The de Forest archive contains a large amount of personal papers, including many photographs of Lockwood and Elizabeth de Forest. The photos document their extensive camping trips in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the 1930s.
Lockwood de Forest, Jr. landscape drawings, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
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.
The Killingsworth collection contains many photographs of Edward Killingsworth at job sites, ground breaking ceremonies, and discussing projects with groups of people.
Edward A. Killingsworth papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara
Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara
The Thornton Abell archive contains a number of studio portraits of the architect.
Thornton M. Abell papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
The George Washington Smith portraits are archived in the Lutah Maria Riggs collection; since she was his protege who worked in his firm up until his death in 1930.
George Washington Smith papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Woolf archive contains quite a few portraits of John Elgin Woolf, including these color photos.
John E. Woolf papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Kem Weber archive contains quite a few photographs of Weber in meetings and posed for portraits.
Karl Emanuel Martin (Kem) Weber papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Cliff May archive contains many personal and professional portraits and publicity images of Cliff May. The second image was published in House and Garden in February 1957 and shows Cliff May, daughter Marilyn, son-in-law Lawrence Philips, grandchildren, wife Jean, daughters Melany and Hillary, and son Mike. Images of May’s family occasionally illustrated articles about his houses and ranch house living.
Cliff May papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
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 School of Architecture at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1929, graduating in 1934. Between 1934 and 1940, Smith picked up drafting and design projects from several different architects and worked as a renderer for Universal Studios. He designed subsistence housing for the Farm Security Administration in 1936 and housing for the war effort with the Public Housing Administration in the early 1940s. Smith considered Harwell Hamilton Harris, for whom he worked briefly, his teacher Kem Weber, and Charles and Henry Greene to be the great influences on his work. He opened an office in Pasadena in 1944, and in 1949 founded Smith and Williams with Wayne R. Williams. Smith taught at USC in 1941-1942 and at Scripps College in Pomona from 1945-1962. In 1973, Smith left Smith and Williams and returned to an individual practice. He died in 2002 in Bend, Oregon. Wayne Richard Williams was born in Los Angeles, October 17, 1919. He attended John H. Francis Polytechnic, a vocational high school that offered drafting classes, and in 1941 entered USC, where Whitney Smith was one of his instructors. When the war ended, Williams worked in Smith’s office while finishing his architecture studies at USC. He graduated in 1947 and probably earned his license in 1949, the year he and Smith formed Smith and Williams. Williams developed an interest and specialty in planning recreational facilities and wrote the book Recreation Places in 1958. It was his idea to form the collaborative Community Facilities Planners in order to compete for large jobs that needed planning, landscape, and architecture. When Smith left the partnership in 1973, Williams retained the firm name, changing it at some point to the Smith-Williams Group. By 2003 he had moved to the Washington, D.C. area to work with International Development, Inc. (IDI) on high-rise apartment buildings and leisure world complexes. Williams died in Leesburg, Virginia in 2007.
Smith and Williams, architects; Whitney Smith, architect Wayne Williams, architect
Smith & Williams records, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Walter White archive contains a few photographs of White at various stages in his career.
Walter S. White papers, Architecture and Design Collection; Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
Architecture and Design Collection; Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
Rudolph Schindler: Popenoe cabin (Coachella, Calif.)
The small, square house for Paul Popenoe and his wife contained two bedrooms, a bathroom, and the exterior walls were ringed with porches that could be covered to act as sleeping porches and an extension of the living space. A central living area with large fireplace separated the two bedrooms from each other.
R. M. Schindler papers, Architecture & Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
Architecture & Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.
Rudolph Schindler Lovell cabin (Wrightwood, Calif.)
Dr. Philip Lovell was a doctor who commissioned multiple projects from Schindler, including his beach house in Newport Beach. This cabin in Wrightwood was to be a simple weekend getaway cabin for the doctor and his wife Leah and their family. The cabin was assembled using prefabricated panels with a flat roof and the structure only withstood one year of snow at its high elevation before it collapsed.
Rudolph Schindler: Laurelwood apartments (Studio City, Calif.)
