Smith and Williams

Description

The firm Smith & Williams was founded in 1949 by Whitney Rowland Smith (1911-2002) and Wayne Richard Williams (1919-2007).

Whitney Smith was born on January 16, 1911 in Pasadena. He attended the University of Southern California (USC) and graduated in 1934 with his bachelor’s degree in architecture. After receiving his degree Smith went on to work as a designer for notable architects in the Los Angeles area: Lawrence Test, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Kem Weber, and William L. Pereira. From 1941 to 1942, Whitney Smith taught at USC. One of Smith’s students was Wayne Williams (1919-2007), who started working for Smith in the early 1940s.

Wayne Williams was born in Los Angeles on October 17, 1919. He graduated with his bachelor’s degree in architecture from USC in 1947. By 1949, Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams officially became partners. Some of their most notable early projects include Crestwood Hills (1950) and Griffith Park Girl’s Camp (1951).

During the firm’s 24 years, Smith and Williams produced numerous award-winning architectural projects, including private residences, educational buildings, religious buildings, community buildings, recreational facilities, commercial buildings, and parks.
The Smith & Williams’ partnership dissolved in 1973, although both Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams continued to practice. Whitney Smith died in 2002 and Wayne Williams died in 2007.

Creator

Whitney Smith, architect
Wayne Williams, architect
Smith and Williams, architects
Julius Shulman, photographer
Garrett Eckbo, landscape architect

Source

Smith & Williams records, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

Date

circa 1940 - circa 1980s

Rights

Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Copyright restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. University of California Regents.

Collection Items

Smith and Williams portraits
Portraits of both Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams can be found in both the Smith and Williams collection as well as the Wayne Williams collection.

Whitney Rowland Smith was born in Pasadena in 1911 and lived there most of his life. He entered the…

Smith and Williams: Smith house (Pasadena, Calif.)
Smith’s own house began as a garage on a piece of land that had been part of a larger residential property. He wrote about the house in a letter to an editor at the Ladies Home Journal in 1948: “The garden walls and landscaping positively define…

Smith and Williams: Dunn house (Pasadena, Calif.)
This house may be the strongest example of Smith’s and Williams’s belief in the architect as a solver of problems. Smith convinced the Dunns not to tear down their Greene and Greene-designed James Culbertson house. The Dunns wanted a smaller,…

Smith and Williams: Roulac house (San Marino, Calif.)
Philip Roulac, a builder and contractor, became a frequent client of and collaborator with Smith and Williams. He built most of the houses that Smith and Williams designed in San Marino. When Roulac purchased land that included the 1934 pump house,…

Smith and Williams: Spencer house (Pasadena, Calif.)
Smith had an opportunity in the Spencer house to realize some of the ideas in his Case Study House 12. The Spencer’s property contained a number of garden structures, including a Greene and Greene lath house. Sketches in the Spencer file show Smith…

Smith and Williams: Blue Ribbon Construction Company tract housing (Northridge, Calif.)
The great variety of work in the Smith and Williams’s office mirrors the growth of Los Angeles, so it is not surprising that they designed more than 50 tract housing projects. One of the best is a small development of 13 houses in Northridge for…

Smith and Williams: Divina Vista tract housing (Monterey Park, Calif.)
Smith and Williams designed the Divina Vista housing tract for the Security Development Corporation in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park.

Smith and Williams argued that the problem of tract houses— small lots too close together—could be…

Smith and Williams: Booth house (Beverly Hills, Calif.)
In the final design for the Booth house, a deck extends all the way across the outside and beyond the edges of the living room, integrating the outside and inside areas into one living space, close to trees. The Booth house is similar to the Crowell…

Smith and Williams: Crowell house (Pasadena, Calif.)
The Crowell house site is on a hilltop, at the edge of a ravine. The design won an Award of Merit in 1956 in a contest sponsored by House & Home and Sunset magazine. The A.I.A. judges cited the manner in which the “Japanese-influenced house”…

Smith and Williams: Wilcox house (Sierra Madre, Calif.)
The house for William B. Wilcox was designed by Whitney Smith and described as an adult house for informal living and entertaining. The kitchen cooking unit and the fireplace are back-to-back, making circulation between living, dining, and kitchen…

Smith and Williams: Goodrich house (San Marino, Calif.)
Interior screens separate the functions in the open plan living zone of the Goodrich house and yet still keep the volume spacious.

