Architectures of Epistemic Mastery on the Caltech Campus, 1915–1930

From the tiled Spanish Mission Revival archways to the international modernist style laboratories, the architecture of Caltech presents a powerful narrative of European civilizational progress. This narrative is forcefully anchored in architect Bertram Goodhue’s plan for the campus. One of Goodhue’s last projects before his unexpected death in 1924, the unfinished Caltech master plan was a culmination of the architect’s grand civilizational eclecticism. The “California” style he invented went on to influence architecture throughout Southern California, the US West, and Australia.3 In no small measure, Goodhue’s Southern California architectural work defined the new Anglo settler-colonial landscape of the twentieth century.