Landscape Architect
Centurion, 1919–1933
Born 30 July 1857 in Kortright, New York
Died 15 April 1933 in Stamford, Connecticut
Buried New Somerville Cemetery
, Somerville, New Jersey
Proposed by Samuel Parsons and S. B. P. Trowbridge
Elected 7 June 1919 at age sixty-one
Century Memorial
James Leal Greenleaf won international repute in the interesting profession of planning, diversifying and reforesting public parks. Few of us, who had never seen the barren waste of rugged boulders and dusty vacant lots which Olmsted conjured into our own Central Park, or the stretches of neglected woodland, overgrown with weeds and thickets, out of which were constructed the charming vistas of Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Rock Creek at Washington, can fully recognize the achievement of the landscape architect’s creative imagination. Greenleaf’s activities were directed to creation of parks in all sections of the country. He had a hand in our most pleasing national reservations. The Columbia Island park in the State of Washington, the approaches to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and particularly the landscape planning of the beautiful public parkway which now stretches down from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol, were his special achievement.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1934 Century Association Yearbook