National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Vitale and Geiffert, Ferruccio Vitale (1875-1933) 1489
Vitale was born in Italy and trained as a military engineer; like James L. Greenleaf he turned to
landscape architecture as a second career. Vitale immigrated to the United States in 1898 serving as a
military attaché to the Italian embassy in Washington, D.C. He began practicing landscape architecture in
1904. Vitale would succeed Greenleaf as landscape architect member of the Washington, D.C. Fine Arts
Commission, and was instrumental in establishing a landscape fellowship at the American Academy at
Rome. Vitale's residential Country Place landscape design is typified by the Langdon K. Thorne property
of the early 1920s located near Bay Shore, Long Island.
Downing Vaux (1856-1926)
Of all of Greenleaf's contemporaries, Downing Vaux, a native of Kingston, NY, most clearly
focused his landscape architectural practice in the central Hudson region. He began his practice around
1880 collaborating with his father, Calvert Vaux who was Olmsted, Sr.'s first design partner. After his
father's death in 1895, Downing Vaux continued to practice landscape architecture on his own. Vaux
often collaborated with Olmsted's stepson John Charles Olmsted on local projects. One of the founding
members of the ASLA, the younger Vaux's work included parks, institutional grounds and residential
properties. Public work included plans for parks in Poughkeepsie, NY, Kingston, NY, Nutley, NJ, and
St. John, Canada.
Vaux's representative residential projects include: 1490
Robert Suckley property Wilderstein Rhinebeck, NY
Abraham I. Elkins property Redbank, NY
Carl F. Baker property Seabright, NJ
James A. P. Bramsdell property Balmville, NY
William Whitlock property Todt Hill Staten Island, NY
1489 Excerpted from Newton, 437.
1490 List excerpted from Joy Kestenbaum, in Pioneers II, 145-148.
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