The Halprins continue to make news

Earlier this year, the California Historical Society presented Experiments in Environment, an exhibition about the famous interdisciplinary workshops led by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and his wife, post-modern dancer, Anna Halprin. The exhibition was presented in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first workshop the Halprins held in 1966. The work of the Halprins continues to draw attention from the media and cultural institutions around the country. 

Dance Magazine reminds us that 50 years ago, it featured a cover story (see below) about Anna Halprin and Driftwood City, a project that grew out of the workshops 

Last week, Curbed featured a terrific piece on the role Lawrence Halprin played in influencing the design of city parks and civic spaces across the country. The article was in written, in part, because of a new exhibition on Lawrence Halprin's work that has recently opened in Washington D.C. Created by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (a partner and sponsor of our exhibition) and on display at the National Building Museum, the exhibition coincides with the 100th anniversary of Halprin's birth and features, among other items, more than 50 newly commissioned beautiful photographs of his built works. 


The exhibition includes a terrific online companion. It can be reached by clicking here:. Included in the online exhibition is a link to the exhibition catalog (where the images below are sourced from).  It can be reached directly here. 

Levi's Plaza

Ghiradelli Square

 Yosemite

Visions of Los Angeles: Landscape Architect Lawrence Halprin Transforms a City

Bunker Hill Steps, Los Angeles, 2011
Photo by Charles Birnbaum / Cultural Landscape Foundation

"Great cities are not made by automobiles, freeways and high rises. Basically, they are made by open spaces and the people who use the open spaces.”
—Lawrence Halprin, c. 1987

It started in the 1950s with plans to revitalize an impoverished area of downtown Los Angeles. Bunker Hill—settled in the latter half of the nineteenth century—was once a cluster of grand Victorian mansions for the upper class. But as residents sprawled in all directions along with the city’s development in the new century, the area succumbed to poverty and neglect. By mid-century, a massive redevelopment project promised to transform Bunker Hill into a vibrant, modern place of buildings and plazas.

Drawing of Bunker Hill, c. 1870 
California Historical Society Collections at University of Southern California

(Left) Aerial View over Bunker Hill, 1945 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library 
(Right) Carlos Diniz (artist), Overview Rendering of “A Grand Avenue,” 1980 
Lawrence Halprin, A Life Spent Changing Places (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2011) 
Archive of Carlos Diniz / Family of Carlos Diniz

Development continued throughout the following decades. In 1980, a new proposal for revitalization of the Bunker Hill area, known as “A Grand Avenue,” was offered by the Maguire Brothers for a competition sponsored by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. The Maguire Brothers drew from a diverse group of architects and designers, including the architect Frank Gehry and the landscape designer Lawrence Halprin.

Lawrence Halprin, Bunker Hill Competition, 1980
Lawrence Halprin, Changing Places (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1986) 

Although Maguire Brothers was not awarded the project, its plan became the foundation of development for the next 12 years. Lawrence Halprin lent his own visions to these public spaces in downtown Los Angeles. “In my case,” he explained in his book A Life Spent Changing Places, “I often found that when I lost one competition or opportunity, another opened up in the same place or with the same client.”

These opportunities took form in four projects: the Crocker Court (now Wells Fargo Court), Bunker Hill Steps, Library Square (now Maguire Gardens), and Grand Hope Park. This linear group of public spaces along Hope Street is described below by Charles Birnbaum, president and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, in the foundation’s publication What’s Out There Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Open Space Network 

by Charles Birnbaum

These designs are responsive to the topography, embellished with public art, and reflect the context of the region through materials that allude to the natural environment and past cultural influences. They also express Halprin’s impressions of the Southern California landscape and its unique cultural history.

Crocker Court (Wells Fargo Court)

Wells Fargo Court, 2011 
Photo by Charles Birnbaum / Cultural Landscape Foundation

Completed in 1983 with architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and sculptor Robert Graham, the space is Halprin’s only atrium design. Conceived with developer Robert Maguire as “an urban, indoor Garden of Eden,” the interior public space was designed to display Modern sculpture. It is the only Halprin project where the landscape design, including the fountain, is subservient to the sculpture designed by Robert Graham . . . and other artists including Joan Miro and Jean Dubuffet . . . .

