Robert Winter

Dr. Robert W. Winter (July 17, 1924 - February 9, 2019) was an architectural historian. He was the Arthur G. Coons Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, at Occidental College, Los Angeles. He is particularly known for his contributions to the history of the California branch of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Winter was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1924. He received his undergraduate degree (A.B.) from Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Early in his career he taught at Dartmouth, at Bowdoin, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the faculty at Occidental in 1963 and retired in 1994.

Winter lived in Pasadena in the Batchelder House that formerly belonged to tilemaker Ernest Batchelder, about whom he wrote the definitive Batchelder history, Batchelder Tilemaker (1999).

Winter is the author of numerous books including The California Bungalow (1980) and American Bungalow Style (1996). With Dr. David Gebhard, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, he co-authored guides to architecture in Northern and Southern California. He was best known for these architectural guidebooks, especially the one for the Los Angeles Area, often referred to as "The Guide". There are 6 editions of the Los Angeles guidebook, dating from 1965, 1977, 1985, 1994, 2003 and 2018. Winter published the fifth edition after Gebhard's death in 1996 and the sixth edition, in which he collaborated with historian Robert Inman, was released in December 2018.

In 2007, Winter was made a Fellow the Society of Architectural Historians.

Winter died on February 9, 2019, at age 94.

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