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DeMars, Vernon Collection, 1933-2001
2005.-13
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Contributing Institution:
University of California, Berkeley. College of Environmental Design. Environmental Design Archives
Title: Vernon DeMars Collection
Creator:
DeMars, Vernon, 1908-2005
Creator:
Wells, John G.
Identifier/Call Number: 2005.-13
Physical Description:
62 Linear Feet:
15 cartons, 16 manuscript boxes, 6 flat boxes, 1 shoebox, 33 tubes, 77 flat files, 10 models
Date (inclusive): 1933-2001
Abstract: The collection spans the years 1933 to 2001, and includes DeMars' personal papers, records from his private practice and professional
career, and materials generated by the firms DeMars & Reay, DeMars & Wells, and DeMars & Maletic.
Language of Material:
English
.
Collection is open for research. Many of the Environmental Design Archives collections are stored offsite and advance notice
is required for use.
All requests for permission to publish, reproduce, or quote from materials in the collection should be discussed with the
Curator.
[Identification of Item], Vernon DeMars Collection (2005-13) Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley.
Vernon Armand DeMars was born in San Francisco, California, in 1908. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the
University of California, Berkeley, in 1931. After jobs with the National Park Service and travel in the U.S. and Europe,
DeMars worked in the offices of Clarence Mayhew (1935-36) and John Reid Jr (1935) and then went to work for the Federal Resettlement
Administration for two years (1936-37). He spent a year in charge of planning and design of a small housing development company
which was unsuccessful followed by six months employment as Head Draftsman for the S.F. Bay Exposition Company working on
buildings for the Golden Gate International Competition. Between 1938 and 1943 he served as the Architect for the USDA Farm
Security Administration's regional office in San Francisco. The FSA provided housing to migrant farm workers, planned and
built rural camps, schools, clinics, and community centers, and constructed wartime housing for over 7000 military personnel.
During his tenure with the FSA, DeMars collaborated with landscape architects Burton Cairns and Garret Eckbo, and planners
Fran Violich and Corwin Mocine, to make lasting contributions to the field of planning and low-cost housing design. Projects
included the Farm Workers' Center at Yuba City, California, the Cooperative Farm and Workers' Housing at Chandler, Arizona,
and the Woodville Farm Workers' Center near Porterville, California.
In 1939, DeMars, and other designers including Burton Cairns, Joseph McCarthy, Garrett Eckbo, T.J. Kent Jr., and Francis Violich
co-founded Telesis, a city and regional planning organization that was the inspiration for the San Francisco Planning and
Urban Research Association (SPUR), a public policy think tank on planning and government. He married Betty Bates in the same
year, with whom he collaborated on several major projects throughout his career, including one in 1944-1945 that explored
the possibilities of row housing and greenbelt planning for the Ladies Home Journal. Betty created the interiors of the models
for a traveling exhibition based on the project, entitled "Tomorrow's Small House." She also designed a series of banners
for the 1967 opening of Zellerbach Hall at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1943 DeMars joined the National Housing Agency in Washington DC as Chief of Housing Standards, where he was engaged in
research on post-war housing. He subsequently served two years with the Navy as Naval Aide to the Governor of Puerto Rico
and advisor on Public Works. After the war he remained on the East Coast and was recognized for his design contributions to
the Bannockburn housing cooperative near Washington DC, and the Eastgate apartments in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which housed
MIT faculty. From 1947-1949 he was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he got to know William
Wurster, Dean of the Architecture School.
In 1951 DeMars reestablished himself in Berkeley. He lectured in the Department of Architecture for the College of Environmental
Design for two years before becoming Professor of Architecture in 1953. He chaired the Department from 1959-1962 and eventually
became Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 1975. Before joining the UC Berkeley faculty he consulted for the San Francisco
Redevelopment Agency on Diamond Heights, Hunter's Point and the Western Addition neighborhoods, and produced a report for
the Mutual Security Agency's Special Housing program for miners in the Ruhr, Germany. During this period he also collaborated
with architect Donald Hardison on several projects in Richmond, California, including Easter Hill Village public housing,
which was noted for its attempt to bring individuality to residences in a low-income development. He and Hardison would later
submit and win a joint-venture proposal in the competition for creating a new student center and world-class auditorium at
UC Berkeley.
DeMars and architect Donald P. Reay established the firm DeMars & Reay in 1955, continued in 1966 as DeMars & Wells with John
G. Wells, a principle in DeMars & Reay. The firms' emphasis was housing and community development and covered a wide range
of building types and planning problems, demonstrating a diversified architectural approach and flexibility in design application
over the next twenty-two years. Major projects accomplished during DeMars' tenure as principle with these firms included the
Capitol Towers apartments in Sacramento; San Francisco's Golden Gateway Redevelopment project (with Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons);
Mililani New Town in Oahu, Hawaii; the Mt. Angel Abbey Library (with architect Alvar Aalto); the University of California
at Berkeley's Student Center and Zellerbach Hall, and the College of Environmental Design's Wurster Hall. DeMars & Wells dissolved
in 1977 and was followed by DeMars & Maletic with principle Carl Maletic. The firm's major project was championing the cause
of rehabilitating the San Francisco Ferry Building and expanding Embarcadero Plaza after the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished
in 1991. The project was a continuation of DeMars' longstanding interest in Willis Polk's concept of creating a major plaza
in front of the Ferry Building.