The fountains, channels, and runnels provide the sound of running water throughout the garden. Many of the plants have been changed in recent years. They were originally planted in different sizes and scales to one another with the intent of humanizing everything in the room. With this illusionistic goal in mind, Graham was commissioned by Halprin to create four sculptural centerpieces for the fountains. Each sculpture is of the same athletic female figure in different gymnastic stances, slightly smaller than life size.

Lawrence Halprin, Crocker Garden Court, 2009 
Courtesy of Los Angeles Times

Bunker Hill Steps

Lawrence Halprin with a drawing of the Bunker Hill Steps, date unknown 
Lawrence Halprin, A Life Spent Changing Places (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2011)

Completed in 1987 with architects Pei Cobb Freed Partners and developer Robert Maguire, this grand stairway and water garden was designed by Halprin to link downtown Los Angeles to the newly developed Bunker Hill section of the city. Postmodern in style and reminiscent of Rome’s Spanish Steps, the steps are choreographed as an urban experience similar to a city street, complete with terraced landings, retail shops, and outdoor cafes with a range of activities for relaxing, dining, or shopping. The terraces can be accessed by stairs or escalator. A “museum wall,” displaying sculptured grottoes and fountains, bounds the steps on one side while the other side curves around a seven-story building.

The staircases are bisected at the center by a raised, rocky ravine, with water cascading downward to a small basin at Fifth Street. They are edged with flowering trees, shrubs, and perennial plants, which also serve to frame views and screen the escalators. The bronze sculpture Source Figure by Robert Graham was added near Hope Place in 1992.

Top of the Bunker Hill Steps, 2011 
Photo by Charles Birnbaum / Cultural Landscape Foundation

Maguire Gardens (Los Angeles Central Library)

Lawrence Halprin, Design for Los Angeles Library Garden, date unknown
Lawrence Halprin, A Life Spent Changing Places (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2011)

This project is unique in Halprin’s body of work, one of the only projects where a new design also addressed lost historic landscape features from an earlier era. Completed in 1988 with preservation architects Hardy, Holtzman + Pfeiffer, developer Robert Maguire, and several visual artists, the gardens are linked to the Bunker Hill Steps by a pedestrian and mid-block crossing. The space, occupying a former parking lot adjacent to the Central Library, was intended to be a passive public park, with a restaurant, outdoor dining terrace, fountains, pools, overlooks, site-specific public art, and a generous lawn. These elements, Postmodern in style, all contribute to a dignified setting for the iconic Egyptian Revival library building, originally designed by Bertram Goodhue in 1926.

Halprin not only restored and drew inspiration from Goodhue’s stepped reflecting pool, but extended it westward from the Central Library to South Flower Street. Building on this central spine, Halprin employed pools and associated axial walkways to spatially organize new outdoor rooms and guide people’s movements. The art in the garden was designed by Jud Fine (reflecting pools, grotto fountain) and Laddie John Dill with Mineo Mizuno (Font Fountain).

Maguire Gardens, 2011
Photo by Charles Birnbaum / Cultural Landscape Foundation

Grand Hope Park

Grand Hope Park, 2011 
Photo by Charles Birnbaum / Cultural Landscape Foundation

This Halprin-designed 2.5 acre park, completed in 1993 with the Jerde Partnership architects, anchors the southern end of the Network and serves as a gateway to the South Park residential, cultural, and commercial district. The park’s plan also incorporates the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising campus. Unique among the Open Space Network projects, this park’s client was the Community Redevelopment Agency. The center of the rectilinear park is occupied by a large lawn with a curvilinear path and edged by vine-covered pergolas, a children’s playground, and public art. The southern end of the park is more structured, with smaller lawn panels and benches set within wide paved terraces.

