Ezra C. Stiles
Ezra C. Stiles was an American landscape architect. He also worked as an urban planner, writer, mapmaker, and painter.
A descendant of Yale University president Ezra Stiles, Ezra Clarke Stiles was born in Painted Post, New York, and graduated from Penn State in 1914 with a degree in Forestry and Landscape Architecture. He began as
a community planner in Charlotte, North Carolina, as an employee of John Nolan, a landscape
architect in Boston. In 1915, he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to become a draftsman for A.W. Smith, a garden design and florist firm.
In 1926, Stiles founded a landscape architecture firm in Pittsburgh, and ultimately became known as one of the region's top landscape architects. Among his clients were prominent Pittsburgh families ; corporations, universities, and city planners. In 1938, he laid out the McKeesport Rose Garden and Arboretum in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
In the 1960s, Stiles' firm worked with two others to expand the Allegheny County park system.
Stiles wrote at least three books:
He and historian Paul C. Bowman drew a of the American Expeditionary Force's participation in World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive; it is preserved by the Library of Congress. Other maps depicted Pittsburgh in 1899 and Frick Park in 1938.
He had at least one son, Ezra C. Stiles Jr., who served as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Forces.
Some of Stiles' papers and drawings are preserved by the University of Pittsburgh.
