Glendale, California Biographies

        Burt Richardson, who is a contractor and builder with offices at 1127 Walter P. Story building, Los Angeles, and doing business under the name of the Richardson Building & Construction Company, is a son of Elkanah W. and Ella (Weekly) Richardson. He was born February 16, 1896, on the Santa Eulalia Ranch which was purchased, in 1868, by his grandfather, William C. B. Richardson, a sketch of whose life appears elsewhere in this volume, as does that of his father and mother.

        Mr. Richardson attended the grammar school of Tropico, after which he graduated from the Glendale Union High School with the class of 1914. He attended Mt. Tampalias Military Academy for one year, which was followed by two years at Brown and Nichols Preparatory School at Cambridge, Massachusetts, before entering Yale University, from which institution he graduated with the class of 1918, with the degree of Ph. B. While a student at Yale, he sailed to France and enlisted in the French army on March 21, 1917, in T. M. 133. He served with that contingent for nearly a year, then returned to America and joined the Naval Aviation, being Flight Adjutant of Flight 34, until he was mustered out of service January 1, 1919, and was in the Reserve Corps until September 1, 1919. As Flight Adjutant he was stationed at Boston Institute of Technology and at North Island, San Diego. He returned to Yale in January 1919, to complete his studies.

        Mr. Richardson secured a position in the office of Civil Engineer Campbell of the United States Steel Corporation at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he remained for a year, after which he came to Los Angeles and was employed by the W. A. Heitman Construction Company as assistant superintendent on the Young Men’s Christian Association building until that building was completed. In January, 1922, he opened an office in the Story Building, Los Angeles, and has since been doing a general contracting business under the name of the Richardson Building & Construction Company, of which he is the owner and proprietor. His first contracts of importance were an addition to the Hollywood High School, the Cherimoya Grammar School, the Soto Street School, the Burbank High School, and the Glendale Municipal Plunge. He is Knight Templar Mason, and a member of the Glendale American Legion, and in Los Angeles is a member of the University Club. He belongs to the Colony Club of Yale University, and to the Fraternity Beta Theta Pi. He is a member of the Associated General Contractors of America, of New York City, the National Geographical Society and the Society for the Advancement of Science, of Washington, D. C., the Old Colony International Club of New York City, and the Los Angeles Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution.