Arthur Asahel Shurcliff

Who was Arthur Asahel Shurcliff?

Arthur Asahel Shurcliff was a noted American landscape architect. Born Arthur Asahel Shurtleff, he changed his last name in 1930 in order, he said, to conform to the "ancient spelling of the family name". After over 30 years of success as a practicing landscape architect and town planner, in 1928 he was called upon by John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the Boston architectural firm of Perry, Shaw & Hepburn to serve as Chief Landscape Architect for the restoration and recreation of the gardens, landscape, and town planning of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, a position he held until his retirement in 1941. It was the largest and most important commission of his career.

Shurcliff was born in Boston, Massachusetts, studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and upon the advice of Charles Eliot and Frederick Law Olmsted, enrolled at Harvard University for studies in art history, surveying, horticulture and design. After his graduation in 1896, he joined Olmsted's Brookline landscape architecture firm. In 1899, he aided Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. in founding America's first four-year landscape architecture school at Harvard University.