A Garden Fit for Mad Men’s Don Draper

If Don Draper of AMC’s hit television show Mad Men ever decided to trade in Manhattan for the suburbs of Washington, this stylishly designed company headquarters and garden would suit him just fine. After a dip in the company spa, Draper might mix himself a highball, kick up his feet on a Knoll desk, and enjoy the view of this lush, corporate garden from his corner office window.

Volkswagen Beetles were one of the best selling cars in America in the 1960’s. In 1966 Capitol Car Distributors, a Volkswagen distributing company, unveiled its new headquarters in Lanham, Maryland to much fanfare. At the time, the company managed over fifty-eight Volkswagen dealerships in the Mid-Atlantic region. Situated on thirty-three acres of land east of the Capital Beltway, the luxurious, 150,000 square-foot complex was designed by Mills, Petticord and Mills of Washington, D.C. Volkswagen’s iconic advertisements may have encouraged consumers to “think small,” but the sleek modern design of Capitol Car’s headquarters projected an ideal of a refined, successful corporate culture.

Wolf Von Eckardt, an art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, raved about the building’s posh interiors, its modern, “palatial façade,” and the beautiful Japanese-inspired landscaping. The garden featured an organically-shaped patio wrapped around a miniature lake surrounded by small conifers. A waterfall gushed over a natural limestone rock formation, and a pagoda-inspired pavilion provided a space for shade and relaxation.

The garden’s designer, landscape architect Ethelbert Furlong (1894-1993), enjoyed a career of over sixty years, including designing the landscape for the 1949 House Beautiful “Pace-Setter House” and acting as a garden consultant to the Museum of Modern Art for its 1954 Japanese House. According to Elisabeth Ginsburg, a garden writer for The New York Times, after serving in WWII Furlong turned to creating modernist landscapes that incorporated Japanese design elements, though he never actually traveled to Japan himself.

The offices of Capitol Car Distributors were furnished with Knoll and Herman Miller, and the cafeteria and dining room had views of the garden and, as Von Eckardt observed, “a décor that makes you feel you ought to dress even for lunch.” Male employees could relax in the sauna or the Finnish heat bath with a diving pool, but there were also “special sauna days for the girls.” Capitol Car even boasted a computer, housed in its very own air-conditioned room. On a wistful note, Von Eckardt ended his article by wondering if “anybody ever wants to go home.”

The garden received the 1966 Industrial Landscape Award from the American Association of Nurserymen. Lady Bird Johnson, who had launched her national beautification campaign a few years earlier, personally distributed the awards to businesses and landscape architects chosen from a nationwide survey of businesses with outstanding landscapes, commenting that “it must give a lift of joy to anyone who goes to look at these and a sense of civic pride to the community involved.”

Today the campus is home to Hargrove, Inc., a management firm for special events. The images of the garden, taken by Stewart Bros. Photographers, are part of The Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens, which contains thousands of images documenting a range of gardens, from private estates to small city gardens, and even a few commercial landscapes. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division also has images of the garden in its Gottscho-Schleisner Collection.

-- Kate Fox, Intern
Archives of American Gardens