For the Calvin Goodrich house, Whitney Smith designed a "petal" roof: four identical gables, floating above…

Smith and Williams: Farris house (San Gabriel, Calif.)
A central garden room separates living and sleeping zones from the kitchen. The roof is pitched to capture light and views from the hilltop site. The use of concrete block in the garden room may have inspired Smith and Williams’s model house for…

Smith and Williams: Swanson house (Pasadena, Calif.)
As in many of Smith and Williams’s houses, the fireplace is set in a window wall. The architects bring nature directly into the house through views and by means of a stone wall that penetrates the living room from outside. A garden court sits at…

Smith and Williams: Salet house (La Canada Flintridge, Calif.)
The Salet house was built as a mother-in-law unit on the same property, yet secluded from, the main house. The tadpole-shaped plan has a square, open plan living and dining zone, which separates living spaces from bedrooms. Opposite the entry is an…

Smith and Williams: Anderson house (Loomis, Calif.)
The Anderson house is arranged in two sections connected by a hall-bridge that runs between the living house and the sleeping house. The structure sits lightly on the site so as not to disturb the rocks and mature oaks. Decks create separate outdoor…

Smith and Williams: Siegel house (Pasadena, Calif.)
The house for Dr. Daniel Siegel and his family uses a strong circulation element, in this case a ramp, to organize the living areas on a deep and steep lot. The entrance to the house is strongly marked with a long covered walk. Cobblestones are used…

Smith and Williams: Orange County Home Show house (Costa Mesa, Calif.)
Robert Thorgusen of Smith and Williams was in charge of this exhibition house for the annual Orange County Home Show. Two identical rectangles—one for living and one for sleeping— are adjacent to a central court and surrounded by decks. Exposed…

Smith and Williams: George house (La Canada Flintridge, Calif.)
This house was designed for a musician and an artist on a heavily wooded lot that included nearly 50 mature trees, some of which the architects allowed to grow through the eaves, rather than remove. The architects designed the house as two separate…

Smith and Williams: Newton house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The house for Dr. and Mrs. Bernauer Newton and family is considered one of their boldest designs for integrating inside and outside spaces.
The bedrooms for the Newton house are in separate pavilions connected to the living area by covered…

Smith and Williams: Blaisdell medical office (Pasadena, Calif.)
Medical offices became a Whitney Smith specialty; he designed two before 1949 and at least 14 with Smith and Williams. This refined design, perhaps his best, was made of concrete and wood. Patients entered through a landscaped area, now devoted to…

Smith and Williams: Royce Children's Clinic (Pasadena, Calif.)
The exterior is reserved but the inside is full of visual excitement. Wooden screens and colored glass separate reception from waiting areas, and animate the small space. As in their other doctors’ offices, the scale and materials create a…

Smith and Williams: San Gabriel Valley Medical Association building (San Gabriel, Calif.)
This medical building comprises four separate structures, connected by stairways and an L-shaped second floor. The round building, closest to Las Tuna Drive, originally was a pharmacy.

Smith and Williams: Mulder-Gregg medical building (Covina, Calif.)
The wood beams are used in a craftsman mode and contribute to the soothing domestic appeal of this small medical building.

Smith and Williams: Microdot Incorporated (South Pasadena, Calif.)
Brick and colored, clear, and painted glass were used to create visually pleasing spaces inside—a lobby and conference room—and read on the exterior as colorful volumes.
A preliminary design proposed a façade that resembled a computer punch…

Smith and Williams: United Autoworkers Union building (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Of all Smith and Williams’s buildings, the union structures are the most modernistic. The glass, steel and concrete buildings present forthright, transparent façades to their members and communities. The materials also represent the sleek and…

Smith and Williams: Friend Paper Company (Pasadena, Calif.)
The saw tooth edge of the Friend Paper Company roof creates a distinctive character for the building on the street. What is not as noticeable is the double roof system that Smith and Williams created to modulate the effect of heat and light coming…

