Pioneer Information
Born in upstate New York, Strang enrolled in Cornell University in 1905 intending to study art, but she transferred to the Rural Art Department from which she graduated in 1910. During her final year, Strang wrote an article entitled “Landscape Architecture from the Point of View of an Undergraduate,” among the first such descriptions by a student of landscape architecture. Her gift for prose became her major contribution to the field. Upon the completion of her degree, Strang apprenticed at some of the most prominent landscape architecture firms of the time. She worked in the New York office of Ferruccio Vitale, the New York office of Hinchman & Pilat, and the London office of Lorrie Dunington (later Dunington-Grubb). In 1911 Strang returned to the United States to work at the office of John Nolen in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While working there, she offered her drafting services to such Boston-area practitioners as Warren Manning, Samuel Negus, and Stephen Child. At Child’s encouragement, Strang accepted a part-time teaching position at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture in Groton, Massachusetts.
At the onset of World War I, Strang moved with her family to Leominster, Massachusetts, where she continued to practice and began to write on landscape architecture-related topics, such as the design process, good design principles, and garden maintenance. She discussed her work and study, and illustrated her writing with plans and photographs of modest projects for which she became known. Through her writings Strang also encouraged young women to enter the profession. Between 1918 and 1930, she authored more than four dozen articles for popular periodicals. Strang was institutionalized in the late 1920s due to illness and depression. She remained incapacitated until her death.
