{{Short description|American public housing advocate and educator}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2024}} {{Infobox person | name = Catherine Bauer Wurster | image = Katherine Bauer 1926 page 63 (cropped).jpg | image_size = | caption = Bauer in 1926 | birth_date = {{Birth date|1905|5|11|mf=y}} | birth_place = Elizabeth, New Jersey, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1964|11|21|1905|5|11|mf=y}} | death_place = Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California, U.S. | occupation = | spouse = William Wurster | children = One daughter<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/20/archives/w-w-wurster-architect-dies-berkeley-dean-77-designed-prominent.html |title=W.W. Wurster, Architect, Dies |newspaper=New York Times |date=September 20, 1973 |access-date=October 19, 2018}}</ref> }} '''Catherine Krouse Bauer Wurster ''' (May 11, 1905 – November 21, 1964) was an American public housing advocate and educator of city planners and urban planners. A leading member of the "housers," a group of planners who advocated affordable housing for low-income families, she dramatically changed social housing practice and law in the United States. Wurster's influential book ''Modern Housing'' was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1934 and is regarded as a classic in the field.
==Early life== On May 11, 1905, Catherine Krouse Bauer was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey to Alberta Krouse Bauer, a self-educated homemaker, and Jacob Bauer. Her father, a state highway engineer, was an early advocate of superhighways and implemented the first cloverleaf interchanges in America while serving as New Jersey's Chief Highway Engineer.<ref name="Houser">{{cite book |last1=Oberlander |first1=H. Peter |last2=Newbrun |first2=Eva |year=1999 |title=Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer |publisher=UBC Press |location=Vancouver |pages=[https://archive.org/details/trent_0116404576088/page/358 358] |isbn=978-0-7748-0720-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/trent_0116404576088/page/358 }}</ref> Bauer's younger sister was Elizabeth Bauer Mock, a curator and Director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and her brother was Jacob Louis Bauer Jr., an engineer. She married and had 1 child.
Bauer completed her secondary education at the Vail-Deane School in her hometown. She first attended Vassar College, spent one year as an architecture student at Cornell University, then transferred back to Vassar College from which she received her undergraduate degree in 1926.<ref>{{cite web|author=University of California|date=April 1966|language=en|title=University of California: In Memoriam, April 1966 - Catherine Bauer Wurster|url=http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb658006rx&chunk.id=div00031&doc.view=entire_text}}<!-- auto-translated by Module:CS1 translator --></ref>
In 1926–1927, Bauer spent time in Paris, where she befriended Fernand Léger, Man Ray, and Sylvia Beach. Inspired by the city planning vision advanced by French architect Le Corbusier, Bauer published an article on his worker's apartments in suburban Paris.<ref>{{cite web|author1=Catherine Bauer Wurster|title=Machine-Age Mansions for Ultra-Moderns|publisher=The New York Times Magazine|date=April 15, 1928|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1928/04/15/archives/machineage-mansions-for-ultramoderns-french-builders-apply-ideas-of.html}}</ref>
==Professional career== Returning to New York City in 1927, Bauer worked at a number of publishing houses, eventually collaborating with American urban critic Lewis Mumford beginning in the late 1920s.<ref name="Houser"/> It was at his urging that she became involved with the architects of change in post-World War I Europe, among them Ernst May, André Lurçat, and Walter Gropius. Convinced that good social housing could produce good social architecture, and moved by the visible ravages of the Depression, she became a passionate leader in the fight for housing for the poor<ref name="Houser"/> and in 1934 accepted an appointment by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to become Executive Director of the new Labor Housing Conference based in Philadelphia. Her book ''Modern Housing'' (1934) described the housing achievements Bauer had observed in Europe and lessons for the United States capturing attention of New Deal policy-makers who wanted to boost the economy through housing construction.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the City|last=Caves|first=R. W.|publisher=Routledge|year=2004|pages=34}}</ref> In 1936 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study housing in Europe and the USSR.
Bauer was the primary author of the Housing Act of 1937 and advised five presidents on housing and urban planning strategies. Following the passage of the Housing Act of 1937, she was named the Director of Information and Research for the newly formed United States Housing Authority, a federal agency of the Department of the Interior under the New Deal. She served as consultant and adviser to national, state, and local housing and planning agencies during the 1930s-1960s including the Federal Housing Administration, the Housing and Home Finance Agency, and the California Housing and Planning Association. Bauer was instrumental in the creation of the influential documentary film ''The City,'' which was included in the 1939 New York World's Fair.
