Julian H. Whittlesey papers, 1940-1988

Julian H. Whittlesey (1905-1995) was a prominent architect and city planner who practiced in the United States, Canada, Africa, and India. He studied civil engineering and architecture at Yale, earning degrees in 1927 and 1930. He also studied on a fellowship to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. In the 1930s, Whittlesey worked for the U.S. Public Housing Administration and the Resettlement Administration, which was a New Deal U.S. federal agency created in 1935 to relocate struggling urban and rural families to communities planned by the federal government. In 1935, he co-founded with Albert Mayer the firm Mayer and Whittlesey (later Mayer, Whittlesey and Glass). The firm designed Manhattan House and other large buildings. They also helped design the cities of Kitimat, British Columbia, and Chandigarh, India. During World War II, he designed military-related housing and administrative buildings. In the 1950s, he co-founded Whittlesey Conklin and Rossant, which designed Reston, Virginia. He became a partner and consultant to Planners, Inc. in Washington, DC, which primarily did projects in Latin America and Africa for the World Bank. He also served as field architect with the American School of Classical Studies in Greece. He was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; fellow and research associate of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania; trustee and director of the Foundation for Cooperative Housing from 1958 to 1971; trustee and director of the Community Development Foundation and its subsidiary TechniCo-op, Inc.; treasurer of the Association for Field Archaeology; and president and treasurer of Whittlesey Foundation, Inc. He authored Photogrammetry for the Archaeologist with Calculator Programs for Cartographic Plotting (1979) and Stepping Stones: Letters to Eunice, 1932-1974, on Paths of Architecture and Planning and Archaeology, a volume of typed transcripts of letters with autobiographical notes that was privately printed in 1989.