Halprin's drawings articulated the locations for art opportunities. This culminated in installations by Lita Albuquerque (Celestial Source for the sunken water court), Adrian Saxe (wildlife figures), Raul Guerrero (Hope Street Fountain and decorative stenciling on pergolas), Gwynn Murrill (coyotes, hawk, snake), Tony Berlant, and Ralph McIntosh. The mosaic-adorned Clock Tower was designed by Halprin.

Grand Hope Park, 2011
Photo by Charles Birnbaum / Cultural Landscape Foundation

“‘Memorable’ and ‘intense’ and ‘passionate’ are words that I prefer to ‘pretty’ when I’m making places for people.”
—Lawrence Halprin, 1991

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources

• Bill Boyarsky, “The Remains of Bunker Hill,” LAObserved, February 4, 2015
• Cultural Landscape Foundation, “What’s Out There Los Angeles”; http://tclf.org/landscapes/wot-weekend-LA
• Lawrence Halprin, A Life Spent Changing Places (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2011)
• “Los Angeles: Library Restoration Wins National Design Award,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1994
• Valerie J. Nelson, “Lawrence Halprin dies at 93; designer made urban settings feel like nature,” Los Angeles Times, November 2, 2009
• Leon Whiteson, “A Central, Revitalized Role for Landscape Architects,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 1989

______________________________________________________

Join the California Historical Society in Los Angeles for “How Participatory Design Is Changing Los Angeles,” a special event recognizing Lawrence Halprin’s contributions to the city’s public spaces.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016
6:00 pm
Gensler Los Angeles
500 South Figueroa Street

A panel discussion led by Alison Bick Hirsch, Assistant Professor at the USC School of Architecture and author of City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America will include a diverse array of architects, designers, planners, and architectural historians: Steve Rasmussen Cancian, Shared Spaces Landscape Architecture and Union de Vecinos; Jennifer Wai-Kwun Toy, Co-founder and Design Director, Kounkuey Design Initiative; Brian Glodney, Associate/Urban Designer, Gensler, Architecture, Design, and Planning Firm; Helen Leung, Co-Executive Director, LA-Más, a non-profit community design organization.

$5 for CHS members, $10 general admission

RSVP: https://participatorydesign-la.eventbrite.com

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Learn more about Lawrence Halprin at the California Historical Society’s exhibition Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971 (January 21–July 3, 2016)—funded by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Foundation, and the John and Marcia Goldman Foundation—and at http://experiments.californiahistoricalsociety.org/blog/.

______________________________________________________

The architectural drawings of Lawrence Halprin are preserved at the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the leading repositories of architectural drawings and records in the world.

A Landscape Planned for Living: Lawrence Halprin’s Levin Family Garden

Lawrence Halprin, The Irving Levin Garden, San Anselmo, 1951
Courtesy of Fred Levin

Gardens were a wonderful testing ground for details and a great learning experience for how things are constructed. When gardens were successful they provided great personal joy and led me to some interesting discoveries and friendships. 
—Lawrence Halprin, A Life Spent Changing Places 

A 2016 magazine article titled “Taming the Tilt” describes a hilly backyard in San Francisco’s Castro District as “unusable” and a “tangled mess of greenery.” The homeowners, notes the author, “craved a California-style outdoor space for grilling, entertaining and gardening.” The solution? Create three levels, or “rooms,” separated by retaining walls and filled with mostly native, drought tolerant plants, in subtle hues of gray and gray-green, with “hits of purple.” 

There was a time, however, when this concept ran counter to the prevailing inclination to create landscapes that mimicked traditional gardens in less arid parts of the country. In 1951, Irma and Irving “Bud” Levin broke with that tradition.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in its article “A Garden Planned for Three-Level Living,” when the Levins purchased a San Anselmo, California, home with a slightly sloping half-acre lot—described as being “tangled, disorganized [and] run-down”—rather than fighting this “jungle,” they hired newly-minted landscape architect Lawrence Halprin to create a new kind of garden environment.