In addition to his many AIA awards, DeMars was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and received the Award of
Honor for Design Excellence from the Bay Area Chapters of the American Institute of Architects in salute to the Student Center
and Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus as "in the tradition of the great European urban plazas and spaces." In 1975 he
received the Berkeley Citation, the campus' top honor, and in 1999 the College of Environmental Design honored him as a distinguished
alumnus. DeMars received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects and the Distinguished Alumni
Award from the College of Environmental Design in 2003. DeMars died in 2005.
Sources:
Biographical clip files, Environmental Design Archives
This collection is organized into six seris: Personal Papers, Professional Papers, Faculty Papers, Office Records, Project
Records, Additional Donation.
The Vernon DeMars Collection spans the years 1933 to 2001, and includes DeMars' personal papers, records from his private
practice and professional career, and materials generated by the firms DeMars & Reay, DeMars & Wells, and DeMars & Maletic.
The collection is organized in six series: Personal Papers, Professional Papers, Faculty Papers, Office Records, Project Records,
and Major Projects.
The collection is extensive and contains a wide range of materials documenting DeMars' long career as a designer and planner.
The Personal Papers series contains biographical material, personal correspondence, some financial records, documentation
related to his service with the Navy, student work, his art and illustrations, writings, and travel photographs and portraits.
Records related to DeMars' abiding anthropological interest in the Indians of the southwest United States and his performances
of Native American dances appear in this series. A small number of artworks and photographs by DeMars' wife, Betty Bates DeMars,
are also represented.
The Professional Papers series includes correspondence with other architects, awards, and a mixture of records that include
correspondence and presentation notes related to professional organizations, committee work, and juries. Research and reference
files are extensively represented. Administrative and personnel documents from his work with governmental agencies such as
the National Housing Agency and the Mutual Security Agency are represented, as well as records from the Telesis group. The
Faculty Papers contain material related to DeMars' professorship at the College of Environmental Design. Primarily, this series
contains official correspondence with other members of the UC Berkeley Architecture faculty, committee work documentation,
and course materials such as syllabi and lecture notes from classes he taught.
The Office Records series documents administrative operations, public relations efforts, financial transactions, and correspondence.
Clippings from newspapers and tearsheets from magazines in which DeMars' projects were featured, and some photographs are
included. This series also contains the partnership and dissolution documents from each of the firms.
The majority of the Projects Records series documents DeMars & Reay and DeMars & Wells projects spanning the years 1955-1977,
and document the firms' work through drawings, photographs, administrative files, and models. The Project Records series includes
Farm Security Administration, where a significant number of plans and drawings are retained. This series also includes the
Old Sacramento Historic District, a long-term planning commission that generated voluminous administrative files. The UC Berkeley
sub-series is extensive and includes each commission carried out on the UC Berkeley campus. The San Francisco Performing Arts
Center and the San Francisco Ferry Building and Embarcadero Plaza proposals are also well documented, although DeMars' designs
for them were not realized.
The collection was donated in 2005 by the Vernon DeMars Estate. The records had been housed in a number of storage areas in
the creator's home and frequently removed from their original files or mixed with other paper files. During processing a representative
sample of financial records was retained; and routine job correspondence was sampled. In some cases, where documentation was
scant, all material in a project file was retained. Ernest Born drawings of the San Francisco Ferry Building and Embarcadero
Plaza proposal were transferred to the Ernest Born collection.
Within each series original order has been maintained wherever it was evident. However, much of the material arrived with
no evident order. Project documentation, especially for ongoing projects such as the Student Center and various auditoriums,
was interfiled in a manner indicative of DeMars' creative work process more than any formal organizational method. Where an
original order was not evident, records have been arranged either chronologically or alphabetically as noted in the Series
Description. The records for the Sacramento Historic District were maintained in their original chronological order.
For related materials to the items in this collection, please see the following finding aids:
Garrett Eckbo Collection (1990-1), Environmental Design Archives
Joseph Esherick Collection (1974-1), Environmental Design Archives
Francis Joseph McCarthy Collection (1985-1), Environmental Design Archives
Donald Olsen Collection (2003-1), Environmental Design Archives
Donald & Sylvia Reay Collection (2005-20), Environmental Design Archives
Vernon Armand DeMars Oral History (1992) A Life in Architecture: Indian Dancing, Migrant Housing, Telesis, Design for Urban
Living, Theater, Teaching. The Bancroft Library Regional Oral History Office
William W. Wurster/Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons Collection, (1976-2), Environmental Design Archives
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Architecture -- California.
Architecture -- Study and teaching.
Architecture -- 20th Century -- California -- San Francisco Bay Area.
Richmond Housing Authority -- Easter Hill Village
United States. Farm Security Administration