DEL.ICIO.USLandscape architect humanizes the South’s spaces
Edward L. Daugherty has had a pioneering eye for shaping the land
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Lifelong Atlantan Edward L. Daugherty, one of the South’s most noted landscape architects, says he often sees things that aren’t there. It’s that vision, his eye for possibilities, that has influenced the shape of his hometown’s cityscape for six decades.
Daugherty, 82 this month, continues his work of “humanizing” existing spaces, even as his career is featured in an upcoming retrospective exhibit.
JESSICA MCGOWAN/jmcgowan@ajc.com
Landscape architect Edward L. Daugherty, who helped plant these trees at the Atlanta History Center, is a proponent of ‘humanizing’ spaces.
BRUCE W. TAYLOR
Edward L. Daugherty was twice asked to design plans involving Marietta Square, seen here in 1979. His vision for the square was instrumental in keeping the historic park an anchor for the city’s growth.
Courtesy of Edward L. Daugherty
This 1978 shot shows Daugherty’s use of an arcade in the landscaping at All Saints Episcopal Church.
"Edward L. Daugherty, a Southern Landscape Architect: Exploring New Forms"
Opens Friday, through March 28 at the Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center, 130 W. Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Free. 404-814-4046, www.atlantahistorycenter.com
For more on Daugherty's career: The Cultural Landscape Foundation Web site is expected to feature the Atlantan as one of its "Pioneers of American Landscape Design" starting today: www.tclf.org/pioneers
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“I think if there is a thread in my work, it’s to help people use the space that is available,” he says. “It’s about evolution. It’s about doing the best you can with what you’ve got.”
Take, for instance, his work with All Saints Episcopal Church on West Peachtree Street. Since 1948, he’s helped his childhood place of worship expand and grow while cultivating safe and communal pedestrian spaces within a busy Midtown block. Or consider Daugherty’s work with Georgia Tech (where he was both a student and professor), which transformed the concrete campus by integrating green mini-parks and communal spaces for students.
On Friday, the Cherokee Garden Library at the Atlanta History Center opens a retrospective of his work, “Edward L. Daugherty, a Southern Landscape Architect: Exploring New Forms,” featuring photos and renderings of his 25 most noted projects.
Staci Catron, director of the Cherokee Garden Library, says they approached Daugherty with the idea after he donated his collection to the museum a few years back.
“We are trying to document how the land is shaped in the South, and Edward has been critical in that,” Catron says. “His career mirrors a lot of change in the city.”
Continuity, fluidity and humanity
Daugherty knew his gift at an early age, he says. As a young teen, he used $100 of his savings from bagging groceries to purchase his first plot of land, a 75-foot-by-55-foot lot adjacent to his parents’ home off Peachtree Street.
With dreams of one day becoming an architect, at 14 years old he designed and built a three-room shack on the parcel. He owned that property until just five years ago, he says.
“I can’t tell you what I sold it for, but it was a very good investment,” chuckles the unassuming Daugherty, a picture of Southern gentility in a navy blazer and bow-tie.
The themes of his work are clear: continuity, fluidity and humanity. Daugherty says he approaches his projects knowing they will involve years, if not decades, of successive decisions, such as his work with downtown Marietta’s revitalization.
Daugherty became involved with the Marietta Square project around 1958, when city planners contacted him about their plans to turn the city’s central park into a parking lot.
“Because we know a landscape architect can make it pretty,” Daugherty says with a sardonic grin. “In other words, make it acceptable.”
Daugherty maintained Marietta officials need not sacrifice the park to keep downtown economically viable. Instead, he drafted a plan that kept the park intact while finding alternate parking spaces to satisfy downtown merchants. He also showed that by incorporating defined large and small spaces the park could accommodate public events. His plan ultimately wasn’t implemented, but the park remained.
A pebble in a pond
Several years later, Daugherty became involved with Marietta Square again, though on a much larger scale. In the mid-1970s, his firm was commissioned to study and revamp 200 acres of Marietta for a downtown historic preservation and revitalization project.
He engaged the assistance of an economist, architectural historian, traffic planner and safety specialists to assess what it would take to encourage economic growth and revitalize downtown Marietta. He held “public listenings” to engage residents’ hopes for their city. He emphasized marking historic landmarks to encourage preservation efforts.
His plan kept the core of the city as a viable place to live, work and visit at a time when malls were draining the life from Main Street America.
“The park was the pebble, the city was the pond,” he says of the rippling effect of his efforts.
Some 55 years after Daugherty opened his first office on his parents’ sleeping porch, he continues to influence Atlanta’s residential and urban landscape with projects such as Decatur’s Woodlands Garden and the Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in Buckhead.
Spencer Tunnell, a landscape architect and Cherokee Garden Library board member, credits Daugherty for inspiring his own career while just a high school student. He later worked for Daugherty before launching his own firm, Tunnell and Tunnell Landscape Architecture.
He summarizes his mentor’s vision as creating spaces and places.
“For him, landscape architecture is not something just to be looked at,” Tunnell says. “It’s to be experienced and lived in and walked through in a four-dimensional way, with the fourth dimension being time. It’s timeless in that it speaks to the universal needs of people.”
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