MPF Conservation is a full-service company specializing in conservation, restoration and preservation of upholstered and non-upholstered objects. These pages feature work we have done for the University of California, Berkeley (UCB).
We are updating our site;
please excuse messy changes
or missing links!
Included in the University of California, Berkeley pages:
Above, Phoebe Apperson Hearst and John Galen Howard.
MPFC’s first projects for UCB were the leather doors in the Doe Memorial Library (Doe), built at the beginning for the 20th century.
In 1899 Phoebe A. Hearst sponsored an International Competition for an Architectural Plan to design the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Henri Jean Émile Bénard (1844-1929), a French architect and painter, won the competition. However, after traveling to California, he declined to work on the project, as it meant he had to stay onsite (though his design influenced the final plan). Hearst turned to John Galen Howard, the 4th runner-up, to complete the project. Howard designed the Beaux-Arts classical Doe Memorial Library as we know it.
Doe was first named Boalt Memorial Hall of Law, then renamed for Henry Durant, the university’s first president in 1951 when the law school changed buildings. Finally, he library was named after Charles Franklin Doe who bequeathed funds for its construction in 1904.
Doe was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
From Wikipedia: “The library is home to the Mark Twain Papers, an extensive collection of the private manuscripts, sketches, essays, poems, notes, photographs and letters of Samuel Clemens’ works as Twain. At the library’s entrance is a statue of Clemens holding a copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, sculpted by Gary Lee Price. The statue is commonly mistaken for Albert Einstein, with whom Twain shared a likeness.”
Images above are noted on the image, and if not ©MPFConservation are by:
Daniel L. Lu (user:dllu): https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69819324
Louis H. G.: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70837197)
Above and below, two reading rooms in the Doe Memorial Library,
University of California, Berkeley. North Wing, above, and East Room, below.
First image below by “melystu” in Flickr.
If you are interested in reading more, here are some good links beside Wikipedia:
