Architect Brothers Grasped For Perfection

“Greene & Greene” by Edward Bosley (Phaidon, 240 pages, $75)

If Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene had only left us Pasadena’s celebrated Gamble House, their exalted place in American architectural history might still have been secure.

Fortunately, the two brothers’ blend of Shingle Style sensibilities and Asian aesthetics yielded an impressive string of residential projects in the first decade of the 20th century.

Later, when their uncompromising standards for workmanship contributed to their firm’s financial decline, the brothers went separate directions and produced additional masterpieces unlike anything they created together.

Edward Bosley, director of Gamble House, has assembled a masterpiece of his own — “Greene & Greene” — which combines the best of the coffee-table-book genre with the credibility and historical richness of a scholarly tome.

“Perhaps one of the greatest legacies of Charles and Henry Greene, along with their extraordinary houses…,” Bosley writes, “is the uncompromising will of two men…who toiled for a level of perfection that each felt to be unattainable, but worth striving for.”

Bosley’s book achieves a level of perfection one suspects even the Greene brothers would appreciate.