October Meeting Explores the Man Behind Stan Hywet’s Gardens

The life and work of Warren H. Manning, one of America’s preeminent landscape architects and the man behind the stunning grounds at Stan Hywet, Biltmore and the 1893 Columbian Exposition, will be the subject of Hudson Heritage Association’s October 12 meeting. The meeting, at 7:30 p.m. inside Barlow Community Center, is free and open to the public.

Speakers Gloria J. Schreiber and Rebecca Rogers, both landscape historians, will focus on the work they contributed to a new biography on Manning published by the Library of American Landscape History. They will also discuss some of Manning’s work in Northeast Ohio, including Stan Hywet, where Schreiber worked as a senior gardener, and the Tod Homestead Cemetery and Mill Creek Park in Youngstown, sites that Rogers successfully placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Manning (1860-1938) is considered the most significant American landscape architect and planner of the first half of the 20th century. His practice worked on more than 1,600 projects in 36 of the then 48 states, including almost 100 sites in Northeast Ohio. His projects ranged from small home grounds to estates, cemeteries, college campuses, parks and even new industrial towns.

Manning began his career at the Frederick Law Olmsted firm of Boston, and worked directly with Olmsted on some of the firm’s most important projects, including the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, the gardens at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore estate in Asheville, N.C.

Finger Lakes Region State Park

Manning, one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects, created revolutionary overlay map methods for landscape design, work that provided the basis for computer mapping systems that are widely used today.

About Rebecca Rogers: A graduate of MIT’s School of Architecture, Rogers worked as an historic architect for the National Park Service before settling in Youngsto

wn. There she has been an active preservationist, placing more than 25 sites in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia on the National Register. A master gardener, she has published research on regional historic gardens and landscapes. Rogers, daughter of longtime former Hudson Mayor John W. Rogers, is perhaps best known in town for her 1973 book “Hudson, Ohio: An Architectural and Historical Study,” a resource that directed land-use decisions in the Village of Hudson during the 1970s and 1980s.

About Gloria J. Schreiber: A part-time landscape historian, Schreiber speaks on various topics, including local history. Retired from her landscape business, she continues to raise rare and hard-to-find lilacs. A resident of Hartville, she’s active in volunteering with the Marlboro Township Historical Society as a historian and curator, with the Quail Hollow Volunteer Association and with the newly formed Stark County History Network. She has three children and is called “Mimi” by her four grandchildren.

SaveSave