In Memoriam: David P. Schuyler

Abstract

David Schuyler, Shadek Professor of Humanities and American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, long a leading scholar in the fields of American landscapes and the art, literature, and environment in New York's Hudson Valley, died of a fall at home on July 24, 2020, after years of declining health. He was seventy years old.A native of Newburgh, New York, David earned his B.A. from American University, followed by master's degrees at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill and the Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware, respectively. David studied with John Kasson at Chapel Hill and began his lifelong work on Andrew Jackson Downing, the subject of his master's thesis completed in 1975. He earned his PhD in History from Columbia University in 1979, having been mentored there by Eric McKitrick and Kenneth Jackson. The latter remained a lifelong inspiration and a cherished friend.David's first and only full-time academic post was at F&M, where he launched American Studies as a significant element in the college curriculum and mentored scores of students, many of whom pursued careers in public history, government service, and academia. David's teaching was innovative and hands-on. His course on the Hudson River in history—perhaps the only such course taught in the United States—offered his students a wide-ranging exploration of the subject, drawing on works of history, literature, art history, biography, and contemporary advocacy. It was just one example of David's keen eye for the right material to explore in classes that emphasized dialogue about each of the topics under consideration. In many instances, notably in his discussions of urban and suburban history, David deftly connected the historical incidents and trends with present-day concerns.David's students—particularly those who worked with him as summer Hackman Scholars at Franklin & Marshall—exploited the college's archives and nearby repositories, most notably at the Lancaster County Historical Society. Several of them published their work in the society's historical journal, while others saw their names included on the title page and the acknowledgments of various Schuyler publications. This was evidenced in books ranging from histories of the F&M built environment and the evolving urban landscape of the city of Lancaster to the monumental work David completed on the papers of the great American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. David believed in his students' abilities and that their work on these projects was an important stepping-stone to realizing their ambitions after graduation. In the words of two of his students, “Professor Schuyler sometimes had more confidence in us than we did in ourselves.” Not surprisingly, David was recipient of the Lindback Award for outstanding teaching and received other notable accolades throughout his long career at F&M.David was not simply a beloved mentor at F&M and the go-to sage when it came to enhancing the campus environment; he was a prolific and widely admired scholar, active in Pennsylvania and national circles in public history ventures, as an adviser to museum curators, and a referee for many book and article manuscripts. He was also remarkably disciplined in making time for his own work, a quality that was, if anything, accentuated in his fifties and sixties. Over the course of a four-decade career, David wrote and edited more than a dozen books, including three on F&M history. The most influential of those books was his first: The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America (1986) as well as four volumes he either edited or co-edited of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers. When it came to completing the concluding, ninth volume in the Olmsted Papers series, David was invited to edit the work he entitled The Last Great Projects. In this enterprise, David and coeditor Gregory Kaliss collaborated with a series of student assistants who contributed materially to what proved to be a 1,067-page volume, capstone to David's several decade connection with Olmsted. The extended introduction to this volume, written in David's elegant style, is itself worthy of separate publication as it explicates Olmsted's mindset and modus operandi in his final active years.David's other publications included a short, incisive biographical study of the founder of landscape architecture in the United States, Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852 (1996). According to one leading scholar, this book is considered the definitive work on Downing. David's books Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists and the Hudson River Valley, 1820–1902 (2012) and Embattled River: The Hudson and Modern American Environmentalism (2018) were among his most mature and powerful works, each of them breaking new ground on their subjects, each widely hailed inside and outside academia. Aside from his masterful accounts of the literature and major art works of the Hudson River Valley, in Sanctified Landscape and collateral publications, David raised Jervis McIntee into the pantheon of the most notable Hudson River artists—a remarkable achievement.David believed in making history and historical research accessible to the general public. Examples of his popular writing include Franklin & Marshall College (2004), which David coauthored with F&M student and Hackman Scholar Jane A. Bee. He also published a pamphlet, The Campus Stretching Long: The Franklin & Marshall College Landscape, 1853–2000, with F&M student and Hackman Scholar Lydia Wood, and a book-length account of the college's built environment, Constructing the Campus: Franklin & Marshall College, 1853–2019, coauthored with yet another of his Hackman Scholar mentees, Rachel Sheffield. An essay on the working relationship between Olmsted and his partner Calvin Vaux in designing the exclusive suburb of Riverside, Illinois, published in Iconic Communities and the Challenge of Change, edited by Mary Corbin Sies, Isabelle Gournay, and Robert Freestone (2019), was David's last significant scholarly contribution.Readers of this journal may know David best through his pioneering work, A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization in Lancaster Pennsylvania, 1940–1980 (2002), which told the story of a smaller American city as it experienced the tribulations of the suburban exodus post–World War II, ethnic conflicts, and failed urban renewal projects. At the time of his death, David was in the early stages of researching and writing a more upbeat sequel to this work. Over the years he contributed articles and reviews to Pennsylvania History, the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and the Lancaster Historical Society's scholarly journal.David's academic service extended well beyond the F&M campus. He was active in the Society for American City and Regional Planning History and served as its president from 1997 to 1999. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Planning History and the Hudson River Valley Review, and as a consulting editor of the North American Landscape Series for the Johns Hopkins University Press. In later years he took special interest in the home of artist Frederic Edwin Church, serving on the board of Church's remarkable homestead, Olana. In 2018 David was given the Olana Partnership's Frederic Church Award for outstanding contributions to American Culture.Aside from these professional achievements, David mentored many younger scholars in the field or urban, suburban, and environmental history. He read innumerable manuscripts in progress, offering his suggestions for improvement, and took pride in his acolytes' and peers' significant scholarly contributions. The friendship of many of these individuals was a special treasure, especially so in wake of the passing of his beloved spouse, Marsha Sener Schuyler, in 2002.David was an active member on the boards of Pennsylvania historical preservation organizations, the Pennsylvania Historical Association, and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, where he was appreciated for the distinctive expertise he brought to bear on the commission's deliberations. Above and beyond such professional concerns, he was a discerning art collector and an avid gardener. David was, in nineteenth- century parlance, a “compleat man,” eager to teach, eager to promote good practices, eager to help build a better world.David is survived by his daughter, Nancy Sener Schuyler, nine brothers and sisters, and his many admirers and friends at F&M and beyond.