In the Press

Joanna C. Diman (1901-91)

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Joanna Diman—called “Jo” by her coworkers—was the key in-house landscape architect at SOM in New York, working on large and small projects from 1944 until 1967 (Figure 1). She was part of a small civil engineering department, working under A. Martin “Scoop” Funnell and alongside other landscape architects (C. O. Andersen, Carroll J. Donoghue), and she seems to have been the longest-serving and best-paid member of the staff landscape group.Her standing is revealed by the special praise she received from Bunshaft, SOM’s prickly design leader. Little information about Diman or her work for SOM has been available until recently. However, thanks to materials supplied by her nephew, Ezra S. Diman, including a curriculum vitae that documents her work experience up to 1944, it is now possible to follow her early development, and with the help of archival records at SOM, we can sketch a picture of her career.