Lawrence Halprin: Landscape Architecture in Israel

Lawrence Halprin, Self-Portrait before Leaving Israel, 1998

Courtesy of Anna Halprin

As a teenager, the land of Israel captivated Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009). In 1929, at 13, he marked the ritual transition into Jewish adulthood and responsibility (bar mitzvah) in Jerusalem (then British-governed Palestine Mandate), where he and his family were living at the time. In 1933, at 17, he returned there for two years. 

During this time, Halprin joined a group of pioneer men and women involved in the utopian kibbutz movement, which established collective, socialist societies (kibbutzim, Hebrew for “gatherings”) based on agriculture.

Living Lightly on the Land Lawrence Halprin and The Sea Ranch

Charles Birnbaum (Photographer), The Sea Ranch, 2008

Courtesy of Charles Birnbaum/The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Today The Sea Ranch on California’s Sonoma coast is known as a rustic community where people live in harmony with their environment. In 2005, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin—who developed The Sea Ranch master plan in the early 1960s—noted that wherever he went, people were eager to hear about The Sea Ranch as “a shining emblem of what a community can become.” “All over the world the fact of The Sea Ranch has changed the attitude and the vision of how you can design and build a community in which people can live and be nurtured by a landscape…architecture itself has been changed by design here.”

Landscape Architect Lawrence Halprin (1916–2009), c. 1960s

Courtesy of Eichler Network

In addition to its connection to the coastal landscape, the goal of Halprin’s master plan was to create a “utopian” community, inhabited by a cross-section of society. Greatly inspired by the communal life he’d experienced during three years spent in Israel, Halprin sought to create “a collective—very similar to being on a kibbutz.” At The Sea Ranch people would live individually as families, but in this very isolated and rugged environment they would spend significant time together as a community. The places Halprin most admired around the world—Italian hill towns, rugged Swiss mountain communities, which he used as models for The Sea Ranch—had an “organic wholeness,” a “simplicity” and, most importantly a “memorable and unified personality.”

Lawrence Halprin, Sea Ranch Ecoscore, c. 1968

Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania

In preparation for creating the master plan, Lawrence Halprin spent much time on the land observing the landscape, animals, vegetation, and weather. He took his family camping there and made detailed studies of local geology, flora and fauna, the ever-present wind, and the sounds of the ocean. “I wanted to plan a unique community based on ecological principles of design and immersed in nature.”

Lawrence Halprin, Sea Ranch House, c. 1980

Courtesy of the Halprin Family Archive and Edward Cella Art + Architecture

Charles Birnbaum (Photographer), The Sea Ranch, 2008

Courtesy of Charles Birnbaum/The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The design aesthetic for Halprin, developer and architect Al Boeke, and fellow architects Joseph Esherick, Charles Moore, William Turnbull, Jr., Richard Whittaker, Don Carter, Richard Reynolds, and Donlyn Lyndon, was to maintain a “regional character” for the buildings, inspired by the natural, cultural, and built environments of the Sonoma County coast. Houses and other structures at The Sea Ranch would not compete with their natural surroundings—no perimeter fences would separate properties and only indigenous vegetation would be planted around homes. Roof lines were designed to deflect the wind and not stand apart from the structures. Mundane elements of everyday life such as garbage cans and cars would be hidden from view. Halprin’s goal, as he noted in The Sea Ranch: Diary of an Idea, was not to “destroy the very reason [that] people come here.” As Carl Solander writes in Architecture Boston, “The great achievement of Sea Ranch is its concealment of architectural vicissitudes within nature.”

