Papers of Dan Kiley

Born in Boston in 1912, Dan Kiley attended the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in the mid-1930s. In 1939, with fellow landscape architects Garret Eckbo and James Rose, he published a seminal manifesto on modernist landscape architecture in three parts related to the urban, rural, and primeval environments. He served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. At the end of World War II, Kiley designed the courtroom where the Nuremberg Trials were held. In 1951 he established the Office of Dan Kiley in Charlotte, Vermont, where he worked for more than forty years until his death in 2004.

Considered the father of modern landscape architecture in the United States, Dan Kiley combined modern design ideals with classical principles in hundreds of projects in the United States and worldwide. Among his projects, many with notable architects, include the Gateway Arch in St. Louis (Missouri), the Miller House Garden (Indiana), and the US Air Force Academy (Colorado) where he worked with Eero Saarinen on all three projects; the Ford Foundation's headquarters in Manhattan with Kevin Roche; and the National Gallery of Art's East Wing in Washington D.C. with I. M. Pei. His overseas projects include the landscape of La Defense in Paris. Kiley was awarded in September 1997 the National Medal of the Arts, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon an artist in the United States.