Working with Dan Kiley

by Heather Prince

and reminisced on the unique working environment of Dan Kiley’s practice. “When I started with Dan Kiley, some of my best friends and classmates were already working there. I’d just gotten out of the Army and went back to the National Park Service in Philadelphia where I’d been working before. I was working there for a couple of months and one of my former classmates, actually my roommate, Peter Ker Walker, who later became Dan Kiley’s partner, was in Vermont. He said ‘Hey, come up for a visit.’ So, I did in the early spring of 1963. I asked if Dan was looking for anybody else for the firm. Peter said yes, that Dan would like to hire a couple of people. I interviewed and I got the job! In May of 1963 I got in my little Volkswagen. It was 90 degrees in Philadelphia where I was and by the time I got to Vermont, it was only 35 degrees. I had been adding on shirts and jackets as I drove up there.”

Kiley and his wife and children had originally settled in a rambling house in Vermont in 1951 and he initially ran the office out of the boathouse. Before long, the practice had taken off and the house was converted to offices. “It was an absolutely idyllic environment. The office was called Wing’s Point on a point sticking out into Lake Champlain near the little town of Charlotte. It was like Shangri-La,” commented Karr. “You had long open views of the lake, it’s about three miles wide right there, and beyond that are the Adirondack Mountains in New York. One might go down to the lake at the end of the day and each time it would have a different mood. One day it would be very still, quiet and waves gently lapping. The next day stormy and dark. In winter, it would freeze over sometimes. If it was very calm, it would freeze at night and it would be a smooth sheet of ice we could push the snow off of and ice skate on. It was wonderful. Sometimes in the summer we’d get a fog combined with the golden sunlight behind the mountains. It was unbelievable.” It provided a touchstone of inspiration for Kiley and his team of young landscape architects. “Dan’s office was an old white clapboard house, and that was where we all were. We were just a group of young guys unattached to anything and anyone, so we lived a very special life in this idyllic environment. We worked very hard, into the night, sometimes four o’clock in the morning, meeting deadlines constantly. But then we’d go out and ski the next day. We swam every day at lunchtime. We played volleyball on an old tennis court. We did all kinds of sports. We were all young. We’d work hard and play hard.” Karr and the team were often on their own as Kiley’s projects took him across the country “Dan wasn’t there most of the time. He’d go on trips by train because he was afraid of flying. He would be gone for two, three weeks at a time. So, he’d call in from Chicago or New York and ask how things were going. Otherwise, we were on our own,” remembered Karr. “It was an office consisting of young fellows doing all this work. We’d do the design work, then he’d come back and make a change here or there. It was an unusual situation. We all relied on one another. There were six of us from the University of Pennsylvania and we all knew each other and

actually ran the office. You couldn’t have asked for a better situation – working with all your best friends in an idyllic environment and on some of the best projects in the world? It was wonderful. It was absolutely fantastic. So, we had a good time, but we worked hard.”

Even though Joe Karr grew up on a farm near Rochelle, Illinois, he hadn’t planned on working in Illinois. “I had never thought about working in Chicago and didn’t know anything about Chicago,” said Karr. “I went to school at the University of Illinois and then on to the University of Pennsylvania for my Masters, which was a real eye opener for me because my classmates were almost all from Europe. There were only a few of us from the U.S. My classmates were from Scotland, England, Sweden, Canada, Italy, even Columbia. They were all architects, and I was a landscape architect. At that time Penn was a premiere school for landscape architecture and going there was an awakening for me. I learned more how to draw and was able teach the architects in my class about grading and planting. So we sort of helped one another. That’s why when we went to Vermont, we already had this relationship and we helped each other.

We traveled a lot, just like Dan did. We’d be gone for three, four days at a time, often several times during a month. We were gone to the sites or the architectural offices we were working with. We’d always have two people handling the work. While I was away someone like Peter would watch my projects and take phone calls and respond to correspondence.”

Coming from a foundation of collaboration, Karr has found that relationshipbuilding has been essential to his success. “These kinds of relationships become so important. I thought the same thing when I came to Chicago, especially with the nurserymen and the contractors. In the end you’re all working together towards one thing.

If someone has a problem, you help them solve it. If you help each other -- that’s what made projects work.

And that was especially true with

Ron Damgaard. I met Ron in 1964.

We became friends for life after that. We were always friends. We always worked things out together. And that relationship has continued with the rest of the Damgaard family. We still keep in touch. Those are the things I have thought extremely important.”