Horace William Shaler Cleveland was an important force in nineteenth century American landscape architecture. In 1873 Cleveland published "Landscape Architecture, as Applied to the Wants of the West with an Essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains," one of the first attempts to define and develop a comprehensive scope for the new profession of landscape architecture.

The University of Massachusetts Press in association with the Library of American Landscape History has reprinted Cleveland's pioneer work with a new introduction by Daniel J. Nadenicek and Lance M. Neckar that provides an overview of Cleveland's career and a historical backdrop to his concerns for ill-considered growth in the Midwest. The Institute for Cultural Landscape Studies is sponsoring this joint presentation in honor of this new publication.

Born and schooled in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Cleveland set up a landscape practice with Robert Morris Copeland in Boston in 1854. One of their first commissions was the design of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, a site replete with literary history. They also contributed to early ideas for Boston's park system as a series of linked public spaces. Cleveland's design sensibility, influenced by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists, argued for an organic design approach, a natural style that fit the land. His work and writings can be seen as the beginning of a body of American landscape design that includes Frederick Law Olmsted, Jens Jensen, Ossian Simonds and others. After moving to Chicago in 1869, Cleveland worked throughout the Midwest, designing the South Parks system in Chicago, the suburb of Highland Park in Illinois, and the Minneapolis park system, one of the most significant open space systems in the United States.

Speakers: Daniel J. Nadenicek, Director of the Center for Studies in Landscape History and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at Penn State, and Lance M. Neckar, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Associate Dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota.