This early photograph of Irving Gill, from circa 1898, shows him soon after he moved to the San Diego area from Chicago. Gill is dressed in a suit with a bow tie and is looking away from the camera. It is one of a series of posed studio portraits taken of Gill in various poses.
Irving J. Gill, architect Unknowm photographer
Irving John Gill 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
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Irving J. Gill: Alice Lee and Katherine Teats houses (San Diego, Calif.)
Alice Lee (a San Diego socialite and second cousin of Theodore Roosevelt’s first wife) and Katherine Teats commissioned two distinct house groups from Gill. In 1905 Gill designed a house for Lee and Teats on Seventh Avenue, with adjacent rental houses, all in the Prairie style, on land purchased from George Marston, another client who built a significant house nearby, currently a museum and historic landmark. Hazel Waterman, then working in Gill’s office, did the drawings. The landscape was by Kate Sessions. In the period photographs, the streets are unpaved and the upper stories of the houses contain sleeping porches-- open air rooms with ample cross-ventilation in a time before air conditioning.
Irving J. Gill: Bailey house (La Jolla, Calif.)
Frank Mead worked in the Hebbard and Gill office beginning about 1904. He and Gill formed a seven-month partnership in 1907, when the H & G partnership ended. Before joining the office, Mead, though trained as an architect, worked actively, and successfully, for the repatriation of lands to the Mohave-Apache (Yavapai) Indians in 1904. He was helped in his efforts by his friends: Charles Fletcher Lummis, the founder of the Landmarks Club and editor of Out West magazine; Natalie Curtis, ethnomusicologist of Indian songs and friend of Alice Klauber, Charles Douglas and Wheeler Bailey. Douglas and Bailey were sympathetic to the plight of displaced Native Americans and collected their art and crafts. While this house had gas lighting, there is a note on the plan regarding telephone service near the kitchen.
Irving J. Gill: Barker house (San Diego, Calif.)
Gill used simplicity, symmetry and strategic asymmetry in his landscapes and buildings. Garden walls extend the building volume across the site, while also enclosing gardens and terraces. In this series of drawings of graphite and gouache on board for the Nelson Barker house, the white planes of the house and garden walls stand out against the faintly-sketched backdrop.
Irving J. Gill: Bishop's Day School (San Diego, Calif.)
Bishop Johnson lived in Pasadena and the Episcopal Church originally planned to build a preparatory school in Sierra Madre. When Ellen Scripps and her sister Elizabeth Virginia Scripps offered to be benefactors, the decision was made to build a day school in San Diego and a boarding school in La Jolla. Ellen recommended Irving Gill for both projects, pleased with his work on the Scripps Biological Station, 1908.
Irving J. Gill: Bishop's School for Girls (La Jolla, Calif.)
In the Woman’s Club, the La Jolla Playground Community House, and here in the Bishop’s School, Gill used an arcaded screen wall as a unifying element, and to articulate his austere geometry with rhythmic voids. Scripps Hall was built in 1910, Bentham Hall in 1912, and Gilman Hall in 1916-17. Louis Gill continued to add to the school’s building program, and Carleton Winslow, who was brought to California by Goodhue to work on the 1915 San Diego exposition, replaced Gill’s tower, put a dome on Bentham Hall, and added St. Mary’s Chapel and the Wheeler Bailey Library in the 1920s.
Irving J. Gill: Clarke house (Santa Fe Springs, Calif.)
Built on 60 acres of orange groves, the Clarke estate was Gill’s last major residential project. Constructed of poured in place reinforced concrete, the house measures 8,000 square feet. Gill’s drawings note that Gill and Pearson built the house using the “Gill System.” The Clarkes called their “ranch house,” Krankhaven (in German, a healthy haven). The Clarke house plan bears a remarkable similarity to that of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock house (1917-1921) in Los Angeles for Aline Barnsdall, on which Lloyd Wright and Rudolf Schindler worked. When oil was discovered on their land shortly after they moved in, the Clarkes moved elsewhere, including to land in the Coachella Valley where they established a date farm. Marie Rankin was a patron of the arts in Los Angeles and, among other efforts, donated the land for the Hollywood Bowl, for which Lloyd designed two shells, in 1927 and 1928.
