John Frey, FASLA
John Ward Frey
(1930 - 2020)
On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 11am, join the Town of Lexington in honoring longtime resident and community volunteer at a memorial dedication at Tower Hill Park. Click for details.
We are saddened to announce the passing of John Frey, FASLA.
John Ward Frey
(1930 - 2020)
John Frey grew up in the small rural town of Cedarville, Ohio in an historic home with some 40 acres, where he took care of a big vegetable garden, a cow and a calf. As a child, he loved gardening and trees. His mother, Sarah Helen Dempwolf Frey, was an artist who taught at Wittenburg College, and his father, Philip Rockel Frey, was a musician and composer. Their three children comprised a trio: his older brother Demp on piano, his sister Margaretta on cello, and John on flute. After graduating in 1952 as a math major from The College of Wooster in Ohio, he attended Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), where he earned a Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1955. John traveled extensively in Europe in 1957-58 as the recipient of Harvard’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship.
In 1956 he began professional work as an urban designer with The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in Cambridge, MA. From 1956 to 1957, he served in the U.S. Army in the Engineering and Plans Section, HQ 18th Engineer Brigade in Fort Leonard Wood, MO, where he took advantage of the local caves to go spelunking. He also served in the Santa Fe office of the National Park Service.
In 1961, he married Wilma Weggel, a landscape architecture student who received her MLA degree from the Harvard GSD in 1965 with two young daughters in tow. Immediately thereafter, the growing family settled in Lexington in an early 19th century house with a barn.
John became a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1962, and in 1992 was recognized as a Fellow, FASLA, for his contributions to the profession in “Built Work.”
John practiced as a Registered Landscape Architect in Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut. He was an original Associate for five years with Sasaki Associates in Watertown, MA. In 1963, John and his Harvard classmate Max M. Mason, Jr. founded Mason & Frey, Landscape Architects, a partnership that continued for more than 30 years. After Max retired in 1996, John continued the practice until 2006.
One of the firm’s largest projects, which continued through the decade ending in 1989, had John as Partner-in- Charge of the southern two miles of the MBTA’s linear Southwest Corridor Parkland in Jamaica Plain, MA. The project included the landscape of the Forest Hills, Green Street and Stony Brook MBTA Orange Line transit stations plus the MBTA Red Line’s Alewife station in Cambridge and Arlington, MA, and the Orange Line Massachusetts Avenue station in Boston.
John was also Partner-in-Charge for the design of the Lexington Center Mall, Lexington, MA; the Bicentennial Park in Arlington, MA; master planner and site designer for the State University of New York at Geneseo and S.U.N.Y. at Farmingdale; and for Fulton Montgomery Community College in Johnstown, NY. Mason & Frey worked with all the prominent Boston architects of the time across New England, New York, Long Island and places in the Midwest.
Mason and Frey’s Professional Design Awards included:
1964 Progressive Architecture Design Award (with TAC) - IBM Gaithersburg, MD
1967 Industrial Plant Beautification Award - Governor’s Conference on Natural Beauty - Polaroid Corporation, Waltham, MA
1968 Mass. Audubon Society Citation – Lincoln Road Bicycle Path, Lincoln, MA
1973 American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award for Murray Hill, Manchester, VT
1973 Boston Society of Architects Award, St. Joseph’s Cooperative Homes, Boston, MA
1988 National Endowment for the Arts Presidential Design Award, Federal Design Achievement Award, for the Alewife Station and Garage, Cambridge, MA.
John was passionate about urban design and trees, and his concerns informed his volunteer civic activities. In 1987 he became a founding member of the Town of Lexington’s Design Advisory Committee, and served as its appointed Chair for 11 years. He was a founding member and appointed Chair of the municipality’s Tree Committee for 18 years, from 2001-2019. He served on the town’s Bicycle Advisory Committee.
He was active in Citizens for Lexington Conservation, Friends of the Arlington Great Meadows, and Friends of the Bikeway. He was a founding member, president and vice-president of the East Village Community Association (Arlington and Lexington), established in 1992. He participated in the Lexington Field and Garden Club, Civic Improvement Committee, Lexington Conservation Stewards and was a founding member of Lexington Friends of Trees.
In 2005, John received the “Outstanding Citizen Forester” award from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. In 2015, he was the recipient of Lexington’s Minuteman Cane Award, which is awarded to “someone who is at least 80 years of age, a 15-year resident of the Town, actively involved in the community and an inspiration to others (while exhibiting a creative approach to life through a choice of either a second career, a hobby or volunteerism).”
John supported statewide, regional and national conservation organizations, including the Appalachian Mountain Club, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Charles River Watershed Association, Massachusetts Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, Rails to Trails Conservancy, the Sierra Club and its local Chapters, the Trustees of Reservations, The Wilderness Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as organizations supporting health, environmental protection and economic opportunity, especially for women, in countries across the globe.
He led his family on hiking, backpacking and canoe trips, especially in New England’s White Mountains and its lakes and streams, as well as backpacks into the Grand Canyon and in southeast Utah, the Cascade Range in Washington, the Trinity Alps in northern California, and the mid-Atlantic Appalachians, to name a few.
He was undaunted by challenges, confident of being able to solve problems, adventurous but not foolhardy, practical, persistent, focused, hard-working, innovative and optimistic.
John’s death left his wife of 59 years, Wilma E. (Weggel) Frey of Tewksbury Township, NJ, where she has worked as an environmental policy advocate since 1990 with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, a statewide nonprofit land trust and land use policy organization. He also leaves his four daughters and their spouses: Landscape Architect Holly Frey (Peter Cullen) of Verona, NJ; Allison Frey (William Harbert, PhD) of Canonsburg, PA; Frederika “Fritzi” Frey (Leo Tracey) of Wakefield, RI; and Dr. Marietta Frey (Michael Migliore) of Palo Alto, CA. In addition, seven grandchildren: Sarah Harbert, PhD, Melissa Harbert, Anika Tracey, Jackson Tracey, Courtney Cullen, Kevin Migliore and Colten Migliore. He also leaves his older brother Dempwolf Frey, his twin Brothers-in-Law Bob Weggel (Diane Avery) and Carl Weggel, and nieces Jane Frey and Mary Frey and their adult children, and nephew John Frey. His sister Margaretta Frey is recently deceased.
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Includes excerpts from The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
