Charles S. Greene Photograph Collection | Collections | The Huntington

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Visual Materials

Charles S. Greene Photograph Collection

Description: Contains Charles Greene family photographs, including children, parents, sisters of Alice Gordon White Greene, and members of Henry Greene's family. Boxes 14 and 15 contain photos taken by Charles in Europe (1901) and England (1901, 1909). Flat File Folder 39 (Series III.A.)contains 2 panoramic photographs of attendees at the 1911 AIA meeting in San Francisco, and 3 prints of a photograph of attendees at the 1948 AIA dinner honoring the Greenes in Los Angeles.
Type: Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)
Date: 1850-1965
Call number: Subseries F.
Provenance: Gift of The Gamble House Conservancy, July 2021. In 1968, the Greene and Greene Library (later the Greene and Greene Archives) was established to bring together drawings, photographs, and other records of the Greenes' work. The core of the initial collection was the gift by David and Mary Gamble of drawings and photographs of The Gamble House. Subsequently more than 400 donors contributed to the collection, most importantly the families of Charles and Henry Greene, who donated personal correspondence, family photographs, drawings and sketches, and numerous other materials. Besides the Greene and Gamble families, other clients and later owners of Greene and Greene buildings gifted drawings and other records. The Greene and Greene Collection also contains a research collection on Greene and Greene, comprised of copies of original materials from other institutions and other secondary materials. The Greene and Greene collection has physically resided at The Huntington Library since 1987. However, during that time it remained the property of and was administered by the Greene and Greene Archives of The Gamble House, School of Architecture, University of Southern California until 2019 when ownership was transferred to the Gamble House Conservancy. In July 2021, The Huntington acquired the collection from the Gamble House Conservancy.

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Henry M. Greene Photograph Collection
Visual Materials
Contains family photographs, including children, parents and members of Charles Greene's family. Boxes 16-20 contain family photograph albums. Box 16 contains a family photo album given in 1884 to Lelia Mather Greene by her mother-in-law. The album in Box 20 contains photographs taken on outings in the mountains above Pasadena in the 1890s. See also Flat File Folder 39 (Series III. A.) for AIA award photographs.
Subseries G.
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Henry M. Greene Personal Correspondence, including his collection of family records
Visual Materials
Box 6 contains materials regarding the marriage of Henry to Emeline Dart in 1899, scattered correspondence (1912-1954), and notes, records and ephemera documenting Henry's trip to the East coast in 1912-1913. There is also a notebook, two personal account books (1899-1903 and 1911-1917), and award certificates from the AIA in 1948 and 1952. At the end of Box 6 are family materials of the Greenes, including the "Memo of the Timber wanted for the Steeple in Providence 1775" by Thomas Sumner, a typescript account of Thomas Sumner Greene's experiences in the Civil War and records of the Greene family.
Subseries E.
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Charles S. Greene Family and Personal Correspondence
Visual Materials
Box 3 contains letters to and from the Greene family, including correspondence and ephemera documenting Charles' marriage to Alice Gordon White in 1901 and their honeymoon trip to Europe. Also included are scattered letters from Thomas Sumner Greene; from Alice's sisters, Martha and Jane; from Henry Mather Greene, and from the children of Alice and Charles. There is also a series of letters from Alice and the children to Charles while he was on visits to Pasadena in 1918 and 1919. A small group of letters is addressed to Alice Greene from friends and family (1901-1960), as are a few to eldest son Nathaniel Patrickson Greene, and one to daughter Bettie Greene. Several of the letters in this family group concern disposition of Charles' papers after his death.
Subseries B.
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Book Collection of Charles S. Greene
Visual Materials
Charles Greene had a large collection of books that reflected his interests in art, architecture, furniture, pottery, landscape gardening, Asian art and culture, ancient history, and photography. Many of his books were donated to the University of California at Berkeley; about 70 of the finest books were sold at the California International Book Fair in 1993. The collection includes 10 boxes of books, including a few on Japanese and Indian art, as well as a collection of novels by Lafcadio Hearn.
Subseries L.
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Photographs by William R. Current
Visual Materials
William Current grew up in Pasadena and began photographing the work of Greene and Greene as a teenager. He received a Guggenheim Foundation grant in the 1970s, resulting in a comprehensive documentation of all of the Greenes' work that was made accessible to him. He also traveled to the Avery Library at Columbia University and to the Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley to photograph many of the drawings (Avery) and historic photographs of the houses (Berkeley). The project became a traveling exhibition and a book, produced in collaboration with his wife Karen Current. Box 124 contains the 1950s photographs. Most of the others appear to date from the 1970s. Negatives and contact prints of images not printed enrich the collection with extra images of the buildings, architectural drawings and historic photographs, making it a valuable resource for study as well as an aesthetic treasure. Also included are a few photographs documenting other Arts and Crafts work, such as the Keyes bungalow in Altadena and the work of Buffalo Metalworks. Karen Current Sinsheimer and Jennifer Current donated more than 1600 original prints and negatives by Current to the Greene and Greene Archives in 2005.
Subseries F
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Scrapbooks: Greene and Greene, Charles, Henry
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.
Subseries H.