glitter stucco & dumpster diving - Architectural Survey€¦ · glitter stucco & dumpster diving...

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glitter stucco & dumpster diving reflections on bUilding production in the vernacular city JOHN CHASE VER,O New York· London NA '730 .CZ Cyg 20{)0 Ayt-

Transcript of glitter stucco & dumpster diving - Architectural Survey€¦ · glitter stucco & dumpster diving...

Page 1: glitter stucco & dumpster diving - Architectural Survey€¦ · glitter stucco & dumpster diving reflections on bUilding production in the vernacular city JOHN CHASE VER,O New York·

glitter stucco & dumpster diving

reflections on bUilding production

in the vernacular city

JOHN CHASE

VER,O

New York· London

NA'730.CZCyg20{)0

Ayt-

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contents

preface ixacknowledgments xlf

PART ONE

THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HOME AS COMMODITY

the stucco box (with John Beach) 3

build your castle upon the trashthe making of rnountaingate 39

First Published by Verso in aoocCopyright © John Chase :zooo

AJl rights reservedPART TWO

ILLUSION AND DELUSION IN LOS ANGELES

v E II SO

finding los angeles in the movies,finding the movies in los angeles 51

how can i miss you when you won't go away?convention versus invention and the survival

of period revival in southern california 75

UK: 6 Meard Street, London WiV JHRUSA: r80 Vanek Street, New York,NY 10014-4606

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books knocking off the knock-offs 103

DESrGN BY POLLEN

Printedby R.R.Donnelleyand SonsISBN1-85984-8°7-9

PART THREE

LAS VEGAS

British library Cataloguing in publication DataA catalog record for this book is available from the British Library

pirates! volcanoes) neon!welcome to the capitol of non-glarnour!

(with Frances Anderton) 11 7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in.Publication DataA catalog record for this book is available from the library of Congress

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convention versus invention and the survivalof period revival in southern california

high art architects and their critics have become so fixated on making artout of architecture that they have forgotten how complex a discipline archi-tecture really is. Their discussion places a high value on the innovation of newvocabularies and on abstract formal qualities. Architectural cognoscenti focustheir attention narrowly on high-art work. Other segments of building pro-duction, which employ more populist and commonly understood vocabular-ies. such as period revival architecture, are ignored.

Making these grounds for judgment is a difficult but possible, and very nec-essary, task. Critics argue that architects are forced to define the world for them-selvessince the world is so confused. They can't express a social consensus sincethere isn't one abroad in society at large. Consequently they have to make it outofwhole doth, No soda! agreement, no responsibility-reo the theory goes. Giventhe vacuum of modem society, architects are free to pursue their own concerns.

However, just because there is no universally accepted worldview does-n't mean that there are not sets of cosmological beliefs accepted by subsetsof the public. Many well-defined subgroups within America have stronglyheld worldviews, from fundamentalist religious sects to Hells Angels andmembers of the Thousand Oaks PTA And despite the apparent diversity of

75

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belief among subgroups within the American public, one seems to find a

surprisingly great coherence around matters of architectural form and its

symbolism-as proved by the success of consumerist architecture.Works of arch.itecture may begin as private statements of taste, but they

inevitably become, to some degree, public artifacts that are part of everyone'sdaily life. You don't have to buy the kind of art found in motels and hang itover YOill living room couch as part of your everyday environment. Neitherdo you have to see motel paintings hung on museum walls next to avant

garde art. However you do have to drive by the motel building, and it may besituated next door to a work of high art architecture.

For most modernist architects it has not been enough to master a set offorms or a system of composition. If any system offamiliar references isappar-ent in their architecture, there are only two permissible explanations. One isthat the references are not intentional and are side effects of satisfying someother consideration-s-such as a heavy snow load necessitating a pitched roof.The other permissible explanation is that an architect has invented a new

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architectural vocabulary him or herself, in the manner of a genius such asWrightor Gehry, and therefore is not indebted to previous precedent.

