Arts and Letters

He was a tall man and spoke with an air of authority that might have been intimidating. Yet Gilmore Clarke possessed a genial nature that prompted all who knew him to call him Gil. Together, these qualities gave him an unusual power of persuasion. Coupled with his genius for planning, this accomplished much that we now benefit from but which we take largely for granted. If it had not been for him the Pentagon would be located at the main entrance of Arlington Cemetery in sight of the Lincoln Memorial, and the beautiful Memorial Highway by which we drive to Mount Vernon would not skirt the Potomac, nor would it be spanned by the handsome stone-faced bridges. But for him the Westchester parkways would not have been developed to fit the configuration of the landscape in curvilinear separated roadways, and numbers of other projects such as the Whitestone and Triboro bridges would not have been so successfully planned and carried out.

But there were times, of course, when his persuasiveness met with indomitable opposition. President Truman could not be persuaded, even by Gil, who was then Chairman of the Federal Fine Arts Commission, that a balcony should not be added to the south portico of the White House. His failure in this instance was followed by his dismissal and that of the entire Commission with him. But even after his retirement he continued to fight to protect the Mall from the many encroachments that have been proposed during the past fifty years.

His was a long and varied career. Born in New York City, he graduated from Cornell and served in World War I, obtaining the rank of Captain. He was decorated with the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. He returned to Cornell as Professor of Landscape Architecture and became Dean of the College of Architecture there. He was spokesman for landscape architecture on numerous boards and councils. Yale made him a Doctor of Humane Letters.

With the late Michael Rapuano he established the civil engineering and landscape architectural firm of Clarke and Rapuano, and was president of the firm for ten years before his retirement. He was elected to the Institute of Arts and Letters in 1937 and to the Academy in 1946. He served as treasurer of the Academy for nineteen years. He gave of himself generously to a wide variety of causes and labored ceaselessly to make our urban world more orderly and beautiful.

He was a deeply religious man. Conservative by nature, he was saddened by the disorder and turmoil of our day. To him much of our contemporary building was symptomatic of worldwide dissolution. Yet he was no pessimist. In the Septets of Sonnets, which he sent to his friends for many years at Christmas, his love for his family, his hopes, his patriotism, and his faith are clearly revealed. They show him to have been fundamentally joyful with keen delight in the beauties of nature. And indeed he should have felt deep satisfaction and happiness in the contemplation of such a long and singularly fulfilled life of service.

Gil died at the age of ninety while on a cruise with his wife off the coast of Denmark. He was buried in Arlington Cemetery with full military honors.