Alice Recknagel Ireys
| Alice Recknagel Ireys | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Alice Elizabeth Recknagel April 24, 1911 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | December 12, 2000 (aged 89) Brooklyn, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture |
| Spouse(s) | Henry Tillinghast Ireys III |
Alice Recknagel Ireys (1911–2000) was an American landscape architect whose notable clients included the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, the Clark Botanic Garden, the Abigail Adams Smith Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Alice Elizabeth Recknagel was born on April 24, 1911, in Brooklyn, New York, to Harold S. and Rea Estes Recknagel. Her father was an insurance-industry attorney. The townhouse Alice grew up in had been occupied by her family since the 1830s, and she would live there her entire life.
Alice became interested in gardening as a child by working with her grandfather at a family farm in Green Harbor, Massachusetts. Her interest developed further as a result of a program at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden funded by the Burpee seed company that allowed children to grow plants and then take them home. She went to school at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn and then on to the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which was then affiliated with Smith College. Although the Cambridge School ordinarily only admitted women holding a B.A. degree, Recknagel persuaded school founder Henry Atherton Frost that her Packer diploma was the equivalent of a junior college degree and so secured admission. She took four years to complete the three-year program, graduating in 1935.
Alice married Henry Tillinghast Ireys III in 1943. They had three children, Catherine, Anne, and Henry, and for a period after their births Alice cut back on her landscaping work. Henry died in 1963.
Ireys initially worked around New York in collaboration with other landscape architects, including serving as an assistant to Marjorie Sewell Cautley. These commissions ranged from public housing projects to lakeside plantings for the 1939 New York World's Fair. She set up her own office in 1947 out of her Brooklyn townhouse.
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