Fletcher Steele

John 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.

Early life

Steele was born in Rochester, New York, United States to a lawyer father and pianist mother. He graduated with a B.A. from Williams College in 1907. While there, he was a member of the fraternity of Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall). 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 was based in Boston for more than 50 years. In pursuit of his career he traveled by train extensively in the United States. Toward the end of his life, he lived in Pittsford, New York. The local library there has a Fletcher Steele Room and books on display from his private collection.

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.

Projects Steele is noted for a number of major works including Naumkeag, Peters Reservation, Ancrum House, Whitney Allen House, Standish Backus House, Elihu Kirby House, Lisburne 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.

According to Robin Karson's 1991 book about Steele's life and his landscape architecture, the only two of his gardens that remain in existence (as originally created) are at Naumkeag and at the Whitney Allen House. However, Melissa McGrain, with the support of her husband Andrew Stern, bought the estate containing Nancy and Richard Turner's house in Pittsford, New York and did excellent work in restoring the garden that Steele designed and developed for the Turners.

Selected writing Design in the little garden, Boston, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1924. The House beautiful gardening manual; a comprehensive guide, æsthetic and practical, for all garden lovers, both those who are still planning their gardens on paper and those who have had gardening experience, including plant lists compiled with the help of horticulturalists in all sections of the country, and an introductory chapter on garden design by Fletcher Steele, Boston, The Atlantic monthly press, 1926. Gardens and people, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1964.