The point of much contemporary high-art architecture is to launder every-

thing out of a project except the abstract play of form. Only lesser mortals,incapable of existing on the thin-oxygen, high-altitude plain of distilled

abstraction, fret over experiential qualities or relationships to site or other

nearbybuildings. They do not possess the synthetic and analytic skills of thetruearchitectjartist, or so the dogma goes,

Plebians may concern themselves with the nuances of program, the daily and

seasonal progress of sun and shade, parking requirements, handicap accessi-bilityand the like. But thetrue architect is like the true artist. The architect of the

highestcaliber has only one thing on her or his mind: form. Broken, shattered,

morphing exploded, imploded form. For, after all, if architecture is a form of

l. J. Hei15bergen offices, 741S.21 Beverly Boulevard, Hollywood,

1927, Claude Beelma~ with A. B. Hein, details by Willard I'/Me. rep-

rmntill4i prewar per~ reYiYal d~sign in los Itngel~s.

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sculpture, an exercise in plasticity, why sully it with other, far more mundaneconcerns. Doing so can only dilute the sculptural purity and breach the finitude

of the artistic endeavor by introducing subject material alien to the aesthetic.

In order to get this high-octane stuff really pure it has to be absolutely lib-erated from any hints of recognizable references outside the sculpture-pat-tern space-field itself. At its best, the meaning and the design process that the

building held for its maker can only be derived from a lengthy accompany.ing text and would be completely indecipherable if judged only from selfevi-

dent visual information. Any system of form generation that involves

selecting shapes at random and then overlapping, multiplying, randomlyaltering or distorting that initial shape vocabulary will do nicely.

The more closely an avant garde architect can come to treating their workas pure formal abstraction divorced from both structure and experience, the

more prestige they have with their peers. The media, eagerly complicittreats "avant garde" architects exactly as they would artists. Avant garde

architects are encouraged to design buildings as though they were just walk·in sculpture, often ignoring even their experiential character, let alone thesocial and real world forces that are part of architecture.

I

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me dismissal of context, building typology and existing patterns of orderedurbanism in Southern California has encouraged local avant garde architects tobeheeas though these high-art perceptions were fact, These perceptions becomeanimportant detetminan t of design, Reinforcing degrees of agreement betweenbuildingsor districts has generally been a low priority with much recent archi-tecture,Taking cues from a neighborhood or from a regional repertoire of build-ing types to inform the design of a building is seen as a limitation on creativity.

These architects have the freedom to gratify individual whim and pursue aCOurseof self-aggrandizement without the burden of responsibility that wouldbe attached to a more complete description of their profession. It is not thedevotion to or interest in formal or theoretical issues borrowed from the artworldthat is the problem, The problem is that the architect's freedom is oftenpaidfor by the loss ofa larger consciousness of architecture's social role,

When I was at SCI·Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) Ifound that many instructors believed that studio classes in issues like specialneeds housing were actually harmful to the student-because they wouldinterferewith the single-minded pursuit of abstract beauty.

Battles to create categories of distinction in archecture are particularlyfierce.There is an artificial opposition between the profound and the ordi-nary and a need to go outside architecture to borrow extraneous theorical jus-tification, The introduction or consideration of sentiment is, of course,contemptible beyond words.

While this premise is theoretically liberating to the artist in his role as unfet-teredcreator, it does have the practical disadvantage of creating environmen-tal chaosand putting many architects in over their heads. Not only do they havetolearn to speak a language, but they have to invent the language as well. Sincethepoim oflanguage is the creation of a framework of commonality to facili-~te,commUnication, full ownership of a new shape/form vocabulary by eachmdiVldual architect creates a Tower of Babel situation.

POsbnodemist architects encountered much the same difficulties, Theirtask w eli~ . therwi, as uerent. They had to find a wayofdistorting, parodying oro erwiselronicalIyeli . . I ed ~stancmgthemselves from the genre they have se ect .une paro-dY.oftenhas the effect of making their work brittle, silly and lacking in com-nJlttuent.As the archness of postmodern irony and the antisocial abstractionofdeconstruction have worn thin, we need to explore approaches that reinforcetheen~r houment rather than fragment it further. If we are ever to ave a seg-

New southern mansion, early 1980s, Metrairie,louisia~a, near

New Orleans.

