Landscape Architecture Fall 2025 Lecture Series: Thomas J. Campanella

Join us in 175 Warren Hall for a lecture with Thomas J. Campanella, MLA ’91, FAAR ‘11. This lecture is titled "Designing the American Century: The Public Landscapes of Clarke and Rapuano."

This lecture will tell the largely forgotten story of Cornell-trained landscape architects Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano, the foremost spatial designers of the “American Century.” Over their 50-year careers, Clarke and Rapuano produced a breathtaking portfolio of public landscapes, one that not only recovered the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux but propelled it into the motor age. The parks, parkways, highways and housing estates created by these extraordinary men helped forge—for better and worse—the contemporary American metropolis. From the revolutionary parkways of 1920s Westchester and Long Island to scores of New York City parks and playgrounds; the site plans for two World’s Fairs, the UN Headquarters, the Pentagon and Wolf Trap, to residential estates like the Harlem River Houses, Parkchester and Stuyvesant Town—the work of Clarke and Rapuano continues to touch the lives of millions. The lecture will draw from Campanella’s just-published book, Designing the American Century: The Public Landscapes of Clarke and Rapuano, 1915-1965 (Princeton University Press).

Thomas J. Campanella writes about landscape, cities and the built environment. He serves on the faculty of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University and is the inaugural Historian-in-Residence of the New York City Parks Department. He has held Guggenheim, MacDowell and Fulbright fellowships, and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Campanella has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Wired, Slate and CityLab. His books include Designing the American Century (2025); Brooklyn: The Once and Future City (2019), a finalist for the Brendan Gill Prize; The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World (2008); and Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (2003), winner of the Spiro Kostof Award.