FAIRHOPE, Ala. — William L. “Buddy” Richmond IV, a Fairhope architect with a vision of what the downtown could become and who helped make it happen, died March 22, 2008. He was 72.

“Buddy was such an artist in everything he did,” said Presiding Judge James H. Reid, of the 28th Judicial Circuit in Bay Minette. “He was not interested in just building things for the purpose of making money. He wanted them to be beautiful as much as functional.”

Richmond was born Dec. 26, 1935, in Starksville, Miss. He served in the U.S. Navy and graduated from Auburn University in 1962 with a degree in architecture.

During the 1960s, he worked in Sarasota, Fla., with the prominent architect, Edward J. “Tim” Seibert, who began his professional career with the world-renowned architect, Paul Rudolph, who later became dean of the Yale School of Architecture.

“He had enormous talent,” Seibert said Friday from his home in Boca Grande, Fla. “I’m glad to hear that he moved someplace where he could use it. I’ve read about Fairhope and heard it’s a beautiful place.”

In 1971, Richmond and his family traveled from Sarasota to Starksville for Thanksgiving and stopped by Fairhope on the way, staying at the Baron’s Inn.

“Next time he came through the area, he stopped by on his own,” his son, William Labon Richmond V, said this week. “I had a friend who later told me he saw this man downtown holding his hands up like a picture frame and looking through them.”

Richmond said his friend asked the man what he was doing and Labon’s father said: “I’ve got a vision for Fairhope, and I’m going to change this place.”

“Not long after that we moved here, and he started doing it,” Labon said Thursday at his parent’s house in Fairhope.

“Then he ran into me,” said John Bethea, one of Richmond’s closest friends. He sat between Labon and Barbara Richmond, Labon’s stepmother. “I got into the real estate business, and we did a couple buildings together. People started seeing what he could do and asked him to do their work. Then he got together with Tim (Kant) and it kind of escalated from there.”

Bethea said the first building they did together was at 14 S. Section St. That design with a brick front and brick sidewalk set the standard for all that followed, he said.

Bethea has his real estate office in one of the projects they worked on together at the corner of Fairhope Avenue and Church Street.

“It won a city beautification award like a lot of the projects we did,” he said. “He was the one who deserved all those awards.”

When Richmond moved to Fairhope in the early 1970s, the town looked much different than it does today.

“At the time, the downtown streets weren’t anything that you could write home about,” said Mayor Tim Kant, who met Richmond in the early 1980s when Kant was the city’s horticulturist. “He drew up a rendering of all that you see now, with the flowers and trees on the corners and the brick sidewalks, and presented it to the city. We didn’t have a lot of money then, and he donated all his time and energy.”

Kant said Richmond redid the Welcome Center and helped with the fountain at the municipal pier and the James P. Nix Center.

“It just goes on and on,” Kant said. “He always had an eye for Fairhope. He was the one with the main vision to see how it was all put together.”

A memorial service for Richmond held at the James P. Nix Center on March 28 was attended by 200 to 300 people, said Kant who delivered the eulogy.

Richmond’s three sons all live in the Fairhope area: William Labon IV in Fairhope, Sean in Silverhill, and Dallas in Fairhope. His stepdaughter, Kate Baumer, lives in the house in Fairhope with her mother, Barbara.

“Buddy didn’t need an architect scale,” Barbara said. “He could whip out a drawing on a napkin to perfect scale.”

In the backyard of the Richmond house is a building her husband built a few years ago.

“I call it Buddy’s hut,” Barbara said, admiring the tall room with timbers across the ceiling and a large sitting area for friends.

Back in the house a number of drawings and paintings that Richmond did hang on the walls. “Buddy was an artist,” she said. “He didn’t see things like other people. He was always thinking. Buddy marched to the beat of his own drummer.”

Bethea said that he has the last drawing that Buddy did, a design for a new building on Fairhope Avenue between Church and Section streets that will have shops in it and connect to De La Mare.

“Buddy was the one who planted the seed for Fairhope,” Bethea said. “He’s the one who had the vision.”