Tradition & Diversity of Work
Gardner Dailey was one of the two most prominent architects in the San Francisco Bay area from the late 1920's until his death in 1967. The other leading architect for that period was William Wurster.
They were both born in 1895 and their careers had some striking similarities. They were the two leading proponents of the Second Bay Region Style, the term which was first coined by Lewis Mumford who was considered the leading architectural critic of his time. Mumford (1895-1990) was internationally renowned for his writings on architecture, environmentalism, cities, regional planning, technology, and modern life. He was called “the last of the great humanists” and his contributions mark him as one of the most original voices of the twentieth-century.
Dailey worked with many other styles which were very different from the Second Bay Region Style. If one reads much about Gardner Dailey, they will recognize his brilliance and prominence in the San Francisco community and his contributions to the architecture, art and design world. He soared with the eagles and produced a remarkable body of work, both in its quality and diversity.
Gardner Dailey was a very accomplished architect/designer who created masterpieces in a variety of different styles. These styles included thick-walled Andalusian, Monterey tradition, California ranch house, Anglo-Colonial Revival, Regency Tradition of England, Streamline Modern, International Style, Second Bay Region Style/Tradition, Regency Revival and elements taken from Japanese architecture. (David Gebhard, in “an everyday modernism: the houses of William Wurster”, 1995, Marc Treib, ed., pp.164-174) Dailey also successfully combined a variety of styles. And his major buildings on the campus at Berkeley are another example of a different style. Dailey won awards for Tolman Hall and his interior of Hertz Hall is particularly beautiful, warm, comfortable and functional. The quality and diversity of Dailey’s work is even more impressive because he produced so much work from a relatively small office.
2. EARLY CAREER SHOWED DIVERSITY
Dailey’s early architectural work included mansions in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. In 1929, he designed the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park which David Gebhard described as thick-walled Andalusian (which some have called a subcategory of Mission Revival or Mediterranean). The Allied Arts Guild has gone through a major restoration. For more information, go to its website at http://www.alliedartsguild.org/ . Some of the neighbors in Menlo Park are concerned about the expanded uses of the Allied property. Numerous neighbors of Allied and "Save Allied Arts Guild" have complained about the expanded uses. See website at http://www.savealliedarts.com/maps.htm . They also filed a lawsuit entitled "Allied Arts Neighbors v. City of Menlo Park" which is now pending before the Court of Appeal
In the mid thirties, Dailey started working with the International Style and was one of the two leading proponents of the Second Bay Region Style. There were great similarities between the modern approaches in to modern architecture in southern (Schindler, Neutra, Ain, etc.) and northern California (Dailey, Wurster, Esherick, etc.) The northern Californians used more natural materials such as wood in contrast to the southern Californians who used more metal and steel. Dailey was particularly noted for his entrances and use of wood when he designed in the Second Bay Region Style.
4. DAILEY AT MOMA - 1944 "Built in the US since 1932"
Gardner Dailey’s work was shown nationally at the New York Museum of Modern Art in its landmark exhibit “Built in the USA Since 1932." The catalog for that exhibit devoted at least four full pages to Gardner Dailey. That exhibit showcased Dailey along with other architectural luminaries such as Frank Lloyd Wright, LeCorbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Oscar Neimeyer, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Edward Durrell Stone, Philip Johnson, Gregory Ain, Richard Neutra, and several other architects who designed houses in what came to be known as the Second Bay Region Style (William Wurster, John Funk, Vernon Demars).
5. DAILEY AT THE SAN FRANCISCO ART MUSEUM ("SFMA") - 1949 "Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region"
The next most important architectural exhibit involving Dailey was a landmark exhibition in 1949 at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA) which was entitled “Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region.” The catalog for that important exhibition indicates that it displayed at least 52 houses (and multiple housing units), but the book only contains illustrations for 17 of those houses and only one of those 52 is a Dailey house designed for L. E. David in Ross, California with Thomas Church as the landscape architect. (Celebrated landscape architect Lawrence Halprin worked for landscape architect Thomas Church until Halprin opened his own office in 1949. Therefore, it is quite possible that Halprin worked on the David house. The cooperation among the Bay area architects are admirable.)
Lewis Mumford, the leading architectural critic of his time (1895-1990), authored a major portion of “Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region” and coined the descriptive term known as the “Second Bay Region Style.” William Wurster and Gardner Dailey were also named as authors of portions of “Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region.”
Gardner Dailey was not a man who sought the limelight and did not seek to influence the composition of the exhibition to promote himself or display his work. Despite his deep involvement with the San Francisco Museum of Art and his contributions to “Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region,” only one of Dailey’s houses was selected for display at the exhibition. It should be remembered that Dailey was one of three members on the Jury of Selection for the exhibition and he was the Secretary of the San Francisco Museum of Art when W. W. Crocker was the Chairman and its Board members included Mortimer Fleishshacker, Robert Gordon Sproul (president of the University of California), J. D. Zellerbach, Mrs. Hervey Parke Clark, Mrs. Peter Folger, Mrs. E. S. Heller, Mrs. W. S. Heller and Mrs. Charles O. Martin. Dailey served on the Board of SFMOMA for more than 20 years and was a powerful influence on it. This is most significant because William Wurster and Gardner Dailey were at that time the undisputed leaders of the Second Bay Region Style/Tradition and displays of several houses designed by Dailey would have been appropriate and perhaps more representative.
