"Planting Fields: A Country Place and Its Makers" with Witold Rybczynski

The Country Place Era is a landscape history term that refers to the period from about 1890 to 1930 when wealthy Americans built country estates that were noted for their exceptional houses and gardens. Planting Fields, on Long Island’s North Shore, is both exemplary and unusual. Unlike most country places, this was not the result of a concentrated building campaign but of a three decade evolution that involved two sets of owners, two separate
houses, three architects, four landscape architects, and several artistic talents, each reinforcing and expanding the work of their predecessors.

Witold Rybczynski is the author of more than twenty books, including an award-winning biography of Frederick Law Olmsted. His latest is The Story of Architecture which the New York Times Book Review called an “expansive account that traces the influence of social, technological, and economic shifts on architecture across the centuries.” He is an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania.