April is World Landscape Architecture Month and we’re celebrating by featuring renowned landscape architect and former Cambridge resident Carol R. Johnson.
Carol R. Johnson was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on September 6, 1929. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother, a school principal. From them she inherited a love of the outdoors and was shaped by the landscape experiences of her childhood spent in Vermont and Martha’s Vineyard. She first experienced the idea of a designed landscape as a student at Wellesley College, where Frederick Law Olmsted had applied his campus planning concept of building on the hills and leaving the valley open. She graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She then went to work for a commercial nursery in Bedford, Massachusetts. While there, she met students in the landscape architecture program at Harvard. With their encouragement, she decided to pursue a career in landscape architecture.
Johnson earned her degree from Harvard in 1957, and in 1958 she was one of the first landscape architects to be hired by The Architects Collaborative (TAC), the renowned architectural practice founded by Walter Gropius. She left TAC after only one year to start her own practice, taking advantage of projects offered to her through her Wellesley and Harvard contacts. At first, her office worked on mostly suburban private gardens, but Johnson soon had opportunities to expand her projects, such as the landscape of the U.S. Pavilion at Montreal’s Expo ’67, where she collaborated with Buckminster Fuller and Cambridge Seven Associates.
Johnson initially managed her practice out of her apartment in Cambridge and then a small office at 15 Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. As the practice expanded, she moved to larger offices in 1986 at 1100 Mass Ave. The firm, known as Carol R. Johnson & Associates, or CRJA, worked on a range of public and private projects including the planning and design of urban spaces, campuses, industrial sites, and waterfronts into popular parks and public spaces. Through the years, the firm developed a national and international clientele with multiple projects in Abu Dhabi, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. In 2001, the firm relocated to Boston where it purchased and renovated a former molasses warehouse in Boston’s financial district. The firm also established a studio in Knoxville, Tennessee responding to growth in the southeast and mid-Atlantic region. In 2011, CRJA was acquired by the IBI Group of Firms. Johnson became a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1982, and in 1998 she received the ASLA Medal. Johnson officially retired in June 2016.
Projects in Cambridge
Specific projects in Cambridge include Lechmere Canal Park and John F. Kennedy Memorial Fountain and Park, as well as her own home on Brown Street.
Built in 1895, the Lechmere Canal functioned as an active seaport until the Charles River Dam Bridge cut off access in 1910, and the canal fell into disuse. In 1978, the City adopted the East Cambridge Riverfront plan to revitalize the neighborhood with commercial and residential development. Johnson’s firm was hired to create a 7.5-acre linear park which wraps both sides of the canal and connects with the Charles River walkway. The canal was edged with sunken gravel paths and bermed lawn panels, maximizing green space along its length. Weeping willows, sycamores, and red maples were planted at regular intervals alongside evergreen shrubs, ornamental grasses, and groundcovers. The canal terminates at a circular basin with a tall jet fountain at its center. This area has a secondary circulation network composed of a raised brick path which provides direct access to the surrounding buildings. The seawall at the basin offers docking for light watercraft, and a small stepped amphitheater and open air pavilion serve as orienting focal elements. Intended as a shady place to sit, the pavilion also incorporated plexiglass panels that interpret the industrial history of the canal. The project also established urban design guidelines for private developers whose buildings edge the basin and canal.
Completed in 1987, John F. Kennedy Park is a passive recreational greenspace with several walkways located at the corner of Memorial Drive and JFK Street. At each gateway to the park, entrance pillars display text from the speeches of John F. Kennedy. At the center of the park and on axis with a pedestrian link to Harvard Square, a water feature is surrounded by a wall with additional inscriptions of Kennedy’s speeches. The cascading water over the text was inspired by Johnson’s hikes in New Hampshire where she saw streams coursing over rocks. Varieties of trees native to Massachusetts and flowering trees which bloom around the time of Kennedy’s birthday were planted in clumps throughout the park. Because of the site’s relationship to the curving Charles River across the street, visitors can enjoy expansive views to the south and west. The park was dedicated as the Commonwealth’s official memorial to Kennedy on May 29, 1987, which would have been Kennedy’s 70th birthday.
In her former home at 14 Brown Street, an 1928 Colonial Revival, Johnson created a garden out of a limited area. A garage was constructed in front of the house to one side creating a private space for outdoor dining in the rear with a picnic table under a pergola covered with grapevines. Johnson also extended an existing berm out from the house almost to the front sidewalk, elevating the front yard 4 and a half feet above street level, creating a forecourt to the house with a lawn edged with perennials. The house was accessed by a walkway alongside the base of the berm. The roof of the garage was designed as another outdoor space used for entertaining as well as a place to read and enjoy the view. Adjacent to the pergola, Johnson also enjoyed tending a vegetable plot surrounded by a low hedge of boxwood.
Sources
https://ibiplacemaking.com/history/
Stocker, Carol. “Creative Landscape Solutions in Crowded Cambridge,” Boston Globe, June 1, 2000.
https://tclf.org/pioneer/carol-r-johnson
