Thomas Church

Biography Thomas Church was born in Boston, and raised in California, in Ojai and Oakland. He then attended the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he received his master's degree in City Planning and Landscape Architecture in 1926. He studied Italian Renaissance gardens, and Moorish and Iberian Renaissance Spanish gardens, observing their responses to a climate so similar the Mediterranean climate in California. On returning from Europe he worked in a city planning office on the East Coast (1927–1928), then he taught at Ohio State University (1928–1930).

In 1951 Church was awarded the Fine Arts Medal, for Landscape Architecture, by the American Institute of Architects. They are: Unity — the consideration of the design as a whole, integrating the house and its gardens with a free flow between them. Function — the relation of the outdoor recreational and social areas to their interior counterparts, and of the outdoor service areas to the household's needs, to please and serve the people who live in them. Simplicity — upon which rests the aesthetic and economic success of the design. Scale — relating the different design parts, features, and areas to one another, to create a whole an integrated landscape design.

Church used the Modernist design principles for freedom of elements, such as the forms of spaces and features, and a sense of movement. When possible, he favored creating multiple viewpoints, instead of a traditional single axis. "A garden should have no beginning and no end," he wrote in Gardens Are for People, "and should be pleasing when seen from any angle, not only from the house." Others include the Mrs. Clinton Walker House in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and the Bloedel Reserve and Lakewold Gardens in Washington state.

He also worked on a number of larger non-residential landscape commissions. He worked on campus master plans for UC Berkeley, Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz, Harvey Mudd College, Woodside Priory School, and the Wascana Centre in Saskatchewan. He designed the grounds of the Embassy of the United States, Havana, the General Motors Research Laboratory in Detroit (1949–1953), the Des Moines Art Center, the Hotel El Panama in Panama City, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and Parkmerced (1941–1951) in southwestern San Francisco.

He was the landscape design consultant to Stanford University for 30 years, beginning in the late 1940s. He served on the Stanford Architectural Advisory Council from 1960 to 1978, that President J.E. Wallace Sterling created.

Legacy Thomas Church had a long, distinguished, and productive career with over 4,000 projects, as a Landscape Architect.

The Post-war Modernist garden design style, first in California and soon influential across the United States, was created and developed by a small group of landscape designers, of which Thomas Church was the "first founder." The subsequent founders and practitioners of the Modern California Landscape include Garrett Eckbo, Robert Royston, James C. Rose, and Dan Kiley.