{"id":15241,"date":"2022-06-17T17:21:53","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T22:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/?p=15241"},"modified":"2022-06-17T17:21:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T22:21:57","slug":"davenporters-of-note-leonidas-w-ramsey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/sc\/2022\/06\/17\/davenporters-of-note-leonidas-w-ramsey\/","title":{"rendered":"Davenporters of Note: Leonidas W. Ramsey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Davenport residents have long been passionate about gardening. In June of 1913, nearly 400 people were hard at work preparing their properties for the first of the Rotary Club of Davenport\u2019s \u201cCity Beautiful\u201d contests. This dedication to beautification attracted young landscape architect Leonidas Willing Ramsey to Davenport. He and his partner, H. T. Reeves, after investigating twenty U.S. cities, \u201c…decided that opportunities in their line were better here than elsewhere.\u201d The pair opened their practice in the Putnam Building the following year. [The Daily Times, July 6, 1914, page 7]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Davenport Democrat and Leader,<\/em> April 16, 1916<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ramsey had recently graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he studied under the first-ever Professor for Civic Design, the noted urban planner Charles Mulford Robinson. Born May 22, 1891, in Hazelhurst, Mississippi to Jacob Leonidas and Carrie Willing Ramsey, his early education included the Marion Institute and Millsaps College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interrupted briefly by his service (Navy ensign, late 1918-1919) in the First World War, \u201cBuck\u201d Ramsey\u2019s career as a landscape architect was an active one. In 1914, the Reeves & Ramsey firm designed the waterfront park between Main and Scott Streets for the Levee Commission; Ramsey then wrote up the project for American City<\/em> magazine with the title \u201cThe Improvement of the Davenport River-Front.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His design for the grounds of the Mississippi Valley Fair and Exposition garnered praise from landscape experts, whose \u201cuniversal verdict,\u201d according to the Democrat and Leader<\/em> of August 1920, was that it was \u201cthe best planned and best laid out fairgrounds in the entire West.\u201d American City<\/em> magazine again published Ramsey’s article about this project, \u201cA New Era for the District and County Fair\u201d in May of 1920.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ramsey was a regular contributor to House Beautiful<\/em>, House and Garden<\/em>, Garden Magazine<\/em>, The American Home<\/em>, The Ladies Home Journal,<\/em> and other popular periodicals of the time; he also served as the Landscape Editor for the Democrat and Leader<\/em> newspaper, 1915- 1916.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramsey spoke frequently on the City Beautiful Movement, landscape gardening, and city planning topics to popular and university audiences all over the Midwest, as well as to local organizations and clubs. The Davenport and Rock Island Rotary Clubs, the Woman\u2019s Clubs in both cities, and the Tri-City Garden Club invited him often.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Some of Ramsey\u2019s other clients included Augustana College, the City of Ottumwa, and many private residences in Illinois and Iowa. In 1923, Ramsey and his associate Charles Lawrence did gratis work for the Lend-A-Hand Club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 1921, Ramsey founded the Garden Press in Davenport \u201cfor the purpose of printing and distributing literature pertaining to gardening and landscape architecture.\u201d [Democrat 7 Jan 1921] The RSSC Center has recently acquired The Landscape Garden Series<\/em>, a boxed set of ten illustrated booklets issued by the Garden Press that same year. Ramsey authored four of these: \u201cPlanning the Home Grounds,\u201d \u201cArchitectural Features,\u201d \u201cBeauty in the Vegetable Garden,\u201d and \u201cThe Home and the City.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Garden Press soon grew into the L. W. Ramsey Co., a tremendously successful advertising agency with offices in Chicago and Hollywood, CA. Ramsey remained devoted to Davenport, however; the main office stayed here in the Union Bank building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The busy advertising executive did not abandon his love for landscape architecture, either. He continued to write on the subject, publishing first Landscaping the Home Grounds<\/em> (SC 712 Ram 1930) in 1930.<\/p>\n\n\n\n