Nell"GHorgianhouse, Hlrly 1980s. Metrlirie, louisiana.

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ment of building production whose design intent can be dearly understoodand appreciated by both the public and those inculcated in architectural 00-ture, architectural cognoscenti will have to stop dismissing popular culture andvalues and find some common ground with the public.

Stepping beyond the cult of the architect-as-artist/personality andacknowledging and chronicling the vernacular that does exist in SouthernCalifornia are first steps in that direction. If vernacular architecture can bejudged and found lacking by the standards of formal purity of high-art archi-tecture, then vernacular architecture also functions as a critique of high-artarchitecture and a call for it to communicate with a larger constituency.

In a contemporary consumer society many buildings have a primary or sec-ondary function as consumerist architecture. Their relationship to consumerbecomes one of the primary determinants of form. Just as both the detectivenovel and the essay are legitimate literary forms, so does architecture in itsbroadest sense allow for both the the high-art building and more populistworkwith a wider audience. The appearance ofbuildings in this latter category oftenserves to help sell the products or the services offered inside.

Thus. in a theme restaurant, the embodiment of a mood or set of associa-tions ought to be and is the paramount concern. Just as a principal appeal ofawestern novel could be its romantic sense of escape, the principal appeal of aconsumer-oriented building such as a shopping center could also be emotiveor nostalgic -since architecture can be both a fine and an applied art.

If the provision of entertainment, symbolic recall. representation, hier-archies of building components and sequences of experience is a valid func-tion of architecture, then the use offorms. details or patterns of compositionevoking time or place other than contemporary America is quite appropn'ate. If such recall is an essential part of both fine and popular works of titer-ature, then it also has a place in works of architecture intended to be similarlyevocative. The success of a project in hitting this particular target and thecoherency and appropriateness of its three-dimensional, material realizationought to be the principal criteria by which it is evaluated, and not its confor-mity to currently accepted rules of contemporary high-art architecture.

As Pierre Bourdieu wrote in Distirn::no». "Intellectuals could be said to believeill the representati.on~titerature, theater, painting-more than in the thingS rep-resented, whereas the people chiefly expect representations and the conventionswhich govern them to allow them to believe 'naively' in the things represented"

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Thus it was inevitable that period revival architecture, with its clearlydefined initial premises, has begun to appear more like a viable option andlesslike a cop-out. Revivalism continues to offer opporh.J.nities to work with-in an agreed-upon architectural VOGl bulary by extending and reinterpretingthat tradition rather than by mocking it as Postmcdemists do. Most impor-tantly, it can create buildings whose design intent can be dearly understoodand appreciated by the public.

Period revival architects were able to make the past their own without sac-rificing the functional integrity of their buildings. Nearly all the forms andthe symbolism that they employed are no less appropriate or anachronistic50 years ago then they are today, The imagery of the American home in theaoth century has usually had some traditional connotations, even whenthesewere mingled with modem forms, such as a wagon wheel and split-railfencein front of a mobile home. The gemutlichkeit suburban life ofbackyard-barbecue-pool suburban life would not have always played well against anexclusivebackdrop of comer windows and open, web-steel trusses.

Farfrom being the copyists that conventional wisdom assumes them to be,period revival architects often brought an informed sensibility to their sourcematerial, transforming it and making it their own. Each designer left an indi-vidual stamp onhis or her work, just as each era revives the language of the past~ its own way, Iv; David Gebhard explained in his book L.A. in the )0$, the typ-

ical depression_era Southern California period revival houses had highly work-able floor plans that allowed for easy access to the outdoors, convenientaCcommodation for the automobile and a logical circulation pattern. In thissense the Modernist house of the 1930S was not necessarily more functionalthan the period revival house of the same age rather it expressed the functionsItw.asprogrammed to through different imagery, To the degree that both thePencd revival and the Modernist were framed the same way orwanned by thesame brand offumace, they were equally modem,

And, after all, period revival architecture has never completely died. Itretreated from the front lines of architectural culture proper, but lived on in theWorldsof popular architecture and interior design, among other places. Therewere even architects such as Wallace Neff, [ohn Woolf, Kaspar Bhmcke andJames Dolena who continued to practice it during the 195os, '60S and '70S inSouthern California. Therefore it doesn't completely qualify for a miraculouscomebackf . . th bi ct Therom the dead, despite the new surge of interest ill e su Je .

