Finding Aid for the Jim Charlton papers, 1938-1985 0000117
Finding aid prepared by Jillian O'Connor and Chris Marino
The processing of this collection was made possible through generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered
through the Council on Library and Information Resources “Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives” Project.
Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design & Architecture Museum
Arts Building Room 1434
University of California
Santa Barbara, California, 93106-7130
805-893-2724
adc@museum.ucsb.edu
Title: Jim Charlton papers
Identifier/Call Number: 0000117
Contributing Institution:
Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design & Architecture Museum
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
3.5 Linear feet
(1/2 record storage box, 3 flat file folders, plus 4 ADD boxes)
Date (inclusive): 1938-1985
creator:
Charlton, Jim, 1919-1998
Partially processed collection, open for use by qualified researchers.
Gift of Jim Charlton, 1995. Two boxes of unsorted letters, manuscripts, printed material, photographs and publications added
2017, gift of Roger Friedman.
Jim Charlton papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa
Barbara.
James (Jim) Charlton was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on April 8, 1919. At State Teachers’ College, Charlton discovered the
work of Frank Lloyd Wright at the school’s library. Inspired by Wright, Jim packed his bags and hitchhiked to Spring Green,
Wisconsin where Frank Lloyd Wright was residing at the time. Charlton managed to arrange a meeting with Wright and later joined
the Taliesin Fellowship. Charlton worked under Wright on building Taliesin West in Arizona. When WWII began Charlton joined
the Air Corps and was stationed in England as part of a bomber escort. Out of the service in 1945, Charlton moved to Los Angeles
and found work with John Lautner. By 1950, he was collaborating with architects Whitney Smith, Archibald Quincy Jones, Wayne
Williams, and Edgardo Contini on the Mutual Housing Association, a 500-home cooperative financed by the Federal Housing Administration
built in Brentwood, California. In 1956, Jim established his own practice. In 1962 Charlton and his wife moved to Hawaii where
he began to design steel-framed houses. Charlton retired in 1990 and died March 28, 1998.
The Jim Charlton papers span 7.5 linear feet and date from 1938 to 1985. Box 1 of the collection contains newspaper articles
organized by architectural project, correspondence, speeches, Charlton’s business cards from Los Angeles and Hawaii, small
sketches, photocopied pages from a scrapbook of Charlton’s projects, 3 x 5 in. color photographs of houses he designed in
Hawaii, black-and-white 8 x 10 in. photographs of the De Mille house, and color photographs of a kinetic sculpture he designed
in Hawaii.
The flat file folders contain perspective sketches of the Mutual Housing Association done in color pencil and dated 1948,
architectural drawings of the De Mille house in Montecito, and color renderings of astronauts on the planet Mars.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Charlton, Jim, 1919-1998
Architectural drawings
Architecture -- California
Architecture, Modern -- 20th century -- California
Photographic prints
Drawings
Drawer 183, FlatFile 4