Designed by Charles and Henry Greene in 1908, the Gamble House ranks high among the great works of architecture worldwide.
Commissioned by heirs to the Procter & Gamble fortune, the house embodies not only the noblest aspirations of the Arts & Crafts movement but also the aspirations of Americans who seek to live in greater harmony with the land. It is the paramount collaboration between two of America’s most gifted architects and their astute patrons.
In the first publication about the house since its restoration in 2004, The Gamble House: Building Paradise in California documents the history, design, craftsmanship, and enduring aesthetic impact of this renowned cultural landmark. It takes a close look at the pull of paradise that was early twentieth-century California, and shows how the house fit into that paradise and helped to define it.
New photography by Alexander Vertikoff illuminates a series of scholarly essays based on recently discovered archival material. The essays were written by Gamble House scholars Edward R. Bosley, Anne E. Mallek, Ann Scheid, and Robert Winter.
“I believe that past, present, and future are all evoked in the Gamble House and that it bears full witness to the genius of Greene & Greene, the dedicated patronage of the Gambles, and the essential power of ‘architecture as a fine art’…”
~Edward R. Bosley
James N. Gamble Director
The Gamble House
Excerpt:
“By the early 1900s the family has begun to travel farther west and south for the winter. They were among thousands making the winter pilgrimage by rail from the chilly Midwest and East to the sunny and healthful climate of California. Here, with the architects Charles and Henry Greene, they built what would come to be their ideal house. Eventually it would represent much more to the Gambles than a mere residence; it was a place of education and entertainment, a harbor of hospitality for friends and extended family, and a beloved legacy for children and grandchildren. Ultimately, it would be recognized as a cultural site of national significance.”
Excerpt from The Gamble House: Building Paradise in California
Essay entitled A Family Home and Legacy by Anne E. Mallek
Contributor Bios:
Edward R. Bosley Bio:
EDWARD R. BOSLEY is the James N. Gamble Director of The Gamble House, a program of the University of Southern California School of Architecture. For more than forty years he has studied, researched, lectured, and written on the work of architects Greene & Greene. He is author of the monograph Greene & Greene, published by Phaidon Press in 2000. With Anne E. Mallek he was co-curator of the exhibition A ‘New and Native’ Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene and co-editor of the publication that accompanied the exhibit.
Anne E. Mallek Bio:
ANNE E. MALLEK has served as curator at the Gamble House since 2004. She previously worked at historic house museums in England and catalogued the extensive collection of William Morris and Morris & Company material at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In 2008 she was co-curator with Edward R. Bosley of the traveling exhibition A ’New and Native’ Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene and co-editor of the publication of the same name (Merrell Publishers). Mallek is a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
Ann Scheid Bio:
ANN SCHEID heads the Greene & Greene Archives at the Huntington Library. The archives is administered by the Gamble House, University of Southern California. She is an author and historian who has published books on Pasadena history as well as articles and essays on the history of architecture, planning, and landscape in Southern California. She is a graduate of Vassar College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She contributed a chapter on the clients of Greene & Greene to the publication A ’New and Native’ Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene.
Robert Winter Bio:
ROBERT WINTER is the author or co-author of nine books about California architecture. He is the Arthur G. Coons Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, at Occidental College, Los Angeles, and a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians. He lives in the historic Batchelder Bungalow in Pasadena, California.
Alexander Vertikoff Bio:
ALEXANDER VERTIKOFF has served as the principal photographer for more than ten books on architecture, including American Bungalow Style; Greene & Greene: Masterworks; Greene & Greene: Developing a California Architecture; Stickley Style: Arts and Crafts Homes in the Craftsman Style; Bungalow Nation, and Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home: Chicago’s Forgotten Renaissance Man.
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