Charles Sumner Greene (1868-1957)
and Henry Mather Greene (1870-1954) were brothers
born in Brighton, Ohio, now part of Cincinnati. The
boys spent part of their childhood living on their
mother's family farm in West Virginia while their
father, Thomas, attended medical school in St. Louis,
Missouri. The brothers developed a love of nature
during those West Virginia years that would be ever-reflected
in their art.
 Charles Sumner Greene |
 Henry Mather Greene |
By the time the boys were teenagers, their father,
now a respiratory physician, had moved the family
to St. Louis and enrolled the boys in the Manual
Training School of Washington University. Here, beginning
in 1883 and 1884, respectively, they studied woodworking,
metalworking, and toolmaking. The family lived in
a small, poorly ventilated apartment during those
years, and their father's professional concern with
the need for sunlight and freely circulating fresh
air would come to influence them later in their work.
Their father decided for them that the two should
become architects, and at his urging, enrolled at
the School of Architecture of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. They grudgingly studied
the traditional classic styles, hoping only to gain
certification for apprenticeships with architecture
firms upon graduation, which they accomplished — Henry
finally settling in with the H. Langford Warren firm,
and Charles with Winslow and Wetherell, among others.
Then in 1893, their parents, who had moved to the “little
country town” of Pasadena, requested that their
sons move out to California and join them. The brothers
did so, and the cross-country trip proved fortuitous:
while passing through Chicago, they stopped at the World’s
Columbian Exhibition and for the first time saw
examples of Japanese architecture. Their immediate
admiration of the style would become a strong influence
on their later designs.
Soon after their arrival in Pasadena, Charles and
Henry set up shop together, and the architecture firm
of Greene & Greene was born. Their art would culminate
between 1907 and 1909 with the construction of the “ultimate
bungalows” — one of which is the Gamble House
in Pasadena. |
More About the Greenes
Read
the biography of Charles Sumner and Henry Mather
Greene at the Greene
& Greene Virtual Archives. |