The Laurelwood Apartments were the last grouping of apartments Schindler designed before he died. The complex of twenty two-bedroom, one-bath apartments is set on a sloping lot, with each apartment having either a private patio or terrace and a private entrance. The International Style apartments were one of the first courtyard apartment complexes in the Los Angeles area in this modern style. The complex was designated a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument in 1980, after a developer threatened to tear it down.
Rudolph Schindler: Bethlehem Baptist Church (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Bethlehem Baptist Church on South Compton Avenue in Los Angeles is Schindler's only religious structure. It is one of very few examples of modern architecture in South Los Angeles. The African-American church congregation commissioned Schindler to design the building in 1944, most likely due to his ability to work with small budgets and be his own contractor. The church was declared a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument in 2009, and is still in use today by a new religious organization.
Rudolph Schindler, architect Julius Shulman, photographer
© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10) 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.
Rudolph Schindler: Free Public Library (Jersey City, NJ)
At the time Schindler submitted a design for the Bergen Branch of the Free Public Library Competition in Jersey City, New Jersey, he was working for Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park, Illinois. Schindler did not win the competition, and was not even mentioned as a contender. He did not follow the competition instructions by designing a smaller building, siting the library on a different portion of the lot than required, and declaring the required fireplaces unnecessary.
Cliff May: May house #1 (San Diego, Calif.)
For Cliff May's first house for himself and his wife, Jean Lichty, he designed a house which surrounds a courtyard in an asymmetrical fashion. Cliff May house 1 is a modest hacienda house in the Talmadge Park neighborhood and the first of five houses May designed for himself and his family. After building the house and moving in, May opened it for public visits and advertised it for sale.
Cliff May papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara
Cliff May: Lindstrom house (San Diego, Calif.)
Cliff May built his first speculative house in Talmadge Park in 1931, and his second in 1933, bought by Captain William Lindstrom. The Lindstrom house and furniture cost $7,710.42 to build. The $1,636.65 profit was split evenly between Cliff May and the contractor O. U. (Oliver Ulysses) Miracle.
Cliff May: O'Leary house (San Diego, Calif.)
Cliff May’s future father-in-law, Roy C. Lichty, gave May a lot in the Talmadge Park subdivision, where Lichty was general manager, and financed his first speculative house, which May designed and built in 1931–1932 with the help of master carpenter William F. Hale. The house sold to Colonel Arthur O’Leary, who also purchased the Mission-style furniture that May had built and placed in the house to help sell it.
Cliff May: Horton development (La Jolla, Calif.)
Hiram and Violetta Lee Horton built four of the six speculative houses May designed for them on Hillside Drive in La Jolla, a seaside community in northern San Diego. Violetta Horton also commissioned May to build the Sweetwater Women’s clubhouse in nearby Bonita. Where May had the chance to work on a corner lot or to orchestrate a number of dwellings together, he was less constrained by the need to separate the porch and court from the sight of neighbors, and began to find more varied ways to organize the house plans. Once out on more spacious exurban sites, May varied the shape and orientation of the courtyard with splayed and open plans.
Cliff May: Smith speculative house (Bel Air, Calif.)
The Hollywood Citizen-News reported that though the grand speculative house May built for John A. Smith resembled an “ancient ‘dobe ranch house,” the walls were actually hollow tile and filled with plumbing, electricity, and other modern conveniences. On the photographs of this house, May wrote, “Rancho goes moderne.” May saw no conflict between making a house look old (a “rancho”) and filling it with the newest appliances and fixtures (“going moderne”). The same Citizen-News article noted that the 5,000-square-foot house had sold to Mrs. W. H. Lyman Jr. of Beverly Hills for $39,500. The average cost of a new home in the U.S. in 1935 was $3,450.
Cliff May, architect W.P. Woodcock, photographer
Cliff May: Blow house #1 (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Cliff May and John A. Smith formalized their relationship in a contractual partnership to “jointly undertake the construction of dwellings for sale in the vicinity of Los Angeles,” naming May as builder and designer and Smith as financier through his First National Finance Corporation. By the summer of 1937 they were aggressively promoting and publishing their houses, one of which is the first house May designed for Frederick Blow and his wife. Frederick Blow commissioned May, left money in an account for him, and then left for Europe. This house has all the hallmarks of the best of May’s ranch houses. It spreads on the site, encloses outdoor rooms, and looks, with its uneven roof line, as though it grew on the site over decades.
