Eliot, Charles

Eliot, Charles (1859–97) landscape architect; born in Cambridge, Mass. (son of Charles William Eliot). After graduating from Harvard University, he studied horticulture before becoming an apprentice to Frederick Law Olmsted in 1883. Taking a year off to study European landscape design, he came back to open his own Boston firm in 1886, creating parks for small New England and midwestern cities like Youngstown, Ohio. A regular contributor to Garden and Forest Magazine in 1890, he wrote Waverly Oaks, outlining a strategy for conserving a stand of virgin trees (in Belmont, Mass.) and existing flora elsewhere; this led to formation of the Massachusetts Trustees of Public Reservations in 1891, the first state-funded conservation group. Joining the Olmsted brothers in 1893, he formulated a forestry plan to include existing growth in the firm's design for the Boston Metropolitan Parks Commission, before his untimely death in 1897. In 1900 Harvard University established the first university course in landscape architecture in his memory.