My Top Five: Fritz Steiner
In a new book on Penn's campus landscape, trees are the main character.
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My Top Five asks a Weitzman faculty member to curate a list of five cultural artifacts—in any medium, from any time period—to give insight into the latest thinking about visual culture and the built environment.
Fritz Steiner is dean and Paley Professor at the Weitzman School of Design. His latest book, Penn’s Sylvania: The Campus as Landscape, is a richly illustrated and thought-provoking volume that traces the evolution of one of the nation’s most distinctive urban campuses—whose botanical collection is an official arboretum—through interdisciplinary essays and photography. In addition to Steiner and co-editor Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa, the book’s contributors include Weitzman faculty members Catherine Seavitt, Laurie Olin, and Witold Rybczynski. Penn’s Sylvania will be available from Penn Press in September, and the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology is hosting a book launch on September 10.
Here, Steiner shares his favorite trees on Penn’s campus. The accompanying photographs include a small selection from the book’s portfolio by Ignacio Bunster-Ossa.
A Treaty elm at Blanche Levy Park (Photo Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa)
My favorite trees were inspired by my work editing Penn’s Sylvania. Several, in particular, reflect the essays and perspectives of contributors to the volume.
1. The Treaty elm anchors College Green, formally known as Blanche Levy Park, a landscape conceived by Sir Peter Shepheard and members of Penn’s landscape architecture faculty in 1977. This Ulmus americana is believed to descend from the original Treaty Elm beneath which William Penn is said to have entered into a peace agreement with Lenape Chief Tamanend in 1682. As both a living tree and a powerful symbol, it connects the University to Pennsylvania’s earliest history and the enduring relationship between landscape and memory.
Pawpaws at James G. Kaskey Memorial Park (Photo Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa)
2. The pawpaw is the subject of Catherine Seavitt’s essay. Long before it received its scientific name, Asimina triloba, its fruit was prized by the Lenape people. Seavitt describes the tree as elusive, enduring, and endearing—a modest native species whose quiet resilience belies its remarkable history.
Yellowwood trees along Weitzman Plaza on 34th Street (Photo Sahar Coston-Hardy)
3. The yellowwood is one of Laurie Olin’s favorite trees. Ellen Harrison, who led efforts to beautify the campus in the late 19th century and was an early, influential tree advocate at Penn, made generous use of Cladrastis kentukea. Her beloved grove of yellowwoods at the corner of 34th and Walnut was lost during the construction of Meyerson Hall in 1967. When Laurie Olin and his colleagues at OLIN designed Weitzman Plaza, they planted five yellowwoods along the 33rd Street steps as a tribute to the lost grove, reconnecting the campus with an important part of its landscape history.
Tulip poplars on Woodland Walk by Lauder College House with 125 Years by Jenny Holzer (Photo Ignacio F. Bunster-Ossa)
4. Tulip trees are the focus of Susan Weiler’s contribution. The Lenape valued Liriodendron tulipifera not for its fruit but for its strong, lightweight wood, which they used to construct dugout canoes. Weiler designed the serpentine Woodland Walk, planting fifty of these majestic trees to commemorate the 125th anniversary of women at Penn in 2003.
Locust Walk (Photo Eric Sucar for Penn Today)
5. Japanese zelkovas line Locust Walk, one of Penn’s most iconic landscapes. Before editing Penn’s Sylvania with Ignacio, I often mistook Zelkova serrata for London plane trees. In the early 1960s, landscape architect George Patton selected the Japanese zelkova to shape what has become not only one of Penn’s most memorable public spaces but also one of the most beautiful campus walks anywhere.
