Description
Contains landscape architecture drawings, photographs, clippings, correspondence, and writings documenting Baylis landscape
design projects and publishing endeavors. Professional Papers contain correspondence, writings, graphics intended for publication,
and material for the production of the book California Houses of Gordon Drake (Douglas Baylis and Joan Parry. NY: Reinhold
Publishing Corporation, 1956). Office Records contains financial and other administrative records as well as photographs of
completed projects. Project Records contain project files, drawings, and photographs. Projects types include commercial, recreational,
religious, planning, governmental, educational, cultural, and funerary. Residential projects include Eichler's Highlands No.
3, Ping Yuen Housing Project, and many smaller-scale residential gardens. Other projects include Pacific Area Headquarters
of the American National Red Cross, landscape plans for Bay Area Rapid Transit, Candlestick Park, IBM Headquarters, and San
Francisco's controversial Portsmouth Square. The final series, Construction Details and Landscape Structures, contains sketches,
measured drawings, and notes for countless landscape details including vegetation structures, landscape structures, ground
plane treatments, garden furniture, and garden buildings.
Background
Douglas Baylis was born in 1915 in East Orange, New Jersey. In 1941, he graduated with a Landscape Architecture degree from
the University of California, Berkeley. Early influences in Berkeley included teacher Leland ("Punk") Vaughn and mentor Thomas
Church. Following graduation, Baylis worked in the Church office for about four years and then started his own firm. He is
often credited (with Church, Eckbo, and Royston) as one of the founders of the "California School" of modernism in Landscape
Architecture.
Restrictions
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the
Curator.