6. DAILEY AT THE SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ("SFMOMA") -1995
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) was inaugurated in 1935 [then called the San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMA)]. Since then, SFMOMA “has been committed to the presentation and interpretation of both historical and new architecture” and has held many landmark exhibitions relating to architecture. (“an everyday modernism: the houses of William Wurster”, 1995, Marc Treib, ed., Director’s Forward and Acknowledgments, p. 6) An exhibition entitled “an everyday modernism: the houses of William Wurster” was presented in 1995 (the centenary of the births of both William Wurster and Gardner Dailey) and it was the first major exhibition presented by SFMOMA’s Department of Architecture and Design in the inaugural year of SFMOMA’s new building. Marc Treib recognized that it was appropriate to hold a Wurster exhibition because he was being forgotten and it might be “because the architectural ideas and features central to his manner [style] might have become so common in California houses today, both architect designed and mass market.” (Id., p. 8) Gardner Dailey’s architectural ideas and features have become very common to California. Professor Treib’s Introduction provides much information and raises some very provocative questions. It is difficult to understand why SFMOMA (or any other equivalent facility) has not held a similar exhibit for Gardner Dailey because Wurster and Dailey had so much in common and they were undisputably the leading architects in the Bay Area of their period from the late 1920s through mid 1960s.
The 2004 Annual Preservation Conference, sponsored by the California Preservation Foundation at the Presidio in San Francisco presented an educational session entitled “Forgotten Modern Masters, Vanishing Legacy of the Second Bay Region Style” which stressed the importance of Dailey.
Much of the drawings, pictures and documents relating to his work have been saved in the Design Archives of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley.
Its List of Collections contain many renowned architects and landscape architects.
Clicking on an architect or landscape architect takes one to resources and brief information about that architect.
Its resources and information for Dailey contains a some brief biographical information and a picture of his Brazil Building at the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco Bay.
Architectural historian Pamela Post’s dissertation (published in 2000) was entitled “East meets west, the model homes at the 1939-1940 New York and San Francisco World Fairs.” William Wurster and Gardner Dailey were among the architects whose works were most prominently displayed on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay and elsewhere in the Bay area. Her dissertation gives prominent recognition to Gardner Dailey.
8. AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS COMMISSION ("ABMC")
Dailey was a pilot in World War I and was awarded a Purple Heart for an injury that he received when he was a pilot and his airplane crashed. This injury left him blind in his right eye. A legacy of his patriotism exists at the American Cemetery and Memorial in Manila and at the West Coast Memorial at the Presidio in San Francisco.
After World War II, Dailey designed the magnificent Manila American Cemetery and Memorial for the American Battle Monuments Commission (AMBC). In 1948, the Government of the Philippines granted permission to the United States to establish a memorial cemetery on part of the former reservation (152 acres) of Fort William McKinley. After a tremendous amount of grading and landscaping, the cemetery and memorial were completed and dedicated in 1960.
In addition to the spectacular monument/building, it contains the largest number of graves for United States military dead in World War II (17,206) as well as inscriptions of the names of 36,282 missing in action.
The ABMC web site is http://www.abmc.gov/
and Manila Cemetery & Memorial's website is http://www.abmc.gov/ml.htm
For more details, download the booklet referred to at the bottom of the page for the Manila Cemetery and Memorial because it gives a much more detailed and interesting discussion of this cemetery and memorial. Not only did Gardner Dailey design the buildings, he also designed most of the landscape. (booklet, p. 11)
Dailey also participated in the design of another very important memorial for the ABMC. Hervey Parke Clark designed the World War II West Coast Memorial which is located in the Presidio in San Francisco. Celebrated landscape architect Lawrence Halprin designed the landscaping for the West Coast Memorial and its lettering was based upon the work of Gardner Dailey.
At the time of the submittal, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) required that submittals contain full size drawings of the lettering. Hervey Parke Clark submitted lettering done by Gardner Dailey and that lettering is prominently included in the Memorial that was constructed. The Architecture and Design Collection at the University of California at Santa Barbara has an original of that submittal (approximately 10 feet by 18 inches).
http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/adc_front.html
http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/adc.html
It was generous of Dailey to assist another architect who was a competitor for this important Memorial and commission. Lawrence Halprin was the landscape architect for this Memorial.(See information on Architectural Links)
The design of the West Coast Memorial was approved by the ABMC in 1957 and General of the Army George Marshall (chairman of the ABMC) said that construction would start shortly thereafter. The monument was dedicated in 1960 by numerous luminaries including Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.
After the World War II, Gardner Dailey started designing larger civic and institutional projects for the University of California, Stanford University and many others.
10. SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF PROJECT INDEX AT BERKELEY'S COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN (CED)
The CED Project Index contains a listing of 312 projects by Dailey. But it does not contain all of Dailey's projects. Some of Dailey's more significant projects are listed below with their number on the Index.
7. Allied Properties (Mar Monte Hotel in Santa Barbara)
19. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Lake Merritt Stationand Administration Building
20-25. Bechtels Residential Projects
26. Bergeron's Trader Vic's restaurant in San Francisco
27. Berliner house (Sausalito)
29. Coral Casino (Santa Barbara)
34. Brazil Pavilion
43. Cadet Basic School (US Merchant Marine in San Mateo)
50-52. Clift Hotel Additions
74-79. Del Monte Properties
85. De Young Memorial Museum, Brundage Collection, San Francisco
90. Dunne House
110. Ernest Gallo
120. Golden Gate International Exhibition (GGIE), Brazil Pavilion
119-121. Haas Residential Projects
145-154. Industrial Indemnity
176-177. Lowe House
182. ManningHouse
186-196. Matson Company projects in San Francisco and Honolulu which included the Royal Hawaiian, Moana, Princess Kaiulani and Surfrider Hotels and offices
214. Owens House
229. American Red Cross
232. William P. Roth
239-241. San Francisco Park and Playground Commission
251. Sir Francis Drake Hotel
256-251. Stanford University
273-284. University of California ( Berkeley and Davis)
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