Ezra C. Stiles

Ezra C. Stiles (September 26, 1891 – January 27, 1974)[1] was an American landscape architect. He also worked as an urban planner, writer, mapmaker, and painter.[2]

A descendant of Yale University president Ezra Stiles, Ezra Clarke Stiles was born in Painted Post, New York, and graduated from Penn State in 1914 with a degree in Forestry and Landscape Architecture. He began as a community planner in Charlotte, North Carolina, as an employee of John Nolan, a landscape architect in Boston. In 1915, he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to become a draftsman for A.W. Smith, a garden design and florist firm.[3]

In 1926, Stiles founded a landscape architecture firm in Pittsburgh, and ultimately became known as one of the region's top landscape architects. Among his clients were prominent Pittsburgh families (the Scaifes, Corsons, Frownes, and Garmens); corporations (Carnegie Steel Works and Rockwell Manufacturing Corporation), universities (Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina), and city planners (he designed two city parks to mark Pittsburgh's bicentennial).[2] In 1938, he laid out the McKeesport Rose Garden and Arboretum in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKeesport, Pennsylvania.[4]

In the 1960s, Stiles' firm worked with two others to expand the Allegheny County park system.[5]

Stiles wrote at least three books:

• Framing the Home Landscape with Pittsburgh Steel Company (1929). 20 pp.
• Rock Gardening for the Small Place (Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1935) 94 pp.
• The Silver Sturgeon

He and historian Paul C. Bowman drew a lavishly illustrated map of the American Expeditionary Force's participation in World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive; it is preserved by the Library of Congress.[6] Other maps depicted Pittsburgh in 1899[7][8] and Frick Park in 1938.[9]

He had at least one son, Ezra C. Stiles Jr. (1921-1957), who served as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Forces.[1]

Some of Stiles' papers and drawings are preserved by the University of Pittsburgh.[2]