The Cultural Landscape Foundation Announces 2009 Landslide Sites
Themed “Shaping the American Landscape,” the compendium spotlights significant landscapes and landscape features at risk.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has announced the 2009 Landslidetheme—“Shaping the American Landscape”—and the 16 Landslidesites for 2009. Landslideis an annual compendium of significant landscapes and landscape features at risk for alteration or destruction. The announcement coincides with the publication of Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project, the second volume of an encyclopedia covering 250 years of American landscape architects and allied practitioners.

Landslide, establishedin 2002, examines threatened landscapes (listed thematically, e.g., working landscapes, designed landscapes) and is designed to educate the public about and rally support for these sites. TCLF will support the 2009 Landslideand the new volume of Pioneers, in part, with 10 regional conferences. The first five were scheduled for this fall, with two still to be held: November 6 at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; and November 13 at the Chicago Architectural Foundation. Dates and venues for the spring 2010 conferences will be announced shortly.

Previous Landslides have been accompanied by traveling exhibitions organized in cooperation with and curated by the George Eastman Museum of International Photography and Film, which commissioned original photography of the endangered places. The latest Landslide exhibition, “Marvels of Modernism,” opens at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, on November 6, 2009. The exhibitions place these landscapes within a broader conversation of art, design, and culture, which helps contextualize the significance, value, and import of the sites and their designers.

The 16 2009 Landslide sites, culled from nearly 100 nominations, feature the work of master landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted, Beatrix Farrand, George Kessler, and Hideo Sasaki, along with architects I. M. Pei and H. H. Richardson. The threatened sites vary in geography, style, type, and scale.

The 2009 Landslidelist, alphabetically by state, includes:

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, California
16th Street Mall, Denver
Riverside Cemetery, Denver
City of Hartford Parks System, Connecticut
Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta
Washington Park, Chicago
Scripps Estate, Lake Orion, Michigan
The Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo, North Carolina
Olana, Hudson, New York
Richardson Olmsted Complex, Buffalo, New York
Washington Square Village, New York City
Wilderstein, Rhinebeck, New York
Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver Legacy, Salem, Oregon
North and South Parks, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Overton Park, Memphis, Tennessee
Northern State Hospital, Sedro Woolley, Washington

To read about these sites, visit www.tclf.org/landslide/2009/index.html.

The volume Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project (University of Virginia Press) took 10 years to complete and features 151 illustrated biographical profiles of landscape architects and allied practitioners. It can be ordered through Amazon. The first volume, published in 2000, covers 160 individuals.