Greene was born on October 12, 1868, in Brighton, Ohio, the son of Thomas Sumner Greene, a bookkeeper, and Lelia Ariana Mather Greene. He had a brother, Henry Mather Greene, who was born two years later. They grew up primarily in St. Louis, Missouri, and on their mother's family farm in West Virginia while their father attended medical school. Their father, a practicing homeopathic physician by this time, was very concerned with the need for sunlight and circulating fresh air; the importance of these elements was to become one of the signatures of the brothers' work.
Education
As teenagers, the Greene brothers studied at the Manual Training School of Washington University in St. Louis, where they studied metal- and woodworking and graduated in 1887-1888. Charles and Henry each received a "certificate for completion of partial course, " a special two-year program at MIT's School of Architecture, in 1891. They studied classical building styles, intending at that time only to gain certification for apprenticeships with architecture and construction firms upon graduation.
Career
After MIT in spring 1890, Charles apprenticed first with the firm of Andrews, Jaques and Rantoul; but after four and a half months, moved to the office of R. Clipston Sturgis. By March 1891, he had moved again to work with Herbert Langford Warren; and by the following November, he had changed again to the firm of Winslow and Wetherell. He would stay there until the two brothers departed to join their parents in Pasadena, California. All the firms the brothers worked for were located in Boston, Massachusetts. The architectural firm of Greene and Greene was established in Pasadena in January 1894, eventually culminating with the designs of their "ultimate bungalows", such as the 1908 Gamble House in Pasadena, generally considered one of the finest examples of residential architecture in the United States. After 1901 the firm began developing the distinctive stylistic elements that finally came together as a cohesive whole in their grand works of 1907-09. The Greenes developed a personal idiom within the Arts and crafts aesthetic, receiving commissions to design furnishings for their houses. In 1905 the Greenes began an association with Peter Hall as the primary contractor for their major commissions, and from 1907 with his brother John Hall, who ran a millwork shop producing their decorative arts and furniture designs. The Greene brothers were masters in their area of domestic concentration for which, until the year of 1948, they received little acclaim. In 1948 they received citations from the Pasadena Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and from the national body in 1952 for creating a “new and native architecture. ” In 1960, they were among the modern architects included in the book Five California Architects by Esther McCoy, where the chapter on the Greenes was written by Randall Makinson. The firm of Greene & Greene was officially dissolved in 1922 after Charles moved his family north to Carmel, California. Charles died on June 11, 1957. The brothers remained lifelong friends until their deaths.
Achievements
Greene is best remembered as a founder of an architectural firm Greene and Greene. Active primarily in California, their houses and larger-scale ultimate bungalows are prime exemplars of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.
Connections
In 1901 Charles Greene married Alice Gordon White, and they honeymooned in Europe and her native England.
