Charles and Henry Greene were brothers and partners in the architectural firm Greene and Greene that flourished in the early
twentieth century in Pasadena, California. They created a distinctive residential architecture, now known as California Craftsman,
designing houses mostly in Pasadena. In some cases they also designed interior fixtures and furniture to complement the architecture.
The firm, founded in 1894, dissolved in 1922. Even before the formal dissolution Charles and Henry each created independent
works and also occasionally collaborated after the firm was dissolved. Although celebrated in their own time, the Greenes
were largely forgotten after 1920. Their work was re-discovered in the late 1940s by modernist architects and their admirers,
and one of their major works, The Gamble House, opened as a museum in 1966. The rediscovery of the Greenes’ work led to a
new appreciation of the bungalow and to a national revival of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Charles Sumner Greene (1868 - 1957) and Henry Mather Greene (1870 – 1954) were born in Cincinnati, Ohio. The family soon moved
to St. Louis, where Charles and Henry grew up. In the mid-1880s, they entered the Manual Training School of Washington University.
The school stressed work with the hands as a way to train young people to enter the professions and industry. In 1888, the
brothers headed east to Boston, where they enrolled in the two-year architecture course for “Special Students” at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. After apprenticing at various Boston firms, the brothers moved to Pasadena, California, to join their
parents; they opened their firm in Pasadena in 1894. The first decade of the twentieth century saw the development of the
firm’s distinctive California Craftsman residential architecture, inspired by the theories of the Arts and Crafts movement,
as well as New England Shingle Style houses, European and English architecture, and Asian art and design. Houses for James
Culbertson (1902 and later), Mary Darling (1903), Theodore Irwin (1906), Robert R. Blacker (1907), David Gamble (1908), William
Thorsen (1908), and Charles Pratt (1910) established the firm’s reputation. Charles moved to Carmel in 1916 to pursue the
life of an artist and writer, while Henry remained in Pasadena; the firm was officially dissolved in 1922. Each brother produced
works independently, Charles designing the D. L. James house (1918 and later) and Henry designing the Thomas Gould, Jr. and
Walter Richardson houses (1920, 1929 respectively). Although their work was largely forgotten between the wars, the Greenes
lived to see renewed recognition of their achievements after World War II, when they were honored by the American Institute
of Architects, Southern California Chapter (1948) and by the national AIA (1952).
195 boxes, 46 flat file folders
Requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection must be submitted in writing to the
Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Greene and Greene Archives as the owner of the physical items
and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Collection is open for research by appointment. Portions of the collection are available online on the Greene and Greene Virtual
Archives Web site: http://www.usc.edu/dept/architecture/greeneandgreene. For more information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org.