Cautley, Marjorie Sewell, 1891-

Landscape architect.

Cornell University Class of 1917. Marjorie Sewell Cautley, the daughter of Elbridge Sewell and Minnie Moore, was born into a Navy family and spent part of her early years in Japan and Guam. Eucated at the Packer Institute for Collegiate Studies in Brooklyn, N.Y.,she received a B.S. in landscape architecture from Cornell, 1917, and an M.A. in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania, 1943. After graduating from Cornell, she worked for Warren Manning in Massachusetts, and was employed by California architect Julia Morgan. She returned to New Jersey to start a private practice. In 1921 she began work on Roosevelt Common, a community park in Tenafly, NJ. She married Randolph Cautley in 1922; they were divorced in 1944. They had one daughter, Patricia Cautley Hill, born in 1925. In 1924, Marjorie S. Cautley was hired by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, and worked on Sunnyside Gardens (1924-1928), Phipps Garden Apartments (1930, 1935), Hillside Homes (1935), and Radburn, NJ (1928-1930). She also taught site planning and landscape design as a part-time lecturer at Columbia University and at MIT. She published Garden Design in 1935 and oversaw CCC projects in New Hampshire state parks. In 1937, she was stricken with an illness that dominated the rest of her life. Although she was hospitalized for several years, she continued to write articles and completed her graduate work. Her thesis was published in part as an article in American City. She died in 1954.

Marjorie Sewell Cautley attended the Pratt Institute and graduated from the Packer Collegiate Institute. She studied landscape architecture at Cornell University (B.S. 1917). After working for Warren Manning and then for Julia Morgan, she opened her own practice in New Jersey. She was married to Randolph Cautley in 1922, and gave birth to a daughter, Patricia. In 1925 she was elected a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Marjorie Sewell Cautley made a substantial contribution to the developing planning profession as well as to landscape architecture. Her landscape projects show her characteristic focus on planning for people as well as on esthetics and plant materials. In particular, her work with Clarence Stein and Henry Wright engaged her deep concern for the needs of residents and the relationship between the project and the larger community. She gave many lectures and published articles and a book (Garden Design, 1935). She taught site planning and landscape design at MIT (1934-1937) and Columbia (1935-1937).

At the height of her productivity in 1937, she suffered a nervous breakdown and spent several years in a mental hospital. She obtained release in 1942, earned the Master of Fine Arts degree in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943 and divorced Randolph Cautley in 1944. However, she was institutionalized again by 1946 and remained until her death in 1954.