Architect
Centurion, 1898–1931
Born 8 May 1864 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Died 18 July 1931 in San Francisco, California
Buried Sunset View Cemetery, El Cerrito, California
Proposed by Thomas Hastings and John Francis Murphy
Elected 5 November 1898 at age thirty-four
Proposer of:
Century Memorial
The achievement of New York’s fraternity of accomplished architects—whose works, indeed, are to be found in all cities of the United States—sometimes causes forgetfulness of what the architects of other American communities are doing. John Galen Howard scored his earlier success in New York City, but for more than thirty years his artistic career had been identified with California. In San Francisco he designed the Berkeley campus. The Greek Theatre, perhaps the most perfect American reproduction of that type of classic art, was the work of his imaginative mind. Howard was on the board of architects that planned the reconstruction of San Francisco after 1906; he cooperated in the plans for the Buffalo Exposition of 1901 and designed its famous “electric tower.” It was in appropriate recognition of his varied qualities that California placed him for thirty years in the University’s chair of architecture.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1932 Century Association Yearbook