Archive News

Warnecke Architectural Archive is proud to be participating in the  California Preservation Foundation's first statewide Doors Open event! 

We will be offering docent tours of the archives at 11:00am and 2:00pm.

Visitors are welcome between 10:00am and 4:00pm, Saturday, June 11th.

Bring your friends and family to as many of the independently operated sites as you can visit in one weekend, for a flat fee of $20 per person!

 

About Doors Open California:
Doors Open California is a new component of the annual California Preservation Conference, organized and hosted by the California Preservation Foundation. The theme of the conference for 2022 is “Opening Doors,” signifying CPF’s effort to generate widespread and inclusive interest in historic preservation and heritage conservation throughout the state. 

Doors Open California is two-day celebration of architecture and culture featuring more than 70 on-site tours and access to historic places across the state on Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and 12, 2022.

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For Information and to Registure Visit: https://californiapreservation.org/doca/

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Walking tour of the Memorial Arboretum Arlington National Cemetery

By Emily Rheault

Featuring historical photos from Warnecke Archives 

 

President John F. Kennedy visited Arlington National Cemetery in March 1963. Looking at the view of Washington, D.C. from the hill by Arlington House, he is reported as saying, “I could stay hereforever.” Eight months later, he was assassinated.

After his death, Kennedy’s family knew they wanted to inter him at this spot. In 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy hired John Warnecke to design the memorial and landscape that you see today. Inspired by the 170-year-old Arlington Oak, Warnecke designed the memorial around the oak. In the final design, the post oak featured prominently. It served as a natural focal point and offered its beauty and shade to visitors for the next 48 years.

Kelema Lee Moses joins us at the Warnecke Archives to research for her current project.

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Moses is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Occidental College whose work focuses on critical contemporary issues in the architectural and urban landscape of Pacific island cities. Her current book project, Island Modernism/Island Urbanism: Encountering Statehood in Honolulu, Hawai’i, suggests that island cities offer a place-based perspective to urban studies that must also account for spatial limitations; where architects and planners must develop inventive approaches to balance economic interests, environmental issues, and Indigenous imperatives. She is currently an ACLS/Getty Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art at the Getty Research Center.

37th Annual California Preservation Awards

 

The Historic Bank of Guerneville Building is the winner of a 2020 Preservation Design Award for Rehabilitation. Award recipients are selected by a jury of top professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, planning, and history, as well as renowned architecture critics and journalists. The Award will be presented on Wednesday, October 22, 2020 at an online awards ceremony. Tickets and sponsorship options are available at californiapreservation.org/awards.​ Located on a prominent corner of Downtown Guerneville, California, the Historic Bank of Guerneville Building sat abandoned for nearly 30 years. Lack of retail spaces on Main Street in Downtown Guerneville influenced the final use of the building as a collective of local small businesses and include a small exhibit space for the local historical society. Many original elements were discovered and revealed during its rehabilitation including an original mosaic tile floor, hidden since the 1940s.

John Carl Warnecke (1919 -­ 2010) designed one the most visited American Presidential monuments, John F. Kennedy’s Eternal Flame in Arlington National Cemetery. Given our cultural fascination with the Kennedy clan, how is it that the architect selected to honor Kennedy’s memory is himself not more prevalent in our architectural memory? Why has there not yet been a monograph dedicated to Warnecke’s life and work?

 

Join us for this fascinating presentation by Bridget Maley, architectural historian and writer, founder of architecture + history, llc, who will examine how Warnecke’s work reveals a deeply contextual approach which began early and continued throughout his career. 

 

Watch the video presentation.

John Carl Warnecke: His Fascinating Life and Architectural Career 
Paul V. Turner, Wattis Professor of Art, Emeritus
 

John Carl Warnecke, class of 1941, was a Stanford football tackle who went on to become one of the most successful architects in America from the 1960s to the 1980s. This talk will explain the importance of Warnecke’s work, especially his pioneering role in the development of “Contextualism” in architecture––as seen, for example, in his work in Washington, D.C., for John F. Kennedy. Warnecke was the president’s favorite architect, and his friendship with JFK will be examined––as well as his remarkable relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy following the president’s death. Another focus of the talk will be on the important, but little-known, role that Warnecke played in the development of Stanford’s architecture after World War II.

A special exhibition from the Warnecke Archives showcases a design for a trailer for H.R.H. the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, 1951. The exhibition includes original project designs, autobiographical excerpts, design descriptions, photos, floor plans, and job records.

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Trailer for H.R.H The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia - Description of Design

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Show opens Saturday, March 14, 2020 from 1 - 4 pm

@ Chalk Hill Artist Residency