Mary Rutherfurd Jay

• Name — Mary Rutherfurd Jay • Birth Name — Mary Rutherfurd Jay • Born — 16 August 1872 • Birthplace — Fair Haven, Connecticut • Died — 4 October 1953 • Place of death — Manhattan, New York • Relatives — Pierre Jay, brother • Occupation — Landscape architect

Jay's first commission was a "plaisance" or pleasure garden in 1907 for the home of her sister Laura Jay Wells in the Round Hill neighborhood of Greenwich, Connecticut. "From this modest but well-measured beginning, her portfolio grew to more than 50 articulated projects for private residences all along the East Coast. Her projects varied widely in composition and plant material and demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of English, French, Dutch, Indian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese design. With great facility, she learned the horticultural and architectural vocabulary of the grand estates of Europe and Asia - pleached allees of trees, plaisances, pergolas, moongates, parterres, rock gardens, pools and teahouses - and adapted these distinctive landscape elements to American gardens and soil conditions." An avid student of the French planner of the gardens of Versailles, Andre Le Notre, Jay called herself a "garden architect." She shared her knowledge freely with others as a lecturer in people's homes and as a contributor to magazines with large circulations such as House Beautiful and House & Garden as well as smaller niche journals such as The Touchstone. Her plans were created for friends and clients as notable as New York architect, historian and social reformer Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, author of the monumental series The Iconography of Manhattan Island; the families of financiers William Avery Rockefeller and William Goodsell Rockefeller of Greenwich, Connecticut; Remington Arms President Samuel F. Pryor; and yachtsmen C. Oliver Iselin and Henry R. Mallory. By 1926, she was one of the few women who leased office space in the Architects Building at 101 Park Avenue in Manhattan (the others being Marian Cruger Coffin and Ruth Dean), and her portfolio of projects ranged as far south as Palm Beach, Florida and as far north as Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Her colleagues included notable architects such as Addison Mizner, J. Alden Twachtman and Francis Keally; she collaborated with peers like Martha Brookes Hutcheson.

The Garden Club of America was formed in 1913 and many of its members sought out Jay's expertise as a judge for flower show competitions, an experienced speaker on visiting world gardens and as a personal design consultant for their own estates. As an advocate for women's education on a larger scale, Jay was an early member of the Women's Agricultural and Horticultural Association formed in 1914 to nurture and mentor women interested in pursuing her field as a career; this later became the Woman's National Farm and Garden Association (WNFGA). Jay also served on the board of the nascent Pennsylvania Horticulture School for Women, the precursor of today's Temple University Ambler, volunteering as Field Secretary to interest more people in the school and raise much needed funds. • Illustration — The Jay Estate in Rye, NY, today As World War I came to a close, Jay shared and applied all that she had learned about the restorative power of gardens by working with the American Red Cross and the American Committee for Devastated France, a battalion of female volunteers organized by her friend Anne Morgan, daughter of banker and philanthropist John Pierpont Morgan. Jay's original mission was to supervise an agricultural unit to help residents of villages like Soissons in Aisne recover from the destruction of the Great War, but because of hostile activity in the area she was sent to Versailles instead to work with wounded and shell-shocked soldiers in the Garden Army Service.