Lawrence Halprin, Approach to Yosemite Falls, c. 2005

Courtesy of yosemitehikes.com

In addition to the rugged coastal community of The Sea Ranch, Lawrence Halprin’s career was also noted for its impact on urban environments. Some of his best known designs include the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C., the cascading falls of the Ira Keller fountain in Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill Steps, and San Francisco’s Letterman Center, Ghirardelli Square, and Levi’s Plaza. In many of these designs, Halprin was inspired by his affinity for the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Most of his urban spaces include water features—creeks, fountains, and waterfalls. To Halprin, actual development in the Sierra itself was neither feasible nor desirable. “The Sierra, I knew, should always remain wilderness.” One of his rare Sierra projects was the re-designed entrance to Yosemite Falls completed in 2005. To Halprin, though, the wild coastline of northern California was different. The Sea Ranch, Halprin felt, “could be the place where wild nature and human habitation could interact.”

Lawrence Halprin, Sea Ranch Landscape, c. 1980

Courtesy of the Halprin Family Archive and Edward Cella Art + Architecture

Ironically, this world renowned development on a pristine section of coastline was the source of much controversy during its early years. Despite its reputation as the ideal community, it became the catalyst for the creation of the state agency tasked with protecting and conserving the coastline, the California Coastal Commission.

As California’s population boomed following World War II, housing tracts popped up almost overnight—from former agricultural valleys to land’s end at the coast. In southern California, especially, public access to beach areas became severely limited by private communities. In northern California development was slowed somewhat by the general ruggedness of the coastline, but in 1963 when Oceanic Properties Inc. purchased the land for The Sea Ranch—then known as Del Ray Ranch—coastal lovers became concerned, and rightly so, that access to 10 miles of stunning coastline would be cut off to the public. Seeking first local and then statewide support, in 1972 activists got Proposition 20 placed on the California ballot, the passage of which established the California Coastal Commission and placed limitations on further coastal development. Without The Sea Ranch as the driving inspiration for California coastal protection, mused former Sonoma County Supervisor Ernie Carpenter, “it would be gruesome out there.”

Lawrence Halprin, Sea Ranch Map, 1960s

From Lawrence Halprin, The Sea Ranch: Diary of an Idea

In other ways, Halprin’s utopian goals for The Sea Ranch did not always meet his expectations. As the community grew and architectural styles became more diverse, Halprin found newer buildings becoming too large. The clustering of buildings—desirable in Halprin’s plan—became less common, and less emphasis was placed on the building and utilization of community-focused structures. With its growing popularity the cost of homes went beyond what average people could afford, creating a less diverse population than Halprin had envisioned. (Some of this he blamed on the Coastal Commission’s strictures on the number of houses that could be built, thus driving up demand and pushing prices beyond affordability.)

In 1995, feeling some despair about the state of things, Halprin wrote, “perhaps most importantly The Sea Ranch still needs a heart.” In part he attributed the lack of cohesion to the development’s layout, and its 11-mile length, which made organic community a challenge. Achieving a kibbutz-like environment largely eluded him at The Sea Ranch, where a more individualistic spirit and desire for solitude is common among residents.

Charles Birnbaum (Photographer), Lawrence Halprin at Sea Ranch, 2008

Courtesy of Charles Birnbaum/The Cultural Landscape Foundation

Regrets notwithstanding, Lawrence Halprin knew that he and his fellow architects had created something groundbreaking and unique at The Sea Ranch. “Despite my frustrations over shortcomings, the [environmental planning and design] message far exceeds anyone’s expectations.” “At The Sea Ranch,” he wrote in 1995, “we have developed a community based in wild nature and sustained by its beauty.”

