Rare Books
Epic of Bolinas
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Visual Materials
The Greene and Greene Collection contains a wide variety of materials, from Greene and Greene ancestor, architect/engineer James Sumner's "Memo of the Timber wanted for the Steeple in Providence," dated 1775, and a diary of a European grand tour from 1829 to 1931 by an English ancestor of Charles Greene's wife, Alice, to drawings and photographs of Greene and Greene works from the time of construction through the close of the 20th century. The bulk of the collection dates from 1889 to 1975. Photographs comprise most of the records documenting their architecture. There is a small number of architectural drawings; most of the firm's drawings are housed at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, New York City, with a smaller collection of drawings from the estate of Charles Greene at the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley. The collection is organized into four series: I. Personal papers, II. Office records, III. Job (project) records (including furniture), and IV. Related research materials. In general, the papers and records of both brothers have been kept together for the periods in which they were living together as students and young men, and for the period when they were partners in the firm of Greene and Greene. Within each series, the organization follows the separate lives and works of each brother from the dates at which they diverge. Although the collection has been assembled from many different sources, most items have a unique accession number identifying the donor, so that the researcher can easily identify the source of most documents.
archGreene
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Manuscripts
The collection primarily consists of incoming correspondence to the Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee law firm from their various clients and legal colleagues. The content of the cases represented is mainly civil, most heavily focused on divorces, estate settlements, and patents, as well as some correspondence on Mission Indian land cases, suits against railroads, water rights, and mining disputes. There are also a variety of advertisements from publishers, typewriter merchants, and other business connections, as well as a very few outgoing letters from Wells, Van Dyke, & Lee and limited personal correspondence. In addition to facts regarding specific cases, the letters provide an overview of general social issues, law fees and practices, property laws, patent laws, the status of women, child custody laws, divorce laws, and prevailing views of divorce in 1880s California. Some notable correspondents include Lucky Baldwin, theologian John Alonzo Fisher, American Bar Association co-founder Henry Hitchcock, California governor Henry Harrison Markham, US Secretary of State James Davis Porter, Coca-Cola Bottling Company founder B.F. Thomas, and Lucky Baldwin's ranch manager Hiram Unruh. The collection also includes the Superior Court Registry of Actions, Vol. 3 (1886-1888).
WVL 556.