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Architects Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, 1947. Photograph by Cole Weston. Courtesy of the Cole Weston family. Greene & Greene Archives, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
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The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens has acquired the archives of architects Greene & Greene according to a news release.
The trove of approximately 6,000 items includes design drawings and photographs, business correspondence, family papers, notebooks, scrapbooks, artifacts, and reference books from the libraries of brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene.
A gift from the Gamble House Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that oversees the 1908 American Craftsman home in Pasadena designed by the Greenes, the archives have been housed at The Huntington since 1987. Until recently, the collection was owned and administered by the USC School of Architecture, which previously operated the Gamble House museum under an agreement established in 1966. USC transferred responsibility for the landmark home to the Gamble House Conservancy in 2020.
“We are thrilled by this gift from the Gamble House Conservancy,” said Sandra Ludig Brooke, the Avery Director of the Library at The Huntington. “The depth and range of these materials offer incredible resources to scholars, particularly those studying the golden age of Los Angeles architecture in the early 20th century, and to those with a practical interest in Greene & Greene, including property owners and preservationists.”
Charles Sumner Greene (1868–1957) and Henry Mather Greene (1870–1954) grew up in St. Louis and received their early architectural training and apprenticeship in Boston. After moving west to Pasadena in 1893, they opened their own practice and established a reputation designing residential projects, collaborating with highly skilled craftspeople and artists and forging a new path for American architecture.
The Greene & Greene Archives were established in 1968 to bring together drawings, photographs, and other records of the Greenes’ work. The core of the initial collection was a gift by the Gamble family of materials related to the now-famous residence commissioned by David and Mary Gamble.
The archives also complement a permanent Greene & Greene exhibition, established in 1990 in partnership with the Gamble House, that explores the breadth of the brothers’ artistic vision. Highlights of that installation in The Huntington’s American art galleries include the reassembled stairway from the Arthur A. Libby House (1905) and a re-creation of the dining room of the Henry M. Robinson House (1905–07) with the original furniture.
A finding aid to the archives is available on the Online Archive of California database. Research inquiries can be directed to reference@huntington.org.