Alison Moore
Strategic Initiatives Liaison
amoore@calhist.org

Sources

• Ballotpedia, The Encyclopedia of American Politics, “California Proposition 20—Creation of the California Coastal Commission (1972),” https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_20,_Creation_of_the_California_Coastal_Commission_%281972%29
• https://www.architects.org/architectureboston/articles/seen-sea-ranch-sonoma-county-california
• Charles Birnbaum /The Cultural Landscape Foundation, “Lawrence Halprin,” https://tclf.org/pioneer/lawrence-halprin/biography-lawrence-halprin
• Alice Gregory, “Utopia Rules at Sea Ranch—A Community Born of 60s Idealism,” New York Times “T Magazine,” July 19, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/t-magazine/sea-ranch-california-utopia.html?_r=0
• Lawrence Halprin, “The Sea Ranch: Diary of an Idea,” Comet Studios/Lawrence Halprin, 1995
• Meg McConahey, “Sea Ranch legacy looms large on architecture, coastal protection,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, October 3, 2014, http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/2905976-181/sea-ranch-legacy-looms-large?gallery=3950632&artslide=0
• Bill Platt, “The Sea Ranch as Intentional Community,” Ridge Review View 3, no. 3 (Fall 1983)
• Carl Solander, “Seen: The Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, California,” ab / Architecture Boston, (Fall 2011),
• The Cultural Landscape Foundation, “Lawrence Halprin: Oral History Interview Transcript, Interviews Conducted March 2003, March and December, 2008, by Charles A. Birnbaum and Tom Fox,” https://tclf.org/sites/default/files/pioneers/oralhistory/Halprin-Transcript.pdf
• Wikipedia, “Sea Ranch, California,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Ranch,_Californi

Learn more about Lawrence Halprin at the California Historical Society’s exhibition Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971 (January 21–July 3, 2016) and at http://experiments.californiahistoricalsociety.org.


“I am delighted that Experiments in the Environment will be coming to its home base in San Francisco, the home of radical, humanistic, and participatory innovation. The exhibit excites me as well because it is including a new section describing my collaboration with Larry and our work beyond the Experiments. As Larry inspired me with his sensitivity to the environment which influenced my experiments, I influenced him in my use of movement audience participation as I pioneered new forms in dance. This combined exhibition shows the impact we had on each other throughout our lives and I hope it helps people understand our work better.”

—Anna Halprin, 2015

Join Us!

Sea Ranch: A Presentation with Donlyn Lyndon at the California Historical Society

Join the California Historical Society on Thursday, March 10, 2016, at 6:00 pm for a conversation about The Sea Ranch with Donlyn Lyndon, Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Design at University of California, Berkeley; author of The Sea Ranch: Fifty Years of Architecture, Landscape, Place, and Community on the Northern California Coast, and designer of a continuing series of works at Sea Ranch. For more information and reservations, visit http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/events_calendar.html.

Anna Halprin: “Jews Are a Dancing People”

Anna Halprin: “Jews Are a Dancing People”

Anna Halprin Leading a Women’s Peace Walk on the Rhoda Goldman Promenade, Israel, 2014

Courtesy of Sue Heinemann

Anna Halprin (front row, center) leads a peace procession on the Rhoda Goldman Promenade designed by her late husband, the renowned landscape architect Lawrence Halprin. Next to her (our left) is Susie Gelman, daughter of Richard Goldman, who commissioned the promenade.

Photographer Sue Heinemann remembers traveling to Israel with the postmodern dance legend Anna Halprin in the fall of 2014: “There she completed her trilogy Remembering Lawrence, honoring her late husband, who helped found an early kibbutz and designed several Jerusalem landmarks. Anna led over a hundred Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze women on a silent peace walk along the Goldman Promenade, designed by Larry, situated between East and West Jerusalem.”

The Sierra in the City: Lawrence Halprin and Levi’s Plaza

Levi’s Plaza Fountain, 2015

Courtesy of Alison Moore

In 1973 Levi Strauss & Co. left its cozy quarters at 98 Battery Street in San Francisco for the bold, upright world of the new Embarcadero Center, a series of four skyscrapers located near the city’s waterfront. Within a few years, however, Chairman of the Executive Committee Walter Haas, Jr. began to feel that all was not right. “The highrise at Embarcadero Center was not our style,” he recounted in an oral history, “I’d get in the elevator and people didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them.”

1966: A Year that Changed California, and the World.

With the start of 2016, the California Historical Society is turning its attention from the Centennial of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition to the 50th anniversary of the critically important year of 1966 in California. It was a year that put into motion powerful—yet diametrically opposed—forces that transformed the State and country, then and...now.

