High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! John Nolen (June 14, 1869 - February 18, 1937) was an American landscape architect. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John Nolen was orphaned as a child and placed in the Girard School for Orphaned Boys by the Children`s Aid Society. Nolen graduated first in his class in 1884 and worked as a grocery clerk and secretary to the Girard Estate Trust Fund before enrolling in the Wharton School of Finance and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1891. Nolen earned his Ph.B. in 1893, and for the next ten years worked as secretary of the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching. He married Barbara Schatte in 1896.