Notable Projects while at the Olmsted Firm: Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York Kennecott Copper, Lexington, Massachusetts University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi
Art Richardson joined the firm in 1948, and became an associate partner soon thereafter. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. retired in 1949, leaving the firm in the hands of two older men, Edward Whiting and William Marquis, and several younger men, Artemas Richardson, Charles Riley and Carl Parker. Richardson described his ongoing work at the firm in these years as entailing “personal contributions primarily on industrial, institutional and housing site development planning, park development planning, and college/university campus master planning. Greater personal involvement with grading & site construction than with planting, though practice has embraced all phases.”
As other partners left, Richardson gradually acquired the remaining shares of the firm, and after becoming its sole owner and President, found himself taking on the care of the physical property and archives. Ultimately the overall caretaking role and its fiscal requirements exceeded his capacities, and realizing the value and history of the site, Richardson would sell Fairsted to the National Park Service to create Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in 1979. Richardson maintained the firm’s name, “Olmsted Office,” in a small practice in New Hampshire until 2000. Richardson is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and a former president of the Boston Society of Landscape Architects.
