Architecture & Urban Design: Los Angeles and Southern California

(See the entry under Julius Shulman for an example of this.)

The UCLA University Archives identifies, collects, arranges, describes, preserves, and provides access to official university records in all formats, including electronic, that document the history of administrative offices and departments, academic departments and programs, related organizations, and activities of faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

From the Thelner and Louise Hoover Collection of Photographs of UCLA, 1927-82; photographer Thelner Hoover was UCLA Class of 1930 alumnus.

Photographs of Ralph D. Cornell, who was supervising landscape architect at UCLA from 1937-72. Some of Cornell's other landscape architecture projects included Pomona College, Torrey Pines Park, Los Angeles Music Center, and La Brea Tar Pits.

Please see the List of Collections at: for specific information about the AD&A Museum's holdings.

The Huntington's principal architecture and planning holdings relate to Southern California. The Library holds approximately 35,000 plans, renderings, photographs, and project records from around 1900 through the 1950s. Chief among these are archives for some of the region's most important architects: Morgan, Walls & Clements, Wallace Neff, James Dolena, Florence Yoch and Lucile Council, Edward Warren Hoak, the Foss Construction Company, and Samuel Lunden.
Important material related to the built and landscaped environment is also present in the Library's photographic collections, including the work of Maynard L. Parker, William M. Clarke, the Harold Parker Studio, the "Dick" Whittington Studio, and the records of Southern California Edison. Since the early 1980s, The Huntington has housed the documents, reports, and Federal Works Progress Administration land use maps from the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department and the Los Angeles City Department of Planning.

This collection contains material related to architectural historian Sara Holmes Boutelle, including extensive correspondence, research notes, photographs, interview notes, book drafts, articles, book reviews, presentation notes, and newspaper clippings, primarily relating to California architect Julia Morgan, women in American architecture, and historic preservation in the Bay Area.

Materials collected include drawings and prints, correspondence, published and unpublished writings, business records, visual media, diaries, biographies, oral histories, ephemera and other original materials relating to architects and architecture, landscape architecture, environmental design, urban planning and engineering in California, with special emphasis on coastal and central valley areas of the state. Online collections are viewable at: http://digital.lib.calpoly.edu/cdm/

Ralph D. Cornell was the supervising landscape architect at UCLA from 1937-72. Some of Cornell's other landscape architecture projects included Pomona College, Torrey Pines Park, Los Angeles Music Center, and La Brea Tar Pits.

The Environmental Design Archives holds nearly 100 collections documenting the built and landscaped environment. These records span a century, 1890-1990, and contain primary source materials such as correspondence, reports, specifications, drawings, photographs, 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.

Southern California highlights of the collection include the archives of Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, Ray Kappe, Frank Israel, and William Krisel, the architectural photography of Julius Shulman, and the papers of Reyner Banham.

The Greene & Greene Virtual Archives (GGVA) contains images of drawings, sketches, photographs, correspondence, and other historical documents related to the work of the architects Greene & Greene, the southern California design firm (active 1894-1922) that is often associated with the finest architecture and craftsmanship of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Recent photographic documentation of the firm’s furniture and other decorative arts is presented as part of the GGVA. The GGVA brings together material from the four major Greene & Greene collections: the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in the City of New York; the Environmental Design Archives at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB); The Gamble House, University of Southern California (USC), in Pasadena, California; and the Greene and Greene Archives, USC at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Approximately 4000 of the most important and frequently requested materials from the four repositories are available for viewing.

The Horner Architectural Photography Collection contains 307 vintage, black and white mounted photographs taken by Benjamin Bean Horner (1893-1971), an architect who practiced in Southern California, primarily Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The photographs are from the 1920s; the majority of the images are of historic structures in England and California.

"A pioneering designer of midcentury residential and commercial architecture, William Krisel is best known for designing affordable homes that expressed the modern aesthetic of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Consisting of drawings, photographs, documents, and articles, the William Krisel Papers contribute to the study of midcentury modernism and postwar housing trends, particularly the development of tract housing in California."

Drawings, renderings, blueprints, photographs, and surveys relating to the professional career of architect S. Charles Lee. Much of the collection reflects his work as one of the most prolific architects of the art deco movie theatres on the West Coast, including the Bruin Theatre in Westwood, the Los Angeles Theatre, and the Los Angeles Tower Theatre.

Maps of Los Angeles, other parts of the United States, and various places in the world. Includes maps of California, New Mexico oil fields, maps from the 1860s concerning the American Civil War, California gold fields, and maps of Mexico, South America, Caribbean, Russia, Australia, Pacific islands, India, Middle East, Great Britain and Ireland, Western Europe, and world maps, among others.

This collection contains architectural drawings and plans, office records, photographs, correspondence, project files, student work, family correspondence, and personal papers from the estate of California architect Julia Morgan, who practiced in San Francisco during the first half of the twentieth century. The bulk of the collection extends from 1896, when Morgan left for Paris to study architecture at the Beaux-Arts, to 1945 when her practice began to wind down.

A collection of modernist architect Richard Neutra's architectural and non-architectural art works, including photographs and drawings of his structures, architectural drafts and sketches, small paintings, intaglio prints, travel sketches and descriptive manuscripts.

Charles C. Pierce (1861-1946) was a pioneer Los Angeles photographer. Collection consists of historic negatives and prints. Most are of Southern California scenes; Los Angeles is well represented with views of downtown streets, commercial and civic buildings, and residential areas.

The Julius Shulman photography archive contains over 260,000 negatives, vintage and modern prints, transparencies, and related printed matter. The material documents the modern movement in architecture in Southern California from the 1930s through 1997, including the Case Study Houses.

The SCI-Arc Media Archive hosts over 1000 hours of continually–updated videos of architecture and design lectures, symposia and events featuring the most significant voices in architecture since 1974.