- Thomas Chalmers Vint
- Cornelius Amory Pugsley National Medal Award, 1955
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- Thomas Chalmers Vint (1894-1967) received the national level Pugsley Medal in 1955 when he was chief of the Design and Construction Division of the NPS. Vint was born in Salt Lake City of Scottish-Irish parents recently arrived in the US, and grew up in Los Angeles, where he attended Polytechnic High School. Having decided on a career in landscape architecture, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. While in school, Vint worked in the offices of several Los Angeles landscape architects, architects, and builders. For nearly a year he served as an assistant to Lloyd Wright, a landscape architect and the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was designing the grounds of large residences and laying out residential subdivisions. He subsequently worked for Wright and his new partner, Paul G. Thiene, who were preparing landscape designs for several Pasadena suburbs. Years later Vint recalled that in Wright's office he had the opportunity to deal with "every problem from many angles" and received "thorough" training and exposure to the landscape profession. Vint graduated from Berkeley with a B.S. in landscape architecture in 1920, having earned a semester's credit transferred from the Ecole de Architecture, University of Lyon, while he had been stationed there as a lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps in France during World War I.
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- In 1921 he studied city planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and then worked a variety of short jobs while intermittently accepting contracts to grade and plant residential grounds and supervise construction. While working for a Los Angeles construction company, he learned about the large-scale planting of trees and shrubs, and as an employee of the architectural firm of Mayberry & Jones, he observed firsthand the use of concrete for the construction of hotels, garages, and hospitals. He briefly headed the landscape office for the famous Armstrong Nurseries of Ontario, California, advising on planting designs and supervising planting projects. Vint also conducted experimental nursery work for the California Walnut Growers Association at the state�s experiment station at Riverside.Vint's early work experience equipped him with a variety of practical skills that prepared him well for his long career with the NPS.
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- In November 1922, Vint became an architectural draftsman in the office of Daniel Ray Hull, the NPS chief landscape engineer, in Yosemite National Park. In 1923 the office moved to Los Angeles, where Hull and Vint rented space in the architectural office's of Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who was designing park lodges for concessionaires. Vint became an assistant landscape engineer in the NPS in 1923 and an associate landscape engineer in 1926. When the office moved to San Francisco in 1927, Vint succeeded Hull as chief landscape architect with responsibility for the location, character, and quality of construction and planning in all the parks in the system.
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- Under Vint, the landscape program of the NPS expanded into a single, fully orchestrated process of park planning and development based on naturalistic principles of design and an ethic of landscape preservation. Vint developed a highly successful program to train his staff, assembled from several fields of study and areas of expertise: architects, landscape architects, engineers, and draftsmen. He coordinated a service-wide program of landscape preservation and harmonization to meet the NPS's difficult twofold mission, that parks be both accessible to the public and preserved unimpaired for future generations. His standards for locating and designing park roads had substantial influence on highway construction outside the NPS.
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- By July 1929, Vint had transformed the Landscape Division into a design office with an increasing emphasis on general planning. The division prepared the architectural and landscape plans for government projects under the direction of the park superintendents, reviewed the plans for tourist facilities to be built by the concessionaires and the plans for roads, and prepared the architectural plans for bridges constructed by the Bureau of Public Roads. In a 1930 annual report, Vint remarked that the San Francisco office operated much like the usual professional landscape office except that it had "the ideal condition of having park superintendents for clients."
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- In the late 1920s, plans were under way for many of the larger parks. By the end of 1931, as a result of the Economic Stabilization Act, Vint and his staff, in conjunction with park superintendents, had begun plans of proposed improvements for all parks. Dubbed "master plans" by NPS director Horace Albright in 1932, they quickly became required for all parks and were the essential tool for all park planning and development. Updated annually, they guided national park development for many years.
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- During the 1930s, under the leadership of Vint and his staff, the NPS developed an increasing number of parks from historic sites, the monuments and parkways of Washington, D.C., many other national monuments, and national parkways such as the Blue Ridge Parkway. In response to this word load in the east, Vint moved his office from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. The Historic American Building Survey was launched under Vint's supervision. The HABS, as it was familiarly known, obtained measured drawings and photographs of more than 2,800 historic buildings throughout the country; also recorded by photographs alone were an additional 3500 buildings. The survey is one of the outstanding contributions to the conservation of historic buildings ever executed in the US. As a member of the editorial committee for Park Structures and Facilities (1935) and Park and Recreation Structures (1938), Vint communicated many of his ideas on park planning and development to state park designers. In 1938 he became chief of Planning, supervising 150 to 200 architects, landscape architects, and planners in four regional offices and two field divisions.
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- World War II brought a rapid end to the CCC and PWA allocations. Planning, design, and construction in national parks virtually ceased for the duration of the war. In 1946 master plans were once again revived and updated; however, there was little money for construction and development.
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- By the mid-1950s, burgeoning numbers of park visitors coupled with inadequate and outdated facilities raised public concern about the condition of national parks. The NPS successfully argued for new appropriations, and Congress approved a ten-year program of park development and improvements called "Mission 66." Vint was a member of the steering committee and headed the initial planning stage. In 1961 he was made assistant director for Design and Construction. Shortly thereafter, Vint retired after almost forty years of federal service.
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- Vint was a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award, the highest civilian honor conferred by the Department of Interior, "for outstanding ingenuity and resourcefulness in solving architectural and engineering problems of the Park Service, and for leadership and unswerving integrity for a period of more than thirty years of continuous service."
- Source:
- Adapted from McClelland, Linda Flint. (2000). Vint, Thomas Chalmers. In Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson Pioneers of American Landscape Design. McGraw Hill, pp. 413-416.