Arthur Asahel Shurcliff
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Arthur Asahel Shurcliff (1865 - 1957) was a noted American landscape architect. He was born with the family name Shurtleff but changed it to Shurcliff in 1930 to conform to an older English spelling. Among his other accomplishments, he served as the chief landscape architect for the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, from its inception in 1928 until 1941.
Shurcliff was born in Boston, Massachusetts, studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and upon the advice of Charles Eliot and Frederick Law Olmstead, enrolled at Harvard University for graduate studies in landscape architecture. After his graduation in 1896, he joined Olmsted's landscape design firm. In 1899, he and Olmsted founded the world's first four-year landscape architecture course at Harvard University. In 1905 he married Margaret Homer Nichols, and established his own landscape practice in Boston. In later years, he served as President of the American Society of Landscape Architects from 1928-1932.
In addition to Colonial Williamsburg, his better known public works include Old Sturbridge Village, the grounds at Plymouth Rock, the Quabbin Reservoir, parts of the Charles River esplanade, a partial redesign of the Back Bay Fens in Boston, Robert E. Lee's Stratford Hall, parts of Wilcox Park in Westerly, Rhode Island, and the River House in York, Maine, as well as commissions for Boston's Metropolitan District Commission and the Metropolitan Planning Board.
