William Wilson Wurster

William Wilson Wurster 1895-1973, American architect, b. Stockton, Calif. Wurster was a major designer of town and country dwellings in the roomy and comfortable West Coast aesthetic termed "Bay Region style." His buildings were carefully integrated with the surrounding environment. Wurster taught at Harvard and was dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1944-50) and dean of the Univ. of California Architecture School at Berkeley (1950-59). His major works include the Golden Gateway Redevelopment Project and Ghirardelli Square, both in San Francisco, Cowell College of the Univ. of California at Santa Cruz, and a number of office buildings.

Bibliography: See M. Treib, ed., An Everyday Modernism: The Houses of William Wurster (1995).

Wurster, William Wilson (1895–1973). American architect with a strong belief that architecture should respond to local conditions. As principal of Wurster, Bernardi, & Emmons, he was responsible for a great number of ‘Regional’ buildings in California, many having timber frames with pitched roofs, shingle or clapboard-covered walls, and rough carpenter's detailing, collectively called the ‘Bay Region School’. Good examples of his work were the Gregory Farmhouse, Scotts Valley near Santa Cruz (1927), the Butler House, Pasatiempo (1934–6), and the Reynolds House, San Francisco (1946), all in CA. He also designed Stern Hall, University of California, Berkeley (1942), the Medical Plaza, Stanford University, Palo Alto (1959), the Woodlake Residential Community, San Mateo (1965), and the award-winning Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco (1962–7), all in CA. With Belluschi and Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill the firm designed the Bank of America World Headquarters, San Francisco, CA (1970–1).

Bibliography

Cruickshank (ed.) (1996);
Kalman (1994);
Treib (ed.) (1995);
S. Woodbridge (ed.) (1976)