The founding four—David A. Wallace, Ian L. McHarg, William H. Roberts, and Thomas A. Todd—as faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, were encouraged to undertake part-time consulting services as a means to teach from practical experience. With this in mind, Wallace and McHarg solicited a planning assignment for 70 square miles of rural land in Baltimore County, Maryland, the Greenspring and Worthington valleys. Soon after “Plan for the Valleys,” the young practice won another assignment, a master plan for the redevelopment of the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
These professional contracts brought Bill Roberts and Tom Todd together with Wallace and McHarg to form an ongoing multidisciplinary firm with four equal partners.
