Pioneer Information
Born in Buffalo, New York, Lawson earned a bachelor’s degree in the Rural Art (now Landscape Architecture) program from Cornell University in 1913. Following his undergraduate studies, he worked in the firm of Townsend & Fleming and taught as his alma mater. Lawson next completed his master’s degree in 1915, and won the first national competition for the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome. When World War I caused the academy’s closure, Lawson served in the Red Cross and prepared war maps. He also translated Il Giardino Italiano (1915) to English and measured Italian villa landscapes—including the Villa Borghese, Rome, and the Villa Gamberaia, Settignano. By 1919, he continued his fellowship, publishing several articles in Landscape Architecture magazine, assembling a record of his measured drawings and photographs (Italian Villas: Plans and Details), and forming a romantic relationship with architectural fellow, Philip Trammel Shutze.
In 1921 Lawson relocated to Paris, engaged by the American Graves Registration Service (now Mortuary Affairs). Working with landscape architect George Gibbs, Jr., he laid out several American cemeteries in England and France, including the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in Montfaucon, France. The following year he returned to Cornell as an assistant professor of landscape architecture, mentoring such students as Michael Rapuano. In 1931 Lawson took leave, establishing a private practice in Rochester, New York, where he prepared a planting and landscape plan for the Greater University of Buffalo (now University at Buffalo) and designed residential landscapes with Schutze, including Swan House, Atlanta. Lawson returned to Cornell in 1933, teaching for ten more years. He retired to Lakeville, Connecticut, assisting Ezra Winter and Patricia Murphy Winter at their herbal nursery. Lawson was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1938 and passed away at the age of 83 in Winter Park, Florida.
