News Release - The Huntington Acquires the Greene & Greene Archives in a Gift from the Gamble House Conservancy

The extensive research archives, housed at The Huntington since 1987, will enhance the Library’s strong holdings in Southern California architecture.

SAN MARINO, Calif.—The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens has acquired the archives of legendary Arts and Crafts architects Greene & Greene. 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, the nonprofit organization that oversees the iconic 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. Institutional documents pertaining to the Gamble House as a museum will be retained by the Conservancy.

“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 Greene & Greene Archives will be an important addition to the Library’s strong and diverse holdings in Southern California architecture, which includes the papers of Wallace Neff, Roger S. Hong, and Samuel Lunden; the firm of Morgan, Walls & Clements; and landscape architects Florence Yoch and Lucile Council, among others. 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.”

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. Over the years, more than 400 additional donors have contributed to the collection, most importantly the families of Charles and Henry Greene themselves, who have donated personal correspondence, family photographs, drawings and sketches, and numerous other materials. Other clients and later owners of Greene & Greene buildings have generously given drawings and other records, and additional collections within the archives document Southern California architecture more broadly.

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.