Browse Items (856 total)

Schematics of lamp designs. Davidson was inspired by Bauhaus furniture, which were streamlined, stainless steel constructions.

Renderings and floor plan of the Drive-in Curb Market. Designs like this clearly anticipated the increasing importance of automobiles in the modern age.

Photographs of the entrance and interior of the Haberdashery (a men's clothing store). This business replaced the earlier Schilling's Flowers.

Photograph of the interior and front entrance of the Schilling's Flower Store. It was later replaced by Bachelor's Haberdashery Shop.

Photos and plan of the entrance to Davidson's office in Los Angeles. The facade echoes the stylistic influences of Rudolph Schindler and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Exterior photograph of the Vigeveno #1 House, a ranch-style vacation home for art dealer James Vigeveno and his family. Another design was made for Vigeveno alongside the first, although this second house featured a completely different architectural…

Davidson's design for the cover of California Sport Magazine.

Built in the single-story"ranch style", the Walter Foster House project was one of Davidson's new designs bearing a departure from the International Style in favor of Soft Modernism. The house's plan incorporated local building styles and materials,…

Photographs of the exterior of the Stothart House; one of the driveway entrance and one of the side patio. The design emphasis on horizontal and flat forms, along with uniform windows and parapets echoed the International Style.

Case Study House # 15 is a modified version of CSH #11, also by Davidson. This particular version was changed slightly to conform to the site in the suburb of La Canada Flintridge. Changes include the shape of the patio, adding a basement, and adding…

Case Study House #11 shows the progression of thought in the program since J.R. Davidson designed CSH#1. This house is smaller, more efficient, and is sited at an angle on the lot to still provide ample outdoor living areas. Both Davidson and Art and…

Case Study House #1 was the first design to be shown in the 1945 edition of Art and Architecture magazine, but due to wartime restrictions, it was not the first house built. J.R. Davidson was known for building large houses for wealthier clients, and…

Photographs of the interior of the Hi-Hat restaurant. The owner originally requested an English style tavern, to which Davidson created a design that reflected his wishes but through a modernist's sensibilities.

Photographs of the exterior and interior of the Bilicke-Satyr Bookstore, featuring special strip lights. Many of Davidson's early commercial projects incorporate Art Deco elements, calculating geometric shapes, sleek forms, and straight lines.

Floor plan and photographs of the residence Davidson designed for himself and his wife on South Barrington Avenue in Los Angeles.

Photographs of the interior of the coconut grove courtyard and lamp details. Davidson emphasized unique lighting designs, with the lamps here incorporating vegetal or "oriental" star elements.

Photographs of the remodeled bar and tavern of the Hotel Knickerbocker. The resulting shape of the space results from the combination of "several existing odd rooms".

After supposedly being turned down by Richard Neutra to design their home, clients Joseph and Lore Kingsley commissioned Davidson to design a unique home to fit their needs. This design was then mirrored next door in the house built for Joseph…

Davidson retrofitted this Georgian home to better house the owner's modern art collection. He replaced wall space with larger windows and a glass enclosed porch to allow more light in and open up the space.

Davidson was commissioned to refurbish Sardi's Restaurant, which originally had interior design work done by Rudolph Schindler. Davidson reorganized the inside and added new features, opening up the space by cleverly incorporating partitions and…

These photographs document the narrow medical building that housed the practices of Dr. B.F. Feingold and and Dr. J.M. Harris. The spaces were designed to be modern and expansive, with scattered lighting and noise insulation.

Photographs of the exterior of the apartments. The plans reflected the Bauhaus concept of utilizing limited space. Each of the four apartments has an exterior space such as a patio or sundeck to provide private outside access- a luxury usually only…

Photographs of the exterior entrance, bar, and lunch counter of the Golden Lion Inn. The facade echoed tavern aesthetics, yet the inside was incredibly spacious and well lit.

This photograph of the front of the house with trees and landscaping was altered (possibly by Davidson himself) to add vines and leaves to the exterior walls and balconies of the house. In this view, the first floor terrace is not yet enclosed, and…

An architectural drawing of the east elevation, details, and sections for the Mann house. The east elevation shows the balcony adjacent to Mann's bedroom, and the sections show the east and west sides of the house. There are also details of the…

A non-technical plan of the second floor. This plan shows three small bedrooms which share one bathroom on the west side of the house, with access to the large south-facing balcony, which stretches the length of the house. The east half of the house…

A non-technical first floor plan of the house. The plan shows a large south-facing terrace, a motor court at the north side of the house with covered walkway connecting the service entrance and main entrance. Thomas Mann's study is located in the…

An architectural drawing of the north, south, and west exterior elevations of the house. Both the west and south elevations contain specific instructions for grading of the land and footings for the terrace.

