When Ellen Biddle Shipman designed the landscape for Mayfair House in 1929, she was already one of the most respected voices in a profession that had been known to exclude women. At the turn of the century, landscape architecture was firmly a male domain, yet Shipman not only broke through, she redefined the field.

In 1920, she established her office at Beekman Place in New York City, where she made a deliberate decision to hire women exclusively. She had a particular preference for graduates of the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women in Groton, Massachusetts, one of the few institutions at the time, dedicated to training women.

Her influence was impossible to ignore. In 1933, House & Garden magazine named her the “Dean of American Women Landscape Architects". It was a title that reflected not just her talent, but her decades of advocacy and achievement in a field that had once shut its doors to her.

Shipman lectured widely across the country and her work was celebrated in countless books and publications throughout her career. Upon her retirement in the late 1940’s, Cornell University honored her legacy by dedicating an archival collection to her life and work. The Smithsonian Institution also maintains a dedicated collection documenting her garden designs - a lasting testament to her enduring influence on the American landscape.