Charles Adams Platt (New York October 16, 1861–Cornish, New Hampshire September 12, 1933 was a prominent landscape gardener and architect of the "American Renaissance" movement, who introduced formal gardens of Italianate design to an American audience, with his influential book Italian Gardens (1893). Though his garden designs were to complement his domestic architecture, his training was as an artist of landscapes, first at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Académie Julian with Gustave Boulanger and with Jules Joseph Lefebvre. Platt trained as an etcher with Stephen Parrish in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1880. In the Paris Salon of 1885 he exhibited his paintings and etchings and gained his first audience, but a trip to Italy in the company of his brother truly fixed his taste. In the decade 1880–1890 he made hundreds of etchings of architecture and landscapes. He received a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. October 16 is the 289th day of the year (290th in Leap years). ... 1861 is a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Cornish is a town located in Sullivan County, New Hampshire. ... September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years). ... 1933 (MCMXXXIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... For the white nationalist magazine, see American Renaissance (magazine). ... The National Academy of Design, in New York City, now called simply The National Academy, is an honorary association of American artists, with a museum and a school of fine arts. ... The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France. ... Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836 – 1911) was a French figure painter. ... Etching is an intaglio method of printmaking in which the image is incised into the surface of a metal plate using an acid. ... This article is about Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA; there are other places called Gloucester Seal of Gloucester, MA Gloucester is a city located in Essex County, Massachusetts. ... 1880 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Honoré Daumier satirized the bourgeoises scandalized by the Salons Venuses, 1864 The Paris Salon (French: Salon de Paris) is the official art exhibit of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris, France. ... Worlds Fair is the generic name for various large expositions held since the mid 19th century. ...

Platt's influential book was illustrated with his own photographs, the outcome of two articles published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in the summer of 1893; the book was strong on the surviving gardens of the Renaissance and Baroque and made no attempt to describe their history or their designers. (Platt was unaware of the first history of Italian gardens, W.P. Tuckermann's thorough Die Gartenkunst der italienischen Renaissance-Zeit, Berlin 1884.) An issue of Harpers Magazine from 1905 Another issue, from November 2004 Harpers Magazine (or simply Harpers) is a monthly general-interest magazine covering literature, politics, culture, and the arts. ...

The influences of Reginald Blomfield's The Formal Garden in England (1892) and gardens by Gertrude Jekyll illustrated in Country Life refined his style. The impact of Platt, and of Edith Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) can be seen in the switch among stylish Americans from country houses set in lawns with shaped beds of annuals, swept drives and clumps of trees typical of 1885 to houses in settings of gravelled forecourts, planted terracing formal stairs and water features, herbaceous borders and pergolas that are typical of 1905. Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield (20 December 1856–27 December 1942) was a British architect, garden designer and author. ... Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932) was an influential British garden designer, writer, and artist who created over 400 gardens in the UK, Europe and the USA. She also contributed over 1,000 articles to Country Life, The Garden and other magazines. ... Country Life can refer to: Country Life (magazine) Country Life (album) - by Roxy Music This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Edith Wharton Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer, and designer. ... In Valencia a newly-installed pergola shows its structure, which the climbing roses will cover. ...

Platt was a member of the group that gravitated to Augustus Saint-Gaudens at at Cornish, New Hampshire, His own garden at Cornish, made between 1892 and 1912, exemplifies a new style, essentially an Arts and Crafts setting for Beaux-Arts Neo-Georgian and Colonial Revival architecture. Augustus Saint Gaudens, 1905 Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Dublin, March 1, 1848 - Cornish, New Hampshire, August 3, 1907), was the Irish born American sculptor of the Beaux Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. ... Cornish is a town located in Sullivan County, New Hampshire. ... Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with ones own hands and skill. ... ... The Colonial Revival was a nationalistic architectural style. ...

William Waldorf Astor was an early client. Platt's clients for grand country estates included Edith Rockefeller McCormick at "Villa Turicum", Lake Forest, Illinois (1912, demolished), and Mrs Sara Delano Roosevelt, for whom Platt designed a townhouse on East 65th Street in New York in 1907, where, Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "'an architect of great taste' had 'made the most of every inch of space.'" Platt turned to professional help in surveying large-scale projects from the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted. He received detailed planting plans to fill his borders from Ellen Biddle Shipman, whom he had come to know through her gardening at Cornish and whom he had instructed in presentation drawings by a draftsman from his own office, then sent to Grosse Pointe, Michigan to plant one of his designs. William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor (March 31, 1848–October 18, 1919) was a financier and statesman and a member of the prominent Astor family. ... Edith Rockefeller McCormick (1872–1937) was an American socialite and opera patron. ... Lake Forest is a city located in Lake County, Illinois. ... ... Frederick Law Olmsted, oil painting by John Singer Sargent, 1895, Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was a United States landscape architect, famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park in New York City, the countrys oldest... Alternate use: There are several neighboring places in Michigan that begin with Grosse Pointe. ...

Some of Platt's surviving gardens in their full maturity began to be open to the public at the end of the century.

• Gwinn, Cleveland, Ohio: garden designed by Charles Platt and Warren Manning.

His more visible public work includes the Freer Gallery of Art (1918) in Washington, D.C. and the campuses of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1822 and 1927), Connecticut College for Women, Deerfield Academy, and Phillips Academy Andover, where he designed the chapel and library and their settings. The entrance to the Freer Gallery. ... University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign   The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, also known as UIUC and the U of I (the officially preferred abbreviation), is the largest campus in the University of Illinois system. ... Connecticut College is a coeducational, private liberal arts college located in New London, Connecticut. ... Deerfield Academy is a prep school located in Deerfield, Massachusetts. ... Phillips Academy (also known as Andover and Phillips Andover) is a coed high school for boarding and day students grades 9-12 located in Andover, Massachusetts, near Boston. ...

Platt's Italian Gardens was reissued in 1993 with additional photographs by Platt and an introductory overview by Keith N. Morgan, whose research into Platt's career generated some new interest in Platt.

External links

• [David R. Coffin, 1999. "The study of the history of the Italian garden..." from Perspectives on Garden Histories, in series Dunbarton Oaks Colloquium, vol 21 (pdf file)
• University of Illinois campus plan, 1922
• Cornish Arts Colony

Further reading

• The Architecture of Charles A. Platt, 1913. A monograph with an introduction by the art historian Royal Cortissoz to inspire further customers. Reprinted 1998 ISBN 0926494171
• C. Jencks, K[eith] N. Morgan, 1985. Charles Platt :The Artist as Architect (MIT Press) ISBN 0-262-13188-9
• K[eith] N. Morgan, and R. W. Davidson, 1995. Shaping an American Landscape: The Art and Architecture of Charles A. Platt (University Press of New England) A series of essays engendered by an exhibition of Platt's work.