Irving J. Gill: Cositt house elevations (Coronado, Calif.)
The designs from the Hebbard and Gill partnership were eclectic, leaning toward English cottages with Arts and Crafts influence, but included Neo-classical, Gothic, Queen Anne, Mission Revival, and Prairie School styles. In this drawing of a house for Mrs. F.B. Cossitt, the exterior elevations are annotated to include faint red lines indicating the level of each floor and stairwells. Small drawings of specific details and sections are squeezed in between the elevations, to add clarification to certain portions of the drawing.
Irving J. Gill: Daily Blade-Tribune building (Oceanside, Calif.)
In the last year of his life, with the Depression still strong, Gill designed at least four buildings, of which only the Blade-Tribune newspaper building and a beauty parlor in Redondo Beach were built. In 1936 he was working on a theater with Zara Witkin, a civil engineer for the City of Los Angeles who had worked on the Hollywood Bowl with Lloyd Wright, 1927-1928. In a 1936 letter to Gill, Witkin notes that he visited the Dodge house on Gill’s recommendation and was eager to discuss the “possibilities of mutual work.”
Irving J. Gill: Darst flats (San Diego, Calif.)
Gill designed two identical buildings bisected by a walkway from the street to the rear of the property. The floor plan for both buildings shows the mirror image of the first and second floors. Each building contained two two-bedroom apartments, with large living room (with fireplace), dining room, bathroom, kitchen with screened porch, and balconies on the first floor (with a lightwell above on the second floor).
Irving J. Gill: Dodge house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Dodge house was located on Kings Road, just north of the future site of Schindler’s own 1921 house. Considered Gill’s masterpiece, the design was widely praised for, as historian Leland Roth wrote," revealing a functional asymmetry whose ornament was derived solely from the studied geometry of the sharp openings in plain walls." The house was bulldozed, after a long preservation effort, on February 9, 1970. The shock of that loss helped launch the Los Angeles Conservancy, founded in 1978. Gill assembled his own crew to build this and other houses in the L.A. area, in order to get exactly what he wanted. The house was built of reinforced concrete, with metal windows and had many modern conveniences. The layering and piling of cubes and rectangular forms in the Dodge and Clarke houses resembles Native American pueblo buildings. Schindler and Wright consciously borrowed from these native structures, but it’s not clear what Gill’s immediate sources were.
Irving J. Gill: Ellen Scripps house (La Jolla, Calif.)
A book could be written about Gill’s women clients, and Ellen Scripps would be a significant chapter. She helped her brothers build a successful newspaper business and moved to La Jolla in 1897, when the town had “cow paths in lieu of streets.” The success of the Scripps newspaper syndicate allowed her to live independently and to make significant contributions to La Jolla. When her first house burned down, she asked Gill to design a fireproof house for the site. In a 1915 diary entry, Scripps described visiting Gill in his LA office to see the plans for her new house. He took her to his Banning, Dodge and Laughlin houses to see things, “Mr. Gill wants to introduce into my building.” Later, in a 1916 letter to her sister, she wrote: “The two Gills have been busy all day…in shirtsleeves and overalls down on their knees ‘surfacing’ the cement floors. I don’t know if you will like the effect, but to me it is ‘a thing of beauty and a joy forever.’”
Irving J. Gill: Gill cottages (San Diego, Calif.)
Gill designed approximately eight cottages for parcels of land he purchased in San Diego. There is little documentation for these, but all or most of the houses seem to have been built on Albatross, Front, Robinson Mews, and Hawthorne streets.Gill proudly wrote to his father that he built his small houses, “so as to work out some new ideas I had for a cheap, semi-fireproof cottage for working men’s families. They have been a great success and I am building several others of similar construction.” Gill and his nephew Louis lived at 3719 Albatross in 1912. Lloyd Wright and his brother John lived in another of the cottages, down the lane. Gill reused the plan of his Cleveland Heights house in his preliminary design for the Bella Vista Terrace cottages, several years later.
