The Department of Landscape Architecture was an original component of North Carolina State University's College of Design, known at its founding in 1948 as the School of Architecture and Landscape Design. In 1927, Professor Joseph Plummer Pillsbury initiated a curriculum in landscape architecture in the Department of Horticulture. By 1942, the Division of Landscape Architecture within the Department of Horticulture offered a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture degree. When Henry Kamphoefner came to head the School of Design in 1948, he retained the three professors teaching in this division and made one of them, Edwin G. Thurlow, the department head.
From its founding, the Department of Landscape Architecture in the School of Design offered the first five-year bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture in the country. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) accredited the program in 1951. Students and faculty of the Department of Landscape Architecture soon began to distinguish themselves through winning national and international awards, such as the Rome Prize of Landscape Architecture and Dumbarton Oaks fellowships. The department also started its tradition of outreach to the local community and the state, as students contributed to projects in the city of Raleigh and throughout North Carolina.
In 1968, North Carolina State University approved the Master of Landscape Architecture degree and replaced the five-year bachelor's degree with a four-year Bachelor in Environmental Design in Landscape Architecture degree. The ASLA accredited the Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1972. The Department of Landscape Architecture reintroduced the five-year Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree in 1994.
In 2003, Achva Benzinberg Stein, then chair of department, was the first landscape architecture professor at N.C. State to be named to the ASLA Council of Fellows. Department Chair Gene Bressler received this honor in 2007.
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1948 -
1951
:
Edwin G. Thurlow
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1951 -
1952
:
Morley J. Williams
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1952 -
1962
:
Henry Kamphoefner, acting Department Head
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1962 -
1967
:
Richard A. Moore
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1967 -
1968
:
Lewis J. Clarke, acting Department Head
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1968 -
1975
:
Richard R. Wilkinson
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1976 -
1987
:
Arthur L. Sullivan
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1987 -
1990
:
Deborah Dalton, acting Department Head
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1991 -
2000
:
Arthur R. Rice
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2000 -
2005
:
Achva Benzinberg Stein
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2005 -
2006
:
Robin Moore, interim Chair
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2006 -
:
Gene Bressler
From the guide to the North Carolina State University, Department of Landscape Architecture Records, 1949-1973, undated, (Special Collections Research Center)
