The Norman T. Newton Collection

Norman Thomas Newton was born in 1898 in Corry, Pennsylvania. He received both his undergraduate degree in 1919 and his Master's Degree in Landscape Design from Cornell University in 1920. He immediately went to work for Bryant Fleming in his landscape architecture firm until 1923, when he received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. He spent his three years as a Fellow of the Academy studying the gardens of Italian villas notably the Villa Chigi and the Villa Medici. He also studied music and the fine arts due to their being, in his view, “intrinsically related to both architecture and landscape design.” In 1927 he returned to the United States and worked in the office of Ferrucio Vitale designing country places. In 1932 he established his own private practice in New York where he was involved with working on a number of public works projects under the Civilian Conservation Corps. He served from 1933 to 1939 as the Associate Landscape Architect for the National Park Service. The projects he was most known for during this period are the master plans for Bedloe’s Island upon which the Status of Liberty is located in New York City, the Saratoga Battlefield National History Park, New York and the Salem Maritime National Historic site in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1939 he joined the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Design as Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture. His duties as an instructor were placed on hold in 1942 when he joined the war effort during World War II. He served as a Lieutenant Colonel of the United Air Force attached to the British Eighth Army doing the work of the Sub Commission of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFA and A). His duties consisted of noting damage to historic structures, damage or theft of works of art and the protection/rebuilding of structures and location and repatriation of works of art in Italy. He wrote a book titled "War Damage to Monuments and Fine Arts of Italy" documenting his work as a Monument Man. He returned to Harvard after the War and resumed his professorship at Harvard. In 1963 he was named the Charles Eliot Professor of Landscape Architecture, which he held until his retirement in 1967. He returned to Rome, Italy and served as the Resident Landscape Architect at the Academy of Rome.

Newton during his years of teaching was also involved in the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was President of this society from 1957 to 1961. He also is noted for writing the book "Design on the Land" published in 1961, which is considered the comprehensive book on the subject of landscape architecture; and "An approach to design" published in 1951. This publication includes an introduction that explains his philosophy in design and his encouragement to students to design from their own experience. There is a 1979 revised edition of the latter in the Special Collections Department of Harvard's Graduate School of Design in typescript form (photocopy, 140 leaves, bound). He died in 1992.