Greene and Greene furniture.(Current and coming)(historic architectural partnership of brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene)

The years 1903 and 1904 were active ones for the California architectural partnership formed by the brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene. At the behest of two remarkably forward-thinking women, Jennie A. Reeve and Adelaide Tichenor, both of Long Beach, the firm was commissioned to build a total of four houses. Reeve was both progressive and affluent--in other words, a dream client for two nontraditional architects. Tichenor was the wealthy widow of a lumber merchant, Lester Tichenor, and she took control of his business in 1895, after she had spent three years traveling around the world with Jennie Reeve.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Tichenor was educated at Saint Louis Normal College and the Boston School of Art. Reeve's daughter Mary Reeve Darling was probably responsible for introducing her mother to the work of Greene and Greene, since they had built her house in Claremont, California, in 1903. It was in that year that Jennie Reeve commissioned them to design a house for her in Long Beach, and the following year, a rental cottage, followed in 1906 by a winter retreat in Sierra Madre. In 1904 Tichenor commissioned the Greenes to build her a house in Long Beach.

The buildings designed by the firm for these women mark a turning point in the work of Greene and Greene, because each structure was created as a total work of art, the architects being responsible for the design of the furniture, lighting fixtures, hardware, and landscape setting for each building. The results of their labors can be seen in a tightly focused exhibition on view at the Long Beach Museum of Art through October 31. The show is entitled Greene and Greene in Long Beach: Furniture for the Homes of Jennie A. Reeve and Adelaide Tichenor, and it includes a dozen pieces of furniture and lighting devices, along with a few photographs of the interiors and exteriors of the houses during and after construction.

In 1904, as her ...