Background
Ferruccio Vitale was born on February 5, 1875, at Florence, Italy. He was the son of Lazzaro and the Countess Giuseppina (Barbaro) Vitale.
Ferruccio Vitale was born on February 5, 1875, at Florence, Italy. He was the son of Lazzaro and the Countess Giuseppina (Barbaro) Vitale.
Vitale was educated at the Classical School of Florence, and at the Royal Military Academy of Modena, from which he was graduated in 1893.
As a commissioned officer in the Italian army, Vitale was sent to Washington in 1898 and made military attache to the Italian embassy. Later that same year, he was sent to the Philippines as a military observer. Not long afterward, he resigned his commission in the Italian army and devoted himself to landscape architecture. For generations many of his ancestors on his mother's side had been students of the fine arts at the University of Padua and patrons of art in Venice; his father was an architect of distinction and brilliance.
With this background, after several years of practice in his father's architectural office and further study in Florence, Turin, and Paris, Ferruccio Vitale entered upon his profession. In 1904, he returned to the United States and in association with George F. Pentecost, Jr. , established an office in New York for the practice of landscape architecture. That same year, he was admitted to membership in the American Society of Landscape Architects, and four years later he was elected to fellowship in the society. His practice was extensive, embracing not only the design of many private estates but also the planning of towns and suburbs.
For Washington, D. C. , he designed Meridian Hill Park. Although he did not become a naturalized American citizen until 1921, he contributed notable service during the World War as a member of the town planning division of the United States Housing Corporation, working at Dayton, Ohio, and at Watertown, New York. On September 24, 1927, President Coolidge named him a member of the National Commission of Fine Arts to succeed James L. Greenleaf of New York, whose term had expired. He served on this Commission until 1931, when because of ill health he was forced to resign.
At the time of his death, he was a member of the architectural commission of the Century of Progress Exposition at Chicago.
a member of the architectural commission of the Century of Progress Exposition at Chicago, an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects
On May 29, 1910, Vitale married Rosamond Flower Rothery of Wellesley, Massachusets, who with two daughters survived him.