One set of forces was the rise of a "counterculture" in San Francisco. In early January 1966, the city's youth scene was well on its move from the "Beat Generation" neighborhood of North Beach to the cheaper Western Addition, near the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets. In fact, it was only a few months earlier, in September 1965, that the word 'hippie' was used for the first time in a West Coast newspaper. The term was used to describe young people who had begun congregating—with unique, identifiable customs and interests—in a coffee shop in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

CHS's next exhibition, "Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966-1971 (January 21-May 1)" about the famous interdisciplinary workshops led by Lawrence and Anna Halprin (he a landscape architect, she an avant garde dancer), opens on the exact 50th anniversary of an event that would catalyze this nascent hippie culture and launch it with a dynamic power that would soon transform youth culture around the world: The Trips Festival.

The Trips Festival combined music by the Grateful Dead, dance performances by Anna Halprin (whose studio was located right off Haight Street), innovative light displays, and more over three days from January 21-23, 1966.

Yet it was on this very day 50 years ago that another set of forces—perhaps even more powerful than the cultural might of the hippies—were set in motion. On January 4, 1966, actor Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for Governor of California. Shortly after a press conference in Southern California, Reagan released a half-hour film that was aired on television outlets throughout the State. The film captures many of the themes—fiscal responsibility, limited government, welfare reform—that Reagan would use to win the White House less than 15 years later and user in a new era of American politics. In the 1966 election Reagan defeated former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher for the Republican  nomination and incumbent California Governor Pat Brown in the general election to win the Governor's Mansion. Part of Reagan's campaign, as seen in this campaign film, was a reaction to the cultural excesses and anti-war sentiments of the hippies—and a pointed rebuke of the University of California's handling of student protests and the Free Speech Movement.

The rise of the hippies, and the rise of Ronald Reagan, together, yet apart, in California in 1966. Happy 50th Anniversary...

Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966-1971 opens at the California Historical Society on January 21. Join us for the opening celebration, and several other events marking the 50th anniversary of the Trips Festival. Learn more about the exhibition and related public programs at experiments.californiahistoricalsociety.org

Urban Renaissance with Mermaids: Lawrence Halprin’s Ghirardelli Square

Ghirardelli Square

Courtesy of Fairmont Heritage Place

Today we know that the revival of the urban inner city begins with the restoration and re-use of old buildings. Cities that have preserved their old downtowns and industrial districts find in them the seeds to begin anew. Seeking community, people and businesses from Brooklyn to Portland to Oakland now flock to restored buildings to make their homes or to build businesses—eschewing suburbia for urban buzz.

Celebrating the Legendary Dance Pioneer Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin; photo by Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

As 2015 comes to a close, so, too, does the year-long, worldwide 95th birthday celebration for the postmodern dance pioneer Anna Halprin. National and international tributes have brought a renewed focus to Anna’s contributions to performance, choreography, and dance education.

Lawrence Halprin and the Plaza That Changed the World

Sproul Plaza, courtesy Alison Moore.

Is architecture capable of changing the course of history?

On October 1, 1964, in the midst of a growing protest, University of California, Berkeley student Mario Savio hopped onto the roof of a police car in Sproul Plaza, the open space in front of the University’s administration building.  Sitting in the car was former UC student Jack Weinberg who had been arrested for staffing an “illegal” table on Sproul on behalf of the civil rights organization, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Their actions, and those of others, not only helped launch the Free Speech Movement, which would forever alter not only the UC campus, but also the fabric of American society.

Yosemite—Protected Wilderness

Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View at Midday, 2013; photo by David Iliff, Creative Commons License

On October 1, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed legislation establishing the country’s third national park at Yosemite. Congress had recognized Yosemite as worthy of protection since 1864, when in the midst of the Civil War it granted the magnificent and awe-inspiring Yosemite Valley and “the Land embracing the Mariposa Big Tree Grove” to the State of California “inalienable for all time.”

