Guy Lowell

American architect Guy Lowell (August 6, 1870–February 4, 1927) 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 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,

File:60CenterStreet 1927.jpg

New York Supreme Court
60 Centre Street circa 1927

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 (1912–14 and 1919–27). Some of his other commissions included Lowell Lecture Hall at Harvard, and academic buildings at Phillips Academy Andover, Simmons College, and Brown University.

It's notable to mention, that Guy's work on Harvard University President's House was commissioned by his cousin, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, during his tenure as Harvard President (1909–33). The house remained the residence of succeeding presidents until 1971 when Derek Bok (1971–91) moved his young family to the bucolic grounds of the Elmwood colonial mansion. Interestingly, Elmwood was the life-long home of another of Guy's ancestor's, the celebrated American writer, poet, and foreign diplomat James Russell Lowell (1819–91).

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

File:IMG 5693a copy.jpg

Coe Hall at Planting Fields
Oyster Bay, NY

• 1902 Lowell Lecture Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
• 1905 Fox Clubhouse, 44 JFK St, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
• 1904 Emerson Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
• 1909 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• 1912 Natirar, Somerset Hills, NJ
• 1913 New York State Supreme Courthouse, New York City, NY
• 1913 Planting Fields Arboretum, Oyster Bay, NY
• 1929 Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, Grosse Pointe, MI

Selected other buildings

File:17QuincySt.jpg

President's House
17 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA

1901 Tupper Hall (now part of Endicott College), Beverly, MA
1904 Spring Lawn, Kemble Street, Lenox, MA
1906 44 Boylston Street, Cambridge, MA
1907 Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Pawtucket, RI
1909 Tuck Library, now the New Hampshire Historical Society building, 30 Park Street, Concord, NH
1910 13 Follen Street, Cambridge, MA
1911 Piping Rock Clubhouse, Locust Valley, NY
1911 Harvard University President's House, Cambridge, MA
1921 Community House, Hamilton, MA
1922 Fuller Memorial Bell Tower, Phillips Academy Andover, Andover, MA