Guide to the Kermit Carlyle Parsons Papers,
circa 1945-1999

Kermit Carlyle Parsons was born on July 15, 1927, in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Miami University in Ohio in 1951 and a Master of Regional Planning degree from Cornell University in 1953. He was a recipient of a University Fellowship in Architecture at Cornell in 1951-1952 and 1952-1953. After earning his degree from Cornell, he worked as a city planner for the Cleveland (Ohio) City Planning Commission and as a city planner for the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority. Parsons joined the Cornell faculty in 1957. He was appointed associate professor in 1960 and professor in 1965. In 1971 he was named dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning and served until 1980. He returned to teaching for several years until 1985 when he became the director of the Cornell-in-Washington program, a position he held until 1988. Parsons retired from the University in 1999. During his career he had served as a consultant on city and university planning projects in New York State and elsewhere. He authored books such as Writings of Clarence S. Stein: Architect of the Planned Community and The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development. He was a co-author of An Annotated Bibliography on University Planning and Development and, with David Schuyler, he edited the book From Garden City to Green City: The Legacy of Ebenezer Howard. Parsons died on December 9, 1999.

The first 13 boxes of the collection are described at the box level. These materials include manuscript and related papers for The History of Campus Planning at Cornell; "The Quad on the Hill: An Account of the First Buildings at Cornell," offprint from Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 22, No. 4, December 1963; and The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development, including typescripts, printer's proofs, and index cards; material on the University and Urban Change project at Cornell, 1960s; papers on planning in Utica, New York, Cleveland, Ohio, and Irvine, California; publications on Gary, Indiana, Irvine, California, and Tompkins and Broome County, New York; student papers from planning courses at Cornell; and files on fellow faculty members.

This series has been fully processed and consists of materials gathered by Parsons to create a research collection documenting Nathaniel Owings' contributions to urban development. The project was funded in part by the SOM Foundation. Parsons was to write a book titled, Nathaniel Owings and the Freeways: The Baltimore Wars, on Owings' work in Baltimore on designing a new freeway system. Owings was involved with the project and helped to secure materials. He also had been interested in writing books on his projects in Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Owings died on June 13, 1984. The archives project was completed in 1983 but the book projects appear to have not been finished.

The subseries "Project Correspondence" contains correspondence about the Owings archives project and the Baltimore Wars book project.

The subseries "Baltimore" is the largest group of materials in the collection and relates to a project to design a freeway system in Baltimore, Maryland. The firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) led a group of consultants, designers, and engineers called the Urban Design Concept Associates. This group was brought in to design an alternative to an existing highway plan that would have disrupted downtown Baltimore and several neighborhoods. Owings headed the group from 1966 to 1970.

Parsons never published a final book, but he compiled several drafts of Nathaniel Owings and the Freeways: The Baltimore Wars. The latest book draft appears to date from 1990, but Parsons wrote a conference paper on the topic in 1999.

Parsons collected research material from many repositories and sources, including the Baltimore City Archives. Some of the materials in "Research Files" are groups of documents that Parsons compiled for writing chapters in his book. Parsons also collected material by key political figures in office during the project. Theodore McKeldin was mayor of Baltimore from 1943-1947 and 1963-1967. Thomas D'Alesandro was Mayor from 1967-1971. William Donald Schaefer was Mayor from 1971-1987. Stewart Bryant was Director of Community Relations for SOM and interacted with the local political and neighborhood groups that were concerned with the Baltimore freeway project.

This subseries also contains interviews conducted by Parsons to further his research on the Owings project. Some of the cassette audiotapes have been transcribed. Additionally there are photographs and slides of the downtown Baltimore area, including Fells Point and the Inner Harbor.

The subseries "Other Projects" consists of correspondence and reports on other Owings projects. The projects include the Fort Dearborn plan and Lake Meadows project in Chicago, Illinois; the San Francisco commercial and redevelopment project and the Monterey Coast/Big Sur study in California; the Pennsylvania Avenue redesign project in Washington, D.C.; and the secret community of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, built during World War II.

Kelly, Parsons, Canfield and Stein, Planning Consultants. Ithaca Urban Renewal Plans, #2776.

K.C. Parsons publications collection, #6691.