Records of New Jersey landscape architect and Morris County arts and crafts home builders.

The working papers of one of New Jersey’s notable landscape architects, Joan Shapiro Greentree, are now open to researchers in the History Center’s reading room. Born in Brooklyn, Joan Shapiro (1929-2012) graduated high school at sixteen years old and briefly attended Alfred University before dropping out due to the lack of courses in her preferred field of study. Instead, she pursued independent study in landscape architecture at the State University of New York, Fairleigh Dickinson University, New York University, and the New York and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

As a self-taught landscape architect, Joan adopted the professional name “Greentree” and developed an architectural philosophy that centered around environmentalism and was reflected in her practice of working with the ecology specific to each site. This design aesthetic stressed the use of native plants in a manner consistent with a property’s topology, a practice that gained wider acceptance through the late 20th century.

Greentree became an award-winning landscape architect whose work featured prominently in private homes and businesses in New York, New Jersey, and Colorado. During her long career she oversaw projects for the San Francisco firm Lawrence Halperin and Associates, a number of public parks, and numerous private gardens. Joan became one of the first women accepted by the American Society of Landscape Architects. During the 1960s, she founded one of New Jersey’s first recycling centers.

Included with the Joan Shapiro Greentree papers are a significant collection of research notes and photographs related to Claude and Helen Habberstad that she collected with a neighbor and wildlife artist, Mary Pratt Champenois. The Habberstads were journalists and artists who built a series of arts and crafts style cottages in the 1930s, mostly in the Boonton and Parsippany area. Wanting to create affordable homes set in natural surroundings, Claude and Helen selected large parcels of land in Morris County where property was inexpensive. Each cottage was unique and included design features intended to maximize space while blending into the surrounding landscape.

Greentree and Champenois both owned Habberstad homes and, during the 1990s they pursued extensive research on their history, construction, and place within American architecture history. Their work resulted in numerous photographs documenting the homes, a series of oral histories taken by those who knew and worked with the Habberstads, as well as a number of speaking engagements and exhibits about the cottages. The finding aid to the Joan Shapiro Greentree Collection is available online, and the papers may be requested for use in the reading room.