University of California Seal

IN MEMORIAM

R. Burton Litton Jr.

Professor of Landscape Architecture, Emeritus

UC Berkeley

1918 – 2007

 

“Don’t do that” is an admonition Burt Litton used while teaching landscape architecture students to do watercolor sketches in his graduate course on the landscape provinces of California. He would point to a particular part of a student’s watercolor and exclaim that the student was doing something incorrectly, while at the same time encouraging them. His course Introduction to California Landscape Provinces was the mainstay of his teaching for almost 20 years at the University of California, Berkeley. He conceived of the course and the use of watercolor sketching as a means of helping landscape students to carefully observe and to really see the landscape by recording what they saw. The course is one of the most fondly remembered classes in the department because of Burt’s teaching and the experience of sketching and painting with him out-of-doors, away from the classroom. Burt was so dedicated to the course that he voluntarily continued to teach it for six years after he had retired from the University.

 

Burt Litton was born on April 9, 1918. He grew up on a ranch on the Russian River west of Healdsburg, California, and frequently remarked in later life that experience of that rural landscape was the basis for his love and appreciation of ordinary landscapes. Burt attended Santa Rosa Junior College before transferring to Berkeley to study landscape architecture. He completed his undergraduate degree in landscape architecture in 1941 and then went to Harvard University to study at the Graduate School of Design. Burt withdrew from the graduate program and volunteered for the Navy after the United States entered World War II. Because of his background in landscape architecture, he was assigned to work in a developing program in aerial photo interpretation. After completing special training in that field, he was stationed in Hawaii and later in the Aleutian Islands as a photointerpreter. His primary assignment was to convert the three-dimensional images derived from aerial photographs to drawings representing the landscape from beaches where amphibious landings were being planned. As a result of his ability to make accurate drawings, he was assigned the task of teaching his skill to other photointerpreters.

 

After the war, Burt entered the graduate program at Iowa State University, where he completed a Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1948. During his final year in that program he was asked to come to Berkeley to teach. His appointment at Berkeley started in 1948 and continued for 40 years until his retirement in 1988. Over the years he taught nearly every course in the department. His initial appointment was to teach plant materials, but other assignments included various design studios, landscape construction, grading and drainage, visual analysis, and his graduate course on the California landscape provinces. He served as department chair from 1972 to 1976. Burt was keenly interested in the campus landscape and was instrumental in convincing the chancellor of the need for a campus landscape committee, which was established in 1969 to review campus development and to protect the fragile qualities of the landscape. Burt was then asked to serve as the first chair of the committee.

 

In 1968 Burt was invited to join the U.S. Forest Service’s research division to conduct research into techniques for the visual analysis of forested landscapes. By reducing his teaching commitment to the University, he was able to work both for the University and the Forest Service for the next 20 years. His research was fundamental to the development of procedures used in visual analysis of landscapes for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. He also was involved in research for the visual management of forest landscapes in the Trinity Alps of northern California, the Sawtooth Wilderness in Idaho, lodgepole pine forests in Wyoming, and grassland areas in South Dakota.

 

Burt was elected a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1975. In 1982 he received a Senior Sabbatical Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1985 the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture presented him with their Award of Distinction. During his early years on the faculty at Berkeley, he conducted a small private design practice. His most notable public design work is his plan for the town square in Healdsburg, California. He was particularly pleased with this assignment because he grew up along the Russian River near Healdsburg.

 

Burt traveled widely in North America, Europe, and Asia. His travels often combined professional activities with landscape focused touring. A favorite activity was revisiting a landscape, such as Bryce Canyon or the Mojave Desert, in different seasons of the year to record the changing landscape in watercolor sketches.

 

Burt had a keen eye for the common landscape and encouraged his students, friends, and colleagues to gain an appreciation and a stewardship responsibility for ordinary landscapes. He is remembered by his friends for encouraging them to travel to his favorite places by saying, “You must go there.” He died on April 14, 2007.

 

 

Joe McBride

Russ Beatty