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William L. Pereira & Associates records
0326  
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Collection Overview
 
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Description
The William L. Pereira & Associates records consist of architectural plans, materials for presentations to clients, site studies, project workbooks, and interim reports documenting the majority of the firm's projects from 1960 to 1989. William Leonard Pereira, who had already been working as an architect in Chicago and Los Angeles since the early 1930s, founded the company in 1958. William L. Pereira & Associates designed over 300 buildings, including the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco; the University of California, Irvine campus (its infrastructure, campus layout, and early buildings); the original three buildings of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); and much of the University of Southern California's University Park Campus -- where Pereira also taught as a professor in USC's School of Architecture. The collection also holds six pre-1960 project documents created under Pereira's earlier firm, Pereira & Luckman, as well as news clippings dating back to 1939, photographs by Julius Shulman, and audiovisual material about William L. Pereira & Associates. In 2021, a donation of additional project files, photographs, and administrative files from the offices of Johnson Fain, a successor firm to William L. Pereira & Associates, was added to the collection. In 2022, a donation of family correspondence, photographs, drawings by William L. Pereira, and newspaper clippings from Monica Pereira, William L. Pereira's daughter, was added to the collection.
Background
William L. Pereira & Associates was founded in 1958 by William Leonard Pereira. Pereira had already been working as an architect in Chicago and Los Angeles since the 1930s, gaining some of his earliest experience while helping to draft the master plan for the 1933 "A Century of Progress" Chicago World's Fair. Pereira then moved to Los Angeles and worked as a solo architect, a Hollywood art director, and a professor of architecture at the University of Southern California (USC) before co-founding his first large architectural firm, Pereira & Luckman, with Charles Luckman in 1950. By 1958, Pereira and Luckman parted ways and Pereira founded the final company of his career, William L. Pereira & Associates, based in Los Angeles.
Extent
102.4 Linear Feet 115 boxes and 1 oversize folder
Restrictions
All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Department of Special Collections at specol@usc.edu. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.
Availability
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE: Advance notice required for access.