BC Architecture
Discover the Architecture of the Panorama Campus
After 43 years of having classes on the Kern County Union High School campus (now Bakersfield High School), Bakersfield College made the “Move to the Hill” in 1956. Designed by architecture firm Wright, Metcalf, and Parsons, AIA over the course of five years, the style, as they described it, was “a contemporary modern school design”. The Memorial Stadium was the first building finished in 1955 and the first football game immediately took place up competition in September of that year. The rest of the campus was constructed over the coming months and the student body moved onto the new campus in spring of 1956.
Check out prints of original artist renderings of the school, including a 44" x 31" original watercolor painting done by Gene Shrewsbury at the "Bakersfield Built: Architecture of the 1950s" exhibit at the Bakersfield Museum of Art through January 4th, 2025.
Read more below about artist Gene Shrewsbury of Metcalf, Parsons, and Wright Architects AIA.
“Gene Shrewsbury and the 1955 BC Architectural Renedering"
Phone Interview by Jerry Ludeke
September 25, 2012
PREFACE: Artist Gene Shrewsbury rendered the 1955 Bakersfield College campus architectural plans developed by Wright, Metcalf, and Parsons. The rendering was discovered in 2012 by Michael Ledford, a former BC architecture student, in the basement of a Bakersfield antique shop. The cardboard was curled, but the paint was still in good shape. He purchased it to give to his uncle-in-law and long-time BC Ag Faculty, Bill Kelly. Bill and his wife recognized the historical significance of it and donated it to the BC Archives. The Kellys had it flattened and framed and it now hangs in the Bakersfield College president’s office.
SUMMARY OF CONVERSATION: Gene Shrewsbury was born on April 17, 1925 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended the John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles, which was converted to a war production plant just prior to the end of WWII. Shrewsbury credits Mrs. Steinberg, a great art teacher in high school, for developing his drawing skills. Students were required to be in both an art and a music class. Although he was the president of the a cappella choir, Gene said he couldn’t carry a tune, which was a great distraction to the other singers, so the choir director and art teacher made a deal that Gene’s music class time would be spent in the art room doing drawings from anatomy charts and folios of the old masters. That extra practice served him well later when he entered The Art Center, a professional art and design school, with advanced skills.
For two years, Gene worked in defense and aircraft plants as a production illustrator. When the GI Bill was enacted, it enabled him to enter The Art Center art school in mid-1945. At The Art Center school, first located near Westlake Park, Los Angeles (now the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena), Shrewsbury excelled in life drawing and portraiture thanks to his high school teacher. He completed a two year course and had a job offer in the R. C. Qvale Architects’ office in L.A..
Shrewsbury worked for R.C. Qvale, architect, for two years and in 1949 opened his own office in Pasadena. After working a month alone, he hired Ken Nichols, a student from Pasadena J.C., to do perspective layouts and Ken soon became a real expert. Gene enjoyed doing perspectives and developed perspective charts but preferred to paint the image of the architect’s designs.
Soon after the 1952 earthquake, he went to Bakersfield for every rendering job he was called on. “I was so grateful and thankful to Bakersfield for the work provided that I’ll never forget that experience! Added to that pleasure was the fact that my wife’s parents lived in Bakersfield and we visited there often.” He also produced renderings for other architects in California and some surrounding states.
In 1955, he made Ken Nichols, who was good at perspective, a partner, and in 1957-58, Shrewsbury left Nichols in charge and moved to Denver. “So ended my Bakersfield era which was a valuable, productive, and memorable experience.” In Denver, he went to work for a Development Company of shopping malls in Colorado and Texas. After getting his architect’s license in 1960, he was in-house staff architect.
When asked about the medium for his renderings, Mr. Shrewsbury said, “I used tempera (opaque watercolor) because it gives depth and a sense of solid concrete. I use ink only to outline people that appear small in scale.” However, the paint was special, produced in southern California by the Pottenger family. It is no longer available. The Pottenger’s paint could be used for either a transparent or opaque technique. A rendering would take three to four long days (12 to 14 hours) or, for the 30 by 40 size, a week, depending on the detail. Using all transparency paint technique is faster.
Gene commented that, after a rendering has served its initial purpose, it usually ended up in a basement between cardboard pieces. Once when he heard that one of his renderings had been sold at an art show, he was surprised because he didn’t think it was very artistic, but the buyer thought it was artistic. Gene tried to purchase an old rendering by the multitalented Chris Choate, calling him a master whose renderings displayed very convincing use of light and shadow. Choate did work for, among others, LA architect Welton Beckett, who refused to sell Shrewsbury one of Choate’s old renderings. The other rendering artist admired by Shrewsbury as a master was John Hollingsworth, who passed away recently. “He produced transparent water colors very quickly and all of it was like a jewel; you wanted to own it.”
Administration Building
Library
Science and Engineering
All three 1955 renderings above were done by artist Gene Shrewsbury of Metcalf, Parsons, and Wright Architects AIA.
Stay tuned for more information, photos, and blueprints of the Panorama Campus!
