Florence Yoch papers

The collection contains materials documenting the life and work of landscape architect Florence Yoch on approximately 100 of her over 250 projects, most undertaken with partner Lucile Council. There are approximately 2700 photographs; approximately 250 drawings and renderings, including 163 rolled drawings; approximately 600 postcards; office records; travel journals; research materials; writings; and artifacts. The materials date from 1869 to 2013, with the bulk of the collection relating to Yoch's work from 1918 until shortly before her death in 1972.

The collection also includes research and administrative files of James J. Yoch, Florence Yoch's cousin, comprising photographs, approximately 2500 slides, notes, articles, bibliographies, correspondence, and publicity materials, for his book, Landscaping the American Dream: The Gardens and Film Sets of Florence Yoch, 1890-1972 (Harry N. Abrams, Inc./Sagapress, Inc., New York, 1989) and for the exhibition he curated with Eric T. Haskell of Scripps College, "Personal Edens: The Gardens and Film Sets of Florence Yoch," which opened at the Huntington Library in 1992 before traveling to New York, Milwaukee, and San Diego. Items from the collection that were featured in the exhibition have been noted in Scope and Contents notes.

Major projects represented in the collection include landscape design for residences, including those of Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Bishop (Il Vescovo estate, Bel Air), Ira and Margaret Bryner (Pasadena), Charles and Adelaide Davis (Pasadena), Mrs. David E. Park (Montecito), Mary Stewart (Il Brolino estate, Montecito), and Reese and Margaret Taylor (San Marino and Pasadena), along with work for film luminaries including Dorothy Arzner, George Cukor, David O. Selznick, and Jack Warner; for institutions and organizations including the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena) and the Women's Athletic Club (Los Angeles); and for movie sets for The Garden of Allah (1936); Romeo and Juliet (1936); The Good Earth (1937); Gone with the Wind (1939); and How Green Was My Valley (1941).

Renderings include those of landscape architect Katherine Bashford, who served as an apprentice with Yoch in the early 1920s and who illustrated Yoch's plan for the courtyard of Vroman's Bookstore and the pool garden for Mrs. Howard Huntington's residence, and artist Harrison Clarke, whom Yoch hired to illustrate Yoch and Council's design of the B. F. Johnston Botanical Garden in Los Mochis, Mexico, among other projects.

Project records also include topical files, comprising chiefly photographs showing elements of Yoch's work including millstones, benches, and pavements and pebble design. In addition to project records, which were often found in ornately hand-lettered portfolios, the collection features personal papers including a diary, correspondence, and photographs and drawings of Yoch, Council, Yoch's family, and residences in Laguna Beach, Pasadena, San Marino, and Carmel (the latter nicknamed "Lazycroft Cottage"). Professional papers include correspondence; writings by Yoch, among them a typescript of a chapter for a proposed book; research notes; reference and subject files including articles, clippings, books and booklets, catalogs, and periodicals; and photograph albums containing prints, snapshots, and postcards depicting landscape and garden features from Europe, Mexico, and Northern Africa.

Office records include a client index; an office account book with detailed information on materials, features, and projects; garden instructions to clients; presentation photographs; an album of snapshots organized according to an alphanumeric classification system employed by Yoch and Council; publications about Yoch and Council's work; and plant and travel notebooks. Many of the materials in the collection contain plant lists, for example from Los Angeles and North Africa. The collection also includes items used and collected by Yoch and Council, some during their travels in Europe.

The collection features the work of photographers including Fred R. Dapprich, George D. Haight, William Aplin, Hiller and Hiller Studios, William M. Clarke, Don Brown, and many others.

Except for photocopies of correspondence between Yoch, David O. Selznick, and others regarding Yoch and Council's landscape fabrication for the film set of The Garden of Allah, the collection contains no documentation of contracts or agreements with clients.