Browse Collections (41 total)

William Levy Alexander (birth name Alexander Levy) was born in Brooklyn in 1909, the youngest of 15 children. In 1929 he enrolled in architecture…

The Miles C. Bates house by Walter White in Palm Desert, California is also known as the "wave" house for it's uniquely shaped roof. The house blends…

Walter S. White was born in 1917. Between 1933 and 1936 he attended San Bernardino High School. White worked for six months in 1937 for Harwell H.…

Edwin Wallace Neff, Sr. was born on January 28, 1895 in La Mirada, California. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied…

The University of California, Santa Barbara was founded on July 1, 1944 and located in Santa Barbara proper, where the University took over the…

This collection features images used in the book Tremaine Houses: One family's patronage of domestic architecture in midcentury America by Professor…

Thornton Abell graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in architecture, and worked for the well-known firm Marsh, Smith &…

Architects Whitney Smith and Wayne Williams started their firm in 1949, and designed houses, offices, and planned communities until they disbanded in…

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

Whitney Smith was born…

The Santa Barbara Community Arts Association was a non-profit corporation, founded on April 24, 1922. The non-profit’s stated purpose was “to…

The house at 835 Kings Road in Los Angeles, Calif. is considered to be one of the first 'modern' houses. It utilized concrete tilt-slab construction;…

The Aline Barnsdall house, most commonly known as the Hollyhock House, was one of the first Frank Lloyd Wright houses built in Los Angeles. Wright…

Rudolph Michael Schindler (1887-1953) was born in Vienna, Austria. Schindler trained in Vienna at the Technische Hochschule, from which he graduated…

Roland Eli Coate, Sr. (1890-1958) was born in Richmond, Indiana. After attending Earlham College for two years, he transferred to Cornell University…

Architect Robert Stacy-Judd designed the Aztec Hotel in Monrovia, Cailf., in the Mayan Revival style of architecture. As an early proponent of the…

Robert Stacy-Judd was born in London, England on June 21, 1884. He attended Acton College, Regent Street Polytechnic Institute, and the South…

Rex Lotery was born on August 19, 1930 in London, England. Lotery’s family immigrated to Manhattan in 1939 and later moved to Scarsdale, New York.…

Paul Laszlo was an interior designer and architect in Germany from the early 1920s until emigrating to the United States in 1936. He settled in Los…

Lutah Maria Riggs was born on October 31, 1896 in Toledo, Ohio. She came to Santa Barbara in 1914 and attended Santa Barbara City Junior College until…

During the Great Depression, Lucile Lloyd (1894-1941) built an active career as a mural decorator. Her colorful scenes and stenciled patterns adorned…

Lockwood de Forest III was born in New York City in 1896. His father was a well-known landscape painter, and as a teenager, Lockwood was sent to the…

Architect and designer Karl Emanuel Martin Weber was born in Germany, and apprenticed as a cabinet and furniture maker. He emigrated to the United…

John Elgin Woolf was trained as an architect at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and moved to Los Angeles in 1936, hoping to get into the movie…

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1875, Byers studied to become an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan. He went on to complete one year…

Jock Peters, born Jacob Jock Peters, was born on March 16, 1889 in Jarrenwisch, Schleswig Holstein, a region of farmland near the Danish border. At…

The Thomas Mann house was built in 1941 for the acclaimed writer by architect J.R. Davidson. The Mann's left Germany in the 1930's and settled in the…

Julius Ralph Davidson was born in 1889 in Berlin. Beginning at the age of 18, J.R. Davidson worked in architectural offices in Berlin, London at the…

Born near Syracuse, New York, Irving Gill (1870-1936) was descended from Quakers and grew up in a family with ties to the building trades; his father…

Myron Hunt & H. G. Chambers, Architects was an architectural firm based in Los Angeles that was started by Myron Hunt with Harold G. Chambers in 1920.…

Gregory Ain was born in Pittsburg and raised in California; he went to school at UCLA and USC. He worked briefly for Rudolf Schindler and then worked…

George Washington Smith began his career as an artist, then a move to Montecito from Paris in 1916 gave him the chance to build his own house. The…

Edward Abel Killingsworth was born in Taft, California in 1917. He attended the University of Southern California where he began his academic career…

Edla Muir, also known by her married name, Edla Muir Lambie, was born in San Francisco, California on January 23, 1906. At the age of 13, Muir worked…

The 13 story Art Deco building on the corner of Broadway and Ninth Street in downtown Los Angeles, was designed and built by Claud Beelman of the firm…

Cliff May, known as 'the father of the ranch house,' was an early proponent of the California style ranch house. He first built hacienda style houses…

The Case Study House program was started by Art & Architecture Magazine in 1945 as a way for architects to begin to formulate ideas for post-World War…

Carleton Monroe Winslow Sr. was born in Maine on December 12, 1876. He studied architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Ecole des…

Barton Myers was born in 1934 in Norfolk, Virginia. From 1952-1956 he attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis where he graduated with a…

Albert Frey was a Swiss architect who moved to Palm Springs in the early 1930s and partnered with John Clark in 1935 to form the firm Clark and Frey.…

Albert Frey was born in Zurich, Switzerland on October 18, 1903. Frey received his formal architectural training at the Institute of Technology in…

A. E. Hanson, landscape architect and land developer, was born in Chino, California on December 20, 1893. After two years of high school, Hanson left…