Overview
Logbooks and writings of the American landscape architect Arthur Asahel Shurcliff.
Dates
- Creation: 1897-1902
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material. Collection is open for research.
Extent
.14 linear feet (4 volumes in 1 case)Includes an autograph manuscript volume concerning Charles Eliot's remarks on landscape architecture, together with three logbooks of trips taken to Newburyport and Concord, Massachusetts and Europe. Includes cyanotype photographs, landscape garden sketches, a few letters, and additional material. Most of the material in the first volume is by Shurcliff, but some are originals by Charles Eliot (1859-1897). Shurcliff was accompanied in the trips to Concord and Newburyport by Robert Peabody Bellows (1879-1957), who became a Boston architect with the firm of Aldrich & Bellows. There are a few Bellows' sketches in the notebooks as well.
Biographical / Historical
Arthur Asahel Shurcliff (1870-1957) was a landscape architect who, with Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., founded the landscape architecture program at Harvard University. Some of Shurcliff's well known works were: town planning of Colonial Williamsburg; laying out of Old Sturbridge Village; the Charles River Esplanade; the redesign of Frederick Law Olmsted's Back Bay Fens; the zoological park at Franklin Park; Paul Revere Mall (also called The Prado) in the North End; the John Harvard Mall in Charlestown; Carter's Grove in Virginia; and the Richard Crane Estate (known as Castle Hill) at Ipswich, Massachusetts. He was born as Arthur Asahel Shurtleff, and changed his last name to Shurcliff in 1930 in order, he said, to conform to the "ancient spelling of the family name."
Arrangement
Arranged chronologically.
All 4 volumes are housed in 1 case.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
55M-161. Gift of Arthur A. Shurcliff Esq.; 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts; received: 1956 February.
Processing Information
Processed by: Bonnie B. Salt
- Title
- Shurcliff, Arthur A. (Arthur Asahel), 1870-1957. Arthur Asahel Shurcliff notebooks, 1897-1902: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou01154
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440
Houghton_Library@harvard.edu