Joanna C. Diman (1901–91): A “Cantankerous” Landscape Architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill presents a biographical overview of Diman's career as a landscape architect. Using hitherto unpublished sources, Nicholas Adams traces Diman's progress from her training at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women (from which she graduated in 1923) through her early work for individual practitioners. For a decade beginning in 1934, she worked for the New York City Department of Parks. In 1944, she joined the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where she worked until her retirement in 1967. Archival sources at SOM reveal that she was involved to differing degrees in nearly all projects that passed through the firm's New York office, from the relatively small garden at Lever House to the great works of “pastoral capitalism,” such as that at Connecticut General in Bloomfield, Connecticut (1957). Adams raises questions of stylistic individuality and places them alongside the larger issue of what influence an in-house landscape department had on design at SOM during these years.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
September 2018
Research Article|
September 01 2018
Joanna C. Diman (1901–91):A “Cantankerous” Landscape Architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Nicholas Adams
Nicholas Adams
Vassar College
Nicholas Adams was editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians from 1992 to 1996. He is the author of books on Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (2007) and Gunnar Asplund (2014). He serves on the editorial board of Casabella and recently completed a critical biography of the architect Gordon Bunshaft.niadams@vassar.edu
Search for other works by this author on:
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2018) 77 (3): 339–348.
Citation
Nicholas Adams; Joanna C. Diman (1901–91):A “Cantankerous” Landscape Architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2018; 77 (3): 339–348. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2018.77.3.339
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.