Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Gallis (Michael Alexander) papers
2017.M.49
View entire collection guide
Search this collection
Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections
Title: Michael Alexander Gallis papers
Creator:
Gallis, Michael Alexander, 1909-2001
Identifier/Call Number: 2017.M.49
Physical Description:
5.25 Linear Feet
(11 Boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1908-1990
Date (bulk): 1925-1972
Abstract: The collection comprises personal correspondence, drawings, photographs, draft material for a monograph on Erich Mendelsohn,
professional materials and ephemera documenting Gallis's personal and professional life, with particular attention to his
years in training at the School of Architecture at the University of Oregon, Eugene, as well as his independent architectural
practice after 1953. The collection excludes materials produced while Gallis worked with Erich Mendelsohn.
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Language of Material: Collection material is in English with some Russian, Swedish, and French.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Michael Gallis and Berhan Nebioglu. Acquired in 2017.
The archive is arranged in two series:
Series I: Family papers, 1909-1938;
Series II: Professional papers, 1931-1990.
Michael Gallis was born Misha Alexander Haimovitch in 1909 to a merchant family in Russian Siberia (present-day Shenyang,
China), where the family had established a trading company specializing in machinery and timber. His father was a Jewish merchant
from the Minsk area of Russia (now Belarus), and his mother was of Greek origin.
Opposed to the Communist government in Russia, Gallis emigrated with his family to the United States in 1925 where he soon
took up work as a set designer in Hollywood, designing sets for film and, later, mansions for members of the industry. Soon
after his move to the United States, Misha assumed the Americanized first name Michael, later explaining that both his Russian
and Jewish names were the source of prejudice during the 1920s. By 1932 he had also dropped the Haimovitch name and had begun
using his middle name as a surname. Michael ultimately assumed his mother's maiden name, Gallis, when he married Britta Christina
Anderson in 1934.
In 1929, Michael enrolled as an architecture major at the University of Oregon, Eugene. Under the direction of Dean W. R.
B. Wilcox, the school was one of the first in the United States to discard the Beaux-Arts model and embrace modernism in its
curriculum. Frank Lloyd Wright gave a number of lectures at the school, as did some of the leading local modernist architects
from Portland. During the Depression years, Gallis was forced to interrupt his schooling for stints of employment until 1940
when he completed his degree.
Following graduation Gallis moved to San Francisco, where his first job was with a local architect specializing in Gothic-style
churches. A modernist by training, Gallis struggled, for instance, when tasked with producing Beaux-Arts-style renderings
for a new church. His next job was better suited to his skills: Gallis found employment at an architectural engineering firm
specializing in the design of US military installations around the world. This job was key to his later career, as it was
here that he learned how to produce construction documents and to coordinate with the various engineering fields (civil, structural,
mechanical, and electrical). Following the end of the war, Gallis, seeking more creative design work, took a job with the
noted San Francisco architect John Dinwiddie.
John Dinwiddie introduced Michael Gallis to Erich Mendelsohn in the late 1940s, after Dinwiddie, with Albert Henry Hill, proposed
the formation of an architectural partnership on the West Coast. The plans never materialized. Mendelsohn, who had fled Germany
in 1933 and had stayed briefly in Holland, London, Palestine, and New York, later asked Gallis to join him in starting a new
firm in San Francisco.
At Eric Mendelsohn Architects (the German architect similarly Americanized his first name in his professional capacity), Michael
Gallis was intimately involved in every project that the firm completed in the US between 1948 and 1953. Gallis was vital
to the practice: his responsibility was to translate Mendelsohn's visionary sketches into realizable buildings. Mendelsohn
often complained about the need to produce construction documents – in Germany, he explained, it was the architect's responsibility
to produce detailed plans, sections and elevations and it was the contractor's to produce the necessary construction documents
from these drawings. Gallis's expertise in construction drawings and in managing engineers made him a valuable partner to
Mendelsohn, and in 1950 he was promoted to Associate.
The firm's last two commissions were for commercial and scientific research laboratories. Varian Associates, a technology
start-up firm, asked Mendelsohn to design their headquarters at the Stanford Research Park, while the Atomic Energy Commission
sought a design for their new research lab on the hill above the University of California campus at Berkeley. Both buildings
were in the production phase when Mendelsohn died in 1953, leaving Gallis with the task of completing the contracted work.
The completion of the Atomic Energy Commission and Varian Associates projects shaped Michael Gallis's practice from 1953 until
he closed his office in 1973. In addition to these projects, Gallis did work for NASA at the Ames Research Center and completed
two residential commissions, the North House on Tiburon Island with a panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay and his own
home in the Forest Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.
Michael A. Gallis died in 2001.
Source: Maristella Casciato, Acquisition Approval Form for "Michael Alexander Gallis papers," accession no. 2017.M.49, January
4, 2017
Michael Alexander Gallis papers, 1909-1990, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2017.M.49.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2017m49
The archive was processed by Michael Dominik Hagel under the supervision of Kit Messick in 2018. The collection received mold
remediation treatment during processing; particularly dirty items were segregated in boxes 7 and 8.
The collection comprises manuscripts, drawings, correspondence, photographs, and ephemera documenting Michael Alexander Gallis's
personal and professional life mainly from 1925 to 1973, totaling approximately 2,400 items.
The family papers, which comprise the bulk of the archive, include letters, postcards, photographs and ephemera chiefly detailing
Gallis's time at the University of Oregon, as well as his relationship to Britta C. Anderson (starting in 1928) whom he married
in 1934. Anderson collected not only Gallis's letters, which constitute the majority of the correspondence, but also those
of her family in Sweden, a French pen pal and several suitors, one of whom was a teacher at an agricultural school in Iraq,
sharing insight into Baghdadi everyday life in the late 1920s.
Photographs include not only family portraits, but also travel snapshots of the American West, Mexico, China, and Iraq.
Miscellaneous documents include receipts and financial records (mostly from a flower business Anderson ran in 1936), immigration
and travel records for both Anderson and Gallis, newspaper clippings, business cards, greetings cards, and picture postcards.
The professional papers contain an album of freehand perspective sketches and drawings from the period of Gallis's training
at the University of Oregon; and a small quantity of material related to Gallis's own firm, Michael A. Gallis, Architect.
Also included in this series is a manuscript titled "Triumph & Tragedy: Eric Mendelsohn: U.S.A. 1946-1953," which Gallis prepared
around 1960, recapitulating his cooperation with the Jewish German émigré. The file contains photocopies of a typescript of
a detailed draft for a monograph, as well as copies of typescripts for chapters focusing on the Varian Associates building,
Maimonides Hospital and the Russell Residence.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Architecture -- United States -- 20th century
Architects -- United States
Architecture, Modern -- United States -- 20th century
Architects -- Archives
Mendelsohn, Erich, 1887-1953