Designing the American Century: The Public Landscapes of Clarke and Rapuano, 1915–1965

Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano were the foremost spatial designers of the American century. Their vast portfolio of public landscapes propelled the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux into the motor age, touching the lives of millions and changing the face of the nation. Designing the American Century recovers the forgotten legacy of Clarke and Rapuano, whose parks and parkways, highways and housing estates helped modernize—for better or worse—the American metropolis.

With the patronage of public-works titan Robert Moses, Clarke and Rapuano transformed New York over a span of fifty years, revitalizing the city’s immense park system but also planning expressways, public housing, and urban renewal projects that laid waste to entire sections of the city. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas J. Campanella describes how Clarke and Rapuano helped create some of the metropolitan region’s most iconic landscapes, from the Central Park Zoo and Conservatory Garden to the Henry Hudson Parkway and Riverside Park, Jones Beach, the Palisades and Taconic State Parkways, and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. He shows how they left their mark far beyond Gotham as well, with projects as diverse as Yellowstone’s Mammoth Hot Springs, the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, site plans for the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, and Montreal’s Olympic Park.

Richly illustrated with a wealth of previously unpublished drawings, plans, and photographs, Designing the American Century fills one of the last major gaps in the history of American urbanism.