John Carl Warnecke (photo by Don Steffen in Newsweek October 2, 1967)
The Market Street Joint Venture Architects that re-envisioned and rebuilt San Francisco's Market Street in the 1960s and 1970s consisted of three firms: Mario J. Ciampi & Associates, Lawrence Halprin & Associates and John Carl Warnecke & Associates.
John Carl Warnecke was a great power in his field. At that time he ran the largest architectural firm in the United States, headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Honolulu and Washington, DC. San Francisco Chronicle, John King architecture writer described Warnecke as a "a Bay Area architect whose mark on the American landscape can be measured from San Francisco's skyline to John F. Kennedy's grave site."
Warnecke's main claim to fame was his association with president John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie (the architect's obituaries in the Chronicle and the New York Times both headlined this). He was commissioned by the Kennedy White House to redesign Washington DC's historic Lafayette Square. Following the president's assassination he was selected to design John F. Kennedy memorial at Arlington National Cemetery with the Eternal Flame. Senator Edward Kennedy hired him to design McLean, Virginia home. Gossip writers also printed rumors that Warnecke was romantically involved with the president's widow.
John Warnecke, tackle for the 1940 Stanford Indians (source: Merrick, Down on The Farm)
John Carl Warnecke was born on February 24, 1919 in Oakland, CA, son of architect Carl Ingomar Warnecke. He attended Stanford University where he played tackle on the school's undefeated 1940 team that won the 1941 Rose Bowl. He remained physically imposing all his life at 6 foot 3 inches tall and 220 pounds. He quickly completed a bachelor's degree at Harvard University in 1942 where he studied with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, an innovator in the use of new materials in construction and a proponent of functionalism in design.
Warnecke began his career as an apprentice to Arthur Brown, Jr. while studying at Stanford. Brown was one of the architects for of the Civic Center's San Francisco Opera House and War Memorial Veterans Building plus the Federal Building at 50 United Nations Plaza. Warnecke later worked for his father before starting his own firm in 1950. It stayed in business until 1980.
He wrote about his work for the biographical encyclopedia
Contemporary Architects:
The firm has been asked to design in places–equally beautiful–which were built by man over generations: the environs of the White House; historic Annapolis; the campuses of of the University of California and Stanford University; old Monterey; the Royal Palace grounds of Honolulu; fashionable Nob Hill; a site adjacent to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo; and the historic residential area of Neuilly in Paris. In historic places such as these, the needs of the present must show respect for the past.
Warnecke has been called a forerunner of Contextual Modernism in architecture which according to Middleton emphasizes "spatial volume" with both a regularity in pattern and a lack of ornamentation. His architecture has sometimes been called brutalist. Krantz describes Warnecke's style as "a curious blend of Beaux-Arts neoclassicism, Bauhaus Modernism and Far Eastern exoticism."
John Carl Warnecke & Associates designed hundreds of buildings of all types. The firm was hired to work on many college campuses. These included local institutions like Stanford University (notably the designing the Maples Pavilion), The University of California at Berkeley (designing Moffitt Library), UC Santa Cruz (designing the McHenry Library), The San Francisco Theological Seminary, Sonoma State University, and the College of San Mateo. The firm also worked at Georgetown University, The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, The United States Naval Academy, The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Tufts University.
The Hart Senate Office Building (source: United States Senate)
John Carl Warnecke & Associates was also responsible for designing government buildings in Oakland, Sacramento, Washington, DC (including the Hart Senate Office Building), Minneapolis and Honolulu. Two entries from the
American Architects Directory of 1962 and 1970 show some of this work and the awards that he and the firm received for it.
source: American Architects Directory, 2nd edition (1962)
source: American Architects Directory, 3rd edition (1970)
After retiring to the North Bay, John Carl Warnecke died on April 17, 2010 in Healdsburg, California.
Many of the buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke & Associates are a familiar part of the United States built landscape, but Warnecke's name has largely faded from discussion. There are not any books published about his life and career.
A subsequent blog entry will detail Warnecke's contributions to San Francisco's architecture.
Bibliography:
Cardinalis, Kye, "The Contextual Architectural of John Carl Warnecke,"
Atomic Ranch July 22, 2023.
Contemporary Architects, editor, Muriel Emanuel, 3rd ed. (St. James Press, 1994).
Grimes, William, "John Carl Warnecke, Architect to Kennedy, Dies at 91,"
New York Times April 23, 2010.
King, John, "John Warnecke - S.F. Architect with Close Ties to Kennedy Clan," San Francisco Chronicle May 7, 2010.
Krantz, Les.,
American Architects: A Survey of Award-Winning Contemporaries and Their Notable Works (Facts on File, 1989).
Merrick, Fred, Down on The Farm: A Story of Stanford Football (Strode Publishers, 1975).
Middleton, Deborah A. "Warnecke, John Carl," in The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, editor in chief, Joan Marter (Oxford University Press, 2011).
"On The Square," Newsweek October 2, 1967.
Shearer, Lloyd, "Jackie Kennedy, World's Most Eligible Widow - Will She Marry Again," Pasadena Independent Star News December 4, 1966.
"Ted Kennedy's Virginia House On Market For Nearly $10 Million," Huffington Post May 22, 2012.
"Warnecke, John Carl," in Current Biography (The H.W. Wilson Company, 1968).
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