Ridgewood, NJ 07450
(201) 446-6017
News and Related Links
Fall/Winter News
Lecture and Open House Held:
On October 2 the Ridgewood
Garden Club sponsored a lecture on James Rose and the James Rose
Residence/Study Center at the Ridgewood Women's Club. About
one hundred members attended to hear Professor Dean Cardasis
speak. The lecture was followed by a tour of Rose's Ridgewood
design.
On September 1 Melissa Braun and Joshua Hopkins from the University of Massachusetts, Jennifer Antos from Smith College and Chunghwan Sung from the Rhode Island School of Design completed internships at the James Rose Center. During their stay at the center the students created our web page, worked on several historic landscape preservation projects and visited important sites in the region. Josh Hopkins interned at the center in cooperation with the New York City Housing Authority and Chunghwan Sung in cooperation with Ken Smith Associates in New York.
Former Assistant Director of the center, Brian Higley, completed reconstruction of the original pegged spiral staircase. This stairway also served as a key structural post in support of the roof garden. Brian is also working on rebuilding Rose's original woven fence adjacent to it.
With the help of New York architect, Michael Glynn, another James Rose garden was recently discovered. Built in 1951 it is one of the oldest remaining examples of Rose's work. The house, designed by Henry Hebbeln, with whom Rose frequently worked in the fifties, bears striking resemblance to the Rose Center. Both house and garden were commissioned by Polly Weaver-Crone, career editor for Mademoiselle magazine from 1945 until her retirement in 1962. Ms. Crone lived at "True North," as she called it, until she passed away several years ago. The center hopes to document this project in the spring as part of the James Rose Garden Documentation Project.
With the help of landscape architect and former James Rose Center intern, Bob Hruby, "Baltimore," a significant house and garden designed by Rose in the fifties and featured prominently in his first book, Creative Gardens, has been rediscovered. It turns out landscape architect, Carol Macht, of Hord, Coplan, Macht in Baltimore, whom Bob recently met at a local American Society of Landscape Architects chapter meeting, is the daughter of the original owners who commissioned Rose and who live there to this day. Carol grew up there and will lead James Rose Center Director, Dean Cardasis, along with Brian Higley, Bob Hruby and student Peter Witke on a tour in October. It is possible the site will be documented as part of the James Rose Garden Documentation Project in the spring.
The University of Massachusetts Press , in association with the Library of American Landscape History, has commissioned center director, Dean Cardasis, to write a book about The James Rose Residence/ Center at Ridgewood. As a project Rose conceived of and worked on for almost fifty years, the subject is intended to serve not only as a description of a remarkable modern American design, but as a touchstone to many of Rose's important modern environment design ideas from the thirties on. The book is scheduled for publication by the end of 2003.
Look for an article about the James Rose Center in an upcoming issue of Interiors magazine; as well as in a new book to be put out by the German publisher Tashchen, entitled, Country Interiors. An article on Rose is also in the works to be published next year in the New England Journal of Garden History.
The center will be closed to visitors beginning in November and through the winter. Please come to visit in the Spring of 2002. Check our web site for our opening dates and hours for next season.
Related Links
Dean Cardasis
(www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~cardasis)
Homepage of Dean Cardasis, director
of the James Rose Center, landscape architecture master's program
director at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, professor,
and practicing landscape architect.
(www.gardenconservancy.org)
Homepage of foundation formed to preserve exceptional American gardens
(www.theclearing.org)
Homepage of the foundation preserving the legacy and work of Jens Jenson. (Besides the James Rose Center, The Clearing is the only other educational center established at the former home of an important American landscape architect.)
(www.asla.org)
Homepage of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
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