Irving J. Gill: Gill office (San Diego, Calif.)
The photograph in the reception area of the office depicts the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, the first Franciscan mission in New Spain. William Hebbard and Irving Gill (Hebbard and Gill partnership, 1896-1907) stabilized the building in 1899-1900 for the California Landmarks Club. According to his nephew Louis Gill, Irving studied the building closely to understand its simple dignity. The second image shows brushes, paints, and smocks, as well as photographs of Hebbard and Gill designs on the wall, including the Ellen Mason house (1903) and the First Methodist Episcopal Church (1905-07), and a 1914 issue of House and Garden, which includes an article about Gill’s work. Gill’s fascination with concrete as an inexpensive, fireproof building material prompted his intensive experiments with concrete formulations, using the bags of sand, water jug, scales, and other instruments for testing concrete mixtures.
Irving J. Gill: Holly Sefton Memorial Hospital (San Diego, Calif.)
Gill’s intention was to make his buildings as efficient as possible, and that is certainly true for this hospital, funded by Joseph Sefton and built on the grounds of the Children’s Home. The hospital was built of concrete to make it easy to keep clean and free of infestation. The operating area was well lit by natural light through the use of large skylights in the roof and a wall of windows. The accompanying photographic image from the period remind us how modern Gill’s buildings looked in comparison to what existed, and how much land close to cities was still undeveloped. At far left is the Sefton Hospital, with the Gill-designed Children's Home Association boys dormitory in the middle, and a typical building for the time, on the right.
Irving J. Gill: Horatio West court (Santa Monica, Calif.)
Gill helped Schindler and Claude Chase form and raise the tilt-slab walls for the Schindler house on Kings Road, 1921. Invoices in the Schindler archive show that Schindler rented some of Gill’s equipment for the concrete work. Chase assisted Gill on the construction of Horatio West, which has concrete floors and roof, and walls thinly constructed of plaster covered lathe. The building permit for this project was announced in 1922. The Horatio West and Lewis Courts are among the best examples of Gill’s intentions and compositional strategies. Richard Neutra was sufficiently intrigued when he first saw Gill’s buildings in 1925 that he included Horatio West, and several other Gill buildings,in his 1930 book, Amerika.
Irving J. Gill: Klauber house (San Diego, Cailf.)
This house had a simplified exterior form, with a slight Japanese flavor in the tilt of the roof, and a warm Arts and Crafts interior. Melville Klauber was from San Diego’s growing merchant class, and married to the sister of Julius Wangenheim. Klauber made room in his house for a studio for his own sister, Alice Klauber, a painter who had studied with American artist, Robert Henri. Alice was friends with Natalie Curtis, the ethnomusicologist and collector of Native American songs; Frank Mead; and Charles Douglas and Wheeler Bailey. Alice was later the chairperson for the Panama Californian Exposition’s Art Exhibition section.
Irving J. Gill: La Jolla Women's Club (La Jolla, Calif.)
Gill’s notes about the concrete work for the Club and the sequential construction photographs provide unusual detail for one of Gill’s significant civic designs. Robert H. Aiken is usually credited as the tilt-up pioneer in the U.S; he constructed several building in the Midwest between 1905 and 1910. When Aiken went bankrupt, Gill purchased the jacks and tilt-slab table in 1912 and used them to construct the Sarah Clark house (1913), Mary Banning house (1913-14), the Woman’s Club, and the La Jolla Playground Community House. Gill put great faith in concrete and this system and founded the Concrete Building and Investment Company. Although he kept the equipment at least until 1923, his venture lost heavily. It was in the end an expensive way to build.
Irving J. Gill: Laughlin house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
This is the first Los Angeles building that Gill designed on his own. The house has a classic center hall plan and an enclosed outdoor court. He typically oriented his plans so that one was drawn toward the light and landscape at the back of the house. Abstract Doric columns supported unfinished logs to create vine-covered pergolas. Modern conveniences included a garbage disposal, vacuum cleaner outlets in each room, and a car wash in the garage. Laughlin also commissioned the Laughlin Theater (Long Beach) and planning for Casa Grandes (the Laughlin Park development, Los Angeles) from Gill.