Cliff May, architect William F. Cody, renderer
Cliff May: May house #2 (Los Angeles, Calif.)
His second house for his family, Cliff May house 2, was built in Mandeville Canyon. This area of west Los Angeles would remain the epicenter of May’s work and life for the rest of his long career. The wings of Cliff May house 2 enclose the outdoor living space. The street façade is straightforwardly modest and gives no hint of the expansiveness of the courtyard side.
Cliff May: Riviera Ranch photographs (Los Angeles, Calif.)
May evoked the mystique of California’s past and the proximity to the Riviera Country Club’s polo field to market his houses, as seen in his ideas to promote his Riviera Ranch development. He named his model house the “Urban Ranch.” Though Riviera Ranch now sits in the middle of west Los Angeles, surrounded by houses and bordered by busy Sunset Boulevard, these images from 1938 show how rural and undeveloped the area was when May began construction.
Cliff May: Riviera Ranch drawings (Los Angeles, Calif.)
These unbuilt entrance gates indicate May’s vision for Riviera Ranch as a secluded world. The imagined landscaping is a fanciful mixture of cacti and palm trees. The building on the left is an architectural office with drafting and reception rooms. Cliff May did eventually build an office for himself here in 1949, at 13151 Sunset Boulevard, though of a different design.
Cliff May: May house #3 (Los Angeles, Calif.)
When the house was built in 1938–1939, the interior was connected to the outdoors visually through windows facing a sun terrace. In 1949, May changed some of those windows to glass doors. He also added heating under the concrete floor of the outdoor area adjacent to the living and dining rooms, as well as a sunken fire pit just outside the heated area. These changes allowed the sun terrace to be used for activities in the living and dining rooms. Though the pool was seen in the early plans, it wasn’t built until 1956.
Cliff May: Lomita Square housing tract (Wilmington, Calif.)
This wartime emergency housing tract was Cliff May's first development to use production-line and prefabrication of materials to construct a large number of houses in a short amount of time. Originally planned with developer John A. Smith and his First National Finance Corporation, on land owned by Smith near San Pedro Bay, this tract was not built.
May designed these unbuilt minimum houses, a large set of model plans for low-cost ranch houses, for Sunset magazine. May’s strategy was to create garden-oriented, two-wing plans. The entrance was indirect and understated. Thin partitions defined the interior spaces. The houses were oriented away from street lines and toward an interior open space, and the rear facades were punctuated by terraces, porches, or courts.
In 1947, Good Housekeeping magazine published May’s design of a small ranch house for a 60 x 120- foot lot, with the tag line, “Five rooms indoors—five outdoors.” The article boasts that the house is only 42 feet wide and “[t]here is no front or back—the house is livable on all sides.” Illustrated with a photograph of a model and a plan, the writer describes the modernity of the house: “Our ranch spreads out for light, air and view...Its design shows early Spanish influence, but in plan and flexibility it is thoroughly modern.” A sketch plan, with landscaping by Douglas Baylis, was offered to readers for 10 cents. The compact L-shaped plan would form the basis of May’s work for precut houses and housing developments in the mid-1950s.
Cliff May: Postwar Demonstration house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The plan that evolved into May’s widely publicized Pace Setter house for House Beautiful was first designed by May during the war as a Postwar Demonstration house, in anticipation of an expanding upper middle-class housing market. He wanted to build the Postwar Demonstration house (he also called it the “After the War house”) in a planned community of luxury homes called Woodacres. This was a parcel of land north of San Vicente Boulevard near the extension of 14th Street in Santa Monica that he and John A. Smith had purchased around 1940.
Cliff May: Woodacres demonstration house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
May worked on his postwar demonstration model home intended for the Woodacres development, with Elizabeth Gordon, the editor of House Beautiful, who designed these interiors. This model was to be a U- shaped plan. Rooms were to be arranged around a patio area that, in one of the renderings, is taken up by a lagoon-like body of water that provided a spectacular view from the lanai or open-sided porch and its associated corridor, as well as from the living room. The site, as depicted in the rendering, was lushly and tropically landscaped. Letters between May and Smith in the archive indicate that the land on which they planned to build Woodacres was in fact not so attractive and was in need of clearing.
