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Wurster (Catherine Bauer) Papers
BANC MSS 74/163
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
The Bancroft Library
Title: Catherine Bauer Wurster papers, 1931-1964.
Creator:
Wurster, Catherine Bauer, 1905-1964
Identifier/Call Number: BANC MSS 74/163
Physical Description:
62.35 linear feet
(34 boxes, 39 cartons, 2 oversize folders)
Date (inclusive): 1911-1964
Date (bulk): 1931-1964
Abstract: The Catherine Bauer Wurster Papers contain material related to the personal and professional career of author/activist/educator/
C.B. Wurster (1905-1964). These records include correspondence, diaries, notebooks, and presentations; records of her involvement
with numerous organizations, manuscripts, reprints and tear sheets of her articles other writings; notes; extensive subject
files on housing and city planning; files relating to her teaching career at Berkeley and elsewhere; bibliographical material,
ephemera, and clippings; etc. They reflect Wurster’s travel experiences, consulting projects, correspondence with a wide range
of thinkers, activists, architects and planners; involvement in the housing movement and city and regional planning on national
and international levels; creating legislation, and serving as a professor in U.C. Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design.
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information
on the location of these materials, please consult the library's online catalog.
The Catherine Bauer Wurster Papers contain records related to the personal and professional career of author/activist/educator/
C.B. Wurster (1905-1964). These records include manuscript materials, published works, ephemera, and clippings. They reflect
Wurster’s travel experiences, consulting projects, correspondence with a wide range of thinkers, activists, architects and
planners; involvement in the housing movement and city and regional planning on national and international levels; creating
legislation, and serving as a professor in U.C. Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. One carton of photographs has
been transferred to The Bancroft Library Pictorial Collection.
Considered one of the founders of American housing policy, Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster (CBW) was born in Elizabeth, New
Jersey in 1905. Her parents were Jacob Louis Bauer, a transportation engineer and Alberta Krouse. She attended Vail-Deane
School and then Vassar College. In her junior year she transferred to the School of Architecture at Cornell University, but
returned to Vassar to graduate in 1926.
The next few years were devoted to research and writing about housing and city planning and travel abroad to study European
housing. For the next decade in the company of Mary Simkovitch, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, and many others engaged in
the study of housing and city planning, she found that concern for the underprivileged, interest in the relationship between
man and his environment, and a fervor for reform in public policy was to guide her active and influential life.
During these years she served as executive secretary of the Regional Planning Association of America, of the Labor Housing
Conference, and of the Housing Committee of the American Federation of Labor, and wrote her now classic 1934 book Modern Housing.
Its synthesis of social, economic, political, technological and architectural insights, established her as an authority in
housing and a leader in New Deal housing policy. In 1936 she won the first Guggenheim Foundation award made in architecture
or housing. She participated in the preparation, promotion and passage of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 and served as the first
Director of Research and Information for the new United States Housing Authority and as adviser to numerous other federal
and local agencies.
In January, 1940, she came to the University of California at Berkeley as Rosenberg Lecturer in the School of Social Work
and in August of that year married William Wilson Wurster, a prominent San Francisco architect. When they moved to Cambridge,
Massachusetts in 1944, C.B. Wurster became a lecturer in the Department of Regional Planning at Harvard University. She also
became Vice President of the National (Public) Housing Conference, and continued to serve as a board member or officer of
the National Committee on Housing, the Committee on the Hygiene of Housing of the American Public Health Association, the
Boston and Massachusetts Housing Associations, and the International Federation of Housing and Town Planning. During these
years, she presided over a joint committee that drafted “A Housing Program for Now and Later” for the National Association
of Housing Officials and the National (Public) Housing Conference, a significant document in the long campaign for the adoption
of the Housing Act of 1949.
In 1950 the Wurster’s returned to the west coast when William Wurster became Dean of the School of Architecture at The University
of California, Berkeley. Catherine became a lecturer and later professor, in the Department of City and Regional Planning,
a position she held until her death. During these years, she was consultant to the United Nations, travelled, wrote, and advised
on housing problems in India and other developing countries, consulted on projects related to California’s Central Valley
and Washington’s Columbia River Basin, and served as adviser to the U. S. Public Health Service, the U.S. Housing and Home
Finance Agency, and the U.S. Census Bureau. She also served in various capacities in the American Planning and Civic Association,
the Democratic Advisory Council, and was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Planners. In 1960 when President
Eisenhower appointed a Commission on National Goals, she was invited to prepare the section on the urban environment, which
appears in Goals for Americans. In 1963 she organized a major conference on “The Metropolitan Future” as a part of the U.C.’s
series on California and the Challenge of Growth. When she died in 1964, she was editing the papers of this conference, contributing
to the California Governor's Advisory Commission on Housing Problems, and serving as Associate Dean of U.C. Berkeley’s College
of Environmental Design.
Catherine Bauer (she used her maiden name for professional purposes) was a prolific writer and popular lecturer. “She accepted
honors with modesty and would turn quickly and cheerfully to her private business--discovering the facts, asking about the
policy, and urging action--always action which is the test of policy.” She commanded the respect and admiration of architects,
planners, sociologists, and economists for her ability to think sharply, clearly, and incisively, and for a far-reaching knowledge
in a wide range of fields.
