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| Stroll the broad sidewalks of Market Street from City Hall to Front. Take a walk through Society Hill. Spend a few quiet moments in Chestnut Park near 17th Street. Bike along the river at Schuylkill River Park. Take in the quiet beauty of the Temple University Ambler campus.
The handprint of John F. Collins, the founder of Temple’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture, is everywhere you look in these places and many more throughout Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Temple University Ambler is hosting a retrospective on Collins’ remarkable body of award-winning work as a landscape architect, planner, nurseryman and educator. It will be on display in the Learning Center through June 15.
Collins began his professional career at a time when the challenges of urban sprawl were radically affecting cities throughout the country.
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Image courtesy Temple University Ambler
Collins created a master plan for the Fairmount Park Commission, centering around a 1.25 mile park along the Schuylkill River east bank from the Art Museum to South Street. For the next 40 years, Collins continued to work, often on a volunteer basis, to realize the vision of Schuylkill River Park, which was dedicated at a lighting ceremony in 2004.
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It was a time when planners, developers, and landscape architects moved away from “bigger, grander, more,” and began to embrace the idea of human-scale, walkable and diverse communities.
“The idea was to put together all of the major professional disciplines — architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, city planning, and graphics,” Collins said. “There needed to be better facilities that were better maintained that were closely related to neighborhoods, towns, and each other.”
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Image courtesy Temple University Ambler
1988, John Collins (left) became the founding chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at Temple University.
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In 1988, Collins became the founding chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at Temple University. Under his leadership, the department advanced in academic standards, achieving accreditation for the landscape architecture program; hired new faculty; and reached out to the community with urban design-build programs.
“The Horticulture and Landscape Architecture programs were developed into strong programs that were appropriate for an urban university,” said James Blackhurst, dean at the Ambler Campus from 1984 to 1995. “They started focusing on urban environmental planning, which was something that hadn’t been done before.”
Collins established a campus greenery program and proposed a Center for Sustainable Environment at Temple University Ambler. He was also an early advocate for designating the Ambler campus as an arboretum to create an environment for learning and promoting ecologically sound planning, design, development, and management. In 2000, the campus was formally registered as an arboretum by the American Public Gardens Association.
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“John Collins’ legacy is in his built works and in the people whose lives were changed as a result of his advocacy, teaching, and professional example,” said James Searing, a student in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture who has been extensively researching Collins’ legacy for the retrospective.
The John Collins Retrospective was organized by a group of dedicated alumni from Temple University Ambler, friends of John Collins, and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture. Premier sponsors include: CSX Corp.; Edmund Hollander Landscape Architects; Ann D. Marshall; Peter G. Schlotterer; Robert and Heidi Shusterman; S.R. Wojdak & Associates L.P. The complete list of sponsors is available at www.temple.edu/ambler/news/368-collinsfeature.htm.
James F. Duffy contributed to this story.
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