1914 - 2007

Edward Lyons Pryce

Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Pryce began his studies at UCLA in 1932. He transferred to the Tuskegee Institute to study with George Washington Carver, earning a degree in agriculture in 1937. Later he studied landscape architecture, earning a B.S.L.A. from Ohio State in 1948 and an M.L.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1953.

Pryce worked as landscape foreman for a California estate from 1937 until 1939, and then as park maintenance foreman for the City of Los Angeles during World War II. After earning his B.S.L.A. he returned to Tuskegee where he was Head of the Department of Ornamental Horticulture from 1948 until 1955 and Superintendant of Buildings and Grounds until 1969. He continued to work for the university as a professor in the Department of Architecture until 1977 and as landscape architect until 1990. At Tuskegee he collaborated closely with landscape architect David Augustus Williston.

Pryce was the first African American licensed as a landscape architect in the State of Alabama, and the first African American made a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, an honor he received in 1984. Along with his work at the Tuskegee Institute he maintained an active private practice until he retired in 1990.

Photo Courtesy Tuskegee University Archives