Thomas Dolliver Church (April 27, 1902 – August 30, 1978) was a 20th century
landscape architect
A landscape architect is a person who is educated in the field of landscape architecture. The practice of landscape architecture includes: site analysis, site inventory, site planning, land planning, planting design, grading, storm water manageme ...
based in
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
[Pacific Coast Architecture Database (PCAD): Thomas Dolliver Church]
/ref>[UC Berkeley, College of Environmental Design: About the archives]
. accessed 7.28.2014 He is a nationally recognized as one of the pioneer landscape designer
Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...
s of Modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
in garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...
landscape design
Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...
known as the 'California Style'.[ Stanfordalumni.org: Thomas Church]
. accessed 7.28.2014
/ref> His design studio was in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
from 1933 to 1977.
History
Thomas Church was born in Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, and raised in California, in Ojai
Ojai ( ; Chumash: ''’Awhaỳ'') is a city in Ventura County, California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. The valley is part of the east–west trending Western Transverse Ranges and is ...
and Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
.[
He received his ]B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
degree in Landscape Architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...
from the College of Agriculture at the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
in 1922.[
He then attended the ]Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is the graduate school of design at Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It offers master's and doctoral programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban ...
, where he received his master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. in City Planning and Landscape Architecture in 1926.[
After graduating, Church spent six months at the ]American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome.
The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.
History
In 1893, a group of American architects, ...
on a Harvard awarded Sheldon Traveling Scholarship.[ He also traveled throughout Europe, and while in France became friends with ]Catherine Bauer
Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster (May 11, 1905 – November 21, 1964) was an American public housing advocate and educator of city planners and urban planners. A leading member of the "housers," a group of planners who advocated affordable housi ...
, with whom he would later teach at Berkeley. He studied Italian Renaissance garden
The Italian Renaissance garden was a new style of garden which emerged in the late 15th century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the landsc ...
s, and Moorish
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a distinct or se ...
and Iberian Renaissance Spanish garden
A traditional Spanish garden is a style of garden or designed landscape developed in historic Spain. Especially in America, the term tends to be used of a garden design style with a formal arrangement that evokes, usually not very precisely, the ...
s, observing their responses to a climate so similar the Mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate (also called a dry summer temperate climate ''Cs'') is a temperate climate sub-type, generally characterized by warm, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the ...
in California. On returning from Europe he worked in a city planning office on the East Coast (1927–1928), then he taught at Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
(1928–1930).[
He returned to the ]San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
in 1930, and was a Special Lecturer in the UC Berkeley Department of Landscape Architecture for the remainder of that year.[ He also went into private practice in 1930 to design the Pasatiempo Estates in the Santa Cruz area, with Second Bay Tradition style architect ]William Wurster
William Wilson Wurster (October 20, 1895 – September 19, 1973) was an American architect and architectural teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, best known for his residential desig ...
.[ A 1937 trip was made to ]Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
, where seeing new modernist works and site planning by Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (; 3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, see ...
was influential to his design evolution.[
He moved to San Francisco in 1932 and established his practice in The city. Church opened his own design studio in 1933, at 402 Jackson Street in ]San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. He continued to practice there until his retirement in 1977. His own distinctive garden and residence were on Hyde Street, in the Russian Hill, San Francisco
Russian Hill is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It is named after one of San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills".
Location
Russian Hill is directly to the north (and slightly downhill) from Nob Hill, to the ...
district.
Church was a longtime contributor to Architectural Forum
''Architectural Forum'' was an American magazine that covered the homebuilding industry and architecture. Started in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1892 as ''The Brickbuilder'', it absorbed the magazine ''Architect's World'' in October 1938. Ownership ...
, House Beautiful
''House Beautiful'' is an interior decorating magazine that focuses on decorating and the domestic arts. First published in 1896, it is currently published by the Hearst Corporation, who began publishing it in 1934. It is the oldest still-publish ...
, and Sunset
Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring ...
magazines, bringing his design ideas with examples to his design peers and the public.[
In 1951 Church was awarded the Fine Arts Medal, for Landscape Architecture, by the ]American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...
.[ In 1973, Church was elected to the ]National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
, as an Associate Academician. He was also awarded the Rome Prize
The Rome Prize is awarded by the American Academy in Rome, in Rome, Italy. Approximately thirty scholars and artists are selected each year to receive a study fellowship at the academy. Prizes have been awarded annually since 1921, with a hiatus ...
for his work in landscape architecture by the American Academy in Rome.