Cliff May: Lakewood Rancho Estates (Long Beach, Calif.)
In 1950 Cliff May partnered with Chris Choate to form Cliff May Homes to distribute ranch house plans to developers throughout the country. In Long Beach, they partnered with Ross Cortese, who built Lakewood Rancho Estates. Over 17,000 homes in 36 different variations were built in this suburban tract.
Cliff May, architect Chris Choate, architect Pacific Air Industries, photographer
Cliff May: "Pace-Setter" model house (Brentwood, Calif.)
May first took the plans for his postwar demonstration house to Sunset, asking the magazine to sponsor the building of the house. When Sunset declined, House Beautiful agreed to partner with May on the house. First National Finance Corporation financed the construction in Riviera Ranch and Elizabeth Gordon and her staff designed the colorful interiors with furniture and fixtures supplied by advertisers. This model house was opened as the first House Beautiful Pace Setter house, promoted by two months of public tours, a cover shot and accompanying lavish spread in the magazine’s February 1948 issue. Gordon published a new Pace Setter house annually until the mid-1960s to spotlight ideal modern villas for the suburban middle-class.
Cliff May: Cliff May Homes Factory Model home (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The idea for Cliff May Homes, a business of selling designs for prefabricated tract houses, was born in 1950 out of discussions between Cliff May and Chris Choate, an architect working in May’s office. May and Choate did field research, visiting other low-cost housing developments throughout California and in Arizona to assess their competition. They named the first prototype of the panel system the “Factory Model” and built it on a plot of land May owned in Sullivan Canyon, above Riviera Ranch. By the end of the day, a group of about ten skilled laborers had assembled the shell of a two-bedroom house using both post-and-beam construction and a system of pre-assembled panels
Cliff May, architect Chris Choate, architect
The house plans for the "Magic Money" ranch houses could vary between two and three bedroom models, as well as with or without two-car detached garage. The emphasis in these plans is on indoor-outdoor living, as exemplified by the large patio areas and lush landscaping.
Cliff May: Norlie Construction tract (Chico, Calif.)
As the Cliff May Homes distribution of prefabricated housing supplies expanded across the nation, the speed with which a house could be constructed was still a major selling point. In this series of photos, a clock is prominently displayed to show how quickly construction progresses at the site.
Cliff May: Cliff May Homes prefabricated house
Cliff May Homes rationallized the building process and used elements of prefabricated building parts to lower costs. This very colorful presentation drawing highlights the attractive exterior of the home.
Cliff May: Cliff May Homes low cost house
This promotional image highlights the suburban nature of the Cliff May Homes tracts, with lush landscaping and ample parking.
Cliff May: Cliff May house #4 (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Cliff May house 4, or the Skylight house, illustrates May’s eagerness to experiment, something he was particularly willing to do in the houses he designed for his family. Christian (Chris) Choate and May together designed it, with landscaping by Thomas Church. Choate, a licensed architect, worked in May’s office and became a partner with May in Cliff May Homes, producing prefabricated tract housing. The experimentation in this house clearly came out of their discussions about low-cost housing. The house was unusual, especially for Riviera Ranch, because it did not sprawl but was rectangular and compact in its plan. May and Choate brought the patio inside the dwelling and covered it with a large skylight, about 30 feet by 50 feet, which had a retractable glass cover that was opened and closed by a motor. May collapsed most of the rooms into a single space that could be customized by moving around cabinets on wheels that served as temporary walls.
Cliff May, architect Chris Choate, architect Maynard Parker, photographer
Maynard L. Parker, photographer. Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. 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.
Cliff May: Cliff May house #5 (Brentwood, Calif.)
Cliff May house 5 represents the final stage in his design of the custom ranch house in its scale, large areas of glass, and high ceilings. The large central living space (over 1,600 square feet and 53 feet long) was a combination of living room, dining room, and music room separated by a kitchen from the bedrooms. Enclosed on three sides by the house and carport, the terrace had radiant heating so it could be used for entertaining. Elizabeth Gordon declined to publish this house in House Beautiful, saying that the size, over 7,000 square feet with nine outdoor living areas, was out of scale for her readers. May brought it to House and Garden, where it was published as the first “Hallmark House.” The magazine described how the Mays lived in the house and its innovative features, such as kitchen island counter with sink and a sprinkler system for the skylight.