A photograph of the side of the house, taken from the driveway. The garage and service areas are to the left, with the terrace and balcony above to the right. A portion of the terrace was covered and enclosed by the Lappen family in the 1970s.

A well manicured lawn and garden surround a single story stucco house

Photographs of the interior and a floor plan of the Rabinowitz House. The design featured a panoramic view of Bel Air from its secluded position on a hill.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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.”…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

These renderings for the Cafeteria and Boys Physical Education building at Canoga Park High School were designs by Chambers and Hibbard, the architects who continued the firm after Myron Hunt's death in 1952.

The Maurice and Alice Orans House was located on a steeply sloped small lot in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. The garage was built at street level with entrance and exit doors; the curved driveway allows for easy entrance and egress, extra…

The Dr. I. Goldberg house was located in the Encino area of the San Fernando Valley. For this house, redwood siding was used. Ain generally preferred stucco since he did not like that the giant redwood trees were cut down for building materials.

The Charles H. Edwards house was Ain's first solo commission after working for Richard Neutra and Harwell Hamilton Harris. The house, sited on a flat lot in the Hollywood Hills, was named House Beautiful Magazine's "House of the Year" for 1938.

This 20-unit apartment building project (never built), was written up in Arts & Architecture Magazine alongside the Case Study House program, but was not part of it. The "Garden Apartments" as they were described, were a series of townhouse-style…

Gregory Ain, along with his partners Johnson and Day, designed this never-built extension for Hacienda Village for the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles. The Extension of the original World War Two era housing project, would have extended…

The house for Samuel and Celia Tierman was sited on a steep lot in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The small house, with a pyramid-shaped roof, stucco walls, and attached garage was part of Ain's philosophy of bringing modern homes to…

The Albert E. Byler house is located near the top of Mt. Washington, with a view towards downtown Los Angeles. The house is small, measuring less than five hundred square feet, with only a main room, kitchen, and bathroom. The exterior was clad in…

The Scharlin house in Silver Lake was built for the founder of one of the first co-operative nursery schools in Los Angeles, Rose Scharlin. The house sits at the top of the ridge, on a sloping site far back from the street, with views in multiple…

This house for Leo Mesner is in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles. The only portion of the house visible from the street is the garage, with the main view of the house is from the backyard. Inside, the house is spread out on four levels, each…

The A.O. Beckman house was sited on a flat lot, and Ain configured the house so that many of the rooms had direct access to the outdoors. The house was located in the La Brea neighborhood of Los Angeles, and was featured in both Architectural Record…

The Ben and Clara Eisenstadt house was built on a hilltop site along Blair Drive in Los Angeles. It now overlooks the Universal Studios lot.

This house and studio for Jocelyn and Jan Domela was located in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles. Jan Domela was a well-known artist and illustrator for the movie studios.

This house, set on a steep lot overlooking the Silver Lake reservoir, was built for the director of the Los Angeles Newspaper Guild Ursel Daniel. She was single at the time the house was built and later married Martin Irons.

The exhibition house Ain designed for the Museum of Modern Art and the Woman's Home Companion magazine was built in New York City in 1950. It was designed to show how modern living could be made accessible to most homeowners, with sliding walls…

This house in Altadena for John C. Wilfong was a long, low, glass-walled house with views towards the mountains. The investment banker Wilfong wanted a house where he and his wife could entertain and raise their child. Ain designed a linear house…

The Ruth March Ain house was built for Ain's second wife, and is located in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles.

The Alexander and Flora Hural house featured a dental lab on the upper level. It is located in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles.

Harry Hay commissioned Ain to design this house for his mother, Margaret Hay. With clearstory windows and a garage at the front of the property and living room facing the private backyard, the house was seen as a perfect place for Harry Hay to…

The Isador and Rosa Becker house presented a slightly Streamline Moderne style front facade, with curved walls on the exterior. Inside, the house featured a 'reverse' floor plan-- the main living areas were at street level, and the bedrooms were one…

The house for Anselem Ernst was built on a sloping hillside lot in the Los Feliz Oaks neighborhood. The exterior angles and interior use of space and geometry are very reminiscent of Rudolph Schindler, with whom Ain worked for a time in the early…

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…

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.

