Guy Lowell

Guy Lowell (August 6 1870 – February 4 1927), American architect, was the son of Mary Walcott (Goodrich) and Edward Jackson Lowell, and a member of Boston's well-known Lowell family.

As Percival Lowell's third cousin, Guy became the sole trustee of the Lowell Observatory after his cousin's death in 1916. His combined practice of architecture and landscape design was perhaps sparked by his father-in-law, Charles Sprague Sargent, the first director of the Arnold Arboretum.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Huntington Ave, Boston, MA

Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1892, and received his degree in architecture from MIT in 1894. He then studied landscape and horticulture at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and architectural history and landscape architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, with diplomé in 1899. In the middle of these studies he married Henrietta Sargent of Brookline, Massachusetts on May 17, 1898.

Returning to the United States, Lowell opened his own practice in Boston and was successful immediately. By 1906, he had opened a branch office in New York, and later split each week between New York and Boston. His commissions included large public, academic and commercial buildings, as well as many distinctive residences, country estates and formal gardens. He also worked on the Charles River esplanades in collaboration with Charles Eliot. Lowell is perhaps most recognized for his design of two public buildings, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1906–09 and later additions) and the New York State Supreme Court building in New York City (1912–1914 and 1919–1927). Some of his other commissions included Lowell Lecture Hall at Harvard, and academic buildings at Phillips Academy Andover, Simmons College, and Brown University.

Guy's work on Harvard University's President's House was commissioned by his cousin, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, during his tenure as Harvard President (1909–1933). The house remained the residence of succeeding presidents until 1971 when Derek Bok (1971–1991) moved his young family to the bucolic grounds of the Elmwood colonial mansion. Interestingly, Elmwood was the lifelong home of another of Guy's ancestors, the celebrated American writer, poet, and foreign diplomat James Russell Lowell (1819–1991).

Lowell also published several books including American Gardens (1902), Smaller Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1916), and More Small Italian Villas and Farmhouses (1920). He also contributed to American Gardens, a photographic magazine.

Guy Lowell died in the Madeira Islands.

Major buildings and gardens

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Coe Hall at Planting Fields
Oyster Bay, New York

• 1902 Lowell Lecture Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1906 Fox Clubhouse, 44 JFK Street (formerly 44 Boylston), Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1904 Emerson Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1909 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• 1912 Natirar, Somerset Hills, New Jersey
• 1913 New York State Supreme Courthouse, New York City
• 1913 Planting Fields Arboretum, Oyster Bay, New York
• 1929 Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan

Other selected buildings

• 1900 13 Follen Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, built for Alice Lowell Ropes
• 1901 Tupper Hall (now part of Endicott College), Beverly, Massachusetts
• 1904 Spring Lawn, Kemble Street, Lenox, Massachusetts
• 1907 Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Pawtucket, Rhode Island
• 1907 Unitarian Church of Barnstable, Cobb's Hill, Barnstable Village, Massachusetts
• 1909 New Hampshire Historical Society building, 30 Park Street, Concord, New Hampshire; the pediment contains sculpture by Daniel Chester French that includes the Society's crest flanked by figures representing Modern History and Ancient History
• 1911 Piping Rock Clubhouse, Locust Valley, New York
• 1912 Harvard University President's House, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1915 Boscawen Public Library, Boscawen, New Hampshire
• 1921 Community House, Hamilton, Massachusetts
• 1922 Fuller Memorial Bell Tower, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts