Scope and Content Note
The papers of Victor Gruen (1903-1980) span the years 1886-1991, with the bulk of the materials produced during the period 1960-1980. The collection consists of personal and business correspondence , project files , speeches , scrapbooks , and writings that document Gruen's professional career in architectural design, urban planning, and environmental counseling. The papers touch on every phase of Gruen's career and include much information on his personal life as well. Although the formation and dissolution of his business operations are well documented, most of the collection focuses on several of the architectural design and land use projects undertaken by Gruen Associates between 1960 and 1980.
The Gruen Papers appear to have been gathered from several sources, including Gruen's home and the Zentrum für Umweltplanung in Vienna, Austria, and the offices of Gruen Associates and the Victor Gruen Foundation for Environmental Planning in Los Angeles. These materials have been consolidated by the Library into a single collection of business records and family papers, with the original, internal order of the records maintained where possible. Much of the material in this collection is written in languages other than English, particularly German, French, and Dutch.
Gruen began his career in 1923 as a designer in his native Vienna, working initially for the architectural firm of Melcher & Steiner and later in independent practice. He emigrated to the United States in 1938 in the wake of the Anschluss. Settling in New York he practiced independently as a designer, working on such diverse projects as the General Motors Corporation Highways and Byways of the Future exhibit for the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1939 Gruen and Elsie Krummeck formed a design partnership that eventually attracted as collaborators Rudolf L. Baumfeld and Karl Van Leuven Working with other designers and architects on store buildings, storefronts, and store interiors, Gruen's first large project was to design, in association with architect Morris Ketchum, a new department store for the Lederer Company in New York City. In 1941 Gruen & Krummeck moved its main office to Los Angeles, and after the dissolution of his marriage to Krummeck in 1951 Gruen founded Victor Gruen Associates (later Gruen Associates) with Baumfeld, Van Leuven, and consulting engineer Edgardo Contini. Ben Southland and Herman Guttman joined as partners in 1956 and 1957 respectively, and Beda Zwicker became a partner in 1963.
Gruen Associates was a collaborative team of architects, planners, and engineers with main offices in Los Angeles and New York and project offices in Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Rochester, Minneapolis, Honolulu, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Tehran. The company developed the pioneering concepts for regional shopping centers, beginning with Northland Center near Detroit and Southdale Centernear Minneapolis. Gruen Associates also undertook projects to revitalize the central business districts of several American and European cities, beginning with a never-executed plan for Fort Worth, Texas, and later with Midtown Plaza in Rochester, New York, and downtown revitalization plans for Kalamazoo, Michigan, Boston, Fresno, California, Urbana, Illinois, and many others. In later years the scope of projects undertaken by Gruen Associates also extended to planning new towns, regional planning, general land development, public housing projects, and college campuses.
In 1966 Gruen Associates decided to intensify its activities outside the United States by founding Victor Gruen International (VGI), an independent organization centered in Vienna. VGI was primarily a consulting organization working with clients in the conceptual and preliminary phases of overseas projects, with Gruen Associates architects and engineers undertaking the advanced phases to bring those projects to completion.
Upon his retirement from Gruen Associates and VGI in 1968, Gruen founded the Victor Gruen Foundation for Environmental Planning in Los Angeles and later in 1973 its sister organization, Zentrum für Umweltplanung in Vienna. The purpose of these organizations was to promote environmental education for the improvement and protection of natural resources in urban and metropolitan areas. In 1967 Gruen returned to Vienna where he died in 1980.
The Correspondence series is subdivided into Condolence , Congratulatory , General , Interoffice , Legal , Partners , Personal , and Vice Presidents subseries. Condolence correspondence concerns the death of Victor Gruen in February 1980 and contains sympathy cards, letters, and telegrams received by his widow from colleagues, friends, and acquaintances worldwide. Congratulatory correspondence pertains to Gruen's seventy-fifth birthday and his winning of the 1979 Vienna prize, the Goldenen Ehrenzeichens für Verdienste das Land Wien.
General correspondence documents the day-to-day business of a large design and planning operation, including travel arrangements, shipment and receipt of goods, payment for services received and rendered, holiday and social greetings, speaking engagements, research for writings and publications, and other routine business of Gruen Associates. Some of the General correspondence also relates to design and planning projects.
Interoffice correspondence covers the same topics as General correspondence but consists of internal communications between company officials and the various national and international offices of Gruen Associates.
Legal correspondence mostly concerns international regulatory and tax matters relating to the incorporation of Gruen Associates and Victor Gruen International offices abroad. Also in the Legal correspondence is information on a challenge Gruen made to the Austrian Architektenkomitee für aktive Standesvertretung concerning his certification as an architect, an issue also reflected in the Subject File.
