COLLECTIONS

Neal Childs (1887-1978)

The Neal Childs collection includes correspondence, contracts, procedural statements, drawings and scrapbooks documenting the landscape architect’s career.

Finding Aid

Neal Townley Childs’ career included work in forestry as well as commercial and residential landscape architecture. He worked for the U.S. Forest Service from 1911 through 1913 and was an assistant professor of forestry at the University of Nebraska in 1914. He headed Neal T. Childs Co. Landscape Architects and Consulting Foresters in San Francisco from 1915 through 1920, and returned to forestry in 1920, working as Chief Forester for the U.S. Leather Company and Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company. He worked as a landscape designer out of his home Oakholme in Atherton, California, and completed numerous residential projects in the Palo Alto area.

The Neal Childs collection includes correspondence, contracts, procedural statements, drawings and scrapbooks documenting the landscape architect’s career. Scrapbooks contain original photographs and clippings related to landscape architecture and garden structures, and are arranged by subject. Project records consist of specifications, plant lists, photographs, and one drawing and are primarily related to residential projects in the Palo Alto area.