In 1940, Bauer accepted a position as Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Social Welfare. During the 1940s-1950s she lectured and led seminars at Harvard University, Cornell University, Mills College, and University of Wisconsin, and in 1950 joined the department of architecture at University of California, Berkeley. After her marriage to San Francisco area architect William Wurster, whom she met while teaching at UC Berkeley in 1940, both withstood accusations of disloyalty by the Tenney Committee during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Bauer Wurster contributed to the establishment of University of California, Berkeley's UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, contributed to the founding of the progressive architectural research group Telesis and served on the editorial board of the Telesis-affiliated publication, ''Task'', a short-lived but influential architectural journal published during the 1940s.<ref>{{cite web |title=EXHIBITION - TASK: A Magazine for the Younger Generation of Architecture |url=https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/exhibition/i-m-pei-at-the-gsd/ |website=Harvard Graduate School of Design |publisher=President and Fellows of Harvard College |access-date=June 5, 2024}}</ref>
She died in a fall during a solo hike on Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California, on November 21, 1964.<ref>"Woman Hiker Dead." ''Associated Press.'' November 24, 1964.</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/24/archives/woman-hiker-dead-aided-3-presidents-on-city-planning.html |title=Woman Hiker Dead; Aided 3 Presidents On City Planning |agency=AP |date=November 24, 1964 |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=October 19, 2018}}</ref>
==Legacy== A bust of Catherine Bauer Wurster is located in the Environmental Design Library at UC Berkeley. An Oscar Stonorov bust of Wurster adorns the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building's Main (South) lobby in Washington DC.<ref>Huxtable, Ada Louise "The House That HUD Built," ''New York Times,'' September 22, 1968.</ref><ref>"Bust of Late Catherine Bauer Wurster Placed in HUD Building," ''Journal of Housing,'' 1968.</ref> The UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design's Catherine Bauer Wurster Award for Social Practice was established to recognize alumni who have made significant contributions in their professions.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ced.berkeley.edu/ced/alumni-friends/catherine-bauer-wurster-award|title=Catherine Bauer Wurster Award For Social Practice|website=ced.berkeley.edu|access-date=April 25, 2020|archive-date=September 28, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200928111739/https://ced.berkeley.edu/ced/alumni-friends/catherine-bauer-wurster-award/|url-status=dead}}</ref> The building that houses the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley was renamed the Bauer Wurster Building in 2020 to clarify that it was named in honor of both William Wurster and Catherine Bauer Wurster.<ref name="BerkNews">{{cite web |last1=Natividad |first1=Ivan |title=Catherine Bauer Wurster's legacy to live on in renaming of UC Berkeley building |url=https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/12/09/catherine-bauer-wursters-legacy-to-live-on-in-renaming-of-uc-berkeley-building/ |website=Berkeley News |date=December 9, 2020 |access-date=February 25, 2022}}</ref> The lifetime achievement award of the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California is named after Bauer.<ref>{{cite web |title=Explore the Awards |url=https://nonprofithousing.org/events-and-programs/nph-affordable-housing-leadership-awards/explore-the-awards/ |access-date=March 19, 2024}}</ref>
==Bibliography== *{{cite book|ref=none | last = Bauer | first = Catherine | title = Modern Housing | publisher = Riverside Press | year = 1934 | location = Cambridge }} *{{cite journal|ref=none | last = Bauer Wurster | first = Catherine | title = The Social Front of Modern Architecture in the 1930s | journal = Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians | volume = 24 | issue = 1 | pages = 48–52 | date = March 1965 | doi = 10.2307/988280 | jstor = 988280 }}
==References== {{reflist}}
== Further reading == *Oberlander, Peter and Newbrun, Eva. ''Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer.'' Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-7748-0721-0}} *De Jong, Judith K. “Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer, 1905-1964, by H. Peter Oberlander and Eva Newbrun.” ''Land Forum'', no. 13 (January 1, 2002): 29–30. <nowiki>https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bvh&AN=461614&site=ehost-live</nowiki>. *Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Henry Russell Hitchcock, and Catherine Bauer Wurster. ''Modern Architecture in England''. New York: The Museum of modern art, 1937. *“Obituary.” ''Journal of Housing'' 21, no. 11 (January 1, 1964): 570–71. <nowiki>https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bvh&AN=178873&site=ehost-live</nowiki>.
==External links== *{{cite web|title=Catherine Bauer on Heliotropic housing|date=November 18, 2013 |publisher=solarhousehistory.com|url=http://solarhousehistory.com/blog/2013/11/5/zeilenbau-orientation}} *[http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf487003tj/ Guide to the Catherine Bauer Wurster Papers] at The Bancroft Library
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bauer Wurster, Catherine}} Category:1905 births Category:1964 deaths Category:American architecture writers Category:Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning alumni Category:Vassar College alumni Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Public housing in the United States Category:Franklin D. Roosevelt administration personnel Category:American urban planners Category:Women urban planners Category:20th-century American writers Category:American women architects Category:Architects from California Category:Accidental deaths in California Category:Accidental deaths from falls in the United States