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Male, born 1909-06, died 1939-12-15
Associated with the firm network
Résumé
Cairns grew up in a utopian, cooperative poultry-farming community in East Palo Alto, CA, called "Runnymede." Charles Weeks, Sr., (born 02/18/1873 in Wabash, IN-d. 1964 in FL) organized this colony of small-scale poultry farmers beginning in the mid-1910s. This experience of growing up in an experimental, cooperative agricultural community undoubtedly helped to direct Burton Cairns's later occupational choice, working for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration (later renamed the "Farm Security Administration.") Additionally, Cairns's choice of occupation was likely influenced by that of his father and two uncles, who all worked as carpenters.
Draftsman, Various architectural offices, San Francisco, prior to 1933.
Planning Technician, San Mateo Planning Commission, San Mateo, CA, c. 1933-1935.
Chief of Architecture and Engineering for the Southwestern States, Resettlement Administration, (later known as the Farm Security Administration), Region 9, San Francisco, CA, 1935-1939. Cairns was responsible, with Vernon A. De Mars (1908-2005), for the design and planning of the Farm Security Administration's Chandler Farm Workers Community, Chandler, AZ, 1936-1937.
draftswoman at the Ames Shipbuilding and Drydock Company office in San Francisco, and later moved across the bay to work in the Kaiser Richmond shipyards
College
B.Arch., University of California, Berkeley (UCB), Berkeley, CA, 1927-1931.
College Awards
Member, Tau Beta Pi (National Engineering Scholastic Honor Society), University of California, Berkeley (UCB), Berkeley, CA, 1929-1931. (See Ancestry.com, " U.S. School Yearbooks, 1880-2012 for Burton D Cairns, accessed 09/14/2014.)
Relocation
Burton's father Charles Cairns and his family lived with his elder brother James's family in 1910, in US Census Township #1, an unincorporated part of San Mateo County. Another brother, John, lived next door. Burton was 11 months old in 05/1910. His father and all of his uncles worked as carpenters as per the census. (See Ancestry.com, Detail Source Discover Source Citation Year: 1910; Census Place: Township 1, San Mateo, California; Roll: T624_104; Page: 26b; Enumeration District: 0048; FHL microfilm: 1374117, accessed 12/11/2024.)
Ten years later, in 1920, ten-year-old Burton lived on Walnut Street in the unincorporated village of East Palo Alto, CA, according to the US Census. The Cairns family participated in a poultry colony developed in East Palo Alto by Charles Weeks, an advocate of small-scale, cooperative farming. (See Ancestry.com, Source Citation Year: 1920; Census Place: Menlo Park, San Mateo, California; Roll: T625_145; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 75, accessed 12/11/2024.) (See Alan Michelson and Katherine Solomonson, "Remnants of a Failed Utopia: Reconstructing Runnymede's Agricultural Landscape," Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 1997,Vol. 6, Shaping Communities (1997), pp. 3-20.)
In 1930, Cairns resided with his parents in a residence (valued at $8,000) at 523 Walnut Street in East Palo Alto, CA, and he seems to have maintained his permanent address there from at least 1927 until the mid-1930s. (See Ancestry.com, Source Citation Year: 1930; Census Place: Township 3, San Mateo, California; Page: 12A; Enumeration District: 0059; FHL microfilm: 2339952, accessed 12/11/2024.) The San Francisco City Directory [p. 226] indicated that Cairns lived in Berkeley in 1937-1938, and commuted into San Francisco to work in a Department of Agriculture office building. (The Oakland City Directory, 1937. [p. 160] indicated that he and his wife lived at 1348 Euclid Avenue in Berkeley.) The 1937 [p. 53] and 1939 [p. 51] Palo Alto city directories stated, however, that he continued to live on Walnut Street in East Palo Alto. By 1937, he may have lived in Berkeley but also assisted his mother with operation of the East Palo Alto poultry farm at the same time.
Cairns died in an automobile accident on 12/15/1939 at the age of 30. He died instantly at 2:50 P.M., one mile from Tigard, OR, on Highway 99, when his car collided with a Pacific Greyhound bus. (See Ancestry.com, Source Information Ancestry.com. California, U.S., San Francisco Area Funeral Home Records, 1895-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010, accessed 12/11/2024.)
Parents
His mother, Katherine C. McDonald (born 1877 in Canada), survived Burton. His father, Charles Cairns, (born c. 1865 in PEI, Can), died in 1930. They both were born in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada. Charles's parents came from Northern Ireland. Katherine's father was from Scotland. Her mother was of Scottish heritage, born on PEI. Charles migrated to the US in 1883, Katherine in 1905, as per the 1930 US Census. (The 1910 US Census stated that his father came to the US in 1885, his mother in 1894.) The pair wed on 04/05/1905, and she made it to the US after her marriage.
In 1910, Charles worked as a carpenter along with his older brother, James. By the late 1920s, however, he worked as a poultry farmer, while his mother managed the household. In the 1910s, poultry farming became popular in East Palo Alto, CA, as a result of the efforts of Charles Weeks, a promoter within the "Little Lands Movement."
Spouse
He married Emmy Lou Packard, born in El Centro, CA, on 04/15/1914, the daughter of Walter Eugene Packard and Emma S. Leonard. They married after her 1936 graduation from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), where she was the arts editor of the Daily Californian and a talented painter. She became friends with Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. After Burton's death in 1939, she traveled to Mexico to live with Rivera and Kahlo, working as their studio assistant. During World War II, she returned to the Bay Area, and worked as a draftwoman for the Ames Shipbuilding and Drydock Company and subsequently with the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, CA. She lived at 547 Francisco Street in San Francisco in 1953, the year she traveled back from Europe aboard the French ocean liner, the Ile de France. She married Byron T. Randall on 05/29/1959, but divorced him in 1972. She resided at 3350 18th Street in San Francisco, CA, in 1973. She died in San Francisco in 1998.
Children
He and Emmy Lou had one child, Donald.
Biographical Notes
In 1939, Cairns was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, and weighed about 190 pounds. Cairns' work with De Mars for the Farm Security Administration was published widely, and their Yuba City Farm Worker's Community (1940) was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art's "The Wooden House in America" Exhibition, staged in 09/1941. Cairns and De Mars were featured along with other CA architects, Gregory Ain (1908-1988) and Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903-1990) in this MoMA show (MoMA Exh. #146).
PCAD id: 4620
| Name | Date | City | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farm Security Administration Agricultural Worker's Community, Chandler, AZ | 1936-1937 | Chandler | AZ |
