Vernon De Mars (1908-2005)

Name

De Mars, Vernon

Personal Information

Birth/Death:    AIA notified of decease 06/01/2005
Occupation:    American architect
Location (state):    CA

This record has not been verified for accuracy.

AIA Affiliation

Member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) 1952-decease
Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) 1964

Biographical Sources

American Architects Directories:
Biographical listing in 1956 American Architects Directory
Repeat of 1956 biographical listing in 1962 American Architects Directory
Address listed in 1970 American Architects Directory
Biographical information:
Contributed by the Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley:
Vernon Armand DeMars was born in San Francisco, California, in 1908. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1931. After jobs with the National Park Service and travel in the U.S. and Europe, DeMars worked from 1936-1942 as district architect for the Farm Security Administration's regional office in San Francisco. The FSA provided housing to migrant farm workers, planned and built rural camps, schools, clinics, and community centers, and constructed wartime housing for over 7000 military personnel. During his tenure with the FSA, DeMars collaborated with landscape architects Burton Cairns and Garret Eckbo, and planners Fran Violich and Corwin Mocine, to make lasting contributions to the field of planning and low-cost housing design. Projects included the Farm Workers' Center at Yuba City, California, the Cooperative Farm and Workers' Housing at Chandler, Arizona, and the Woodville Farm Workers' Center near Porterville, California.
In 1939, DeMars, Burton Cairns, Joseph McCarthy, Garrett Eckbo, T.J. Kent Jr., and Francis Violich co-founded Telesis, a city and regional planning organization that was the inspiration for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), a public policy think tank on planning and government. He married Betty Bates in the same year, with whom he collaborated on several major projects throughout his career, including one in 1944-1945 that explored the possibilities of row housing and greenbelt planning for the Ladies Home Journal. Betty created the interiors of the models for a traveling exhibition based on the project, entitled "Tomorrow's Small House." She also designed a series of banners for the 1967 opening of Zellerbach Hall at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1943 DeMars joined the National Housing Agency in Washington DC as Chief of Housing Standards, where he was engaged in research on post-war housing. He subsequently served two years with the Navy as Naval Aide to the Governor of Puerto Rico and advisor on Public Works. After the war he remained on the East Coast and was recognized for his design contributions to the Bannockburn housing cooperative near Washington DC, and the Eastgate apartments in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which housed MIT faculty. From 1947-1949 he was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1951 DeMars reestablished himself in Berkeley. He lectured in the Department of Architecture for the College of Environmental Design for two years before becoming Professor of Architecture in 1953. He chaired the Department from 1959-1962 and eventually became Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 1975. Before joining the UC Berkeley faculty he consulted for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency on Diamond Heights, Hunter's Point and the Western Addition neighborhoods, and produced a report for the Mutual Security Agency's Special Housing program for miners in the Ruhr, Germany. During this period he also collaborated with architect Donald Hardison on several projects in Richmond, California, including Easter Hill Village public housing, which was noted for its attempt to bring individuality to residences in a low-income development. He and Hardison would later submit and win a joint-venture proposal in the competition for creating a new student center and world-class auditorium at UC Berkeley.
DeMars and architect Donald P. Reay established the firm DeMars & Reay in 1955, continued in 1966 as DeMars & Wells with John G. Wells, a principle in DeMars & Reay. The firms' emphasis was housing and community development and covered a wide range of building types and planning problems, demonstrating a diversified architectural approach and flexibility in design application over the next twenty-two years. Major projects accomplished during DeMars' tenure as principle with these firms included the Capitol Towers apartments in Sacramento; San Francisco's Golden Gateway Redevelopment project (with Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons); Mililani New Town in Oahu, Hawaii; the Mt. Angel Abbey Library (with architect Alvar Aalto); the University of California at Berkeley's Student Center and Zellerbach Hall, and the College of Environmental Design's Wurster Hall. DeMars & Wells dissolved in 1977 and was followed by DeMars & Maletic with principle Carl Maletic. The firm's major project was championing the cause of rehabilitating the San Francisco Ferry Building and expanding Embarcadero Plaza after the Emabarcadero Freeway was demolished in 1991. The project was a continuation of DeMars' longstanding interest in Willis Polk's concept of creating a major plaza in front of the Ferry Building.
In addition to his many AIA awards, DeMars was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and received the Award of Honor for Design Excellence from the Bay Area Chapters of the American Institute of Architects in salute to the Student Center and Zellerbach Hall on the Berkeley campus as "in the tradition of the great European urban plazas and spaces." In 1975 he received the Berkeley Citation, the campus' top honor, and in 1999 the College of Environmental Design honored him as a distinguished alumnus. DeMars received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Environmental Design in 2003.
Sources: Biographical clip files, Environmental Design Archives

