TAYLOR, ALBERT DAVIS

TAYLOR, ALBERT DAVIS (8 July 1883-8 Jan. 1951), landscape architect active in Cleveland from 1914-51, was raised in Carlisle, Mass., son of Nathaniel and Ellen F. Davis. He studied 1 year at Cornell University, and received his A.B. from Massachusetts College in 1905. He began his career in the office of Warren Manning in Boston, while there preparing the topographic survey for the new campus of Ohio State Normal College (Kent State University) in 1911. He accompanied Manning to Cleveland in 1914 and established his own office. Taylor is credited with introducing many principles of European landscape design to the U.S. His projects included residential, institutional, and public properties, in which he used both formal and informal planning principles. Taylor designed the garden of Trinity Cathedral House in 1930 and planned some of the later additions to LAKE VIEW CEMETERY in the 1930s.

Taylor's public works included the site plan for the Baldwin Filtration Plant in 1920, plans for developing Ambler Park from the Baldwin plant to Coventry Rd. in the 1930s, the retaining walls along Cedar Glen in CLEVELAND HTS., a plan for the completion of the Mall in 1931, and a development plan for FOREST HILLS PARK in 1938. Taylor was the landscape architect for the Pentagon, completed in 1943. Taylor found inspiration in European precedents such as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and English estates and gardens. He wrote numerous pamphlets and articles on landscape design and home gardening. Taylor married Genevieve Brainerd in 1917 and had a son, Chas. B. Taylor. He died in Cleveland and was buried in RIVERSIDE CEMETERY.


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