Greene & Greene: Masterworks

Greene & Greene: Masterworks

Bruce Smith and Alexander Vertikoff

c. 1998

The Charles Green House, Pasadena

• 1901 
• he called it Oakholm
• "home of the week" -- LA Times -- August 7, 2005
• the first of 11 Greene and Greene homes to be built in the Park Place Tract, which has the greatest concentration of the brothers' work in any neighborhood. The Gamble House, the James Culbertson House and the Duncan-Irwin House are among nearby Greene and Greene properties.
• Pasadena, near the arroyo 

The Culbertson House

• 1902
• on the edge of the arroyo
• Culbertson: one of the wealthy outsiders, an investor in Michigan lumber who wintered in Pasadena

The Darling House

• for Mary Reeve Darling
• Claremont, CA
• first commission outside of Pasadena

The Camp House

• 1904
• for Edgar Camp, a prominent lawyer in the midwest
• Grandview Avenue, Sierra Madre, a neighbor of Pasadena

The Reeve House

• 1904
• for Jennie A. Reeve, a relative of Mary Darling's
• only the second commission outside Pasadena
• booming seaside resort of Long Beach

The Robinson House

• 1905
• for lawyer-financier Henry Robinson, a close friend of Herbert Hoover's
• a member of the "banker's pool" that financed the 1920s boom in Los Angeles
• Greene was carrying out alterations to the home of Robinson's mentor, the millionaire David Tod Ford when it was asked to build next door for the Robinsons
• looks over the Arroyo Seco

The Garfield House

• 1904
• "home of the day" -- LA Times -- February 9, 2015
• 1001 Buena Vista St., South Pasadena, 91030
• see next entry

The Brandt-Serrurier House

• 1905
• Altadena
• for A. C. Brandt, a respected local contractor who had already worked on several Greene houses including the home they designed the previous year for Lucretia Garfield, the widow of the assassinated president
• Brandt did not move into the house; he immediately sold it to a wealthy Dutchman, Iwan Serrurier, the latter already familiar with the Greenes' work having hired them to design another house as a speculative venture
• the house was later moved across the stree

The Bentz House

• 1906
• for John Bentz, a wealthy small business owner
• Pasadena

The DeForest House

• 1906
• for Caroline DeForest
• lived there for only a short time before selling it to two sisters, Isabell Tabor and Agnes Tabor Vanderkloot
• 75 years later, 1986, heirs sold it

The Bolton House

• 1906
• Dr William and Alice Bolton; asked Greenes to design another house for them
• their earlier home was built in 1899
• new home to be on the shoulder of a slight hill overlooking Pasadena's city center
• Dr Bolton died suddenly; before the house was completed
• Alice rented out the house to Belle Barlow Bush
• sold in 1917 to James Culbertson's sisters, Cordelia, Kate, and Margaret, who had decided to move from their 1911 Greene and Greene home, a house twice the size
• new owners in the 1950s
• scheduled for demolition; saved when the City of Pasadena and the Pasadena Historical Society took an eleventh-hour stand

The Duncan-Irwin House

• original date not stated
• begins deep in the canyon that runs next to it
• Katherine Duncan probably had it moved to the site overlooking the arroyo about 1901
• 1906, new owern, Theodore Irwin

The Van Rossem-Neill House

• 1903
• young, well-to-do widow Josephine van Rossem commissioned the house as an investment property
• not far from Arroyo Terrace in Pasadena
• 1906, James Neill bought the house

The Blacker House

• 1907
• built for a wealthy lumber baron's family in Pasadena
• first of what the scholar Randell Makinson has called Greene and Greene's "ultimate bungalows"
• by 1947 both Robert and Nellie Blacker were gone
• a multimillionaire from Texas bought it for $12 million and started to remove the interior before the city of Pasadena stopped any more desecration and new owners renewed it/restored it to original house

The Ranney House

• 1907
• set back from the street on the corner of Pasadena's busy Orange Grove Boulevard and the quieter Arroyo Terrace
• Mary Ranney's house: the last of the cluster of Greene and Greene houses built in the Park Place Tract
• the area later dubbed Little Switzerland
• a suggestion of old Swiss, but also an intimation of Japan
• the client was a college-educated woman who had recently moved to Pasadena from Chicago with her parents and started working for the Greenes
• her name on two Greene and Greene homes; unprecedented (p. 138)

