Archive Record

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1 of 1977

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Metadata

Title

FONDS Martha Brookes Hutcheson Papers Collection

Scope & Content

Martha Brookes Hutcheson Papers, Parent Record

The Martha Brookes Hutcheson Papers collection contains personal papers, published articles, photographs, negatives and glass slides that were assembled by Martha Brookes Hutcheson regarding her career, family genealogy, family history, Merchiston Farm, and landscape gardening 1900 through 1959. This collection provides a unique glimpse into the design and professional life of Martha Brookes Hutcheson through her own eyes as she was the primary organizer of the records found within. Mrs. Hutcheson was writing, designing, and working in an era of widespread progressive campaigns, including those for a social insurance system, public education, child-labor laws, and women's suffrage.

From her work as a founder of the Women's Land Army (WLA) during World War I, to the Garden Club of American (GCA) working as a "political and civic force", Merchiston Farm became a nexus for her social agenda, a place where women could contribute physically, intellectually and economically to society at a time when they were often unable to on a broad scale. Hutcheson urged for the contribution of landscape architects to national education, including such movements as the School Garden Movement, and explored the tensions between her own progressive agenda and the strictures of her elite social class. Through Martha's evolving social and ecological design practices and in her public lectures, writing and advocacy through the GCA the Martha Brookes Hutcheson Papers are able to tell the story of how Merchiston Farm and landscape design was able to empower women and pave the way for ecofeminism a practice not realized until 1970.

Object Name

Papers, Personal

Catalog Number

BB2018.002

Collection

Bamboo Brook Collection

Physical characteristics

32 boxes, or 11 linear feet

Creator

Hutcheson, Martha Brookes

Biographical History

Martha Brookes Hutcheson, née Brown, was born in New York City in 1871 and spent part of her childhood at her mother's family home in Burlington, VT where she was put in charge of her first garden at age 10. She attended New York School of Applied Design for Women from 1893 to 1895, studying watercolor painting and then attended a three-year landscape program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the few to accept women degree seekers, from 1899 to 1902 although she did not finish that degree program, leaving due to dissatisfaction with the focus of study lack of emphasis on horticulture and social reform. Before leaving the program, Martha gained additional horticultural education studying under Professor Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum.

Martha traveled extensively in Europe studying gardens and it shows in her professional work. Her first practice was in the Boston area where her clients included the owners of huge estates of the North Shore, the Longfellow homestead in Cambridge, and Bennington College in Vermont. She relocated to Park Ave. in New York City in 1906 Martha Brookes Hutcheson designed and supervised the implementation of over a dozen large commissions for estates in Massachusetts and Long Island as well as numerous smaller gardens around New York City and northern New Jersey In 1910, Martha married William Anderson Hutcheson. The following year they purchased Merchiston Farm, a 100-acre working farm, located in Gladstone, NJ. After the birth of her daughter in 1912, she closed her office and turned her focus to writing and lecturing. Martha's design philosophy and principles are explained in her 1923 book, Spirit of the Garden. In her writings, she prioritizes the use of native plants as a means to support healthy, natural habitats, shifting aesthetic preferences to balancing geometric and organic design models. Merchiston Farm became a workshop for her to practice, study, and experiment with new landscaping ideas. The property exemplifies all of the principles in her book and incorporates many native plants into the design as well as using an imaginative manipulation of water as a landscape element, blurring the distinction between the purely decorative garden and farm. Her design merges food production, architectural features, with geometric and wild gardens.

Mrs. Hutcheson was one of seven founding members of the Woman's Land Army during World War I. Her experience with a group of "farmerettes" at her New Jersey home convinced her of the impact landscape architects could have by increasing agricultural productivity, improving soils and plant communities, and fostering women's practical skills and economic autonomy. In 1920, Hutcheson joined Beatrix Farrand as the second female member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). In 1934 in acknowledgement of her writings, as well as her realized commissions, she was elected a Fellow of the ASLA, the fourth woman to be granted that honor.

During WWII, the Hutchesons moved year round into their NJ home, Merchiston Farm. In 1942 William died. Daughter Martha had married and lived elsewhere but Mrs. Hutcheson stayed at Merchiston Farm until her death in 1959. Her property was given to the Morris County Park Commission in 1973. Today, the property is owned and maintained by the Morris County Park Commission as the Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center for the study of horticulture and preservation of this living workshop and sits on 687 acres, including the 100 original acres donated by Martha Brookes Hutcheson's daughter, Martha Norton and her husband McKim Norton.

Year Range from

1905

Year Range to

1959

System of arrangement

At this time (Summer 2020) the Martha Brookes Hutcheson Papers remain organized as they were donated to the Park Commission and no series have been established. Each box consists of a different grouping. Additionally the overall Collection is broken up by:
"Papers- Boxes 92.1-26.
"Account Books
"Image Collection

Subjects

Garden structures
Garden walls
Gardening
Gardening equipment & supplies
Clubs
Women
Women's education
Women's Land Army

Copyrights

Records may be copied for use in individual scholarly or personal research; however, as with all materials in the Park Commission, researchers are responsible for obtaining copyright permission to use the material from the collection.

Level of description

Fonds

Child Records