Emmet Wemple; Landscape Architect on Major Projects

Emmet L. Wemple, internationally known Southern California landscape architect whose myriad projects included the grounds of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, UCLA and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace, has died. He was 75.

Wemple, who taught at USC from 1951 to 1988, died Wednesday in Los Angeles of complications after heart surgery.

“Emmet Wemple was a genius,” said Stephen D. Rountree, director of operations and planning for the J. Paul Getty Trust who worked with Wemple for more than two decades, “in creating gardens and public spaces which were exquisitely sensitive to Southern California conditions. He loved California’s native landscape and drew inspiration from it. . . . He was the dean of his profession in this region and will be sorely missed.”

The oft-lauded architect had designed the lines of trees and other grounds at the new Getty Center, which is visible from the San Diego Freeway and will open next year in Brentwood.

In Los Angeles, his other projects included the grounds and parks of downtown’s Angelus Plaza senior citizen housing, South Park, the Otis Parsons Design Institute, Paramount and Warner Bros. studios and Watt-Harris Hall at USC. He also planned the landscaping for Valencia Town Center and the Naval Medical Regional Center in San Diego.

Abroad, Wemple’s work included grounds for the American Embassy in Tokyo, the government center master plan in El Salvador and various children’s parks in Central America.

His work has been characterized as “lively” and “conceived with attention to cultural values and a sensitivity to the nature of the places in which the projects occur.”

Wemple was a stalwart activist in the Los Angeles Conservancy, Los Angeles Beautiful, the Los Angeles Urban Design Coalition and Project Restore for Los Angeles City Hall.

“Landscape architects give life to the city,” Wemple told The Times in 1989. “We’re interested in the total effect, the way all the bits and pieces of architecture and planning fit together to make a coherent social and physical environment that’s humane and lively. We provide the vital glue that binds all the elements together to make a livable metropolis.”

A staunch supporter of the city of Los Angeles, Wemple housed Emmet L. Wemple and Associates Landscape Architects in a 1927 two-story stucco building in the MacArthur Park area in 1972 and lovingly restored it, renting space to artists and suppliers. Vandalism, theft and assault forced him to move the firm--reluctantly--to a Pasadena high-rise in 1993.

Born in San Francisco, Wemple made Southern California his home and his garden. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts from USC and was revered by the school, earning the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the USC Architectural Guild in 1988, the Fred B. Olds Support Group Award in 1989 and the Alumni Merit Award in 1992. The school has established the Emmet L. Wemple Endowment for Landscape Architecture Education in his honor.

Wemple was president of the USC Architectural Guild, founding director of the school’s master of landscape architecture program and interim dean of architecture while heading the search for a new dean.

Wemple also received the California Council of Landscape Architecture Award for Leadership.

He is survived by his wife, Meguila Seno Wemple. She has asked that any memorial donations be made to the Emmet L. Wemple Endowment for Landscape Architecture Education at USC.

Services are pending.