Lake Douglas

Landscape Architecture in Urban Louisiana Lake Douglas

While the national evolution of landscape architecture is known, how the profession took shape in different regions of the United States has gone largely unexplored. In Landscape Architecture in Urban Louisiana, Lake Douglas examines the people and the work that brought the profession to Louisiana. Introductory chapters provide background through selected examples of designed landscapes up to the late nineteenth century, together with parallel professional developments on a nationwide scale.

Around 1900, the profession arrived in Louisiana through the planning and design of Audubon Park in New Orleans. The book's second section examines twentieth-century projects of the Olmsted Brothers firm in Louisiana, including Audubon Park and Popp Memorial at City Park in New Orleans (realized) and the master plan for LSU's campus, Baton Rouge (unbuilt), illustrated with numerous, never-before-published drawings from the Olmsted Archives. Douglas then examines early professionals who deserve recognition for their work in shaping Louisiana's designed landscapes, a diverse group of people from a variety of cultural, educational, geographical, and career backgrounds.

Next, Douglas turns his attention to leisure-oriented and residential landscape typologies in twentieth-century New Orleans and the origins and politics of municipal open-space management. These developments introduced urban residents to examples of what later landscape architects could offer. The book moves on to consider the influence of landscape architects from outside Louisiana who lectured and worked in New Orleans and Baton Rouge beginning in the mid-twentieth century, whose work gave Louisiana residents firsthand exposure to the contemporary profession.

Finally, Douglas discusses the development of LSU's landscape architecture program, beginning in the 1950s, and explores how its founder, Robert S. Reich, established national professional and academic credibility for the program. Through Reich's leadership and educational philosophy—inspired in part by West Coast landscape architects such as Garrett Eckbo—the program and its graduates have gained national prominence and decisively affirmed the profession's positive impact on urban development and quality of urban life in Louisiana communities and throughout America.