Robert Wheelwright

Centurions were astonished some twenty years ago when Abraham Lincoln walked into our Clubhouse. Those who believed in ghosts knew, of course, that anything could happen at a Century party and this was, after all its centennial. Also, of course, our house has always been haunted by the most genial spirits and after the first surprise it seemed natural that Abe should be among us. Eventually, we knew that the ghost was really Bob Wheelwright whose extraordinary resemblance to the Great Emancipator we had hardly suspected till he donned a beard and a stovepipe hat. Austin Strong, the designer of the centennial pageant was sure, as soon as he saw Bob, that here was as close to the original as he would ever find and his long experience in the theater made him seize Bob and dress him up. And those of us who have had the good fortune to know him are aware that Bob’s resemblance to Lincoln was not only in looks.

Bob was one of those Centurions who are almost part of the architecture of The Century. He was as closely identified with our Association as any member, past or present. Whenever he came to New York, The Century was a second home to him. When he had been a member for twenty-five years, he gave a dinner to celebrate—but it was his guests who celebrated most heartily the fact that he had been with us so long.

Bob was a landscape architect; his taste was part of his talent. In Wilmington where he made his home there are many monuments to his skill. But, on the personal side, he was forever doing things for people, not only young men who wanted to enter his profession but ordinary friends who could not tell an oak from a poplar. One Centurion who owned a large tract of land which had been completely devastated by the hurricane of 1938 cast himself on Bob’s mercy and told of the hundreds of pines which had been blown down and scattered over the landscape till it was a shambles. Bob sent a crew of young men up to his place; they boarded and lodged themselves in a nearby town and almost before the owner knew they were there, had cleaned up the entire mess. When he asked the cost, it was only a quarter of what he had expected and a fraction of what others had asked.

Bob’s Yankee origin stuck out all over him. His slow, New England diction lent itself beautifully to the dozens of funny Yankee stories he loved to tell. Neither New York nor Wilmington ever rubbed off either the accent or his rugged, lanky angular look that was so inherently characteristic.

Robert Wheelwright was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1884. He took his A.B. with the class of 1906 at Harvard College and his Master of Landscape Architecture two years later. He entered the New York office of the late Centurion Charles Downing Lay, landscape architect, and became a member of the firm of Downing and Lay until 1917 when he was called to Washington as camp planner in the construction division of the army. At the end of the First World War, he entered private practice in the Philadelphia office of Wheelwright, Stevenson and Langran. For seventeen years from 1924, he was professor of landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and an Associate of the National Academy of Design. At the end of the Second World War, he designed St. Laurent Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, France.

Bob was a Centurion for forty-four of his eighty-one years. He is missed by us all whether we had the luck to be one of his intimates or were left refreshed by the sight of his familiar figure. He will always be one of the happier spirits who haunt our clubhouse.

Roger Burlingame
1966 Century Association Yearbook