Partners correspondence contains letters, memoranda, and telegrams exchanged among partners of the firm. Topics include speaking engagements, contract pricing, design and planning projects, solicitation of new clients, and discussion of potential development projects. In addition to the partners discussed above, others represented in this subseries are Jack Bayer, John Bell, Daniel Branigan, Abbott Harle, Ki Suh Park, Cesar Pelli, Sylvia Press, Allen Rubenstein, and Marge Wheaton.
Personal correspondence includes incoming mail and copies of outgoing mail sent by Gruen and his wives and their personal and professional friends and acquaintances. Some of the more extensive correspondence is with Rudolf L. Baumfeld, Betty Berg, Margaret Gruen (his daughter), Michael Stephan Gruen (his son), Hortense Hockett, Horst Jarka, Richard and Judith Kafka, Ben and Alice LaRosa, Max and Rita Lawrence, Leopold and Valeska Lindtberg, Harry Lowry (his uncle), Helen Michaelis, Felix and Hedi Salzer,Willy and Valerie Steiner, and Stewart L. Udall. Others represented in the Personal correspondence are Monette Büchele-Schober, Edgardo and Beatrice Contini, Giorgio and Franca Gentili Urs and Renate Heierli, Robert and Ida Lucas, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Cesar and Diana Pelli, Gertrude Weiss Szilard, Karl and Norma Van Leuven, Wolf von Eckardt, and Victor Frederick Weisskopf.
Vice Presidents correspondence contains letters, memoranda, and telegrams exchanged among vice presidents of Gruen Associates. Topics include speaking engagements, contract pricing, design and planning projects, the solicitation of new clients, and discussion of potential development projects. Included are files on Bernard Barry, Dan Branigan, Sydney Brisker, Mel Gooch, Frank Hotchkiss, John Pointer, Rolf Sklarek, and David Travers.
The Personal File series contains household and personal records and other ephemera retained by Gruen. Included are such items as his baby book, school records, a ballad written for his wife, medical records, and obituaries. Documenting his professional accomplishments are awards, certificates, licenses, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles. Also in this series are records issued by government organizations, including marriage and death certificates, passports, emigration and immigration records, and military draft papers. There are family records of Gruen's parents, Adolf Grünbaum and Elisabeth Lea Levy, as well extensive biographical research files on Victor Gruen and, to a lesser degree, his wife, Kemija Salihefendiz Gruen.
The Project File, one of the most voluminous series in the collection, documents design and planning projects undertaken by Gruen Associates. However, there are no records for many projects, including most of Gruen's precedent-setting contracts such as those leading to the creation of Northland Center and Southdale Center in 1954 and 1956. Two projects for which there is extensive documentation are the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the city plan for Vienna. These files include correspondence, reports, contractual agreements, architectural drawings, illustrations, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, legal files, printed matter, research notes, and other such records. Files for the remaining projects generally have simply correspondence or a report as their only documentation.
The Subject File contains information of a general nature concerning design and planning projects undertaken by the Gruen companies, such as project data books and time and expense records. Other business and personal topics include organization memberships, conferences in which Gruen participated, business and household finances, exhibition of a Gustav Klimt painting "Schloss Kammer II," background information on environmental topics, foreign travel, and litigation with the Austrian Architektenkomitee für Aktive Standesvertretung concerning Gruen's professional certification. There is considerable material documenting Gruen's involvement with the Refugee Artists Group of New York, including playscripts, programs, advertisements, and a letter from Albert Einstein commending the group's founding. Also in this series is information on opening ceremonies for Victor Gruen International in Vienna in 1967, as well as limited material from the two environmental foundations founded by Gruen, including the game, "It's Your Town, Citizen Brown!"
In the Writings series are research notes and typed drafts of works authored by Gruen, including his unpublished autobiography, "Ein Realistischer Träumer: Rückblicke, Einblicke, Ausblick." Included in the series is information on several articles and books written by Gruen, including extensive material on The Heart of Our Cities the semi-autobiographical Meine Alte Schuhschachtel, and Das Überleben der Städte.
Speeches made by Gruen during his career are arranged chronologically in eight bound volumes.
Seventy-eight scrapbooks contain mostly newspaper clippings, magazine articles, brochures, photographs, illustrations, and press releases concerning appearances, speeches, and writings by Gruen or design and planning projects undertaken by Gruen Associates. Many of the larger projects or clients are represented in scrapbooks, such as development plans for Fort Worth, Texas, and Fresno, California, and the J. L. Hudson Company and the Dayton Company, builders of the Northland Center and Southdale Center. Twelve scrapbooks titled "Reprints" contain magazine articles about Gruen Associates. There are also scrapbooks for Gruen's awards, certificates, and licenses, for two of his publications, The Heart of Our Cities and Shopping Towns USA, and for the American Federation of Arts traveling exhibit Shopping Centers of Tomorrow. A scrapbook documenting the Refugee Artists Group complements material in the Subject File described above.