Cliff May, architect Maynard Parker, photographer
Rudolph Schindler: Rubinstein reception room (Hollywood, Calif.)
The reception room / salon interior design for Helena Rubinstein by Schindler was for a building on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Helena Rubinstein, the cosmetics entrepreneur, also commissioned Shindler to design a salon in New York City.
Rudolph Schindler, architect Viroque Baker, photographer
Rudolph Schindler: Meline Photoplay building (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Schindler designed preliminary sketches for this high-rise office tower for the Frank Meline Company. The Photoplay building featured a top floor clubhouse for the Photoplayers, which included a ballroom/dining room, men's and women's lounges, a library, multiple small card playing rooms, and a billiard room. Photoplay magazine was a movie industry magazine in the 1920s.
Rudolph Schindler: Mackey apartments (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Mackey apartments were designed in 1939 for Pearl Mackey. Three apartments were rented out, with the fourth, a two-story penthouse, was for Mrs. Mackey herself. Each unit had a different layout, and included built-in furniture, outdoor spaces, and Schindler's characteristic modernist shapes and volumes of indoor space. The apartment building is owned by the Austrian government and run as residential apartments and event space for artists who are part of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
Rudolph Schindler: Sachs Apartments (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Manola Court apartments were designed by Schindler for his friend Herman Sachs, on a steep hillside in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. Sachs was the muralist and painter of the interiors for LA landmarks such as City Hall, Union Station, and Bullocks Wilshire. He started purchasing land on Lucille Avenue in 1926 and had Schindler eventually design three buildings, and add to two others that were already existing, eventually finishing the 16 apartments in 1940. The apartment complex was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Landmark in 2016.
Rudolph Schindler: Barnsdall Translucent house (Palos Verdes, Calif.)
Rudolph Schindler first worked with Aline Barnsdall on the Hollyhock House, when Frank Lloyd Wright sent Schindler to California from Illinois to supervise the construction while Wright went to Japan to work on the Imperial Hotel. Schindler continued to work with Barnsdall, even after she had a falling-out with Wright. The Translucent house was designed to be set along a cliff-top overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Palos Verdes. It was never built, and has been named one of the greatest unfinished projects of the twentieth century.
Rudolph Schindler: Martin country home (Taos, NM)
This "Country house in adobe" for Dr. Thomas P. Martin was one of Schindler's earliest designs in the United States. After spending one week touring Taos, Schindler was influenced by the adobe and pueblo structures in the town.
Rudolph Schindler: Braxton beach house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The beach house for Henry Braxton and his wife Viola Brothers Shore was to be sited along the ocean in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles. The three story house (with sleeping porch and deck on the roof) was never built. Braxton was an art dealer and Schindler had previously worked with him on an interior for his art gallery.
R. M. Schindler papers, Architecture & Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara
Architecture & Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara
Los Angeles, Calif.; Venice Beach, Calif.
Rudolph Schindler: Harris house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The house designed for writer Rose Harris was built on top of a rocky ridge in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles. The steep hillside site provided an unobstructed view down the canyon, but the footprint of the house was small, due to the restrictive building site. The house was demolished in the early 1970s.
Rudolph Schindler: Tischler house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Adolphe Tischler house, on a sloping hillside in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, has a street facade that is reminiscent of the prow of a ship. The street level contained a carport and artist's workshop, while the main entrance and living space was two floors above, facing the back of the lot. The house was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1991.
Rudolph Schindler, architect Lotte Nossaman, photographer Marvin Rand, photographer
© Marvin Rand Estate 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.
Rudolph Schindler: Oliver house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The house for William Oliver in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles is set on a steep lot, with views to the ocean and mountains. The garage is at street level, and the house is above, at a 45 degree angle to take advantage of the views and access the yard.
Rudolph Schindler: Rose beach colony (Santa Monica, Calif.?)
The beach colony with semi-circular beach cottages was planned for Santa Monica and possibly named the "Cabania City Project" by A.E. Rose. One prototype beach cottage was built, but the rest of the colony was not constructed.
Los Angeles, Calif.; Santa Monica, Calif.?
