Garrett Eckbo collection, 1933-1996, bulk (bulk 1945-1980)

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Summary

Creators:
Eckbo, Garrett, 1910-2000
Abstract:
Contains records related to the life and career of landscape architect Garrett Eckbo (1910-2000). The collection includes files created by Eckbo and the numerous firms with which he worked. Contains a wide range of materials documenting Eckbo's long, innovative and productive career as a designer, planner, and author. The Personal Papers contain biographical material, personal correspondence, student work and travel photographs, as well as portraits and family photographs. Project records document a wide spectrum of Eckbo's large- and small-scale projects, including pedestrian malls, civic centers, waterfronts, public parks, churches, playgrounds, freeway systems, botanic gardens, cemeteries, office buildings, resorts, residences, and corporate campuses throughout the West and beyond.
Extent:
23 cartons, 37 manuscript boxes, 6 shoeboxes, 12 slide boxes, 1 card file box, 6 flat boxes, approximately 30 flat file drawers
Language:
English.

Background

Scope and content:

The Garrett Eckbo Collection spans the years 1933 to 1996 [bulk 1945-1980], and includes files created by Eckbo and the numerous firms with which he worked. The collection is organized in eight series: Personal Papers, Professional Papers, Faculty Papers, Office Records, Project Records 1939-1969, Project Records 1970-1995, FSA/National Housing Authority/Defense Housing Records, and Additional Donations. (Where the bulk of a project was completed after 1970, such as in the case of the University of New Mexico, the records are housed in the Project Records, 1970-1995 series.) Within these series original order has been maintained wherever it is evident; however, much of the material arrived with no evident order. In these cases, an order has been imposed by the archivists. Please see the Colophon at the end of this document for further information about decisions made regarding appraisal and arrangement.

This collection is extensive and contains a wide range of materials documenting Eckbo's long, innovative and productive career as a designer, planner, and author. The Personal Papers contain biographical material, personal correspondence, student work and travel photographs, as well as portraits and family photographs. Biographical information contained in this series includes several oral histories and interviews by architectural historians as well as Eckbo's autobiography. His student papers include class notes, plant identification sheets, drawings for numerous student projects, and comprehensive records for "Contempoville", his master's thesis at Harvard. Some writings, poems, and open letters are also included in this series.

Eckbo was an active and committed member of the landscape architecture profession. A reflection of this, the Professional Papers series includes correspondence with other members of the profession, many awards, and a mixture of records that include correspondence and presentation notes related to professional organizations, committee work, and juries. Eckbo was also a prolific author who published seven books and innumerable articles. The subseries "Writings" includes correspondence with publishers, notes gathered for articles and monographs, copies of articles and lectures, manuscripts, illustrations, and proofs for Urban Landscapes. Of particular note is a large quantity of material pertaining to his book People in a Landscape, as well as notes and correspondence for an issue of the Japanese serial Process Architecture devoted to his work. The large subseries "Subject Files" - largely unaltered from its original order - contains clippings and other reference material for his writings that Eckbo collected.

The Faculty Papers contain material related to Eckbo's teaching experiences at a number of educational institutions, as well as his chairmanship of the Department of Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley. Primarily, this series contains official correspondence with other members of the UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture faculty and course materials from classes taught by Eckbo (at USC, UCB, University of Osaka, and UVA).

The Office Records include promotional literature for Eckbo's firms, including proposals and portfolios for potential projects, slides and photographs of residential and non-residential projects, and scrapbooks of magazine and newspaper clippings relating to Eckbo projects. Eckbo also wrote a number of accounts of his time with and departure from his firm, EDAW; those accounts are located in this series. Please note that project photographs are physically located in two places in the collection: within the project records as part of the project files themselves, and a "master set" of professional photographs (some of which were published) in the office records series.

The voluminous Project Records are comprised of drawings, site plans, correspondence, plant lists, and photographs. Large projects such as the Fresno Mall, the American Falls at Niagara, and Shelby Farms (among others) also include sets of bids, specifications, and reports. The project records include files generated by Eckbo's different firms, beginning with his San Francisco office in 1939, continuing through to his retirement in 1990, and concluding with some residential and consulting projects in 1995.

Some of the projects documented extensively in these records include: planning (and planting) for communities such as Bellehurst, Ladera, Mar Vista Homes, Lakewood, and Reseda (all in California); educational projects at Long Beach (CA) City College, Ambassador College, several campuses of the University of California, and the University of New Mexico; regional environmental planning for American Falls, Mission Bay Park in San Diego, freeway corridors in Minnesota and Iowa, and Shelby Farms in Memphis; and the ALCOA Forecast Garden and various other garden designs for iconic Modernist houses in the Wonderland Park section of the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The records document a wide spectrum of Eckbo's large- and small-scale projects, including pedestrian malls, civic centers, waterfronts, public parks, churches, playgrounds, freeway systems, botanic gardens, cemeteries, office buildings, resorts, residences, and corporate campuses throughout the West and beyond. The project records also include records related to various projects for which Eckbo served as a consultant, such as the Peace Garden proposal for Washington, DC, the city of São Paulo, Brazil, and the Ministry of Agriculture in Kuwait. Most of the project records do not contain detailed financial information, though a number of the residential project files do include accounting sheets. For the most part, the records do not include detailed correspondence with contractors, clients, or architects. After 1965, Eckbo seems to have done away with his former system of assigning a job number to each project. The type of material contained in the project records itself changes after 1965, reflecting Eckbo's growing interest in planning large-scale projects and collaborating with municipal and regional governments.