Smith and Williams: Crawford's Country Mart (Los Angeles, Calif.)
This is a rendering of an unbuilt design for a country market.
The use of a metal lath roof easily defines the space of the market and encompasses all its activities and products. A similar roof design was incorporated into the building for…

Smith and Williams: Ralphs Market (South Pasadena, Calif.)
Smith and Williams designed several schemes for Ralphs Grocery Stores. For the South Pasadena location, they designed a distinctive frame for the facade that faces the parking lot. The frame is made up of an expressionistic roof edging held up by…

Smith and Williams: CAPSA College Car Wash (Pasadena, Calif.)
Constructed on Pasadena’s main street, Colorado Blvd., this structure won an A.I.A. award. The jury praised the CAPSA Carwash for possessing lightness and motion. The steel-skeleton structure takes full advantage of its openness to create a…

Smith and Williams: Mobil Service Station (Anaheim, Calif.)
The design of this Mobil station solved the requirements for auto maneuverability on a tight site with modern engineering. Smith and Williams hung four canopies of open web steel on poles to shelter gas pumps, the service area, rest rooms, and the…

Smith and Williams: Van Vechten Launders and Cleaners (Pasadena, Calif.)
The drive-in laundry used the canopy (33 feet wide and 48 feet long) to catch the customer’s eye as well as to shelter customers and the car hops who retrieved and delivered laundry for waiting cars. The triangular space frame truss is accented by…

Smith and Williams: Newport Dunes restrooms and lifeguard station (Newport Beach, Calif.)
An associate architect in the Smith and Williams offices, Robert Thorgusen, designed a beach bath house with an undulating wall of sprayed concrete and metal lath. Thorgusen may have also designed the wooden lifeguard station.

Smith and Williams: Newport Dunes aerial views (Newport Beach, Calif.)
The Newport Dunes development was a planned resort destination in Newport Beach. The rendering and photographic aerial views show contrasting visions of design and reality.

Smith and Williams: Newport Dunes restaurant (Newport Beach, Calif.)
The restaurant at Newport Dunes resort was commissioned by the Fred Harvey Company, which was known for hotels and restaurants that were part of train depots in the southwest United States in the early 20th century. The three story circular…

Smith and Williams: Port Holiday renderings (Lake Mead, Nev.)
The Port Holiday resort was never built, but was to be located in the northwest corner of Lake Mead's Boulder Basin, just outside of Las Vegas, on the way to the Hoover Dam. The client, J. Carlton Adair, commissioned the studies and conceptual…

Smith and Williams: Port Holiday model and plan (Lake Mead, Nev.)
Wayne Williams was the project manager for Community Facilities Planners on this unbuilt project in Lake Mead, Nevada. The development was to include homes, apartments, a mobile home park, hotels and shopping center, sporting areas, all clustered…

Smith and Williams: Smith & Williams office (Pasadena, Calif.)
The first Smith and Williams office space was a converted structure on a property belonging to a Mrs. Armstrong, on South Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena.

Smith and Williams: Community Facilities Planning office (Pasadena, Calif.)
The building on S. Fair Oaks in Pasadena was designed to be four separate buildings housed under one large metal lattice roof, which covers the gardens and offers privacy. The original group of Community Facilities Planners included: Smith and…

Smith and Williams: Neighborhood Church (Pasadena, Calif.)
Prior to 1966, the Neighborhood Church congregation used a sanctuary building at 535 South Pasadena Avenue that had been built in 1887 as the First Congregational Church. In 1946, the church expanded its facilities. Smith and Williams designed a…

Smith and Williams: St. Paul's Lutheran Church (Monrovia, Calif.)
Smith and Williams created, at the time, the longest unsupported plywood vaults for this church. The clerestories under the vaults are lighted at night, which makes the roof appear to float.

