Pretty Penny Estate, Nyack, NY
1897 - 1969

Mary Deputy Lamson

Born in southern Indiana, Lamson’s family had a great appreciation for gardens and plants. She studied at the State Normal School in Mankato, Minnesota, for two years, subsequently transferring to Indiana University in Bloomington, from which she earned a B.A. and an M.A. in English in 1919. While there, Lamson also studied botany, surveying, free-hand drawing, fine arts, and trigonometry. In 1920 she entered the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, completing the three-year program in only two years. Lamson then returned to Minnesota, where she became the Director of Physical Education at Bemidji State Teachers College and began her landscape architecture practice. She moved to New York City in 1924, working for Ruth Dean until Dean’s death in 1932. Lamson worked with others to carry on the firm’s work as Ruth Dean Associates for another two years. In 1934 she opened her own office in New York City. The following year Lamson and four other Cambridge School graduates were awarded an M.L.A. from Smith College, which had merged with Cambridge. She designed large estates, college campuses, farms, small suburban gardens, and city backyards and penthouses from Maine to Florida and from Long Island to Kansas City, Missouri. An example of her estate work is the grounds of Pretty Penny, the residence of Helen Hayes and her husband Charles MacArthur in Nyack, New York. The project was featured in House and Garden in 1937 and in Margaret Goldsmith’s book Designs for Outdoor Living in 1941.

Lamson published numerous short, practical articles in monthly periodicals such as House and Garden and House Beautiful, rarely illustrating her own work. She also published two books entitled Gardening with Shrubs and Small Flowering Trees (1946) and Garden Housekeeping (1951). Lamson died in Red Hook, New York, at the age of 72.