Greene was born on January 23, 1870, in Brighton, Ohio, the son of Thomas Sumner Greene, a bookkeeper, and Lelia Ariana Mather Greene. He had a brother, Charles Sumner Greene, born two years earlier. When the boys were young, the family moved to St. Louis. From 1876 to 1880, while their father attended the Medical College of the University of Cincinnati, the brothers and their mother lived at the Mather farm in Wyandotte, Virginia, where the Greenes became keenly aware of the beauty and simplicity of plant forms, boulders, and other natural materials - a discovery that had a lifelong influence on their architectural philosophies.
Education
When the family returned to St. Louis, the Greene brothers attended Calvin Woodward's Manual Training High School, the first school of its kind in America. The Greenes learned the fundamentals of materials, tools, and workmanship that were to be the basis for their individual work. Following his graduation in 1887, Charles Greene waited for a year so that he and Henry could enter the architectural curriculum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology together in 1888. After the freedom of Woodward's program, the Greenes felt stifled by the training in the classical forms of architecture at MIT, which they considered inhibiting to creative and artistic endeavor.
Career
In 1891 the Greenes left MIT with a Certificate of Partial Course in architecture and apprenticed themselves for two years to various architects in the Boston area. During their apprenticeships they were exposed to the "shingle style" and were also influenced by the great oriental collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and by the Japanese pavilion at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In late 1893 Charles and Henry Greene traveled to Pasadena, California, to visit their parents, who had recently moved there. They were fascinated with California life, the agricultural landscape, the mission structures, and the freedom from tradition. Although they had intended to return to the East to begin their architectural careers, a commission for a small house in Pasadena prompted them to remain on the West Coast. Over a period of three decades the firm of Greene and Greene changed the direction of American domestic architecture. The brothers' strong influence on the California bungalow style and their break with tradition brought new architectural expression to residential design. During the firm's early years (1894-1902) they were engaged in searching for an architectural form appropriate to California life that also expressed the philosophy of Woodward's Manual Training School. They soon turned from the eclecticism of the past to develop the new expressions of their own genius. In their work of 1902-1909, Charles and Henry Greene took the arts and crafts movement in America to unsurpassed heights. Following Charles' trip to England in 1901 and under the influence of the works of Gustav Stickley, published that same year, the Greenes' artistic energies seemed to burst forth in new directions. Their designs were bold, relaxed, and freed from the past, with hints of the Orient, the Swiss Alps, and the missions of California. Yet there was a freshness about them particularly appropriate to the California landscape. Like the work of their contemporaries Bernard Maybeck, Irving Gill, and Frank Lloyd Wright, that of the Greenes was imbued with a new spirit that drew much attention from the leading critics of the day. Between 1902 and 1907 the refinement in the Greenes' personal style attracted many wealthy clients. The vigor and success of their work during this period was the result of the extraordinary blending and compatibility of Charles Greene's vivid imagination and sculptural orientation with Henry Greene's strong sense of order and system. Together they brought a disciplined unity and simplicity to their multi-faceted designs. In 1909 Charles, exhausted by the firm's heavy work load, took his family to England, where he remained for the better part of a year, browsing in bookshops, talking with writers, and painting in watercolors and oils. Henry remained behind to oversee the construction of their most prestigious works. But in the years after Charles returned, the firm found fewer and fewer commissions. Public taste was changing. Moreover, between 1907 and 1909 the Greenes had been spoiled by the seemingly unlimited budgets allowed them; and now their rigid standards were driving costs beyond the reach of many potential clients. During this time, too, Charles began to return to his earlier interest in writing. In 1916 he moved his family to Carmel, California, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1922 the firm was reorganized, and Henry assumed entire charge of the business in his name only. The Greenes' independent works continued to command the accolades of their professional associates. But, despite the innovations in their earlier work, neither produced later designs that had a widespread influence on the trend of American domestic architecture, as had their earlier designs in the California bungalow style. In 1952 the brothers were individually and jointly honored by the American Institute of Architects with the presentation of a citation hailing them as "formulators of a new and native architecture. " Henry Greene died in Pasadena, California on October 2, 1954.
Achievements
Connections
On August 22, 1899, Greene married Emeline Augusta Dart; they had four children.