Smith and Williams: Sun Valley Methodist Church (Sun Valley, Calif.)
Whitney Smith, the partner in charge, designed a tent-like structure for a new sanctuary, in deference to the Methodist open door philosophy of worship. The interior furnishings, including the cross, communion table and rail, lectern and pulpit were…

Smith and Williams: Sunset Canyon Recreation Center (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Wayne Williams and Robert Meyerhof, associate partner in the Smith and Williams’s office, designed a multi-level arrangement of decks and stair landings with an elaborate post-and-beam system that gives the impression of a tree house. The…

Smith and Williams: Buena Park Civic Center (Buena Park, Calif.)
Smith and Williams arranged the office spaces in six pavilions connected by covered walkways that carry people from the edge of the site to each of the six pavilions.

Smith and Williams: Brea Civic Center (Brea, Calif.)
Community Facilities Planners produced comprehensive planning reports for the Buena Park Civic Center and the Brea Civic Center.

Smith and Williams: Mayfair Park (Lakewood, Calif.)
Community Facilities Planners produced a master plan for the parks of the City of Lakewood that called for creating four parks over 10 years. Smith and Williams designed the structures.

Smith and Williams: John Marshall Junior High School (Pasadena, Calif.)
Photographs in the Smith and Williams’s files show the students at John Marshall congregating in groups at the edge of the campus. The design for a new cafeteria gracefully accommodates the students’ energetic sociability with a space that is…

Smith and Williams: United States Post Office (La Canada Flintridge, Calif.)
The post office was designed to anchor a small suburban shopping center. A reproduction of a rendering in the archive shows that the decorative folded detail on the façade was to be carried through onto the fronts of the other buildings in the…

Smith and Williams: Armstrong house (Pasadena, Calif.)
In a letter dated September 1955 to Dan MacMasters at the Los Angeles Examiner’s Pictorial Living section, Smith described the Armstrong house as having no front or back. All four sides, he wrote, were designed for looking ‘at’ and for looking…

Smith and Williams: Dorr-Siegel-Click-Hurley medical building (Pasadena, Calif.)
These medical offices have an unusual form and are very difficult to see from the exterior. In the simplified plan, the building is composed of two adjacent circles connected by a diamond- shaped reception vestibule. Patients enter through a small…

Smith and Williams: California State Polytechnic University (Pomona, Calif.)
Smith and Williams designed more residential and commercial buildings but produced many master plans and planning studies for public and civic projects. The expansion of the state college and university systems provided work for many architects…

Smith and Williams: Barr Lumber model house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
In 1944-1945 the Barr Lumber Company invited three architects to design model houses for an unbuilt experiment and engaged landscape architect Garrett Eckbo to create gardens for each of the proposals. For his submission, Whitney Smith wrote an…

Smith and Williams: Scripps College swimming pool (Claremont, Calif.)
The pavilion was designed by Smith and Williams in 1958, and contained walls which were inset with milk-white, blue, and translucent glass panels.

Smith and Williams: Mutual Housing Association (Los Angeles, Calif.)
In 1946, a group of four friends decided to pool their resources and buy land in the hills above Sunset Boulevard to build homes for their families. The group soon grew to over 400 interested parties, and the group became the Mutual Housing…

Smith and Williams: Bradley house (Pasadena, Calif.)
The Harold Bradley house in Pasadena makes maximum use of a small lot, by yielding a small area to the driveway and garage, and reserving the focal point for a garden terrace. The terrace provides garden views and access for all the major rooms of…

Smith and Williams: Zwell house (Pasadena, Calif.)
For the long, narrow, 1300 square foot house for Leo Zwell, Smith designed a straight line of rooms, with each one having a full wall of glass facing onto the brick terrace. A "light trough" or linear skylight provided natural light to the…

Smith and Williams: Welborn Phillips Company housing (Pasadena, Calif.)
The Welborn Phillips Company was a developer of tract homes. Smith and Williams created a brochure which illustrated their philosophy on tract housing. They highlighted such details as exterior masonry planter boxes to give a pleasant view from…

Smith and Williams: Santa Ana Woods (Santa Ana, Calif.)
Whitney Smith described his design for the Santa Ana Woods tract development as one of his best: "a tract of 104 houses, set far apart from other neighborhoods by natural barriers. The exclusive atmosphere further emphasized by the stone entrance."
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