Robert Morris Copeland

Robert Morris Copeland
Born	(1830-12-11)December 11, 1830 Roxbury, Massachusetts, US
Died	March 28, 1874(1874-03-28) (aged 43) Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Alma mater	Harvard University
Occupation	Architect
Spouse	Josephine Kent (m. 1854)
Practice	Cleveland & Copeland
Projects	Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Robert Morris Copeland Sr. (December 11, 1830 – March 28, 1874) was a landscape architect, town planner and Union Army officer in the American Civil War. Along with his partner H. W. S. Cleveland of the firm Cleveland and Copeland, he is known chiefly for his cemetery plans, most notably Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts as well as contemporaneous designs around Massachusetts and New England.

Biography

Robert Morris Copeland House at Beaver Brook Reservation in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Copeland was born on December 11, 1830, to Benjamin and Julia Fellows Copeland, who lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College, and opened a Boston-based landscape gardening firm with Horace Cleveland in 1854, which became known as Cleveland and Copeland.[1]

Copeland died suddenly on March 28, 1874, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Copeland's house in Belmont still stands within the Beaver Brook Reservation, the first state park in Massachusetts.

Projects

Cemeteries

• Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts
• Mount Feake Cemetery, Waltham, Massachusetts (1859)
• Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts

Town, park, and estate plans

• Central Park, New York City (entered contest, did not win)[2]
• Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts[3]
• Ridley Park, Pennsylvania
• Armsmear, the Samuel Colt estate, Hartford, Connecticut
• Frederick Billings Estate, Woodstock, Vermont

Publications

• Copeland, Robert Morris. Country Life: A Handbook of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Landscape Gardening (1st ed.). Boston: J. P. Jewett & Company. Retrieved 26 March 2016.. Versions of the revised fifth edition (1866) and sixth edition (1867) are also freely available.
• —— (1872). The Most Beautiful City in America: Essay and Plan for the Improvement of the City of Boston. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Retrieved 26 March 2016.

References

1. "Robert Morris Copeland". The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
2. Tishler, William H. (2009) [First published 1866]. "Introduction to the Reprint Edition" (PDF). Country Life: A Handbook of Agriculture, Horticulture, and Landscape Gardening (Reprint ed.). University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1-55849-694-1. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
3. Weiss, Ellen (1975). "Robert Morris Copeland's Plans for Oak Bluffs". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 34 (1): 60–66. doi:10.2307/988957. ISSN 0037-9808. JSTOR 988957.