Retirement Planning: Charles Warren Callister, the Neighborhood Unit, and the Architecture of Community at Rossmoor and Heritage Village

Abstract

Abstract In the early 1960s, amid affluence, loneliness, and increasing longevity, a new type of community appeared in the United States: the “active-retirement complex,” with thousands of houses and/or apartments and an unprecedented range of communal facilities. Though such communities were instantly popular, skeptics likened the first examples to internment camps, and to deflect such critiques, developers like Ross Cortese began to prioritize design. In Retirement Planning: Charles Warren Callister, the Neighborhood Unit, and the Architecture of Community at Rossmoor and Heritage Village, Matthew Gordon Lasner describes how Cortese hired acclaimed San Francisco Bay Area architect Charles Warren Callister, known for his innovative private and ecclesiastical commissions, to design a new retirement community known as Rossmoor, located in the East Bay suburb of Walnut Creek. Long interested in housing reform, Callister attempted to serve the needs of seniors, especially their needs for community and activity, by employing a village plan and arranging the housing in “neighborhoods” around clustered courtyards, both at Rossmoor and at a later project, Heritage Village in Connecticut. Lasner’s study examines the experiences of residents of Callister’s complexes to determine whether this approach, which was rooted in theory rather than gerontological research, “worked” as intended.