Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Wickenden, James D. collection
1968.-1  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Conditions Governing Access
  • Conditions Governing Use
  • Preferred Citation
  • Biographical / Historical
  • Scope and Contents
  • Related Materials

  • Contributing Institution: University of California, Berkeley. College of Environmental Design. Environmental Design Archives
    Title: James D. Wickenden Collection
    Creator: Wickenden, James D.
    Identifier/Call Number: 1968.-1
    Physical Description: 3 Linear Feet: 5 oversize folders, 1/2 box
    Date (bulk): 1915-1937
    Language of Material: English .

    Conditions Governing Access

    Collection is open for research.

    Conditions Governing Use

    All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the Curator.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], James D. Wickenden, (19XX-13), Environmental Design Archives. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California.

    Biographical / Historical

    James D. Wickenden
    James Donald Wickenden was born on May 25, 1900 in Los Alamos, California. He was a descendent of two Spanish soldiers who came to California in the 18th Century (Pablo Cota on his father's side and Manuel Villavicencio on his mother's). Wickenden's mother (Margaret Sauer Wickenden) lived in a two-story craftsman style home built in the 1910s, located on Johnson Drive in San Luis Obispo across from the San Luis Obispo Mission.
    In 1918, Wickenden enrolled in the UC R.O.T.C. program at Berkeley where he studied for seven years, switching majors during that time from Engineering to Architecture. While there, he met his future wife, Virginia deLormier Booker, in a life drawing class. She was a reader for the department of Decorative Arts. Virginia also collected Guatemalan textiles and sold various objet d'arts in her own shop on Bancroft Way (where Zellerbach Hall is presently located). Wickenden graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Architecture in 1925 and he married Virginia in the same year in Pasadena.
    Wickenden's first job as a draftsman was in the office of Clarence Tantau in San Francisco. He then worked in William W. Wurster's office on California Street in San Francisco. In 1937, he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii with his wife and young daughter, where he worked for a series of different architects (including Claude Stiehl, Lemmon Freith & Haines, and Dickey and Vladimer Ossipoff). In June 1942, Wickenden moved back to San Francisco, rejoined Wurster's office, and worked there until his death in January 1968 in Berkeley.
    Some of Wickenden's independent projects include: the Joseph & Minnie Gilman house on the Arlington in Berkeley (built before 1928), the Cordelia Gilman house on Dolores/12th two NW in Carmel-by-the-Sea (built in 1936), the Kenneth Douglas residence in Oahu (built 1939-40), and the Rosen house on the corner of Bay View Place and Euclid Avenue in Berkeley. He also won a national home/cottage design competition.
    Source: James Donald Wickenden Biography from Margaret Wickenden.

    Scope and Contents

    The James D. Wickenden collection consists of student work and other drawings. Coursework includes drawing exercises from high school and from a Stereotomy course (Architecture 107) at UC Berkeley. Project drawings are primarily residential, and include the Gilman house in Carmel (1937), the Campbell house in Palo Alto (1932), the Hinman house in Lake Tahoe (N.D.), and the Dowsett house (1929, location unknown). The collection also includes numerous unidentified sketches. A second donation from the family includes two sketchbooks from 1929.

    Related Materials

    Clarence A. Tantau Collection (19xx-08), Environmental Design Archives