The Crane Estate - Castle Hill | Beach | Wildlife Refuge

Edit: Arthur’s wife’s name was Margaret Homer Nichols Shurcliff, not Rose Nichols Shurcliff.

Today we celebrate the birthday of visionary landscape architect Arthur Asahel Shurcliff (1870-1957), who designed many of the iconic garden and landscape features at Castle Hill, including the Grand Allée.

Born Arthur Shurtleff, he changed his name to Shurcliff in 1930 to conform to its ancient spelling. Shurcliff was an MIT-trained engineer and landscape architect who was mentored by Trustees’ founder Charles Eliot and worked for the Olmsted firm in Brookline. In 1899, together with Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., he founded the first four-year landscape architecture course in the country at Harvard. In 1904, he opened his own landscape practice in Boston.

Arthur Shurcliff’s work included town/urban planning, public projects, college campuses, and the restoration of early American town commons, as well as private residential projects. However, he is perhaps best known as the chief landscape architect for the restoration and recreation of Colonial Williamsburg from 1928-1941, stemming from his deep knowledge of the history and design of colonial landscapes.

A summer neighbor of the Cranes, Shurcliff’s work at Castle Hill included the Rose Garden (1913-14), the Mall/Allée (1913-1915), the Vegetable Garden (1917) and its towers (1919), and supervising the installation of the maze (1920, no longer extant).
These picturesque landscape features continue to attract thousands of visitors to Castle Hill each year and provide a beautiful backdrop to their memories.

In 1905, Arthur married Margaret Shurcliff, and they had six children. Their eldest, Sidney, was a lifelong friend of Cornelius Crane who served as trip photographer on the Crane Pacific Expedition of 1928-1929. Sidney also chronicled this groundbreaking scientific expedition in his book, Jungle Islands (1930).