William Bell Marquis

William Bell Marquis

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Rock Island, IL

Date of Birth:

1887

Place of Death:

Newton, MA

Date of Death:

1978

Notable Projects while at Olmsted Firm:
The Crescent and Yeaman's Hall Club, Charleston, South Carolina
Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, Georgia
St. Joseph's Cathedral, Hartford, Connecticut
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Kirby Park, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Eagle Nest Country Club, Blue Mountain Lake, New York
Mountain Lake Development, Lake Wales, Florida
 

After receiving his master‘s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard in 1912, Marquis first worked for the P.J. Berkman Company in Augusta, Georgia (1912 to 1917). Berkman’s was a large grower of nursery stock and ornamental plants. Marquis was the company’s first professionally trained landscape architect and one of the first landscape architects to be working in the South. His most significant project with Berkman’s was his plan for the new 1,500-acre city of North Charleston, South Carolina. After the end of World War I, Marquis moved to Brookline to begin a more than 40-year career with the Olmsted firm.

In his early years, his work was concentrated in Georgia and South Carolina. He prepared plans for “The Crescent,” Charleston’s first “automobile suburb” and also for Yeaman's Hall, Charleston’s first country club community. For the former design, Marquis made good use of ponds, which were important sanitation devices in the moist terrain of South Carolina. Such knowledge of irrigation management was crucial for the design of golf courses, which became one of Marquis’ specialties.