Ruth Shellhorn was born in Los Angeles in 1909. Her landscape designs, numbering close to 400 and centered in Southern California, were iconic and trendsetting. At a young age she was influenced by her neighbor, Florence Yoch, a Kappa Kappa Gamma who was a landscape architect. Shellhorn became a Kappa Kappa Gamma and a landscape architect, too.
Shellhorn wsa initiated into Kappa Kappa Gamma at Oregon State University, where she was enrolled from 1927 until 1930. She transferred to Cornell University and affiliated with the chapter there. She also served as its president. The February 1932 Key includes this information about her, “Ruth Shellhorn, our chapter president, transfer from Oregon, was awarded a gold seal for having the highest mark in architectural design. Her problem is to be placed in the college files.” Shellhorn’s goal was to earn two degrees from Cornell, one in Landscape Architecture and the other in Architecture. However, she was denied the opportunity to take an overload of classes. She left Cornell and went back to California.
The Cornell University chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma
She made her way from Ithaca, New York, to Southern California, by way of the Panama Canal. While travelling through South and Central America she took notes about the exotic plants that she saw.
Shellhorn first worked with her mentor and fellow Kappa Florence Yoch and Ralph Cornell. Her marriage to Harry Alexander Kueser took place in 1940, but she continued to use her own name professionally. He left his career in banking and handled the finances for her landscape architecture firm. They worked together in a studio which was in their home.
Her first big break was her design for landscaping at Bullocks’s Department Store in Pasadena. It led to decades of working, from 1945 to 1978, with Bullock’s stores and Fashion Square shopping centers. It also helped in getting her noticed by Walt Disney. In the 1950s, she designed Disneyland walkways and plantings in the entry as well as Main Street and the Plaza Hub. The University of California Riverside was another of her landscaping projects. She also designed residential gardens, for a veritable Who’s Who of Southern Californians.
Her many honors include being named the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year and the South Pasadena San Marino Woman of the Year, both in 1955. Kappa Kappa Gamma honored her twice with its Alumnae Achievement Award, once in 1960 and again in 2006. She became a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1971.
Cornell University also bestowed upon her with its career achievement award in 2005. At that time, it was discovered that she indeed had the correct number of courses to graduate but she had not received her degrees. That error was rectified. She died on November 3, 2006.
