queer Places:
20 Monroe Ave, Pittsford, NY 14534
Williams College, Williamstown, MA
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
1 Acorn St, Boston, MA 02108
7 Water St, Boston, MA 02109
48 Beacon St, Boston, MA 02108
Mount Hope
Cemetery in Rochester, New York
Fletcher
Steele (June 7, 1885 – July 16, 1971) was an American landscape
architect credited with designing and creating over 700 gardens from 1915 to
the time of his death. Mabel Choate
met Fletcher Steele in 1926 at the annual meeting of the Lenox Garden Club.
According to Mark Wilson, "He [Steele] began work for her soon after and was
drawing up the first plans for Naumkeag by September 1926." The same year
Steele also oversaw the moving and restoration of the Mission House. Wilson
continues, "The relationship between Mabel and Fletcher was a deep friendship
and respect for one another. Mabel was Fletcher's longest client. The gardens
at Naumkeag are one of the few Steele gardens still intact. " Of Mabel, Steele
wrote, "[Mis Mabel Choate] wants to try things. And she deeply enjoys and
understands beauty in landscape " Mabel hosted an annual birthday party
weekend for Steele and friends, and some imagined a romantic relationship
between them, but Wilson says, "There was no sexual relationship between Mabel
and Fletcher. He was probably homosexual, but it was never stated or talked
about so no one knows for sure and this was a time when it was against the law
to be [homosexual]." Steele was friends and sometime collaborated with
Ralph Adams Cram.
Steele was born John Fletcher Steele in Rochester, New York, to John Mason Steele
(1851–1936), a lawyer, and Mary Lampert (1853–1943), a pianist. He had one
younger sister, Esther Steele. His mother's sister was portrait painter Emma Lampert Cooper. He graduated from
Bradstreet School for Boys in 1903 and then went to Williams College,
graduating in
1907, and promptly joined the young landscape architecture program at Harvard
University where Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was one of his professors. Another
professor was Denman Ross, who would
become a lifelong friend. In 1908
Steele left Harvard to accept an apprenticeship with Warren H. Manning.
In 1913 Steele embarked on a four-month tour of Europe to study European
designs. Upon his return to America, he opened his own practice in Charles
Street, Boston. His early
garden plans are generally in the English Arts and crafts style of Gertrude
Jekyll, Reginald Blomfield, and T. H. Mawson, but ornamented with Italianate
detailing such as balustrades, hedges, urns, statuary, stone pineapples, and
flights of water steps. During World War I, Steele served in the American Red
Cross in Europe. After war's end he regularly returned in summers. His
conversion to an Art Deco style began in 1925 when he visited the Exposition
Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (the 'Art Deco
Exposition') and saw its examples of cubist gardens with mirrors, concrete and
coloured gravel. George Campbell was
Steele's general manager for most of the decade between 1925 to 1935. Campbell
oversaw the operation of the office and acted as superintendent on important
jobs, such as Ancrum House. Once he traveled to Europe with Steele, which
raised subtle questions in the office about the nature of their relationship.
By 1930 Steele was writing with enthusiasm of André
Vera, Tony Garnier, and Gabriel Guevrekian. Steele's designs and writings of
this period were influential during the stylistic transition from Art Deco to
Modernism. He helped shape Modernism through younger design students
at Harvard, notably Dan Kiley, Garrett Eckbo, and James C. Rose, to who Steele
showed the possibilities of modern art and the creativity inherent within the
design process. Kiley later wrote that "Steele was the only good designer
working during the twenties and thirties, also the only one who was really
interested in new things." Eckbo noted that "Fletcher Steele was the
transitional figure between the old guard and the moderns. He interests me
because he was an experimenter." Steele's own designs, however, were
sufficiently removed from the Modern style so that his works were generally
out of fashion until the modern era had passed. Steele is interred in
the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. His papers are archived in
the Library of Congress, the Rochester Historical Society and in the Franklin
Moon Library, State University of New York College of Environmental Science
and Forestry, Syracuse, New York.Images from the Steele manuscript collection
can be found in the SUNY D-Space digital repository.
Steele is noted for a number of major works including Naumkeag, Peters
Reservation, Ancrum House, Whitney Allen House, Standish Backus House, Turner
House, Lisborne Grange. His most famous work by far is Naumkeag. These
projects were not all viewed with high regard at the time, and only relatively
recently have historians begun to appreciate Steele's impact on garden design
and landscape architecture.
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