Rudolph Schindler: Van Patten house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
This hillside house in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles was built for Elizabeth Van Patten and two other women, as three separate apartments with communal areas. Schindler also designed the furniture for the house.
Rudolph Schindler: Goodwin house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
This house in the Studio City area of Los Angeles, was built in 1941 for Samuel and Yolanda Goodwin. The two-bedroom plus den house is sited on a street-to-street lot, with views of the valley.
Los Angeles, Calif.; Studio City, Calif.
Rudolph Schindler: Roth house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Roxy Roth was a screenwriter and actor who commissioned Schindler to design a house in the Studio City area of Los Angeles. The house is on an irregular-shaped lot, with a curved driveway/covered garage with an entrance and exit. The house is sited along the street, to give a wide area for a yard and outdoor living space.
Rudolph Schindler: Walker house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The house Schindler designed for Ralph G. Walker overlooks the Silverlake reservoir on a steeply sloping site. The three bedroom, two bath house is a series of interlocking planes and cubes, with clerestory windows and expansive views. Schindler designed the built-in furniture, as well as other furniture pieces for the home.
Rudolph Schindler: Lee house alterations (Maywood, Ill.)
This house alteration for J.B. Lee was in the Chicago suburb of Maywood. The project was completed by Schindler when he worked for the architecture firm Ottenheimer Stern and Reichert.
Rudolph Schindler: Shep house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The house for Milton and Ruth Shep was designed to sit on a steep slope in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. Ruth Shep also commissioned Schindler to design furniture for the house.
Rudolph Schindler: Janson house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
This house for poet Ellen Janson, is perched on the edge of a cliff, high in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. Janson was a modernist poet, and is widely considered Schindler's last girlfriend.
Rudolph Schindler: Kallis house (Studio City, Calif.)
The Maurice Kallis house is sited on a north-facing slope in Studio City, with a wide view of the San Fernando Valley. The house originally contained a separate apartment and detached artist studio, but is now a single family home.
Rudolph Schindler, architect Robert Cleveland, photographer
Rudolph Schindler: How house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The James Eads How house in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, is sited on top of a ridge, with views of the San Fernando Valley. The house at 2400 square feet, is large for a Schindler, and is built with center-cut redwood and poured concrete. Richard Neutra designed the landscaping for the house. The How house was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2007.
Rudolph Schindler: DeKeyser duplex (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The house for John DeKeyser (also spelled de Keysor), is a duplex with a two bedroom unit on the top floor and a one bedroom unit on the lower floor. This house is just one house away from the Frank Lloyd Wright Freeman house, on the hill above.
Rudolph Schindler, architect Woodcock, photographer
Rudolph Schindler: Erlik house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Robert and Mariana Erlik house was built in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles in the early 1950s.
Rudolph Schindler: Hiler house and studio (Los Angeles, Calif,)
Hilaire Hiler was a well-known artist in the United States and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. He commissioned Schindler to build this house and studio, just off of Sunset Boulevard. The house was torn down in the 1960s.
Rudolph Schindler: Kaun beach house (Richmond, Calif.)
The beach house for Alexander "Sasha" Kaun and his wife Valeria was featured in many architecture magazines in the 1930s as an example of a small, inexpensive house. Kaun was a professor of Slavic languages at UC Berkeley and his wife was a famous artist; they both knew Schindler from their time in Chicago. The house was torn down in 2010.
Rudolph Schindler: Van Dekker house (Canoga Park, Calif.)
This large (3700 square feet) house was built in Canoga Park for actor Albert Van Dekker and his family. The three-level house sits under an unusual copper roof. The Van Dekker house was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2009.
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 the total limits of view so that. . . the actual view is about 75 feet, interrupted only by vertical columns and planting. . . .Space means nothing unless defined. Openness means little unless there also is closure.”
Whitney Smith, architect Smith and Williams, architects Julius Shulman, photographer
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, less formal house with more light and fewer stairs. Smith and Williams took off the second floor and opened up the first level to the site. As a native son of Pasadena, Smith knew Greene and Greene’s buildings well. His 1941-1942 letters to Charles S. Greene convey his admiration for and the influence of their work.
Whitney Smith, architect Smith and Williams, architects Julius Shulman, photographer William Rudolph, associate architect
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 incorporated the older structure into the design of his 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 trying out various situations for the lath house, including as an entrance space.
