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Ruth Havey, Design Sketches for Dumbarton Oaks Garden

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Ruth Mildred Havey (1899–1980) was a landscape architect and an architect. She received a BA from Smith College and studied at the Cambridge School of Architectural and Landscape Design for Women in Cambridge, Massachusetts, receiving a certificate in architecture in 1923 and a master of architecture in 1934. 

While first working for Beatrix Farrand from 1929 to mid-1940s and then later with Mildred Bliss (mid-1940s–1967) on Dumbarton Oaks projects, Havey compiled design ideas that were sketched and traced from drawings and photographs in notable books on architecture and decorative arts and other sources. She drew upon some of these preliminary designs in her more finished drawings for projects in the Dumbarton Oaks Garden.

Most of these designs are for ironwork for gates, grilles, balustrades, railings, lanterns, balconies, tables, vases, finials, and animal and floral details, which combine English, French, Spanish, and American influences. Not all, but many of these drawings identify the source on which the design is based.