The Farm Services Administration series documents Eckbo's work with the National Housing Authority and, later, the military to design landscape masterplans for farm and defense worker housing in California, Nevada, Arizona, and other western states.

The Additional Donations include a number of drawings, photographs, and artifacts which were donated to the Archives by another donor several years after the primary collection had been accessioned.

The bulk of the collection was donated in 1990, with additional materials being transferred from the donor in 1998, and additional donations being received in 2000.

Arrangement

The collection has been organized into eight series (detailed below), which have then been further arranged into subseries in accordance with the guidelines published in the Standard Series for Architecture and Landscape Design Records (2000, Kelcy Shepherd and Waverly Lowell). Within each subseries, the folders have been arranged alphabetically by project name, following the precedent of the collection's original order. The project names and dates were derived from the material in the files themselves, where available. Project locations have been noted to the neighborhood level (e.g. "Wonderland Park, Los Angeles, California") where applicable. A container list for each series is available from the Archives, as is a project index detailing the physical location of each item in the Project Records series. For reasons of preservation, sizeable drawings on tracing paper or other stable media have been flattened and rehoused in flat files, while smaller drawings, blueprints, diazo prints, and sepias - even those with original drawings over the reprographic medium - remain folded in the project files. Please note that photographs are physically located in two places in the collection: within the project records as part of the project files themselves, and a "master set" of professional photographs (some of which were published) in the office records series.

Biographical / historical:

Garrett Eckbo (1910-2000) was born in Cooperstown, New York. Eckbo received his education in a variety of cities, including Chicago and Alameda, CA. In 1929, Eckbo spent six months studying in Oslo, Norway, where he "acquired both ambition and direction" . Upon his return, he worked at several jobs before attending Marin Junior College in 1932. One year later, he began studying landscape architecture at UC Berkeley.

When Eckbo graduated from Berkeley in 1935, Professor John Gregg helped him obtain his first architectural job as a garden designer for Armstrong Nurseries in Los Angeles. During his first year on the job, Eckbo designed almost one hundred gardens for various clients. In 1936, Eckbo's submission to Harvard University's Graduate School of Design won him a first prize scholarship. Eckbo and his classmates Dan Kiley and James Rose led the "Harvard Revolution," ushering in the Modern period in landscape design. Following his graduation in 1938, Eckbo worked as a landscape architect for Norman Bel Geddes on the General Motors Pavilion for the 1939 World's Fair in New York and for the Farm Security Administration, planning new communities and designing housing developments, first for migrant workers, later for war workers.

In 1937 he married Arline Williams and by 1939 Eckbo had published his first articles in the journals Pencil Points and Magazine of Art. In 1942 Eckbo formed a business partnership with his brother-in-law, Edward Williams, to form the firm of Eckbo & Williams. Following World War II, they were joined by Robert Royston, thus expanding the practice. The reputation of the firm grew, and Eckbo, Royston, & Williams oversaw the design and construction of gardens for hundreds of residential, religious, and educational buildings in the newly-developed edge cities and suburbs of Los Angeles and beyond. During this period Eckbo also served as an associate professor at the University of Southern California (1948-1956).

After the 1953 dissolution of Eckbo, Royston, & Williams, Eckbo's work changed to include projects that required large-scale design and master planning. While continuing to design various commercial and educational projects, Eckbo began teaching in UC Berkeley's Department of Landscape Architecture, serving as Chair from 1965-1969.

Eckbo received the 1975 American Society of Landscape Architects' Medal of Honor, and in 1978 became Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley. He continued to publish books and essays on landscape architecture and environmental design, in addition to working on various international projects. His publications include Landscape for Living (1950), The Art of Home Landscaping (1956), Urban Landscape Design (1964), The Landscape We See (1969), and People in a Landscape (1998).

Firm History:
Date Event
1942-1945 Eckbo & Williams San Francisco
1945-1953 Eckbo, Royston & Williams Los Angeles and San Francisco
1953-1973 Eckbo, Dean, Austin & Williams Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Honolulu, Minneapolis
1979-1983 EckboKay Associates San Francisco
1983-1990 Garrett Eckbo & Assoc. San Francisco/Berkeley

Sources:
  • Treib, Marc and Dorothee Imbert. Garrett Eckbo: Modern Landscapes for Living, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
  • Garrett Eckbo typed biography, 1984.

Acquisition information:
The collection was acquired in 1990.
Physical location:
For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the library's online catalog.

Access and use

Location of this collection:
230 Bauer Wurster Hall #1820
Berkeley, CA 94720-1820, US
Contact:
(510) 642-5124
designarchives@berkeley.edu
Website