How Greenwood Common contributed to Berkeley's Mid-Century Modern Aesthetic

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) is offering this talk as a lead-up to the September 28, 2025, Fall House Tour. Even if you do not plan to attend the house tour, you will enjoy the talk with slides by Waverly Lowell. In her book about Greenwood Common in Berkeley, Lowell talks about how architect William Wurster envisioned Greenwood Common as a development that combined an idealistic sense of community with a modernist aesthetic and an awareness of regional traditions. Through research in the UC Berkeley Design Archives, she explores the eight homes — designed by seven significant California architects — which make up the Greenwood Common. Built between 1952 and 1957, the development’s houses harmonize effortlessly with one another and their individual locations. Along with four gardens designed by Lawrence Halprin, the common’s landscape captured what had become the midcentury ideal of indoor-outdoor living. Lowell will sign and sell her books at the event for the reduced rate of $25 per copy.

About the speaker and author: Waverly B. Lowell, FSAA, is a partner in The ONDA Group Archival Consultants. She is Curator Emerita and founder of the Environmental Design Archives at the University of California, Berkeley. She has held positions with the National Archives and the California Historical Society. A Fellow of the Society of American Archivists, Lowell has been honored with a California Heritage Preservation Commission Archivist Award of Excellence and a Distinguished Librarian Award from the Librarians Association of UC Berkeley. Her projects include the exhibit Unbuilt San Francisco: Ambition and Imagination and publications Living Modern: A Biography of Greenwood Common, Landscape at Berkeley: The First 100 Years and Design on the Edge: 100 Years of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

This event will start with a short reception where we will be serving hors d'oeuvres by our caterer and two special white wines, one from California and the other from New Zealand. Our members recently have given high marks for all three.The reception will be followed by Betsy Frederick Rothwell's introduction to Lowell's talk. Rothwell is the current archivist and director of the Environmental Design Archives (EDA) housed at UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. She will give a brief overview of the EDA that holds more than 200 collections documenting the work of historically significant architects including some of the architects who designed houses on our Fall House Tour.

The admission price for this event is: $25 per person and $15 for students. Please pay through Eventbrite. You can also pay by check made payable to BAHA and mailed to P.O. Box 1137 Berkeley, CA 94701. Paypal is available as well. If you go to the join-as-a-member page of our website , you will see instructions for using Paypal.

There will be available at the door wine tickets for $7.00 per glass. Parking on the street is available but limited and you may want to carpool or use a service such as Uber.

Host or Publisher Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association