Phoebe Hearst Plan University of California, John Galen Howard Collection, Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley
Doe Library. The Hearst Memorial Mining Building. The Hearst Greek Theatre. Benjamin Ide Wheeler Hall. The Campanile.
These are just a few stately campus landmarks built in the early 1900s under the leadership of John Galen Howard, an architect who, more than any other individual, shaped the face of the UC Berkeley campus.
A New Englander who had attended MIT and Paris’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Howard entered the international architectural competition to transform our then-undistinguished campus into a “City of Learning.” He did not win. Émile Bénard of Paris won. But when Bénard traveled to California, he insulted nearly everyone he met and refused to leave Paris to carry out his duty.
In 1901, President Benjamin Ide Wheeler appointed Howard to carry out Bénard’s plan. Howard found it to be “utterly impractical” — and went to work blending his Beaux-Arts artistry with Bay Area practicality to create the seminal buildings we still use and admire today. Howard later founded and led the architecture school, now called the College of Environmental Design.
