Planting Fields: A Place on Long Island

A celebration of Planting Fields, one of the few surviving estates of the Gold Coast of Long Island in New York

Planting Fields is an English Country House transported to the North Shore of Long Island, about 48 kilometres/30 miles east of Manhattan. Once home to William R. Coe, chairman of Johnson & Higgins, and his wife, Mai, an heir to the Standard Oil fortune, this lavish Tudor-revival mansion sits on a 400-acre landscape of rolling lawns, formal gardens, and woodlands. Now open to the public as a New York State Historic Park, Planting Fields is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and its lawns and gardens draw more than 250,000 visitors annually, hosting both informal gatherings and celebrations.

This new book tells the story of Planting Fields through stunning new photography by David Almeida, historic images, and sketches and plans by the Olmsted Brothers which capture the spirit of this rare survivor of the Country Place Era. A compelling introduction by noted historian Witold Rybczynski explores the designers who shaped it and the families who lived there, and additional essays examine the history of the site and the displacement of indigenous peoples in addition to outlining the future plan for sustainability and resilience in restoring the landscape.

Jennifer L. Anderson is an Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University who advised on the Long Island Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition, ‘Long Road to Freedom: Surviving Slavery on Long Island.’ Her current scholarship focuses on changing land uses and labor relations on Long Island from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. She is the author of Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America, which examines the social and environmental history of the tropical timber trade.

John Dixon Hunt is Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally trained in English literature, he has devoted himself to the study of landscape design since 1988. Among his many books are Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination, 1600–1750; Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory; The Afterlife of Gardens; and The Making of Place: Modern and Contemporary Gardens. In 2000 he was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture.

Arleyn A. Levee is a landscape historian and preservation consultant specializing in the work of Olmsted Brothers. She has prepared cultural landscape reports for municipalities and private clients across the United States and is the author of The Blue Garden: Recapturing an Iconic Newport Landscape and (with Charles Birnbaum and Dena Tasse Winter) Experiencing Olmsted: The Enduring Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted’s North American Landscapes.

Patricia M. O’Donnell is founding partner of Heritage Landscapes LLC, Preservation Landscape Architects and Planners. She has led more than six hundred heritage-based landscape planning and implementation projects and has contributed to the continued vitality and resilience of sixty Olmsted legacy landscapes. In 2021 she received the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award, the highest award of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Witold Rybczynski is an architect and Emeritus Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been described as ‘one of our most original, accessible, and stimulating writers on architecture.’ (Library Journal). He is author of twenty-two books, including the best-selling Home: A Short History of an Idea; A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century; The Story of Architecture; and, most recently, The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Automobile.

David Almeida is a Long Island-based photographer with twenty years of professional experience in the heritage sector. He has worked in the photography departments of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Wolfsonian-FIU, and University of Miami. His photographs have been published in journals and magazines including Architectural Digest and Antiques and Fine Art and in exhibition catalogues for MoMA, Wolfsonian-FIU, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Planting Fields Foundation, and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Jerome E. Singerman is Senior Humanities Editor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Press. His writing has appeared in The Magazine Antiques and Mittelweg 36. He is author (with Ruth K. Westheimer) of Myths of Love: Echoes of Greek and Roman Mythology in the Modern Romantic Imagination.

Gina J. Wouters has been President and CEO of Planting Fields Foundation since 2019. In a career focused on the preservation and revitalization of historic sites, she has been curator of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami and Vice President of Museum Affairs and Chief Curator at Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville. She is editor (with Andrea Gollin) of Robert Winthrop Chanler: Discovering the Fantastic.