Church, Thomas Dolliver 1902-1978

Biography

Thomas "Tommy" Dolliver Church was born in Boston but grew up in San Francisco, where he worked as a landscape architect for more than fifty years. He is credited with being the creator of the "modern garden." He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard. Following graduation in 1922, he traveled extensively in Europe on a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship. Upon his return to the United States, he began teaching landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He returned to practice in 1929 and three years later opened his own office in San Francisco at 402 Jackson Street where he practiced until his retirement in 1977. During the 1930s, Church and his wife Betsy also ran Cargoes, a retail furniture store in San Francisco which featured the designs of their friend Alvar Aalto.

Church's design approach combined with the local natural environment and economic climate of the 1930s through the 1970s to lead to the development of what became known as the California style. Church designed gardens primarily for the expanding middle class, both in cities and in the rapidly developing suburbs of the Bay Area. In addition to the residential gardens that make up the majority of his work, Church designed larger scale open space for housing, industrial plants and hospitals, and was consultant to Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Church's designs were much publicized by a number of popular home and garden journals, primarily Sunset magazine. His philosophy and principles of design were spelled out in two books, Gardens Are For People (1955, reprinted in 1983) and Your Private World (1969).

Among Church's most important works were the Dewey Donnell garden, El Novillero, in Sonoma, California (1948), done with Lawrence Halprin, who was then working in his office; the beach garden of Mr. and Mrs. O. Martin, Aptos, California (1948); the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan (1956); portions of the campuses of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz; and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.

During the course of his practice, Church collaborated with numerous architects including William Wurster and Gardner Dailey. He also influenced many young landscape architects. Garrett Eckbo, Robert Royston and Lawrence Halprin all worked in Church's office during the early stages of their careers. His awards include the Gold Medal of the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects.

Sources: Mann, William A. "Landscape Architecture: An Illustrated History in Timelines, Site Plans, and Biography." John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York. 1993.

Laurie, Michael. "Thomas D. Church, Landscape Architect." Unpublished article.

From the guide to the Thomas D. Church Collection, 1933-1977, (Environmental Design Archives. College of Environmental Design. University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, California)

Administrative History

Thomas Church was chief landscape architect for the Berkeley Campus from September 1961 through June 1969. Church was known for his 'user-oriented' landscaping; in addition to his Berkeley and extensive private work he also did work for the UC Santa Cruz campus and for Stanford University.

Prior to 1961, the university had used faculty members for landscaping advice; perhaps the best known of these was John Gregg, whom John Galen Howard was known to consult on landscaping. During the 1950s Lawrence Halprin was hired to complete a master plan for the development of the campus, but there seems to have been a disagreement between Halprin and the university administration, and the plan came to naught. Still the building plans set forth in the Long Range Development Plan of 1956 called for an equally intensive analysis of the campus landscape, which Church agreed to perform.

In addition to providing landscaping for the construction projects of the 1960s, Church also devoted much of his energy to the open spaces on campus. Areas such as Strawberry Creek became much more of a focal point under Church's plan, which sought to maintain and even emphasize the traditional park-like atmosphere of the campus in the face of intensive building.

From the guide to the Landscape Records for the University of California, Berkeley, 1959-1969, (The Bancroft Library. University Archives.)