The Gamble House

• 1908
• the last of a number of homes in a small Pasadena neighborhood
• each house was individually -- uniquely -- designed for its owner
• the Gamble House was the last
• for the Cincinnati Gambles of the Procter and Gamble Company
• the only Greene and green house now open as a museum
• Mary, David, and two sons

The Spinks House

• 1909
• built by Henry when his older brother Charles went to England for seven months -- rest and relaxation
• similar to the nearby Crow-Crocker House built during the same period
• constructed on pasture land just two years after and a short walk down the street from teh Blacker House, the home for Margaret B. S. Clapham Spinks and the retired judge William Ward Spinks who had just moved from Victoria, Canada

The Pratt House

• 1909
• Ojai
• another Greene ultimate bungalow
• Charles Pratt was a wealthy New Yorker who was one of the founders of Standard Oil and a half owner of the nearby Foothills Hotel
• called his house Casa Barranca and used it for wintering in Califroina
• his wife, Mary, was the Vassar classmate of Caroline Thorsen and her sister, Nellie Blacker

The Thorsen House

• 1909
• now a restaurant?
• panoramic sweep of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge
• for William Thorsen, his father, a sea captain; who had left Norway at age 14 to sail as a cabin boy
• Thorsen  himself, a lumber baron, as his father had become; and his wife, Caroline
• Caroline, a daughter of one of the great lumbermen of Michigan
• for his second house in California, he turned to the Pasadena architects who had designed a home for his wife's sister, Nellie Blacker, and her lumber-baron husband, Robert Blacker
• the Thorsens lived there until their deat in 1942
• stone's throw from the University of California; furniture sold off
• bought by the Sigma Phi fraternity
• the fraternity has spearheaded a restoration and preservation campaign
• 1996: Sigma Phi and the Gamble House sponsored an exhibition that for the first time in more than a half century reunited the Greene and Greene-designed furniture with the house

The Anthony House

• 1909
• on Wilshire Boulevard
• by 1923 in danger of being torn down
• silent flm star Norman Kerry stepped into purchase it and had Henry Greene supervise a move to a quieter location in Beverly Hills
• Earle Anthony, the original owner, was a Packard dealer who later had dealerships in northern and southern California as well as several radio stations

The Culbertson Sisters House

• 1917
• the house for the three Culbertson sisters was too difficult for them to maintain; they had moved in in 1911, but sold it in 1917
• the new owner of the house was Mrs Dudley Allen; she was so impressed with the house, she went up to Carmel, CA, to see the Greenes about another house
• this was to be the last of the large commissions for the Greenes 
• it is not easily recognizable as a Greene house
• unlike the Blacker House across the street, the exterior is not redwood timbering and shingle with clinker brick and cobblestone, it was constructed of earth-toned Gunite, a stuccolike concret material applied with a pressure gun; the roof is of Ludowici-Celadon porcelain tiles glazed in variations of green with the occasioanl dash of burnt red

The Fleishhackler House

• 1911
• for Mortimer and Bella Fleishhackler; he, a paper company executive
• looking to build in Woodside, south of San Francisco

The Ware House

• 1913
• Pasadena
• one of only two houses the Greenes designed in 1913
• the company would last another decade but the brothers were growing apart; Charles wanted to be a writer; and Henry was left to run the office
• what work emerged, was mostly Henry's 
• for Henry Ware, from Winettka, IL
• to Pasadena for health reasons
• the Greene's Phillips house built in 1906 was right across the street
• it recalled James Culbertson's home from 1902

The Ladd House

• 1913
• Ojai
• Charles was working on the Fleishhacker House in Ojai
• Henry left in charge of the Ladd House, just like he was alone with the Ware House
• the Ware House recalled what they had known in Boston, but the Ladd House returned to their rustic motif

The James House

• 1916 Charles Greene moves to Carmel where he spends the rest of his life
• did more work there than just this one house, but this would be his masterpiece
• patron, D. L. James, an aspiring playwright; wealthy merchant of fine imported china, glass, silver; lived in Kansas City and only came out to Carmel in the summer; both he and Charles Greene wanted an isolated, bohemian getaway
• it looks like a Mary Colter abode; it is incredible

The Charles Greene Studio

• Charles moves to Carmel in 1916
• rents until 1920 when he has own, new, little redwood house
• 1923, Greene and Greene dissolved; at age 54 moves into his own studio