Platt, Charles Adams

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Platt, Charles Adams (1861–1933). American architect and landscape-designer. His Italianate gardens of the 1890s and early 1900s were famous, with buildings and gardens beautifully integrated (e.g. Faulkner Farm, Brookline, near Boston, MA (1897–8), and Gwinn, near Cleveland, OH (1907–8). He advised on the designs of the campuses of Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, and Rochester Universities, and was architect of the Freer Gallery, Washington, DC (1913–18). His earlier architectural work was informed by Classicism, and especially by Italian exemplars, but he also designed in a restrained Georgian Colonial style, as with the Pratt House and Garden, Glen Cove, NY (1910–13). He designed the campus and buildings for the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL (1919–30—a particularly fine work in which axes, symmetry, and composed vistas are fully exploited), and for the Phillips Academy, Andover, MA (1922–33), the Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (1925); and the Deerfield Academy, CT (1930–2), among many other distinguished works. He published his influential Italian Gardens in 1894, based on his travels in 1892, and a monograph on his work in 1913.

Bibliography

ARe, xv (1904), 181–244;
K. Morgan (1985, 1995);
Platt (1913);
Jane Turner (1996);
van Vynckt (ed.) (1993)

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Charles Adams Platt

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