Item #5515 [An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings]. Ferruccio Vitale, Jr, Alfred Geiffert.
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].
[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].

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[An archive of twenty-six original landscape design drawings].

New York: Ferruccio Vitale, circa 1929. 26 original graphite drawings on card stock, 2 signed, 17 taped into 11” x 14” paper mats, 23 with manuscript project numbers in bottom left corner, stamp on verso of 14 drawings reading “Ferruccio Vitale 101 Park Ave. New York Ferruccio Vitale Alfred Geiffert, Jr. Landscape Architects”; album binding holes in left margin of all drawings.

A rare and important collection of twenty-six landscape design drawings by one of the leading American landscape architecture firms of twentieth century.

These drawings document a variety of projects undertaken by Vitale’s firm in the late 1920s. Included here are views of entrances, terraces, lawns, walled gardens, pools, statuary, pavilions, towers, gates, etc. Two of the drawings are signed, one by Vitale’s partner, Alfred Geiffert, dated 1929, and the other by R. A. Ogan, dated 1928. It seems likely that the unsigned drawings are by Geiffert or Ogan as well. All but three of the drawings include project IDs in the lower left corner. Four drawings carry an ID beginning with an R (”R-4-D,” for instance). Two of these carry a pencil notation reading ‘Rockefeller’ in the left corner of the lower margin. These likely relate to Vitale’s garden design work for Percy A. Rockefeller (1878–1934) of Greenwich, Connecticut. Another drawing has the name ‘Bertron’ written in the lower margin. Some drawings carry such titles as Lawn Fountain, Pavilion from House, Shelter in Flower Garden, Waterfall, and Tower from House.

Florence-born landscape architect Ferruccio Vitale (1875–1933) and his partner Alfred Geiffert (1890–1957)—as well as other occasional partners— designed properties for such prominent clients as the Mellons, Benjamin Moore, Condé Nast, Rodman Wanamaker, and many others in New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. Vitale also had a hand in such important civic projects as the National Mall, Washington, D.C.; the Washington Monument Gardens, the National Gallery of Art; the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, and others. Vitale belonged to the second generation of the new profession of landscape architecture, following in the footsteps of the Olmsted brothers, Charles Adam Platt, and William Wells Bosworth. Living in Florence with his architect father during a period of Renaissance garden restoration, Vitale met traveling Americans such as Edith Wharton who popularized the Florentine garden in America with her book Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904), featuring illustrations by Maxfield Parrish. Wharton’s niece, Beatrix Farrand, later apprenticed under Vitale. Emigrating to New York in 1904, Vitale established his own firm in 1908 and hired the eighteen year-old Alfred Geiffert as an office boy assistant. Geiffert remained with the firm until after Vitale’s death, becoming a partner in 1917 and maintaining the “Survivor Firm” from 1933 to 1938.

A rare collection of drawings by this important landscape architecture firm. According to Vitale authority R. Terry Schnadelbach, as stated in the work cited below, there are “no archives of Vitale drawings or files.”

REFERENCES: Schnadelbach, R. Terry. Ferruccio Vitale: Landscape Architect of the Country Place Era (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001).

CONDITION: Very good.

Item #5515

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