Design innovation
When Church started practicing, the Neoclassical style
Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The pr ...
was still the predominant landscape design
Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...
style. Thomas' design education at UC Berkeley and Harvard, along with his travels to gardens in Europe, gave him ample training in Classical and Renaissance garden traditions. However, Church is renowned as a pioneer in American landscape architect for introducing the Modernist architecture
Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form ...
and art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
movements into landscape design.[ After WW II, other designers added to what later became known as the "California Style" of gardens. Some of them apprenticed in his design studio, including ]Robert Royston
Robert N. Royston (1918 – September 19, 2008) was one of America's most distinguished landscape architects, based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. His design work and university teaching in the years followi ...
and Lawrence Halprin
Lawrence Halprin (July 1, 1916 – October 25, 2009) was an American landscape architect, designer and teacher.
Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist a ...
.
Church outlined four principles for his design process in his 1955 book ''Gardens Are For People." They are:
*Unity — the consideration of the design as a whole, integrating the house and its gardens with a free flow between them.
*Function — the relation of the outdoor recreational and social areas to their interior counterparts, and of the outdoor service areas to the household's needs, to please and serve the people who live in them.
*Simplicity — upon which rests the aesthetic and economic success of the design.
*Scale — relating the different design parts, features, and areas to one another, to create a whole an integrated landscape design.
Church used the Modernist design principles for freedom of elements, such as the forms of spaces and features, and a sense of movement. When possible, he favored creating multiple viewpoints, instead of a traditional single axis. "A garden should have no beginning and no end," he wrote in ''Gardens Are for People'', "and should be pleasing when seen from any angle, not only from the house."[ He could also use historicist design principles when the site called for it, such as the formal lines of the Memorial Courtyard (1965) beside the ]San Francisco Opera House
The War Memorial Opera House is an opera house in San Francisco, California, located on the western side of Van Ness Avenue across from the west side/rear facade of the San Francisco City Hall.
It is part of the San Francisco War Memorial and P ...
.
Another design element Church is renowned for is the "outdoor room," creating sub-areas for outdoor living as distinct places within the whole landscape. They were different than those of Italian Renaissance garden
The Italian Renaissance garden was a new style of garden which emerged in the late 15th century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the landsc ...
s with a separation of house and garden, his outdoor rooms interacted with the house, with a free flow between the two [
"Tommy represented freedom from 'decorating' a house," said former ]Sunset
Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring ...
editor Walter Doty, shortly before Church's death. "Landscaping had meant gussying up structures that weren't worth it. Tommy was a 'behavioral' landscaper . . . gardens to live in were more important."[
]
Works
The majority of Church's work was residential, and he reportedly designed over 2,000 private gardens in California and 24 other states.[ Notable residential works include the now iconic landscape design of ''El Novillero'' (]Donnell Garden
Donnell Ranch Garden is considered one of the masterpieces of modern landscape design, and one of the first examples of the now-ubiquitous kidney shaped swimming pool. It was constructed in 1948 at the Donnell Ranch in Sonoma, California, by landsc ...
s) for the Donnell Residence (1947–1948), overlooking the winding salt marshes of the North Bay in Sonoma County
Sonoma County () is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its county seat and largest city is Santa Rosa, California, Santa Rosa. It is to the n ...
, California.[ Others include the ]Bloedel Reserve
The Bloedel Reserve is a forest garden on Bainbridge Island, Washington, United States. It was created by Virginia and Prentice Bloedel, the vice-chairman of the lumber company MacMillan Bloedel Limited, under the influence of the conservatio ...
and Lakewold Gardens in Washington state.
He also worked on a number of larger non-residential landscape commissions. He worked on campus master plans for UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...
, Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, UC Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...
, Harvey Mudd College
Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolls 902 undergraduate students ...
, Woodside Priory School
Woodside Priory School (commonly known as The Priory) is an independent, co-educational, Benedictine Catholic, college-preparatory, day and boarding school in Portola Valley, California, United States. It is located within the Roman Catholic Ar ...
