The Charles Sumner Greene Collection contains a wide variety of materials documenting Greene’s life, both personal and professional. The records, which cover nearly a century, represent almost every period of his life and work but are not complete. The collection is organized into four series: I. Personal Papers, II. Office Records, III. Project Records (including furniture), and IV. Additional Donations.

Although the collection was created by Charles Greene, his brother and partner Henry Mather Greene is also represented in correspondence between the two brothers and project records from the Greene and Greene firm.

Series I, C.S. Greene’s Personal Papers, includes correspondence with family members, family photographs, educational material (mostly from M.I.T.), and records of C.S. Greene’s travels. Subseries J, Honor Awards and Professional Memberships, contains telegrams from notable architects such as Bernard Maybeck and William Wurster congratulating the Greenes on the A.I.A. exhibition of their work in 1948. This series also comprises a significant amount of material documenting Greene’s other creative interests including painting and fictional writing. His closely related interests in Eastern art and philosophies are also well documented.

The second and third series, Office Records and Project Records, document Greene’s professional life. Series II contains files such as professional correspondence (including Frank Lloyd Wright), and standard office material such as time sheets and receipts. Subseries B includes catalogs, samples and correspondence with vendors and craftsmen are valuable as records of Charles and Henry Greene’s close relationship with craftsmen and the building process, and their emphasis on fine materials.

Series III is comprised of project records and is the largest part of the collection. The series contains drawings (both of buildings and furniture), specifications, sketches, photographs and correspondence between the Greenes, clients, vendors and craftspeople. Comprehensiveness varies greatly by project. The collection represents architectural designs, mostly residences, from almost every phase of C.S. Greene’s professional career: from the Lucretia Garfield residence in 1903 to the D.L. James residence, a work Greene designed, built and continued to modify from 1919-1945. The bulk of the material in the Charles S. Greene Collection was donated by the Greene family in 1959. The material had been housed in Charles Greene’s studio in Carmel and consisted of books, which were given to the Architecture Library, and architectural drawings, sketches, office material, paintings, personal material and photographs, which were given to the College of Architecture. At this time the college commissioned Roy Flamm to photograph Charles’s studio in Carmel. In 1952, the Sigma Phi Fraternity (the residents of the Thorsen House) donated drawings of the residence to the Library of the School of Architecture. The Thorsen House records, Flamm photographs and a later donation titled “Personal and Professional Material” are located in Series IV: Additional Donations.