Henry Gutterson (1884-1954)

Henry Gutterson was born in 1884 in Minnesota. He graduated from Berkeley High School in 1903, and from the University of California, Berkeley School of Architecture in 1905 and attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1906 to 1909. After a brief stay in New York working for Grosvenor Atterbury, Gutterson returned to California in 1910 marrying Helen Arnett a year later.

He worked for John Galen Howard on the Panama-Pacific Exposition and St. Francis Wood and for the City of Oakland before opening his own practice in 1914. Gutterson's major projects include the duplexes and cottages along Rose Walk, 75 houses in St. Francis Wood where he was supervising architect, The Christian Science Benevolent Society, Arden Wood in San Francisco and many Christian Science churches. He worked with Bernard Maybeck on several projects including churches the First Church of Christ Science Sunday School and the Principia College Library (Elsah, Illinois). He also designed a number of other buildings at Principia College.

Gutterson taught briefly at the University of California from 1910 to 1911, and from 1920 to 1921. He was active in civic planning, and was a member of the Berkeley Planning Commission and the co-founder and president of the Berkeley Planning and Housing Association. From 1927 to 1930, he served as president of the Sierra Nevada chapter of the A.I.A. In 1946 Gutterson received an award from the A.I.A. for his contributions to the unification of the profession.