William Wurster
Encyclopedia
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and at MIT, best known for his residential designs in California.
Biography
Wurster was born on 20th October, 1895 in Stockton, CaliforniaStockton, California
Stockton, California, the seat of San Joaquin County, is the fourth-largest city in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. With a population of 291,707 at the 2010 census, Stockton ranks as this state's 13th largest city...
. His family encouraged him to observe, read and draw but Wurster often admitted later in life, to holding more of an an intellectual gift, rather than a drawing gift. As a child, he held a close relationship with his father, a banker who, on bank holidays and weekends, would take Wurster to observe the life of the town to show him how it functioned. This, Wurster later reflected, was to show him the workings, rather than the structures of the city.
During his years at Stockton Public High School, Wurster worked in the office of Edgar B. Brown, an englishman known for designing the Stockton Hotel and the Children's Home of Stockton, who was often regarded as one of Stockton's most influential architects. While there, he acted as an office boy, drawing plans, making measured drawings and doing the blueprinting, allowing his early interests in architecture.
Once graduating from high school in 1912, Wurster's parents strongly believed he should acquire a university education and encouraged him to attend the architecture school at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, which was headed, at the time, by founding director and renowned architect John Galen Howard
John Galen Howard
John Galen Howard was an American architect.He is best known for his work as the supervising architect of the Master Plan for the University of California, Berkeley campus, and for founding the University of California's architecture program...
. Wurster enrolled at the university in 1913, receiving a classical Beaux Arts education from notable Berkley teachers such as Warren Perry and William Hays
William Hays
William Hays may refer to:* William Hays , American Civil War Union general* Will H. Hays, Movie censor*William Hercules Hays , U.S...
. While there, Wurster joined the Sigma Chi
Sigma Chi
Sigma Chi is the largest and one of the oldest college Greek-letter secret and social fraternities in North America with 244 active chapters and more than . Sigma Chi was founded on June 28, 1855 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio when members split from Delta Kappa Epsilon...
fraternity, where he was taught both to get on with people and express himself.
When a physical ailment kept Wurster from voluntary military service in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he studied marine engineering at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and joined the merchant marine in 1918. In 1919, once he had completed a year's tour of duty in the South Pacific, he returned to the University to graduate with honors in architecture.
Following his graduation, Wurster briefly apprenticed in the office of John Reid Jr., a San Francisco architect who worked mainly on schools, before Wurster became the architectural designer for Charles Dean
Charles Dean
Charles "Charlie" Dean was the brother of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Democracy for America Chairman Jim Dean and political activist Bill Dean. In 1974, Charlie, who had been traveling through southeast Asia at the time, was captured and killed by Pathet Lao guerrillas...
in 1920. For the next two years, he worked designing the city of Sacramento's water filtration plant. During this time, he also worked independently, designing several small residences. In April 1922, he became a registered architect within California. Following this, Wurster embarked on a tour of Europe, where he encountered art and design he had previously only known through books, before returning to the United States in 1923 and heading to New York where he joined the office of , who were known for their work on the John D. Rockefeller Estate at Pocantico Hills and Otto Kahn's château at Cold Spring Harbor. In 1924 William Adams Delano
William Adams Delano
William Adams Delano , an American architect, was a partner with Chester Holmes Aldrich in the firm of Delano & Aldrich. The firm worked in the Beaux-Arts tradition for elite clients in New York City, Long Island and elsewhere, building townhouses, country houses, clubs, banks and buildings for...
lent Wurster money to open his own office and he returned to the Bay Area to open it in the Hotel Whitecotton in Berkeley.
Wurster remained strongly associated, throughout his forty-five year career with the Bay Area and its regional style, along with Wurster's mentor Bernard Maybeck
Bernard Maybeck
Bernard Ralph Maybeck was a architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was a professor at University of California, Berkeley...
, the landscape architect Thomas Church
Thomas Dolliver Church
Thomas Dolliver Church , called "Dolliver" by his family and "Tommy" by his friends, was a landscape architect.- Life :...
, and fellow architect Joseph Esherick
Joseph Esherick
Joseph Esherick was an American architect.Esherick was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937, Esherick set up practice in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1953 and taught at University of California, Berkeley for many years...
. Wurster designed hundreds of California houses in the 1920s through the 1940s using indigenous materials and a direct, simple style suited to the climate. His 1928 Gregory Farmhouse in Scotts Valley, California
Scotts Valley, California
Scotts Valley is a small city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, about thirty miles south of downtown San Jose and six miles north of Monterey Bay, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 11,580...
is regarded as the prototypical ranch-style house
Ranch-style house
Ranch-style houses is a domestic architectural style originating in the United States. First built in the 1920s, the ranch style was extremely popular amongst the booming post-war middle class of the 1940s to 1970s...
, and a direct influence on the subsequent development of the Northwest Regional style of John Yeon
John Yeon
John Yeon was an American architect in Portland, Oregon, in the twentieth century. He is regarded as one of the early practitioners of the Northwest Regionalist Style of Modernism...
and Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi
Pietro Belluschi was an American architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings....
. In 1930, Wurster hired his first long-term employee, Floyd Comstock, setting the trend of the Wurster office became the training ground of many generations of architects who worked within the firm during its life.
In 1940, Wurster married Catherine Bauer
Catherine Bauer Wurster
Catherine Krause Bauer Wurster was a leading member of a small group of idealists who called themselves "housers" because of their commitment to improving housing for low-income families...
, an influential figure in her own right in the field of public housing
Public housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...
