Henry Wright (landscape architect)
Henry Wright (1878-1936), was a planner, architect, and major proponent of the garden city, an idea characterized by green belts and created by Sir Ebenezer Howard.
Born in Lawrence, Kansas, Henry Wright's family was Quaker and he based many of the ideas for his communities on Quaker ideas. In 1902 Wright helped architect George Kessler design the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri when he was only 23 years old. By the early 1920s Wright became one of the core members of the Regional Planning Association of America, along with Clarence Stein, Lewis Mumford, and Benton MacKaye, and it was this association that led to Wright's most well-known work.
He died in 1936.
Early in his career, Wright designed Brentmoor Park, Brentmoor, and Forest Ridge, three private subdivisions in the city of Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, that were platted in 1910, 1911 and 1913, respectively. Wright later said that the origins of his planning concepts lay in his St. Louis developments. Wright designed all three of his projects to face inward toward their common grounds and away from the noise and congestion of Wydown Boulevard and the trolley line which ran along it (now gone). The subdivisions share common characteristics such as limited access from surrounding thoroughfares, curving interior drives, one to almost 3-acre (12,000 m2) lot sizes, and large traditionally designed houses. Brentmoor Park is designed around a draw, or small valley, which has its lowest point near the intersection of Big Bend and Wydown. This natural land formation forms the common ground of a rectangular 33.8-acre (137,000 m2) tract. The 23-acre (93,000 m2) tract encompassing Forest Ridge has only 6 homes, and rises to a central plateau with the lots planned around a large circular private park. Brentmoor has a simple oval plan due to the evenness of its 49.8 acres (202,000 m2). The three subdivisions in this district contain forty-seven houses, twenty-one of which were built in the first decade after the sites were opened, with an additional sixteen built before 1930. The fashionable period-style houses which fill all three subdivisions were designed by the best local architects as well as some out of town ones, the most notable being Howard Doren Shaw of Chicago and Raymond Maritz. The large, carefully designed houses are about evenly divided between medieval and Georgian styles. Among the civic leaders who have lived here are J. Lionberger Davis, Stratford Lee Morton, and Morton D. May. In 1982, the National Park Service listed the Brentmoor Park, Brentmoor and Forest Ridge District (see: Historic district (United States)) on the National Register of Historic Places.
...
Wikipedia