Irving J. Gill: Laughlin Park Casa Grandes development (Los Angeles, Calif.)
The Los Angeles Herald published several articles announcing the luxury housing development at Laughlin Park. A 1912 article announced that Gill was in charge of all planning for this Hollywood Hills development on a site of three acres. Another article, attributed to Gill, describes the planned development. By 1913, Laughlin had sold the land and Gill was no longer involved. Laughlin Park remains an exclusive neighborhood but none of the homes were designed by Gill.
Irving J. Gill, architect Lloyd Wright, landscape architect
Irving J. Gill: Lewis- Bella Vista Terrace court (Sierra Madre, Calif.)
Gill’s site planning was especially successful in this project. He pushed the cottages to the outside edge of the plot to leave a large public area for shared gardens and a loggia. He also placed each L-shaped cottage so that its arcaded porch and small garden had privacy from its neighbors. Though the cottages appear to be made of concrete, the walls are plastered hollow clay blocks. Fred B. Lewis was a jeweler from Cleveland. On a 1910 trip to California, he spent a vacation at the Cypress Court in Sierra Madre (owned by Frank Fraiburg, also a jeweler from Cleveland), located just north of where Lewis would decide to build his own house court for tourists such as himself. Gill planned 12 cottages for Lewis but only eight were built. In 1913 the Sierra Madre News announced that Lewis had purchased three acres, adjacent to Bella Vista Terrace, for a hotel being designed by Gill. The hotel was not built; Lewis sold Bella Vista Terrace in 1914 and moved to Long Beach, Calif.
Irving J. Gill: Miltmore house (South Pasadena, Calif.)
The austere Miltmore house is generously “ornamented by nature.” Gill sited the house to preserve the many trees on the sprawling lot and placed long loggias alongside the front and rear elevations. The interior is gracious though simple, designed to be easy to keep clean. Gill raised the floors of the closets to keep out dust, and eliminated all moldings. The roof holds a solar hot water heater and skylights. The master bathroom includes a newly popular feature: a shower.
Irving J. Gill: Rancho Barona Resettlement project (near Lakeside, Calif.)
The architect and planner Frederick Gutheim worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1930s. His letters to architectural critic Esther McCoy and to Louis Gill describe his friendship with Irving Gill and the Barona Resettlement project they worked on together. Letters in the Gill archive from agents in Washington D. C. refer to the clay block construction and the task of finding a proficient contractor for the Magnesite, which Gill specified for the interiors. Gutheim reported that Gill worked alongside the new residents to build the church and 12 cottages of handmade clay bricks. He was convinced that Gill’s work was important for being “a truly native style of modern building in California.”
Irving J. Gill: Scripps Biological Station (La Jolla, Calif.)
Gill’s austere clarity was especially suited to pragmatic building programs, such as the concrete Biological Station. Ellen Scripps funded the building, now part of the University of California, in honor of her brother George.
Irving J. Gill: South Bay Union School (San Diego, Calif.)
Gill designed a number of schools. A 1913 article about his concrete public school for the City of Fontana praised the large outdoor playground and quoted Gill as saying that the basement playroom is “the most glaring evil in school room construction today.”
Irving J. Gill, architect John S. Siebert, architect
Irving J. Gill: Timken house (San Diego, Calif.)
This 18-room house built for the steel manufacturer, Henry Timken, was Gill’s largest to date. Gill placed the house close to the street, leaving room for enclosed courts and a large garden. Eloise Roorbach’s contemporary article noted that the “court is the center of the home life,” and praised the design for, “not a single ornament mars the pure symmetry of [the house].”
Irving J. Gill: Wangenheim house (San Diego, Calif.)
Hebbard and Gill designed an English cottage for Wangenheim, a civic leader, owner of a grocery store business, and the father-in-law of Melville Klauber, another Gill client. San Diego was a small town and Hebbard and Gill worked with most of its prominent citizens, reflecting the significance of the firm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.