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Table of contents What's This?
  • Access
  • Custodial History
  • Preferred Citation
  • Biographical / Historical
  • Scope and Content note

  • Contributing Institution: Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design & Architecture Museum
    Title: Gregory Ain papers
    Creator: Ain, Gregory
    Creator: Garrott, James H.
    Identifier/Call Number: 0000104
    Physical Description: 49.5 Linear Feet (6 boxes and 13 flat file drawers)
    Date (inclusive): 1926-1972
    Date (bulk): 1935-1971
    Language of Material: English .

    Access

    Open for use by qualified researchers.

    Custodial History

    Gift of Gregory Ain, 1978.

    Preferred Citation

    Gregory Ain papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

    Biographical / Historical

    Gregory Ain (1908-1988) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of a Russian-born socialist. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1911 and for a year lived in the experimental farming collective, Llano del Rio, in the Antelope Valley. Ain attended UCLA and went on to study architecture at the University of Southern California. In 1927 Ain left without graduating, due to his frustrations with the school's Beaux Arts teaching methods. He worked for Schindler intermittently in the early 1930s and Richard Neutra between 1930 and 1935. Ain began his independent architectural practice in 1935. In 1940, he received a Guggenheim Foundation grant to study low-cost pre-fabricated housing. Ain worked frequently with the modernist California landscape architect Garrett Eckbo and with architects Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day, especially on housing tracts, such as his Park Planned Homes and Avenel Homes. Ain taught at the University of Southern California and in the 1960s became the Dean of the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. Gregory Ain died on January 9, 1988.

    Scope and Content note

    The Gregory Ain papers span 49.5 linear feet and date from 1926 to 1972. The collection primarily contains correspondence, clippings, writings, photographs and architectural sketches and drawings. The collection also includes landscape designs by Garrett Eckbo and the works Ain produced in collaboration with the architects Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Correspondence
    Furniture design
    Dwellings -- Design and construction -- Economic aspects -- United States
    Prefabricated houses -- United States
    Specifications
    Sketches
    Architecture -- California
    Photographic prints
    Negatives
    Modern movement (Architecture) -- California
    Los Angeles (Calif.) Buildings, structures, etc.
    Architect-designed furniture -- United States -- 20th century
    Architects -- California
    Architectural drawings
    Architectural photographs
    Architecture -- California -- Los Angeles -- 20th century
    Architecture -- United States -- 20th century -- Sources
    Architecture, Modern -- 20th century -- California
    Architecture, Modern -- 20th century -- California -- Los Angeles
    Blueprints
    Ain, Gregory -- Archives
    Day, Alfred Waite
    Eckbo, Garrett
    Johnson, Joseph Leupp