The Environmental Design Archives holds more than 200 collections documenting the built and landscaped environment. These records span more than a century, 1890-2014, and contain primary source materials such as correspondence, reports, specifications, drawings, photographs, models, and artifacts. Though the archives' primary focus is the San Francisco Bay Area, designers and projects from throughout California, the United States, and the world are found in the collections.
William W. Wurster founded the Environmental Design Archives (then the Architectural Archives) in 1953 as a teaching collection, following the recommendation of eminent architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock. The personal papers and project records of Bernard Maybeck comprised the inaugural donation. In 1973 the Department of Landscape Architecture combined its collections with the Architectural Archives prompting the College of Environmental Design to adopt the name "Documents Collection." The collection became the Environmental Design Archives in 1999 in response to the establishment of a formal archival program. The Archives has become Northern California's premier collection of historic architecture and landscape architecture records.
Since its founding, the Archives has been directed or supported by faculty members. Architect Kenneth Cardwell (1953-1972) was initially responsible for managing the archives followed by Architectural Historian Stephen Tobriner (1973-2003). Designer/ author Marc Treib (2004-2014) served as the Faculty Curator following the establishment of the EDA by Curator Waverly B. Lowell (1998-2018) the first professional archivist.
Equally integral to the Archives are holdings in American and English landscape architecture. This element of the collection originates with the donation of Beatrix Jones Farrand's Reef Point Library to the Landscape Department in the 1950s. The donation included Farrand's own project records, the garden plans of English landscape architect Gertrude Jekyll, and the records of 'Garden Architect' Mary Rutherfurd Jay. The Archives also contains the records of the founders and practitioners of the modern California landscape such as Thomas D. Church, Garrett Eckbo, Douglas Baylis, Robert Royston/RHAA, and Geraldine Knight Scott. The “next generation” of landscape designers such as Richard Vignolo, Casey Kawamoto, Jack Stafford, Theodore Osmundson, and Walter Guthrie are also held by the Archives.
At this year's Archives Crawl the EDA will showcase some of the most well-known architects of the Bay Area over the last 100 years such as Bernard Maybeck, John Galen Howard, Willis Polk, and more! We will be showing facsimiles of some of our favorite drawings of the San Francisco/Bay Area which include several BART stations, the Levi Strauss Building, the Palace of Fine Arts, the International Building, and the Golden Gate Bridge to name a few. We look forward to seeing you there and sharing our collections with you!