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 the Blue Ribbon Construction Company. Smith and Williams sited the houses diagonally to increase privacy between adjacent houses and to provide longer vistas. Explaining the thinking regarding the design of tract housing, Williams was quoted as saying, “The cost of land has made it impossible for the architect to think of designing a house as a space with four walls.”
Smith and Williams, architects Julius Shulman, photographer
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 solved by skillful designers. They believed that “the house and lot must be intensively used together to result in a unit of total living.”
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 house in the steepness of its site, the placement of the deck to extend the living area and vistas, and in the Japanese flavor of the design.
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” adapted “an Oriental idea to the requirements of California living.” Smith wrote an unpublished essay, “Japanese Influence in California Architecture,” in which he said that the fact that “regional, indigenous California houses” look Japanese “is 99% coincidence.” He went on to say, however, that, “Japanese architecture has a strong emotional appeal to California architects.”
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 fluid. Decks at the same level as the floor carry the living room outside to a stunning view and a pool. The bedroom has a secluded garden.
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 triangular clerestories and supported by posts at the four corners. Smith possibly borrowed the idea of the "petal" roof from his mentor Harwell Harris.
Smith and Williams, architects Marvin Rand, photographer
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 the 1955 Los Angeles County Fair.
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 the center of the house. Lawrence Halprin was the landscape architect.
Smith and Williams, architects George Szanik, photographer
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 interior garden with three sliding shojis, which allow for different views through the living zone.
Smith and Williams, architect Julius Shulman, photographer
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 rooms for the master bedroom and for dining.
Smith and Williams, architects Ernest Braun, photographer
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 in garden retaining walls and for low steps. In the entrance hall the cobblestones appear again as a waist high wall that runs alongside the ramps and leads down to the dining rooms and up to the living room. The cobblestones are repeated in the living room in a large fireplace surrounded by window wall.
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 wood elements and the use of shojis provide a Japanese character. The house is 1,000 square feet but the decks nearly double the square footage. After the Home Show, Thorgusen moved the house to property he owned.
Smith and Williams, architects Frashers Fotos, photographer Robert Thorgusen, architect
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 buildings—living and sleeping—connected by a short set of stairs flanked by stained glass. The large living room is surrounded by other functions—two studios and a kitchen— that open onto the living room through sliding shojis. A long skylight, visible from the front façade, travels all the way through the house.
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 walkways. The structures of the garage, living area, and bedrooms enclose the garden, making it the central ‘room’ of the house.
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 parking. The waiting room includes a private garden patio and a wooden screen for privacy at the reception desk.
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 domesticated building.
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, architects Marvin Rand, photographer Scott Lowry, photographer
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, architects Scott Lowry, photographer
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 card, a reference to the company business.
Smith and Williams, architects Kent Oppenheimer, photographer Larry Harmon, photographer
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 modern modes of transportation made by their members: automobiles and aircraft.
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 into the building.
Smith and Williams, architects Lin Cariffe, photographer
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 Community Facilities Planners, a few years later.
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 attenuated pillars or columns, creating an exuberant false front, which acts as a billboard for the store.
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 visually weightless building.
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 office. Equally impressive was its translation of marketing needs into design; the pumps were labeled with large, easily visible lettering; kiosks for selling tires and oil were clustered in a protected pedestrian island. Smith and Williams commissioned the artist Millard Sheets to design a large red Pegasus (the Mobil brand symbol), for the top of the sign. Albert Stewart sculpted the figure.
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 globe lights, and a concrete block wall separates the office space from laundry area.
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, architects Community Facilities Planners, architects Marvin Rand, photographer
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, architects Community Facilities Planners, architects Garth Chandler, photographer Robert Woodruff, renderer
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 restaurant was centered around an aquarium as tall as the building.
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 drawings, but did not secure funding for the project.
Smith and Williams, architects Community Facilities Planners, architects
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 around a lake named after the client, Lake Adair.
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 Williams architects; Simon Eisner and Lyle Stewart planners; and Garrett Eckbo, Francis Dean, Robert Royston, and Edward Williams landscape architects. In the early 1960s, they were joined by Richard Selje and Robert Bond, industrial designers.