Emerson Knight (1882-1960)

Emerson Knight was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1882 and moved to Los Angeles when he was nine years old. His father, William Henry Knight, was an author, astronomer, and California pioneer. In 1913, Knight embarked on a walking tour of England and studied art in Paris. He returned to Los Angeles in 1916, but soon indulged his trekking desire by walking to Monterey, stopping at the California missions along the way. He began supervising landscape developments for Cammillo Fancheschi in Santa Barbara, and in 1917 became an associate of Mark Daniels, a San Francisco landscape engineer. Knight took charge of 80 acres of the J. Cheever Cowdin estate in Hillsborough (south of San Francisco), and designed gardens and country estates in San Francisco and the peninsula. In 1918, Mark Daniels left his office, including most of his equipment and books, to Knight. In the late 1920s, Knight traveled to Mexico where he did studies for the Mexican National Highway Commission regarding areas that might be developed into parklands and historic monuments. He was awarded a diploma as an honorary member of the Sociedad Forestal Mexicana. Upon returning to the United States, Knight worked for the Save-the-Redwoods League, the Monterey City Planning Commission, the California State Park Commission, and the National Park Service. He was elected as a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and established the San Francisco headquarters at his office so that the Society could qualify for representation in the San Francisco Federation of Arts. He was involved in the plan for the preservation of historic Monterey and worked on park surveys, including one with Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. Outdoor theaters played a major role in Knight's career. In 1924 he oversaw the completion of a garden theater on the Max Cohn estate, Little Brook Farm, in Los Gatos. He designed the Woodland Theater in Hillsborough, and collaborated with Regua and Jackson on the Mount Helix theater outside San Diego. Knight is probably best known for his design of the Mountain Theatre on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. Planning for the project began in the late 1920s, but progress was slow until 1934 when Knight convinced the National Park Service to get involved. (Knight was working as an inspector for the Park Service at the time.) The Civilian Conservation Corp was then engaged to work on the theater, which was completed in 1938. Knight's design for the theater was intended to blend into the natural environment, using natural elements as much as possible. Large boulders were used for seats, trees and bushes were transported to the site to create natural boundaries for the stage, and drinking fountains were built of indigenous rock. In the 1940s, Emerson Knight suffered a period of ill health, but still wrote articles and poetry. He served as associate editor for The Architect and Engineer magazine for 11 years, and was a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Commonwealth Club. He died in 1960.

Source: Dean Luckhart. Emerson Knight: Landscape Architect 1882-1960. Paper for L.A. 2, University of California, Berkeley, 1962.