Thomas D. Church Collection
Scope & Contents note
The Thomas D. Church collection documents more than eleven hundred of Church’s projects through textual records, drawings and photographs. The collection is arranged in six series: Personal Papers, Office Records, Project Records, Display Boards, Additional Donations, and Art & Artifacts. The Personal Papers include an album documenting Church’s trip to Europe is included in the collection and documents his meeting with Alvar Aalto and a drawing while he was a student.
The office records include correspondence relating to prospective (uncompleted) projects, subject files that contain photographs and clippings of landscape details and structures primarily from Church’s book Gardens Are For People; a scrapbook, public relations files, photographs, colleague and vendor card files, and exhibit boards. The public relations files include correspondence regarding the publication of Church’s work, published articles by and about Church, and photographs of Church projects. The photographs consist primarily of completed projects but there are also portraits and photographic studies taken during foreign travel. The exhibit boards feature large mounted photographs, as well as drawings. Additional photographs comprised generally of site and preconstruction images are located with the project files. The oversized scrapbook contains tearsheets of publications of his work. Also included in the office records are photographs and correspondence files created by photographer Carolyn Caddes. The Caddes photographs include portraits of Church, photographs of his office, and some images of his completed projects. Additional photographers represented in the collection include Maynard L. Parker and Rondal Partridge.
The bulk of the collection is comprised of project records. Arranged alphabetically, they consist of correspondence, plant lists, reports, clippings, photographs and drawings. Many project files include pre-construction site photographs. Although the bulk of the records are for residential projects, records of Church’s major non-residential projects form a large part of the series, including the General Motors Technical Center (Warren, Michigan, 1956), numerous sites for the Caterpillar Company (Illinois, 1958-62), Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 1971-75), Stanford University (Palo Alto, 1949-76), and University of California, Santa Cruz (1962-75). The Dewey Donnell garden, his most acclaimed project, is well documented. There are a number of Church project files in the H. Leland and Adele Vaughan Collection possibly because Church worked in their office when he first returned to California.
The third series consists of multimedia display boards from the retail store Cargoes, illustrating projects Church collaborated on with William Wurster and Gardner Dailey. The bulk of the collection was transferred from Church’s office in 1997, and their original order has been maintained. Blueprints and photographs donated separately are included in the final series.
The Additional Donations consist of project records donated by individuals and records related to the publication of the second and third editions of Gardens Are For People. Church’s drafting table, boots, iconic briefcases, and pencil box are contained in the Art & Artifacts series.
Dates
- Creation: 1933-1977
Creator
- Church, Thomas Dolliver, 1902-1978 (Landscape architect, Person)
Access Statement
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the Curator.
Biographical note
Thomas D. Church (1902-1978)
“Tommy” was born in Boston but lived in Ojai until he was a teenager and then moved to Berkeley. He is credited with being the creator of the “modern garden.” Church was educated at the University of California, Berkeley graduating in 1923 and also attended Harvard for graduate work. Church traveled to Italy and Spain for six months on a Sheldon Fellowship that he was awarded at Harvard. After returning from Europe he taught at Ohio State University for a year before returning to the San Francisco Bay area. He taught at UC Berkeley in 1929-1930 and went into private practice at Pasatiempo Estates in 1930. He moved to San Francisco in 1932 and established his practice in San Francisco at 402 Jackson Street where he practiced until his retirement in 1977. During the late 1930s, Church’s wife Betsy worked for "Cargoes" a gift shop that sold furniture. She talked the manager into allowing Tommy to show his drawings there and when the Aaltos--who were good friends of the Churches--wanted to sell their furniture in the US, Betsy was also allowed to show it in the space.
Church’s design approach combined with the local natural environment and economic climate of the 1930s through the 1970s to lead to the development of what became known as the California style. Church designed gardens primarily for the expanding middle class, both in cities and in the rapidly developing suburbs of the Bay Area. In addition to the residential gardens that make up the majority of his work, Church designed larger scale open space for housing, industrial plants and hospitals, and was consultant to Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Church’s designs were much publicized by a number of popular home and garden journals, primarily Sunset magazine. His philosophy and principles of design were spelled out in two books, Gardens Are For People (1955, reprinted in 1983) and Your Private World (1969).
Among Church’s most important works were the Dewey Donnell garden, El Novillero, in Sonoma, California (1948), done with Lawrence Halprin, who was then working in his office; the beach garden of Mr. and Mrs. O. Martin, Aptos, California (1948); the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan (1956); portions of the campuses of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz; and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.
During the course of his practice, Church collaborated with numerous architects including William Wurster and Gardner Dailey. He also influenced many young landscape architects. Garrett Eckbo, Robert Royston, and Lawrence Halprin all worked in Church’s office during the early stages of their careers. His awards include the Gold Medal of the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects.
Sources:
Mann, William A. Landscape Architecture: An Illustrated History in Timelines, Site Plans, and Biography. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York. 1993.
Laurie, Michael. “Thomas D. Church, Landscape Architect.” Unpublished article.
Extent
133.5 Linear Feet: (73 manuscript boxes, 9 flat boxes, 2 card file boxes, 19 tubes, 26 flat file drawers)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
The Church collection contains primarily office and project records. Archival materials include correspondence, subject files, a scrapbook documenting his published work, public relations files, portraits, photographs, a travel photograph album, and exhibit boards. The bulk of the collection is comprised of more than 1100 projects files which may contain correspondence, plant lists, reports, clippings, photographs, and drawings.
- Title
- Thomas D. Church Collection
- Author
- Kelcy Shepherd/W. Lowell
- Date
- January 1999/March 2000/September 2008
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Arrangement and description of this collection was funded by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning and by a grant from the Getty Foundation.
Repository Details
Part of the University of California, Berkeley. College of Environmental Design. Environmental Design Archives Repository