Modern Public Gardens: Robert Royston and the Suburban Park

Reuben Rainey and JC Miller

Among the most innovative and influential of Royston’s office’s work were a series of suburban parks in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. These designs were insightful in their understanding of sociology, play, and the postwar suburban landscape. Much has been written on the urban park, but virtually nothing on the suburban park. While almost completely unknown today, Royston’s parks were one of the most socially successful landscape typologies in midcentury Northern California.

William Stout Publishers

Part of the Berkeley/Design/Books series, launched in 2008 by Professor Emeritus Marc Treib and former EDA Curator Waverly Lowell. The series promotes historical and critical scholarship on subjects substantially drawn from the holdings of the Environmental Design Archives.