. He met Bauer attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design
Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design is a graduate school at Harvard University offering degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design.-History:...
, both taking classes from the German Socialist city planner Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner (architect)
Martin Wagner was a German architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin.- Germany :...
.
Wurster's graduate studies at Harvard were interrupted when he was appointed dean of the architectural and planning school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1945, a position he held for five years. Both Bauer and Wurster withstood accusations of disloyalty from the California Tenney Committee during the Red Scare of the late 1940s.
Also in 1945, Wurster co-founded the firm Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons. In 1950, he was named dean of the UC Berkeley Architecture school. In 1959, he orchestrated the creation of the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
The College of Environmental Design, also known as the or simply is one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. The school is located in Wurster Hall on the southeast corner of the main UC Berkeley campus...
, which brought the three schools of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning into one organization. He served as its dean until his retirement in 1963 for health reasons. Wurster Hall is named in his and his wife's honor.
Among Wurster's many colleagues during his long career was the Architectural Photographer Morley Baer
Morley Baer
Morley Baer , an American photographer and teacher, was born in Toledo, Ohio. His parents, Clarence Theodore Baer and Blanche Evelyn Schwetzer Baer brought up Morley with a tradition of old world customs and mid-West values. Baer learned basic commercial photography in Chicago but subsequently...
, with whom he had a life-long professional association and personal friendship, to whom he sold his first house in Berkeley's Greenwood Common, and for whom he designed a house/studio on the cliffs of Garrapata south of Carmel.
He was elected a Fellow
FAIA
Fellow of the American Institute of Architects is a postnomial, designating an individual who has been named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects...
of the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
(AIA) in 1954, his firm received the AIA's third Architecture Firm Award
Architecture Firm Award
The Architecture Firm Award is the highest honor that The American Institute of Architects can bestow on an architecture firm for consistently producing distinguished architecture.Prior recipients of the AIA Architecture Firm Award include:...
in 1965, and he personally the AIA Gold Medal
AIA Gold Medal
The AIA Gold Medal is awarded by the American Institute of Architects conferred "by the national AIA Board of Directors in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture."...
for Lifetime Achievement in 1969. Among Wurster's students was the award-winning architect John Desmond
John Desmond
John Jacob Desmond was an American architect in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who designed such public buildings as the Baton Rouge River Center, the Louisiana State University Student Union, Bluebonnet Swamp Interpretive Center, Louisiana Arts and Sciences Center, Louisiana State Archives, the...
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge is the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is located in East Baton Rouge Parish and is the second-largest city in the state.Baton Rouge is a major industrial, petrochemical, medical, and research center of the American South...
. Jim Webb, who taught at the University of North Carolina and was an influential architect in Chapel Hill, worked with Wurster for a while.
Work
- Stern HallStern Hall (Berkeley)Stern Hall is an all-female residence hall at the University of California, Berkeley. It was built in 1942 on a $258,000 grant from Rosalie Meyer Stern, widow of Sigmund Stern, class of 1879. It is the sister hall to Bowles Hall, the all-male residence on campus...
, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
campus, 1942 - Valencia Gardens public housing project, San Francisco, 1945, razed 2004
- Case Study House #3Case Study HousesThe Case Study Houses were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, which commissioned major architects of the day, including Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig and Eero Saarinen, to design and...
, with Theodore Bernardi, Los Angeles, 1949 - Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral SciencesCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral SciencesThe Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is an American interdisciplinary research body in Stanford, California focusing on the social sciences and humanities . Fellows are elected in a closed process, to spend a period of residence at the Center, released from other duties...
at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, 1954 - consulting architect for the Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, Texas, 1957
- influential adaptive reuse redevelopment of Ghirardelli SquareGhirardelli SquareGhirardelli Square is a landmark with shops and restaurants in the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco, California, USA. A portion of the area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Pioneer Woolen Mills and D. Ghirardelli Company....
, San Francisco, 1964 (with landscape architect Lawrence HalprinLawrence HalprinLawrence Halprin was an influential American landscape architect, designer and teacher.Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist architects on relatively modest projects. These figures included William...
) - campus plan for University of VictoriaUniversity of VictoriaThe University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...
, Greater Victoria, British ColumbiaGreater Victoria, British ColumbiaGreater Victoria is located in British Columbia, Canada, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. It is a cultural rather than political entity, usually defined as the thirteen easternmost municipalities of the Capital Regional District on Vancouver Island but also includes adjoining areas and...
, 1962 - 555 California Street, San Francisco, California, 1969 (with Skidmore, Owings and MerrillSkidmore, Owings and MerrillSkidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP is an American architectural and engineering firm that was formed in Chicago in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings; in 1939 they were joined by John O. Merrill. They opened their first branch in New York City, New York in 1937. SOM is one of the largest...
and Pietro BelluschiPietro BelluschiPietro Belluschi was an American architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and was responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings....
)
Readings
- Gregory, Daniel, "William W. Wurster," Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California (Robert WinterRobert WinterRobert Winter is one of California's leading architectural historians. He is the Arthur G. Coons Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, at Occidental College, Los Angeles. He is particularly known for his contributions to the history of the California branch of the Arts and Crafts...
, editor) Norfleet Press Book/University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles London, 1997, pp. 245-254.
- Treib, Marc, An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster, San Francisco Museum of Art/University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1995.
External links
- Biographical notes on William Wurster
- A thorough on-line catalog of Wurster's houses, including the Gregory Farmhouse, with photos
- Finding aid to the William W. Wurster/Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons Collection at the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley
- William W. Wurster designs a home in the Castro