Description: Eight photographs document the Donald Gray Memorial Gardens in Cleveland, Ohio. Gray designed the Horticultural Gardens for the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936-1937. The gardens remained north of the Cleveland Municipal Stadium after the exposition and were named for Gray after his death. The garden did not survive the demolition of Memorial Stadium and the rebuilding of the Cleveland Browns Stadium in 1997. Donald A. Gray (1891-1939), landscape architect and designer, was born in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, the son of Charles G. and Rose (Williams) Gray. He graduated from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and attended Harvard University, afterwards working briefly with Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., in the Olmsted Brothers firm in Brookline, Massachusetts, the premier landscape architect firm in America. Gray came to Cleveland in 1920, establishing a practice in landscape architecture and designing many private gardens and estates in Cleveland, the Heights, and outlying suburbs. In 1925 he traveled to England, studying the gardens of great houses there. He designed the landscaping for the development of Fairhill Road houses in 1931, making his own home there for several years. He designed the landscape for Forest Hill Park and some of the designs for the Cleveland Cultural Gardens in Rockefeller Park. Dedicated to "making a beautiful city of Cleveland," Gray worked on developing the Cleveland Garden Center with Mrs. William Gwinn Mather and Mrs. Charles. A. Otis. On 11 Jan. 1928, Gray married Florence Ball. They had 1 daughter, Virginia. Gray died in Cleveland and was buried in Highland Park Cemetery. The photographs were taken by Ihna Thayer Frary. The Ihna Thayer Frary Audiovisual Collection was given to the Ohio Historical Society by Mr. Frary in two sections. One was in March of 1963 and the remainder in May of 1965 by his sons, Dr. Spencer G. and Allen T. Frary following their father's death. I.T. Frary (1873-1965) was the publicity and membership secretary for the Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio. He taught for many years at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Western Reserve University's School of Architecture. He did much research of Ohio and American architecture and was the author of seven major works and numerous scholarly articles on architectural and art history. One of his major works was Early Homes of Ohio published in 1936. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: Om3347_4834646_001
Subjects: Plants and Animals; Architecture; Stadiums; Gardens; Boats
Places: Cleveland (Ohio); Cuyahoga County (Ohio)