Jay, Mary Rutherfurd, 1872-1951

Biography

Mary Rutherfurd Jay was born in Fair Haven Connecticut to the Reverend Peter Augustus and Julia Post Jay. Her family descended from John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States. She studied architecture at MIT and Harvard's Bussey Institute* in Forest Hills, Massachusetts. Her first commission was planting a plaisance on the grounds of a friend living in Connecticut. She began her practice in New York in 1908 and referred to herself as a garden architect. Most of her work was residential for clients in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, with some in New Jersey and Massachusetts. She spent an extended period travelling around the world in 1912 and throughout her life presented illustrated lectures related to international gardens.

At the close of World War I, she was in charge of the farmerettes working with the U.S. Army Garden Service in Versailles, a member of the American Committee for devastated France, and with the American Red Cross.

M.R. Jay was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society in London and held membership in numerous horticultural societies and garden clubs She was the author of The Garden Handbook, published in 1931. Her numerous commissions included a Japanese garden for Honerable G.W. Wickersham's Long Island estate and a New York City roof garden for the New York Times. She died October 4, 1953.

Sources: Who's Who in America v.25, 1948/1949

* Bussey Institution was established by Harvard in 1869 as a school of agriculture and horticulture on land donated by Benjamin Bussey; construction began in 1871. In 1907, Bussey changed from an undergraduate school to an institution for advanced instruction and research, and became part of the Graduate School of Applied Science.

From the guide to the Mary Rutherfurd Jay Collection, 1905-1945, (Environmental Design Archives. College of Environmental Design. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California)