DOI: 10.25549/gg-c61-1196
title: Letter from Charles Sumner Greene to Mrs. William R. Thorsen

description: The Greene and Greene Digital Archive contains images of drawings, architectural plans, rooms, furnishings, books, sketches, photographs, correspondence, and other historical documents related to the life and work of the architects Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, who headed the southern California design firm of Greene & Greene (active 1894-1922) that is often associated with the finest architecture and craftsmanship of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. The physical collections are housed in the David Berry Gamble House and in the Greene and Greene Archives at the Huntington Library, both in Pasadena, California. This material was also available digitally in the Greene and Greene Virtual Archive (https://greeneandgreene.usc.edu/) which included Greene and Greene materials from the University of Southern California, Columbia University (see Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. Greene & Greene Architectural Records & Paper Collections: https://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/avery/greene/), and the University of California Berkeley (for a finding aid only of the Charles Sumner Greene Collection at the University of California Berkeley, see the Online Archive of California (https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7z09p00j/)).Gamble House Greene and Greene Decorative ArtsThe Gamble House Greene and Greene Decorative Arts Collection contains images of rooms, furnishings, and other objects in the Gamble House. The David Berry Gamble House is a National Historic Landmark, the only house designed by Greene & Greene (the southern California design firm, active 1894-1922) that is open to the public and the only example of their work to contain all of the original Greene & Greene furniture designed for it. David Berry Gamble was one of ten children of James Gamble, a co-founder of the Procter and Gamble Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. In May 1907 he purchased the largest parcel along Westmoreland Place, a private development overlooking the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena. Mature eucalyptus trees shaded the home site, from which could be had fine views of the dry riverbed below and the mountains beyond. Notable aspects of the house as seen from the street are the traditional gabled elevation on the south contrasted with the deep terrace and heavily-timbered sleeping porch on the north. These elements are unified by a shared horizontal line of deep eaves and exposed rafters and beams, and by the simple rhythm of the split-redwood, shake-shingle surface. The broad mass of the house is given height and balance by a one-room, third-level attic space and sleeping porches challenge the distinction between interior and exterior on the second level of the house. Outdoor terraces are elevated behind picturesque clinker-brick and pebbledash retaining walls. The design of the broad entry's leaded-glass doors was inspired by the California live oak. Inside, carefully crafted exotic-hardwood paneling, furniture, light fixtures, custom-woven rugs, cast and wrought andirons, fireplace tools, and other hardware express the spirit of the Greenes' Asian-inspired design vocabulary at its most classic.USC's Huntington Archive Greene and Greene Decorative ArtsThis collection contains furniture and other objects owned by the Gamble House (USC) or the Huntington Library, Art Galleries and Botanical Gardens. These objects were designed by the architects Greene & Greene (southern California design firm active 1894-1922) and are on permanent display in the Greene & Greene Gallery at The Huntington.USC's Huntington Greene and Greene ArchiveThe Greene and Greene Archives, USC, at the Huntington Library is an eclectic collection of Greene & Greene materials. Since its inception, over four hundred donors have given a wide variety of items to the collection, including original job files containing client correspondence, original drawings, copies of drawings from private collections and other repositories, personal correspondence, specifications, contracts, postcards, invoices, notes, building permits, advertisements, philosophical writings, books, newspaper and magazine articles about Greene & Greene or their projects, memorabilia, sketchbooks, and scrapbooks.