Gallagher, Percival (1874-1934)

Born August 18, 1874, Percival Gallagher was a successful landscape architect during America’s Country Place Era. Beginning around 1880 and ending 1940, this era was defined by large landscaped estates built directly outside of urban areas as an escape from industrialization. These grand estates, and their gardens in particular, resembled those of colonial America and Europe. This sense of nostalgia and romanticism for formal estates and gardens was perhaps best displayed in the works of the Olmsted Brothers firm, to which Gallagher was a top-ranking employee for the majority of his career.
Gallagher graduated from Boston English High School and studied Horticulture at Harvard’s Bussey Institute. While studying at Harvard, Gallagher met Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., son of the famous landscape architect who he was named after. In 1894, at the age of twenty, Gallagher went to work for Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot (which later became Olmsted Brothers when Olmsted Sr. retired and the business was taken over by Olmsted Jr.). Gallagher worked for the firm for ten years, when he left to open his own practice with a professional friend, James Sturgis Pray. The firm opened in 1904 as Pray & Gallagher, but after only two years Gallagher left the firm to return to Olmsted Brothers, writing that “this new association with the Olmsteds gives me greater opportunities to attend to the requests of personal clients heretofore” (letter to J. Franklin McFadden dated July 9, 1906).
Gallagher resided with his wife, Elizabeth and their three children (David, Richard Sears, and Isabel) in Brookline, Massachusetts, close to the headquarters of Olmsted Brothers. Gallagher’s projects included residences in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Indiana as well as parks and cemeteries. He was in charge of the 1902 renovations to the capital grounds in Washington, D.C., originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. Other prominent projects included the park system for Essex county and Union county, both located in New Jersey, the grounds of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore, Vassar, and Duke University, and the planning of the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition. This collection includes photographs, maps, and plans from some of these projects. Furthermore, his interest in city planning, formal and informal garden designs, aerial photography, artwork, literature, architecture, and philosophy is highlighted within the research material located in Series I of this collection.
During his life, Gallagher embarked on two known trips abroad. His 1899 trip to the British Isles is evidenced by an accompanying travel journal as well as photographs within Series II: Memorabilia. In 1924 Gallagher took an extended tour of Europe, referred to as a Summer School tour in a letter from Phillip Homer Elwood detailing the itinerary, although it is unknown for which school or what role Gallagher occupied. This tour is represented by a large collection of print photographs and corresponding nitrate negatives within Series IV: Photographs.
In 1926 Gallagher was appointed to the committee of Harvard School of Landscape Architecture and in 1927 was made a full partner in the Olmsted Brothers firm. By 1933 Gallagher’s health began to decline, he was going blind, and was diagnosed with arteriosclerosis, a thickening and stiffness of the blood vessels. He died in 1934 and an outpouring of condolences were sent to his wife, Elizabeth, contained within Series III: Correspondence. Upon his death in 1934, his employer and friend Olmsted Jr. wrote of Gallagher, “a charming, kindly, whimsical sense of humor not only made his companionship delightful, but made his art more perfectly human.”