Choreographing the Environment: The Counterculture of Anna and Lawrence Halprin

Anna Halprin; photo by Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

San Francisco Magazine called her a “postmodern dance legend.” The San Francisco Chronicle declared that she “essentially invented postmodern dance.” Today dance pioneer Anna Halprin turns 95. To celebrate her birthday, fans worldwide in fifteen countries are staging hundreds of events this summer, including last week's "95 Rituals" in San Francisco 

Anna Halprin has won numerous awards, most recently a Doris Duke Impact Award in 2014. That award—for artists who have influenced and are helping to move forward the fields of dance, jazz and/or theatre—acknowledged her work in revolutionizing dance and extending the impact of the performing arts “to address social issues, build community, foster emotional healing, and connect people to nature.”

Over the decades, Anna has created more than 150 dance-theatre works. She remains an arts educator through workshops and the Tamalpa Institute, an international movement-based expressive arts training program. As she has explained: “I want to integrate life and art, so that as our art expands, our life deepens, and as our life deepens, our art expands.”

Experiments in Environment

In California, Anna and her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, created a new way of thinking and moving through the physical environment. During the 1960s and 1970s—decades of experimentation and radical social and political change—these two cultural leaders in their seemingly unrelated fields of landscape architecture and dance were at the forefront of a sea change in how we experience public spaces.

(Left) Col. Arthur Roth (Photographer), Hippies in Powell and Hyde St. Phone Booth, San Francisco, c. 1969–70, California Historical Society, CHS2013.1238; (right) Photographer unknown, Vietnam War Demonstration, February 19, 1965, Federal Office Building, San Francisco, California Historical Society

In the explosive place and time that was San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, free love and drug cultures intersected with free speech and antiwar sentiment. Experimentation and open-mindedness ruled the day. The Halprins found common ground—the environment—in which to explore their fields in a transformative way: a series of experimental, interdisciplinary workshops called Experiments in Environment.

Set in the streets of San Francisco, on the shores and cliffs of Sea Ranch (a coastal community in Sonoma County designed by Lawrence), and on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais in northern California, the Halprin workshops brought new environmental awareness to artists, dancers, architects, designers,  and others.

From movement sessions on a dance deck, to blindfolded awareness walks through the landscape, to collective building projects using driftwood and choreographed urban journeys, participants engaged in multisensory activities in alternating environments. “We were trying to break down the aesthetic barriers that we had inherited,” Anna told the Chronicle in 2013. 

Men’s Dance, Kentfield, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 7, 1966. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Blindfold Walk, Kentfield, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 2, 1968. Courtesy of the Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Driftwood Village—Community, Sea Ranch, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 6, 1968. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

Market Street Walk, San Francisco, CA. Experiments in Environment Workshop, July 8, 1966. Courtesy Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. Photograph by Joe Ehreth. 

Impact

In January 2016 the California Historical Society (CHS) will examine this seminal period in our history—50 years after the first Halprin workshops were held. The exhibition Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971, along with a series of public and educational programs and events, including dance performances, will explore the impact of the 1960s counterculture on California and the nation by examining the significant contributions the Halprins made to their fields.  CHS will be collaborating with the Museum of Performance + Design, which houses the Anna Halprin archives, and other groups on this effort.

At a time when we are rethinking and reactivating our public spaces—in our parks, streets, plazas, business districts, and communities—and exploring the role of art and artists in cities, a renewed awareness of the Halprins’ groundbreaking creative process and their legacy on city planning and the arts contributes to the ongoing public discourse about how we create, use, and value public space.

Shelly Kale

Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

70 Years Ago, a City Embraced the Future: San Francisco and the United Nations Charter

It was late April 1945 and the war in Europe was nearing an end. On April 29, German forces surrendered in Italy. The next day, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. A few days later in Berlin, Soviet forces captured the German Reichstag. As combat to end World War II continued, in San Francisco there was talk of peace and an international solution to future conflict.