Triumphs & Tributes: Highlights from New Orleans
Harriet Pattison received a spontaneous and rapturous standing ovation at the ceremony in New Orleans to honor her and 27 other new Fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architects. The moment, shared with her son Nathaniel and two of her closest friends, was a significant highlight among the events that took place in tandem with ASLA’s annual meeting in the Crescent City including tours, receptions and a silent auction that collectively raised nearly $31,200 for TCLF’s educational programming.
The cavalcade of activity, organized with invaluable assistance from TCLF Board Members Shaun Duncan and Holly Sharp, began three days earlier with an extraordinary dinner at Antoine’s, the country’s oldest family-run restaurant, established in 1840. More than 150 gathered into three opulent private rooms (named after Carnival krewes and filled with photographs, ephemera and even a former Mardi Gras queen’s gown) for signature dishes including Oysters Rockefeller, grilled pompano, and Baked Alaska.
The following morning, more than 50 people gathered at St. Anthony’s Garden in the French Quarter for a sold-out-daylong excursion that commenced at Lombard Plantation House, one of the great homes in the Bywater neighborhood and one of the country’s finest examples of West Indian-style Creole design. This was followed by two garden tours in the glorious Garden District, a National Historic Landmark laid out in the 1830s and settled in the 1840s, and then a specially curated luncheon of Haute Creole cuisine at the historic and famous Commander’s Palace, a New Orleans landmark since 1863.
After a post-prandial stroll through Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, directly across from Commander’s Palace, the group headed upriver to the Uptown Historic District, site of two significant Modernist properties: a collaboration between Robert Royston and local architect John Lawrence that fuses traditional New Orleans with mid-century California Modernism, and the National Register-listed Nathaniel C., Jr. and Frances Curtis House (1963). The day concluded with a reception at the Curtis House, where the What’s Out There New Orleans print and online guides to the city’s designed landscape legacy were unveiled. At the event, the Louisiana Chapter of ASLA and TCLF surprised Suzanne L. Turner by jointly honoring her with a Stewardship Excellence Award, citing her remarkable accomplishments as an educator, author, cultural landscape expert and influential mentor.
Over the weekend, TCLF’s Annual Silent Auction was held at the New Orleans convention center in conjunction with the ASLA Annual Meeting. The event included a record numbers of items – more than 100 – and yielded a record result, more than $65,000. For the first time, all of the bidding took place online, which allowed people to participate even if they weren’t present (one bidder in Florida succeeded in acquiring a sumptuous image of NY’s Central Park). Another first, a week long stay at Sea Ranch in California, the glorious community designed by Lawrence Halprin. In addition, 25 percent of the work was donated by nationally known, New Orleans-based artists, thanks to the efforts of Charles Whited, a well respected collector and arts patron in the city.
Following the close of the auction, the ASLA Fellows dinner, a black tie event, saw Harriet Pattison’s elevation to a Fellow of the society. The 87-year-old Pattison, designer with architect Louis Kahn of Forth Worth’s Kimbell Museum of Art and New York’s FDR Four Freedoms Park, beamed during the ceremony and was swamped by admirers and well-wishers both before and afterward. Pattison shared a table with another new Fellow, Lucy Lawliss, whose extraordinary career at the National Park Service included roles as a cultural landscape program manager, superintendent of three national parks and a national program manager in Washington, D.C.; in addition to being an award-winning author and editor.
On Monday at ASLA’s national awards ceremony, TCLF received the Award of Excellence in Communications (the highest honor in the category) for the What’s Out There series of guidebooks to North America’s great and diverse landscape legacy.
The events would not have been possible without the support of numerous companies, organizations and individuals: Anova; Maglin Site Furniture; Bartlett Tree Experts; and Victor Stanley. Additional support was provided by Kelco Landscaping and Construction; Pennoyer Newman; SPJ Lighting, Inc.; the Turner Family Foundation; Peter R. McQuillan and Adam R. Rose; Shaun and Foster Duncan; Sheila and Thomas Lemman; the Zemurray Foundation; A to Z Framing; The UPS Store; Martin Wine Cellar; and the American Society of Landscape Architects.