Allyn R. Jennings

Born in New York, Jennings graduated from the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in 1909. He was then employed in Philadelphia by the landscape architecture firm Martin & Duhring and by architect Charles Barton Keen. Jennings also worked for a time with the South American Railroad Construction Company in Brazil.  From 1914 to 1915, he served in the American Ambulance Field Service in France. In 1915, he earned a degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University and traveled to France with the American Red Cross. For the remainder of World War I, he served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy. After the war, he worked for landscape architect Clarence Fowler in New York City and the Westchester County Park Commission’s Department of Planning and Design, assisting Gilmore Clarke with the creation of a park headquarters plan at Yellowstone National Park in 1930. In 1934, Jennings began working for Commissioner Robert Moses at the New York City Department of Parks, becoming general superintendent and Moses’ chief aide in 1936. Jennings became the New York Zoological Society’s first general director in 1940, but resigned the following year. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Coast Guard and afterwards worked on Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in France, which was established in 1945 and completed in 1960. In 1951, he became deputy commissioner of Philadelphia’s newly created Department of Recreation (formerly the Bureau of Recreation), resigning the following year to resume private practice. In 1954, Jennings updated the plantings at Carroll Park in Philadelphia. He practiced independently as consultant until 1972. Jennings published various articles, including “Planning State Parks” in Landscape Architecture (1933), “Restoring the Roadside” in Real Gardening (1938), and “The Problems of the Park Executive” in Parks and Recreation (1939). In addition to being a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, he was also a member of the New York Botanical Garden’s Board of Managers. Jennings died in Jacksonville, Florida, at the age of 85.