‘Dean of Women Landscape Architects’ Worked on Crab Tree Farm and Other Important Sites

By Carol Summerfield In 1897, Illinois became the first state to provide women with the opportunity to become a registered and licensed architect. And, in 1898, Marion Mahony Griffin passed the Illinois state exam, making her the first officially licensed female architect in United States history. She was also the first employee hired by Frank Lloyd Wright. But women architects were a limited group, with only one other female in the licensed architect ranks through 1920. In fact, the other female architect in 1921, Elisabeth Martini, decided to run an advertisement in Chicago newspapers that read:  Only girl architect lonely. Wanted—to meet all the women architects in Chicago to form a club.

A walk at Crab Tree Farm designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman. Landscape architecture proved a much more open field, as “ephemeral” arts were considered a better place for women to hone their craft because gardens didn’t hold the same longevity as buildings did. And women moved into that field by the dozens, bringing with them innate skills, creativity, and a desire to work hard.

Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869–1950) was one of those women, and she built a decades-long career with numerous gardens in her portfolio in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff. Shipman was labeled by House and Garden Magazine as the “Dean of Women Landscape Architects” in 1933 because, not only was she prolific, but she also trained many landscape architects over her career. Shipman designed more than 650 gardens across the United States that we know about. She designed dozens of gardens in the Lake Forest and Lake Bluff area. She was highly sought after by wealthy clients, including the Fords and Astors in New York and the McCormick and Blair families in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff.  

Shipman opened a New York office in 1920, hiring mostly female students from the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture. Commenting about the male-dominated field to the New York Times in 1938, Shipman said, “Before women took hold of the profession, landscape architects were doing what I call cemetery work.” At a time when the field was completely dominated by men, Shipman broke barriers by running a highly successful, all-female design firm in New York City, actively mentoring the next generation of women horticulturists.

While most of her original, fragile planting schemes have evolved or vanished over the past century, a few of her specific local projects are documented here in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff:

• The William McCormick Blair Estate, "Port O'Call" at Crab Tree Farm (Lake Bluff): This is her most famous local collaboration. Working alongside legendary architect David Adler, Shipman designed a stunning walled garden in 1927 on the west-facing side of the house to shelter her delicate plant selections from the harsh winds coming off Lake Michigan.

• The Mr. and Mrs. Edward Shumway Garden (Lake Forest): This highly celebrated residential commission featured her hallmark brick walkways, walled enclosures, and dense seasonal borders. You can see images from her work on this property in the Smithsonian’s Garden Club of America Collection, many images of which were donated by the Lake Forest Garden Club.

• The "Little Orchard" Walled Garden (Lake Forest): This is another example of Shipman's formal structural lines of a courtyard garden, that used lush, flowing "rooms" of perennial flowers to create unique spaces within a smaller back garden.

• The Wheeler Estate (Lake Forest): Designed in 1930 for Leslie and Rhoda Patten Wheeler, this project featured a formal walled garden situated on the east side of the home that opened up to sweeping lakeside views.

To get a sense of an Ellen Shipman courtyard garden, you can visit the Ellen and Tom Walvoord Courtyard Garden at the History Center, designed in the style of an Ellen Shipman 1920s garden.

The gardens at the History Center (509 E. Deerpath) are free and open to the public sunrise to sunset. The gardens have informational panels to pique your interest and add to your knowledge of the evolution of landscape design.

The History Center is working to build a collection of Ellen Shipman’s drawings and materials, as well as working to create an index of all her local projects, as many are still unlisted for her portfolio of work. If you have any images, drawings, or materials that you would like to share with the museum, please reach out to info@lflbhistory.org.