Pioneer Information
Born in Crown Point, New York, Elmer Eugene Barker began his career as a botanist, earning an undergraduate degree in 1910 and a Ph.D. in 1914 from Cornell University. He subsequently served as an Assistant Professor of Plant Breeding at Cornell University until 1919 before moving to Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico for two years to work as the chief agronomist and plant breeder at the Insular Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1921 he began an Associate Professorship in Botany at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, but left in 1923 to pursue an M.L.A. at Harvard University, which he completed in 1925.
Barker’s new career in landscape architecture led him to work for the United States Engineer Office, the Westchester Park Commission, and the New York State Department of Public Works. He contributed to the design of the New York Lake Champlain Bridge in 1928 by drafting a landscape plan for the adjacent Crown Point Reservation roadway approach and toll collection area. An avid historian, in 1929 Barker created the master plan for the Wakefield Memorial at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia in preparation for George Washington’s birthday bicentennial in 1932. Barker was also hired by the Albany County Historical Association in 1948 to prepare a landscape plan for Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany, New York.
Barker published numerous articles relating to botany, landscape architecture, and history, including “Landscape Gardening Indoors” (1927) and “Wakefield, The Birthplace of George Washington: A National Shrine” (1929), both of which were published in Landscape Architecture Magazine, and “The Story of Crown Point Iron” (1942) in New York History. Following his retirement in 1952 Barker remained active in the field, working as a consultant to architects, landscape architects, and historians. He was a founding member of the Penfield Foundation in Ironville, New York and a member of several historical societies, including the Albany County Historical Society, Crown Point Heritage Association, New York State Historical Society, and Vermont Historical Society. Barker died in Crown Point, New York at the age of 77 and is buried in Crown Point’s Forest Dale Cemetery.
