Want fewer ads?

Charles Augustus Keeler (October 7, 1871 — July 31, 1937) was an American author, poet, naturalist and advocate for the arts, particularly architecture.

Keeler was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and moved with his family to Berkeley in 1887. He studied biology at UC Berkeley, was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and was hired in 1891 by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. That same year, Keeler met the architect Bernard Maybeck on the commuter ferry. They became friends, and in 1895 Keeler hired Maybeck to build his home on Highland Place, just north of the UC campus. It was Maybeck's first residential commission.

Keeler and Maybeck were both charter members of the Hillside Club, and Keeler was its first secretary (1902—1903) and second president (1903—1905). He laid out his ideas for a new kind of architecture in his 1904 book The Simple Home, which became a manifesto of sorts for the Club. Keeler was also member of the Author's Club of London, and the New York Author's Club.

Keeler was friends with many influential naturalists and outdoorsmen, including John Muir, John Burroughs, painter William Keith and developer Duncan McDuffie — men who today would be called environmentalists. Indeed, Keeler often advocated the blurring of boundaries between house and garden.

Keeler was a lifelong adventurer. In 1893 he took a trip around Cape Horn on the clipper ship Charmer. In 1899, Keeler was invited to join other elite scientists on the Harriman Alaska Expedition, to study and document the coast of Alaska. He and his family voyaged to the South Pacific in 1900—1901, visiting Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Samoa and Hawaii. In 1910 he took a worldwide poetry reading tour; he read before Queen Liliuokalani in Hawaii and the Emperor of Japan, and was a house guest of the Hindu poet Sarojini Naidu in Hyderabad, India.

Keeler was an active member of the Bohemian Club, and in 1913, rewrote the script for the Cremation of Care ceremony, performed at the summer encampment at the Bohemian Grove.

Keeler married Louise Mapes Bunnell (1872—1907) in 1893. Louise was a talented artist and illustrated several of his books of poetry. They had three children: Merodine, Leonarde (co-inventor of the polygraph) and Eloise. In 1921 he married poet Ormeida Curtis Harrison (1875—1947). Keeler died in 1937 at his home in Berkeley.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Charles Keeler", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0