Browse Items (856 total)

The Moses Myers House is a historic house museum in Norfolk, Virginia. Barton Myers' ancestors built the house in 1792 and maintained the house through the years.

The Wayne Turner house in Calhan, Colorado is one of White's passive-solar houses with Heat Exchanger Windows. The houses were designed to trap heat inside during the cold winter months, and shade the house from the sun in the hot summer moths. The…

The White Energy Integration System (WEIS) was designed as an alternative energy power plant, which pulled air upwards and powered turbines to generate energy. The large structure (496 feet tall and 880,000 square feet of land) would also have…

The Paulette Herbert Johnson house in Palm Desert was one of White's last houses in the desert before he moved to Colorado Springs. The house was originally designed with a hypar (hyperbolic paraboloid) roof, but was constructed with a flat roof, for…

The Philip Johnson house in Indio, was a large house with a Y-shaped plan. This splayed plan allowed for each room to have views in many directions.

White designed eighteen guest cottages for the Kissing Camels Golf Club. These one story one- and two- bedroom cottages utilized many of the hallmarks of the California Desert Modern design-- breezeblock entryways, floor to ceiling glass walls, and…

Palm Desert developers Al and Margaret Hill purchased land overlooking the Garden of the Gods park, outside of Colorado Springs, and created a private club. White designed the two-story guest rooms-- a complex of three buildings with forty guest…

The large house White designed for his family at the Kissing Camels Estates outside of Colorado Springs, was the first large house White built for himself. With sweeping views of the Rocky Mountains, the house contained two bedrooms, a study…

The house White designed for Miles Bates in Palm Springs was never built, but would have been a much larger residence than the one built for Bates in Palm Desert. The plan for the house included an experiment in overlapping circles and half circles,…

The unbuilt George Kanrich house at the Tamarisk Country Club is a luxurious curved house facing a circular pool. The concave side of the house faced the driveway and contained the utilities and service sections of the house. The convex side faced…

This early design by White has been called his "ideal home design." The long, narrow house plan shows a solid wall facing the street, with an open, glass-enclosed side facing a private backyard. Both the plan and elevation highlight the influence of…

In this design for a drive-in and restaurant (unbuilt) by White and his friend Harry Webster, the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright can be seen by the use of horizontal lines and the linear design of the building.

Walter White designed a number of Prefabricated Mountain Cabins through the years with the first one being The Yellowstone in 1965. The design started out as a small weekend home, with eventual designs encompassing permanent mountain residences. By…

Walter White designed and built the four houses which are considered the La Quinta Units (or Bungalows) on land adjacent to the Breedlove house, which he built for his mother-in-law. The four T-shaped houses were designed as middle-class dwellings…

For the Carroll and Dr. Marlene Smith house in the Black Forest area near Colorado Springs, White designed the house to utilize passive solar architecture in a domestic setting. The house is curved, to take advantage of the view, and contains many…

After World War II, Walter White designed small cabin-like houses for returning service members in the Hollywood Hills, along Valevista Trail. White and his family lived in one of the cabins for a short time.

For the Pearson, Scott & Company building, White worked with architect Leopold Fischer to design the offices for the mortgage company. The building is no longer extant.

For the Valley Lumber Company in Palm Desert, White designed an addition to the store and office building.

For office buildings for the Calor Gas Service company, White used simple corrugated metal sheets, which he folded around corners and edges of the buildings. White designed buildings in Merced and Susanville for the company, as well as designing…

For the Newt and Lillian Stafford house in Escondido, the clients built the original frame house, and White designed a shed-like roof, which was shaped like a butterfly's profile. With the angled roof, some of the interior walls did not reach up to…

The floor plan for the William Durham house in Palm Desert highlights the thoughtful planning behind a Walter White design. The plan shows, through a series of arrows, the view lines from each section of the house, as well as the specific angles of…

The first Herbert Pritzlaff house was designed by Cliff May, in 1947-1948, and was one of the earliest houses in the Palm Desert / Shadow Mountain region. The home burned to the ground in 1949, and White designed and built the replacement.

The office building for Safari USA, a boat building company, utilized steel beams and corrugated sheet metal to provide visual interest and help shade portions of the building from the desert sun.

The Coachella Valley Farms development was initially designed to be the largest small-farm development in the world. With each homestead located on their own long and narrow two acre plots, the houses (with backyard pool) were near the road, with the…

In 1944, White built a 'Desert Dwelling' for his mother-in-law, Esther Breedlove in La Quinta. This small house is one of the earliest examples of White's work in the desert, and shows how his style was shaped by the environment. White used stand…

White worked with the Metro Homes company to design small homes for subdivisions throughout California. In Palm Desert, the Metro Homes (also known as "Palm Desert Homes") were one- or two- bedroom homes (either oblong or T-shaped) with and without…

The plans for unbuilt duplex and triplex units wee commissioned by Pearl McCallum McManus. She inherited a large amount of land in and around Palm Springs and was a major proponent for the development of tourism in the area. McManus and her husband…

Walter White began designing homes in Colorado in the mid-60s, but it wasn't until 1968, when he received his Colorado architect license, that he was able to work on larger civic and commercial projects. The First Assembly of God Church in Colorado…

The house in Palm Desert for E.W, Stewart is one of the best examples of White's large residential commissions. The interior of the house is clearly divided into public and private zones, with a massive circular fireplace at the center of the living…

The Max E. Willcockson house in Indio is notable for White's first use of the hyperbolic-paraboloid roof. This dramatically sweeping feature appears from a distance to hover over the house (which was sited on a high sand dune to increase the drama).…

The long, low house for Charles Milliken sat on a corner lot with an imposing front of stucco, masonry, and wood, while the back of the house featured much more open and airy glass walls to enjoy the view and outdoor living.

The Shadow Mountain Club was one of the first resorts in Palm Desert; the Sun Lodges were bungalows which could be purchased by individuals and then rented out when not in use. The land was owned by the corporation, making the Sun Lodges one of the…

White designed this house for Truman and Marie Susan Ratliff; she was a school teacher and he farmed the property, growing alfalfa and citrus fruits. The sweeping roof was S-shaped, with a higher roofline above the dining and living rooms to take…

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."

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…

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…

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…

Anastasia Bubeshko and her daughter Luby commissioned Schindler to design an apartment complex on Griffith Park Boulevard in the Silverlake neighborhood in Los Angeles. They wanted a modular design on the sloping lot, one which could contain 5…

Schindler was working for Frank Lloyd Wright when Thomas Hardy commissioned a series of 18 worker houses near Racine, Wisconsin.

The beach house commissioned by Phillip Lovell is widely regarded as one of the best examples of modernist architecture by Schindler. With rough, exposed, concrete forms, open staircases, two story living room, and windows facing the ocean, the beach…

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…

The pavilion was designed by Smith and Williams in 1958, and contained walls which were inset with milk-white, blue, and translucent glass panels.

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

Community Facilities Planners produced comprehensive planning reports for the Buena Park Civic Center and the Brea Civic Center.

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.

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…

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 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.

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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.

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.

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…

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…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The wood beams are used in a craftsman mode and contribute to the soothing domestic appeal of this small medical building.

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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”…

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 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…

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 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…

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,…

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’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…

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.

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…

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.

The Robert and Mariana Erlik house was built in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles in the early 1950s.

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.

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.…

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.