Archival Holdings

The American Institute of Architects Archives
Membership file may contain membership application, Fellowship nomination, related correspondence. Contact the AIA Archives at archives@aia.org for further information.

Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley

Collection Number: 2005–13. Extent: 15 cartons, 16 manuscript boxes, 6 flat boxes, 1 shoebox, 33 tubes, 18 flat file drawers, 6 models.
The Vernon DeMars Collection spans the years 1933 to 2001, and includes DeMars' personal papers, records from his private practice and professional career, and materials generated by the firms DeMars & Reay, DeMars & Wells, and DeMars & Maletic. The collection is organized in six series: Personal Papers, Professional Papers, Faculty Papers, Office Records, Project Records, and Major Projects.
The collection is extensive and contains a wide range of materials documenting DeMars' long career as a designer and planner. The Personal Papers series contains biographical material, personal correspondence, some financial records, documentation related to his service with the Navy, student work, his art and illustrations, writings, and travel photographs and portraits. Records related to DeMars' abiding anthropological interest in the Indians of the southwest United States and his performances of Native American dances appear in this series. A small number of artworks and photographs by DeMars' wife, Betty Bates DeMars, are also represented.
The Professional Papers series includes correspondence with other architects, awards, and a mixture of records that include correspondence and presentation notes related to professional organizations, committee work, and juries. Research and reference files are extensively represented. Administrative and personnel documents from his work with governmental agencies such as the National Housing Agency and the Mutual Security Agency are represented, as well as records from the Telesis group. The Faculty Papers contain material related to DeMars' professorship at the College of Environmental Design. Primarily, this series contains official correspondence with other members of the UC Berkeley Architecture faculty, committee work documentation, and course materials such as syllabi and lecture notes from classes he taught.
The Office Records series documents administrative operations, public relations efforts, financial transactions, and correspondence. Clippings from newspapers and tearsheets from magazines in which DeMars' projects were featured, and some photographs are included. This series also contains the partnership and dissolution documents from each of the firms. The majority of the Projects Records series documents DeMars & Reay and DeMars & Wells projects spanning the years 1955-1977, and document the firms' work through drawings, photographs, administrative files, and models. The Major Projects series includes Farm Security Administration, where a significant number of plans and drawings are retained. Major Projects also includes the Old Sacramento Historic District, a long-term planning commission that generated voluminous administrative files. The UC Berkeley sub-series is extensive and includes each commission carried out on the UC Berkeley campus. The San Francisco Performing Arts Center and the San Francisco Ferry Building and Embarcadero Plaza proposals are also well documented, although DeMars' designs for them were not realized.
Colophon: The collection was donated in 2005. The records had been housed in a number of storage areas in the creator's home and frequently removed from their original files or mixed with other paper files. During processing a significant amount of non-permanent material was removed: the majority of transmittal letters were removed; a representative sample of financial records was retained; and routine job correspondence was sampled. In some cases, where documentation was scant, all material in a project file was retained. Ernest Born drawings of the San Francisco Ferry Building and Embarcadero Plaza proposal were moved to the Ernest Born collection.
Within each series original order has been maintained wherever it was evident. However, much of the material arrived with no evident order. Project documentation, especially for ongoing projects such as the Student Center and various auditoriums, was interfiled in a manner indicative of DeMars' creative work process more than any formal organizational method. Where an original order was not evident, records have been arranged either chronologically or alphabetically as noted in the Series Description. The records for the Sacramento Historic District were maintained in their original chronological order. All projects appear on the Project Index.
Link to online finding aid: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt75803497

AIA Historical Directory of American Architects

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