, and the Wascana Centre
Wascana Centre is a 930-hectare (9.3 km2/2,300 acre/3.6 mi2) urban park built around Wascana Lake in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, established in 1912 with a design from renowned architect Thomas Mawson. The park is designed aro ...
in Saskatchewan. He designed the grounds of the Embassy of the United States, Havana
The Embassy of the United States of America in Havana ( es, Embajada de los Estados Unidos de América, La Habana) is the United States of America's diplomatic mission in Cuba. On January 3, 1961, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower severed r ...
, the General Motors Research Laboratory
A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry.
In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...
in Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
(1949–1953), the Des Moines Art Center
The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa.
History
The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines As ...
, the Hotel El Panama in Panama City
Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is locat ...
, the Mayo Clinic
The Mayo Clinic () is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research. It employs over 4,500 physicians and scientists, along with another 58,400 administrative and allied health staff, ...
in Minnesota, and Parkmerced
Parkmerced is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, designed by architects Leonard Schultze and Thomas Dolliver Church in the early 1940s. Parkmerced is the second-largest single-owner neighborhood of apartment blocks west of the Mississi ...
(1941–1951) in southwestern San Francisco.
He was the landscape design consultant to Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
for 30 years, beginning in the late 1940s. He served on the Stanford Architectural Advisory Council from 1960 to 1978, that President J.E. Wallace Sterling created.[ "Church was trying to put a layer of continuity around the original buildings and the new (ones), he was working on a (campus) landscape that was meant to tie all this together."][
Thomas Church died in 1978.
]
Legacy
Thomas Church had a long, distinguished, and productive career with over 4,000 projects, as a Landscape Architect.[ He also wrote several influential and popular landscape design books, including ''Gardens Are for People'' (1955) and ''Your Private World: A Study of Intimate Gardens'' (1969).Author and Book Info.com: Thomas D. Church]
/ref>
The Post-war Modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
garden design
Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expertise. ...
style, first in California and soon influential across the United States, was created and developed by a small group of landscape designer
Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...
s, of which Thomas Church was the "first founder."[ The subsequent founders and practitioners of the Modern California Landscape include ]Garrett Eckbo
Garrett Eckbo (November 28, 1910 – May 14, 2000) was an American landscape architect notable for his seminal 1950 book '' Landscape for Living''.
Youth
He was born in Cooperstown, New York to Axel Eckbo, a businessman, and Theodora Munn Eckbo ...
, Robert Royston
Robert N. Royston (1918 – September 19, 2008) was one of America's most distinguished landscape architects, based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. His design work and university teaching in the years followi ...
, James C. Rose, and Dan Kiley
Daniel Urban Kiley (2 September 1912 – 21 February 2004) was an American landscape architect, who worked in the style of modern architecture. Kiley designed over one-thousand landscape projects including Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis ...
.[
]
See also
*Landscape design history of the United States
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...
*American landscape and garden designers
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
*American landscape architects
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
Notes
References
* Thomas Dolliver Church; ''Gardens Are For People'' — San Francisco: McGraw-Hill
McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...
Book Co., 1955, reissued 1983.
* Thomas Dolliver Church; ''Your private world; a study of intimate gardens'' — San Francisco; Chronicle Books, 1969.
* Waymark, Janet, ''Modern Garden Design Innovation since 1900'' — London, Thames and Hudson.
* Pregill, Philip and Nancy Volkman, ''Landscapes in History: Design and Planning in the Western Tradition'' — New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American Multinational corporation, multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, Academi ...
, 1993.
* Treib, Marc; ''Thomas Church, Landscape Architect Designing a Modern California Landscape'', 90, 101–112 — San Francisco; William Stout Publishers, monograph, 2003.
Online Archive of California—OAC: finding the Thomas D. Church Collection
* "Thomas Church, Landscape Architect : oral history transcript (1975–1978)" — Riess, Suzanne B.; Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California.
*"Thomas D. Church, Landscape Architect : a Bibliography" — Vance, Mary A.; monograph; Vance Bibliographies, 1980.
*
External links
Church (Thomas D.) Collection, 1933–1977
{{DEFAULTSORT:Church, Thomas Dolliver
American landscape and garden designers
American landscape architects
Architects from San Francisco
California people in design
Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area
Landscape design history of the United States
1902 births
1978 deaths
UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design alumni
Ohio State University faculty
Harvard Graduate School of Design alumni
Architects from Boston
1940s in California
1950s in California
20th-century American architects