User:KXF/sandbox/KFX/sandbox/Elbert Peets

Elbert Peets

Elbert Peets (1886-1968) was a landscape architect, city planner, and author who contributed significantly to garden city development in the United States in the early twentieth century, and to the understanding of civic art. In 1916 he opened an office with architect Werner Hegemann; the two worked together until the early 1920s, when Hegemmann returned to Europe. In 1922 Hegemann and Peets published a seminal work, The American Vitruvius: An Architect's Handbook of Civic Art. Peets continued to practice on his own until the mid-1930s and to write, producing books on city planning and tree care. During the Great Depression, he joined the U.S. Farm Resettlement Administration (1935-1938) and then became chief of the site planning section, the U.S. Housing Authority, until 1944. After World War II he worked as a consultant to such clients as the National Capital Planning Commission. Peets taught at Harvard and Yale Universities from 1950 to 1960. His projects include the new towns and communities of Kohler, Washington Heights, and Greendale, Wisconsin; Park Forest, Illinois; Bannockburn, Maryland; and Wyomissing Park in Reading, Pennsylvania. He served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1950 to 1958. Late in his career, Peets developed the site plan for the historic Capitol columns at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. Peets received an undergraduate degree from Western Reserve University in 1912 and a master's degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University in 1915. His papers are in the collection of Cornell University.