Guy Lowell
Guy Lowell (1870-1927) was an American architect and landscape architect. He was a member of Boston's well-known Lowell family, and in this role as Percival Lowell's third cousin, the sole trustee of the Lowell Observatory after his cousin's death. 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.
Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1892, and received his degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894. He then studied landscape and horticulture at Kew Gardens, and architectural history and landscape architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, with diplome in 1899.
Returning to the United States, Lowell opened his own practice in Boston. He 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, and many distinctive residences, country estates and formal gardens, but he is perhaps most famous for his design of two public buildings, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1906-09, plus later additions) and the New York County Courthouse on Foley Square in Manhattan (1912-14 and 1919-27), Lowell Lecture Hall at Harvard, and academic buildings at Andover Academy, Simmons College, and Brown University.
Lowell 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.