The Carpenteria beach house for Albert Keep Isham was a Moorish inspired estate directly on the beach. Smith also constructed a natatorium, which was done in an "Islamic" style and contained a large number of decorative tiles around the swimming pool…

The E. Palmer Gavit residence was originally built in 1919 by Reginald Johnson; Smith designed an addition to the main house, as well as outbuildings. The property was originally named "Cuesta Linda," then "Tanglewood," and eventually Madame Ganna…

George Fox Steedman was a manufacturing executive from St. Louis who commissioned Smith to work with him on designing and constructing Casa del Herrero (House of the Blacksmith) on East Valley Road in Montecito. They created a house and gardens…

George Washington Smith was commissioned by Alfred Dietrich, an heir to an oil manufacturing fortune who also owned a railroad line, to design servants quarters and a garage for his property on Park Lane. This smaller house was built prior to the…

This large Spanish Colonial Revival mansion in the small town of Woodside was built for copper mining magnate Daniel Cowan Jackling and his family. The 17,000 square foot house sat on a 194 acre parcel of land. The property was subdivided and all but…

This house for Robert VanWyck Maverick was one of only two houses Smith built in Texas. It was considered one of the best examples of a courtyard-centered house at the time of its construction. The plan for the house was U-shaped, with a fourth wall…

The Lobero Theater on Canon Perdido and Anacapa Streets in downtown Santa Barbara, got its start in the 1870s as a vaudeville house. By the early 1920s, it had fallen into disrepair and Smith was asked to design and build a new theater in the Spanish…

The Wesley Gallagher house was a Smith commission just prior to his death in 1930. The Smith files contain these sketches and drawings (most done in Riggs' hand) for preliminary elevations for the house. The Riggs files contain the actual working…

The Malcolm Douglas house on Sycamore Canyon Road in Montecito was completed in 1929, and is also known as Los Suenos ("The Dreams"). Douglas, a New York doctor, and his wife, Rachel Peabody Douglas, had Smith design a house to showcase the view of…

The unincorporated community of Hope Ranch was developed in the early 1920s by the Santa Barbara Estates Inc. company, which was owned by Harold Chase, and Peter Bryce was one of the main stakeholders. Bryce was also one of the early residents, with…

Almost immediately after the first library building was built in 1952, plans for an addition were being drawn up. And within a year of completing Library II, planning began in 1962 for Library III, which was completed in 1967. The growth of the…

This Demonstration House for the Better Homes Committee was located on East Cota Street in Santa Barbara.

The Jakarta Hilton was built using indigenous craftspeople to add traditional cultural elements to the design of the hotel. The 14 story hotel included 406 rooms, with long-term rental cottages also available on the 32 acre hotel property. The hotel…

The Killingsworth collection contains many photographs of Edward Killingsworth at job sites, ground breaking ceremonies, and discussing projects with groups of people.

The Del Ray Hotel / Apartments / Shopping center complex in San Diego, was one of Killingsworth's first multi-family dwelling projects. It was designed to provide for all of the necessities in one location. With a large outdoor pool area, landscaped…

The firm Killingsworth, Stricker, Lindgren, Wilson & Associates designed and built many high-end luxury hotels throughout the world during the 1980s. This Marriott was built close to their home office in Long Beach. It was also conveniently located…

The Phoenician Resort, at the base of Camelback Mountain just outside of Phoenix, was designed as a very high end luxury hotel and spa. It initially had 604 rooms, 132 casitas, 9 Steinway grand pianos, and exterior tropical landscaping designed by…

This is the second Case Study Apartment project, and it was never built. Killingsworth designed the 10 unit apartment complex to be a mix of four standard two bedroom apartments and six 'studio' two bedroom apartments which were two stories tall, and…

This un-built Case Study House #26 is also known as the Nugent Pavillion, for the original client who had chosen a site overlooking the ocean near San Diego, Calif. The house was to be built using prefabricated construction system, designed by the…

In one of his earliest projects for the Hilton Hotel chain, this airport hotel in El Paso utilized many of the hallmarks of Killingsworth's style. The six interconnected low-slung, two story buildings had walls of glass in the lobby, with a wide…