Guide to the Marjorie Sewell Cautley Papers,
1847-1995

Landscape architect.

Cornell University. Class of 1917. Marjorie Sewell Cautley, the daughter of Elbridge Sewell and Minnie Moore, was born into a Navy family and spent part of her early years in Japan and Guam. She was educated at the Packer Institute for Collegiate Studies in Brooklyn, N.Y., received a B.S. in landscape architecture from Cornell University in 1917, and an M.A. in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. After graduating from Cornell, she worked for Warren Manning in Massachusetts, and was employed by California architect Julia Morgan. She returned to New Jersey to start a private practice. In 1921 she began work on Roosevelt Common, a community park in Tenafly, NJ. She married Randolph Cautley in 1922; they were divorced in 1944. They had one daughter, Patricia Cautley Hill, born in 1925. In 1924, Marjorie S. Cautley was hired by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, and worked on Sunnyside Gardens (1924-1928), Phipps Garden Apartments (1930, 1935), Hillside Homes (1935), and Radburn, NJ (1928-1930). She also taught site planning and landscape design as a part-time lecturer at Columbia University and at MIT. She published Garden Design in 1935 and oversaw CCC projects in New Hampshire state parks. In 1937, she was stricken with an illness that dominated the rest of her life. Although she was hospitalized for several years, she continued to write articles and completed her graduate work. Her thesis was published in part as an article in American City.

Family papers, including correspondence and photographs from members of the Moore and Sewell families, including Judge Albert H. Sewell, William Elbridge Sewell, Rear Admiral John White Moore, and Minnie Sawyer Moore Sewell; student letters concerning her work on the Cornell University Women's Pageant and her efforts to find employment as a landscape architect. Correspondents include Ralph W. Curtis, Charles N. Lowrie, Warren J. Manning, and Russell Van Nest Black. Also, photographs, notes, and plans relating to her landscape projects including plans of Wadleigh Park (Sutton, N.H.) and Dorr's Pond (Kingston Park, Manchester, N.H.); correspondence about her hospitalization; unpublished writings by Marjorie Sewell; articles and book by her; biographical materials; and 16mm. movie films of Radburn, Sunnyside, and other projects.