Sources:
W. L. Wheaton, T. J. Kent, Jr., M. M. Webber. In Memorium, University of California, Berkeley. Accessed 7 Apr 2016.
Oberlander, H. Peter and Eva Newbrun. Houser: the Life and Work of Catherine Bauer. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999.
W. L. Wheaton, T. J. Kent, Jr., M. M. Webber. In Memorium, University of California, Berkeley. Accessed 7 Apr 2016.
Oberlander, H. Peter and Eva Newbrun. Houser: the Life and Work of Catherine Bauer. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999.
Collection is open for research.
Some materials in these collections may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction
of some materials may be restricted by terms of University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions,
privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond
that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be
commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the
Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000. See: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html
[Identification of item], Catherine Bauer Wurster papers, BANC MSS 74/163c,The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley.
Photographs have been removed to the Library's Pictorial Collections for separate indexing.
Photograph Collection of Catherine Bauer Wurster (BANC PIC 1974.029), Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
William and Catherine Bauer Wurster Papers (2008-15), Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
C.B. Wurster’s papers were given to The Bancroft Library by her daughter following the death of her husband noted architect
and educator, William Wilson Wurster in 1974.
No future additions are expected.
The Catherine Bauer Wurster (CBW) collection was donated by Sadie Wurster Super to the Bancroft Library in 1974. The material
had been collected from a storage area in Wurster Hall and boxed for transfer. It is likely it had originally been stored
following removal from CBW’s office some time after her death in 1964.
Following acquisition of the collection, it was processed according to archival practice of the 1970s. All the correspondence
was separated into individual letters. The result was that incoming and outgoing correspondence was divided and letters were
removed from attachments and other accompanying material. This correspondence was then painstakingly organized into “letters
from CBW” and filed chronologically and “letters to CBW”, which were filed alphabetically by correspondent/organization. Most
other material, whether created, collected, or received by her were filed in three places using an applied alphabetical scheme
that did not always reflect the content or context of the material; Subject Files, Articles not written by her, and Clippings.
Other groupings of documents included a number of cartons referred to as UC Berkeley, Diaries, Notebooks and Personalia; and
Bibliographies.
In 2016 a project to reprocess the CBW Collection was undertaken with the intent of identifying the original context and organization
of the material in the collection in order to provide more comprehensive access. A number of phases were undertaken during
this process. First a review of the Subject Files revealed a number of projects, organizations, and research areas that had
been interfiled as a result of the imposed alphabetizing. These were collocated to restore original creation and context.
A review of the correspondence allowed the identification of the significant correspondents who were housed in miscellaneous
or unidentified folders and the recreation of correspondence that had been separated into incoming (to CBW) and outgoing (from
CBW) letters.
A time line of her personal and professional lives was developed that provided a structure on which to place activities (such
as education and travel), correspondents, employment, research topics, and presentations. The timeline led to the creation
of archival series that more accurately reflect a contextual relationship for the material in the collection. For example
letters to and from her family are housed together rather than throughout 45 containers. She actively either worked for or
was involved in a number of organizations for which the letters from, letters to, organizational records, and publications
are now collocated by organization, this is also the case for documentation related to her book, Modern Housing, her career
as an educator, and a number of significant projects such as her work on California’s Central Valley, the Columbia River Basin,
Sacramento Redevelopment, and housing/planning in India.
Arranged to the folder level.
Processed by Waverly Lowell and Lisa Monhoff in 2017.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Wurster, Catherine Bauer, 1905-1964
Abrams, Charles
Blucher, Walter H. (Walter Harold)
Bohn, Ernest John
Burcahrd, John E. (John Ely)
Crane, Jacob L. (Jacob Leslie)
Crosby, Alexander L.
Echeverria, Edward, G.
Ehrenkrantz, Ezra D.
Eichler, Edward P.
Emmerich, Herbert
Engelbert, Ernest A.
Ensminger, Douglas
Goodwin, Philip Lippincott
Griffith, Alice
Gutheim, Frederick Albert
Harris, Britton
Haskell, Douglas Putnam
Packard, Walter E. (Walter Eugene)
Park, Richard Leonard
Shishkin, Boris
Stein, Joseph
Stonorov, Oscar
Torbert, Edward N.
Vinton, Warren Jay
Weaver, Robert C. (Robert Clifton)
Weissmann, Ernest
Woodbury, Coleman
Wurster, William Wilson
Ylvisaker, Paul N.
Regional Planning Association of America
United States. United States Housing Act of 1937
United States Housing Authority
Harvard University. Department of Regional Planning
University of California, Berkeley. Department of City and Regional Planning
Central Valley Project (Calif.)
Redevelopment Agency of the City of Sacramento
American Institute of Planners
American Planning and Civic Association
National Housing Committee (U.S.)
United States. Federal Housing Administration
United States. Housing and Home Finance Agency
City planning
Housing
Architecture
Architecture -- India