James Sturgis Pray

James Sturgis Pray

Quick Facts

Significance:

Apprentice at Olmsted Firm

Place of Birth:

Boston, MA

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1871

Place of Death:

Cambridge, MA

Date of Death:

February 24, 1929

Notable Projects while at the Olmsted Firm:
Joseph S. Clark Estate, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania
E.L. Fuller Estate, Scranton, Pennsylvania

A Boston native, and a graduate of Harvard, Pray was an apprentice in the Olmsted firm from 1898 to 1903. In 1904 he began his own practice, joining with two colleagues to form Pray, Hubbard & White in 1906. Pray also taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard, beginning in 1902, as an assistant and eventually succeeded Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. as Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture in 1908. Although Olmsted had included instruction in city planning in his courses, it was Pray who inaugurated the first course devoted entirely to this subject in 1909. In 1915 he became the Charles Eliot Professor of Landscape Architecture in what two years earlier had become a separate graduate school.

He served as president of the American Society of Landscape Architects and helped to establish a fellowship in landscape architecture at the American Academy in Rome. Pray was also interested in the training of women as landscape architects. His efforts led to the creation of the Cambridge School of Architectural and Landscape Design for Women in 1915. Pray would also author several books and articles. With the assistance of the school’s librarian, Theodora Kimball, he wrote City planning; a comprehensive analysis of the subject arranged for the classification of books, plans, photographs, notes and other collected material, with alphabetic subject index, which became a standard textbook in the field.