LidRoseStandishNichols

Rose Standish Nichols' library, as it was comprised at the time of her death in 1960, is held in the collections of the Nichols House Museum. The list of books used to create this legacy library derives from a museum cataloging project completed in 2010. Inscriptions from inside the books, and any other notes specific to Nichols' copy, are listed in the Comments field.

This legacy library is complete! Currently unrepresented in the Legacy Library, this collection also contains a Japanese book of the following description: Navy blue paper cover with writing in red; booklet of drawings of flowers, people, animals, and landscapes; binding loose.

Rose Standish Nichols (1872-1960) was an American landscape architect from Boston, Massachusetts. One of the first professional landscape architects in the U.S., Nichols worked for some 70 clients in the United States and abroad. She also wrote articles about gardens, interior decoration, and design for popular magazines such as House Beautiful and House & Garden, and published three books about European garden design and history: English Pleasure Gardens (1902), Spanish and Portuguese Gardens (1924), and Italian Pleasure Gardens (1928).

Nichols, a niece of Augustus Saint-Gaudens by marriage, was a member of the Cornish Art Colony in New Hampshire.

In addition to her professional work as a landscape architect, Nichols was a suffragist and a peace activist. In 1919, Nichols was elected an officer of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. She established a pacifist discussion group, The League of Small Nations; participants included Clementine Churchill and Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. The group was a precursor to the Foreign Policy Association. In addition, Nichols was one of the earliest members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

The home Rose Nichols lived in for most of her life, at 55 Mt. Vernon Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, is now the Nichols House Museum.