Architect was influenced by travels in Asia
Hitchhiking across the country and boarding a tramp steamer to the Orient was unusual behavior for a young man raised in a Presbyterian minister's home in the Midwest.
Yet, the year that John Ormsbee Simonds spent among the people of Borneo and Tibet was the experience that shaped his career as a landscape architect.
Mr. Simonds, of Kilbuck, the founder of Environmental Planning & Design in Pittsburgh, died on Thursday, May 26, 2005, at his home. He was 92.
During his 65-year career, Mr. Simonds' local design accomplishments included Mellon Square, Equitable Plaza, the Civic Arena and Crawford Square. He also designed the Chicago Botanical Garden in Illinois.
"Dad took a year off from college and worked his way across the Pacific as a seaman," said his son, Todd Simonds. "He grew up in a strict Presbyterian environment -- no drinking or gambling. He wanted to break out and see the world.
"Dad jumped ship in Borneo, and for the next year he lived among the Tibetan mountain bandits and the Borneo head-hunters -- and survived.
"The sight of what had been accomplished by the Asians as far as the fundamental relationship between man and nature, and how they interacted with their land, was one of the determining factors in deciding his career.
"Unfortunately, Dad came down with malaria during this trip. When Dad wanted to enlist during World War II, they turned him down because he was still carrying strains of malaria."
The U.S. government, said Todd Simonds, used his father's expertise during the war as a civilian who designed many of the facilities that were being built to accommodate the military throughout the country.
The Depression also colored Mr. Simonds' life. In 1935, following graduation from Michigan State University, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and for a year worked to rehabilitate logged forests in Michigan.
"Those were hard years," Mr. Simonds' son said. "Dad never forgot how the preacher discounts at the local stores and a chicken or two dropped off at the manse by members of the congregation helped his family though the Depression."
Born in Jamestown, N.D., Mr. Simonds was one of five sons of Guy and Marguerite Ormsbee Simonds. His father served Presbyterian churches in Niles and Lansing, Mich.
In 1937, he enrolled in Harvard University's School of Design, where he studied under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. "Dad had several scholarships and managed an undergraduate fraternity house in order to pay for his tuition," his son said.
"Dad won a drawing award at Harvard, which included a trip to China and Japan. He visited the temples and shrines in China and Japan. He not only observed their landscaping, but also their architecture, which he admired."
In 1939, Mr. Simonds and his brother, Phillip, founded an architectural firm, Simonds and Simonds, which is now Environmental Planning and Design, in their apartment in Ben Avon Heights.
In 1943, he married Marjorie Todd, a resident of Ben Avon, who at the time was the assistant dean of women at the University of Pittsburgh.
"Dad credited Mom, who received her psychology degree from Swarthmore College, with editing his technical books, including 'Landscape Architecture.' It was the book that emerged from his 13 years on the faculty of the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University," his son said.
Besides his professional memberships that included the American Society of Landscape Architects, Mr. Simonds was a member of the Harvard Yale Princeton Club of Pittsburgh and the Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon.
Mr. Simonds is survived by his wife, Marjorie Todd Simonds; a son, Todd Simonds and his wife, Molly, of Ligonier, Westmoreland County; three daughters, Taye Townley, of Bellevue, Polly Saltet and her husband, Jan, of Hadley, Mass., and Leslie Allen and her husband, Jesse, of Slippery Rock, Butler County; and seven grandchildren.
Burial will be private. A memorial service will be scheduled at the Community Presbyterian Church.
Arrangements are being handled by the Thomas B. Devlin Funeral Home, Ross.
