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.
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.
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
© 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.
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
© 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.
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.
Smith and Williams: Neighborhood Church (Pasadena, Calif.)
Prior to 1966, the Neighborhood Church congregation used a sanctuary building at 535 South Pasadena Avenue that had been built in 1887 as the First Congregational Church. In 1946, the church expanded its facilities. Smith and Williams designed a nursery school building called the Children’s House. Following their master plan, Smith and Williams subsequently added the Children’s Chapel and the Religious Education Building.
Smith and Williams: St. Paul's Lutheran Church (Monrovia, Calif.)
Smith and Williams created, at the time, the longest unsupported plywood vaults for this church. The clerestories under the vaults are lighted at night, which makes the roof appear to float.
Smith and Williams, architects Larry Frost, photographer
Smith and Williams: Sun Valley Methodist Church (Sun Valley, Calif.)
Whitney Smith, the partner in charge, designed a tent-like structure for a new sanctuary, in deference to the Methodist open door philosophy of worship. The interior furnishings, including the cross, communion table and rail, lectern and pulpit were made by furniture designer Sam Maloof. The pews were made by a furniture company from a Maloof prototype.
Smith and Williams, architects Jim Collison- Photographic International, photographer
Smith and Williams: Sunset Canyon Recreation Center (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Wayne Williams and Robert Meyerhof, associate partner in the Smith and Williams’s office, designed a multi-level arrangement of decks and stair landings with an elaborate post-and-beam system that gives the impression of a tree house. The University of California, Los Angeles, program requested an open place, with few physical boundaries, to encourage informal meetings and conversations between faculty and students.
Smith and Williams, architects Steve Jost, photographer Jim Collison- Photographic International, photographer
Smith and Williams: Buena Park Civic Center (Buena Park, Calif.)
Smith and Williams arranged the office spaces in six pavilions connected by covered walkways that carry people from the edge of the site to each of the six pavilions.
Smith and Williams: Brea Civic Center (Brea, Calif.)
Community Facilities Planners produced comprehensive planning reports for the Buena Park Civic Center and the Brea Civic Center.
Smith and Williams, architects Community Facilities Planners, planners
Smith and Williams: Mayfair Park (Lakewood, Calif.)
Community Facilities Planners produced a master plan for the parks of the City of Lakewood that called for creating four parks over 10 years. Smith and Williams designed the structures.
Smith and Williams, architects Community Facilities Planners, planners Julius Shulman, photographer Jeffrey Lindsay, photographer
Smith and Williams: John Marshall Junior High School (Pasadena, Calif.)
Photographs in the Smith and Williams’s files show the students at John Marshall congregating in groups at the edge of the campus. The design for a new cafeteria gracefully accommodates the students’ energetic sociability with a space that is defined but open.
Smith and Williams: United States Post Office (La Canada Flintridge, Calif.)
The post office was designed to anchor a small suburban shopping center. A reproduction of a rendering in the archive shows that the decorative folded detail on the façade was to be carried through onto the fronts of the other buildings in the shopping center to tie the buildings together, literally and visually.
Smith and Williams: Armstrong house (Pasadena, Calif.)
In a letter dated September 1955 to Dan MacMasters at the Los Angeles Examiner’s Pictorial Living section, Smith described the Armstrong house as having no front or back. All four sides, he wrote, were designed for looking ‘at’ and for looking out ‘from.’ A glass roofed passage connects the house to the terrace and divides the house into three functional buildings: living and dining, kitchen and bath, and bedroom. An interior garden off the dining area and at each end of the passage reinforces the connection of the house to its site.
Smith and Williams: Dorr-Siegel-Click-Hurley medical building (Pasadena, Calif.)
These medical offices have an unusual form and are very difficult to see from the exterior. In the simplified plan, the building is composed of two adjacent circles connected by a diamond- shaped reception vestibule. Patients enter through a small garden, into the reception vestibule that contains garden patios and two receptionist desks. Each of the four doctors occupies one-quarter of a circle; the other quarters are taken up by exam rooms.
Smith and Williams: California State Polytechnic University (Pomona, Calif.)
Smith and Williams designed more residential and commercial buildings but produced many master plans and planning studies for public and civic projects. The expansion of the state college and university systems provided work for many architects through the middle of the 20th century.
Smith and Williams: Barr Lumber model house (Los Angeles, Calif.)
In 1944-1945 the Barr Lumber Company invited three architects to design model houses for an unbuilt experiment and engaged landscape architect Garrett Eckbo to create gardens for each of the proposals. For his submission, Whitney Smith wrote an extensive text, accompanied by drawings, that describe the special features and planning reasons behind each room and asserts that his design "defines urban living as an intimate garden out of which the house rises."
Smith and Williams, architects Whitney Smith, architect Garrett Eckbo, landscape architect
Smith and Williams: Scripps College swimming pool (Claremont, Calif.)
The pavilion was designed by Smith and Williams in 1958, and contained walls which were inset with milk-white, blue, and translucent glass panels.
Smith and Williams: Mutual Housing Association (Los Angeles, Calif.)
In 1946, a group of four friends decided to pool their resources and buy land in the hills above Sunset Boulevard to build homes for their families. The group soon grew to over 400 interested parties, and the group became the Mutual Housing Association, which purchased over 800 acres of hilly land to build on. The group chose Whitney Smith, A. Quincy Jones, and Edgar Contini to design the modern houses, a park, and community center. The project was named Crestwood Hills, and the original architects drew up plans for 29 different house plans- each sited on a lot to provide unobstructed views.
Smith and Williams, architects Whitney Smith, architect A. Quincy Jones, architect Edward Contini, engineer
Smith and Williams: Bradley house (Pasadena, Calif.)
The Harold Bradley house in Pasadena makes maximum use of a small lot, by yielding a small area to the driveway and garage, and reserving the focal point for a garden terrace. The terrace provides garden views and access for all the major rooms of the house through glass doors and windows. Though placed at the front of the house, privacy was created by effective use of a translucent plastic wall and the natural topography of the site-- the house sits on a slight rise above the street. Wide roof overhangs, up to eight feet, provide shelter to the south and west facing rooms.
Whitney Smith, architect Fred Dapprich, photographer
Smith and Williams: Zwell house (Pasadena, Calif.)
For the long, narrow, 1300 square foot house for Leo Zwell, Smith designed a straight line of rooms, with each one having a full wall of glass facing onto the brick terrace. A "light trough" or linear skylight provided natural light to the living/dining room ceiling.
Whitney Smith, architect Maynard Parker, photographer Garrett Eckbo, landscape architect
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.
Smith and Williams: Welborn Phillips Company housing (Pasadena, Calif.)
The Welborn Phillips Company was a developer of tract homes. Smith and Williams created a brochure which illustrated their philosophy on tract housing. They highlighted such details as exterior masonry planter boxes to give a pleasant view from inside the house, sound insulation between bedrooms and main living areas, a breakfast bar along one side of the kitchen for flexible seating, and integrated car shelters.
Smith & Williams records, 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
Smith and Williams: Santa Ana Woods (Santa Ana, Calif.)
Whitney Smith described his design for the Santa Ana Woods tract development as one of his best: "a tract of 104 houses, set far apart from other neighborhoods by natural barriers. The exclusive atmosphere further emphasized by the stone entrance."