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situation brings to mind the musical question that Dan Hicks and his HotLicks asked in the r97os-How Can I Miss You "When You Won't GoAway.

But as Tim Street-Porter has noted so eloquently in his book The Los AngelesHouse, while sophisticated period revival design was alive and well on the EastCoast in the work of architects like Robert Stern and Allan Greenberg, the vastmajority of recent period work in Southern California has been abominable-'precisely because period revival architecture is viewed as an obscenity within localarchitectural schools and has such low status in the profession. "opportunitiesfor continuing a great regional tradition have been lost: the multitude of period-stylehouses built in LosAngeles in the 1970S and '80S have been invariablyover-scaled, badly detailed, and poorly proportioned," wrote Street-Porter.

Period revival architecture will always be with us for the same reason thatSanta doesn't get a new costume every Christmas. These styles simply carrytoo much baggage to jettison them. As a result it is safe to say that the pro·duction of vanguard architecture and the production of period revival archi-tecture will remain too quite separate spheres of production, audiences, andethos, fulfilling related but separate high-end market niches. Neither ofthem will be disappearing anytime soon. They are included as concreteproof of the varied nature of building production in Southern Californiaboth before and after World War II. These three achitects continued todesign architecture with period revival references even during the 50Sand60S when modernism had a popular following, as witnessed by the con-struction of the stucco box apartments discussed in the first chapter.

Following are profiles, of varying length, of two period-revival architectswho managed to work successfully in the genre, both before and after WorldWar II: John Woolf, James Dolena, and a brief note on Wallace Neff.

john vvoolf

Nowhere is the outlaw status of California's postwar period revival relative toacademia more evident than in the work of J ohn Elgin Woolf. As the mosl, . . . ormventive deSigner working within the Hollywood Regency, GeorgianSecond Empire styles in the past 50 years, Woolf was regularly published in thepopular press, in magazines such as Vogue:, Town and Country and

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Architectural Digest. He received no attention in professional or academic jour-nals,however, because these journals defined their subject material in such awayas to automatically exclude rum. Woolf's work did not conform to high-artstandards of simplicity, abstraction or freedom from historical reference.

John Woolf's work was anathema to the generation of Mode mist architectswhobegan their careers after World War II, when his career was flourishing. Tothesearchitects, the forms employed by Woolf were debased symbols, empty ofmeaning and a target for mockery for their lack of connection to contemporarySouthern California culture and to Modernists' notions of minimalist con-structionand flowing space. But while many architects disliked Woolf's work (tothedegree that they were aware of it at all), interior decorators and status-con-sciousclients with traditional ideas about architecture had no such reservations.

Woolf adopted the Hollywood Regency vocabulary that was prevalent inLosAngeles at the time he arrived here in the 1930s, flavored it with recol-lections of South em antebellum architecture and codified it into a formulathat his firm practiced in a relatively consistent manner for over 40 years. Inhis almost exclusively domestic practice, Woolf emphasized the elementsthat were important to his clients; the entrance, the mansard roof, symme-try and privacy. He used eccentrically detailed elements with classical pedi-grees,reproportioned and placed in new and often mannered relationships.

,

I

John Woolfl l~O Chi~holm hollS8 II 520 Bllurty Drne ~BI!Y8IlYHnb I!d 10 8 slri"g oj important lal1ler Cllmrnislion3.

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The 1S42 Pendleton house. 1032 eeverly Price eeYBrly Hills,

WI! tne nrst of e Slries allafller residefllial c~mmii8ions 'or

'IllcNf.legendary mol'ie mDgulRobert Eians was a later occu-panl 0' Ihe hou~e,

Shuttered windows and chest-high oval niches with a keystone atthebottom, acting as a base for an urn, were not original to Woolf, but they cer-tainly owed much of their popularity among Southern California decoratorstohim In many of his houses. Woolf created an axis that extended fromtheentry through the living room and across a pool, terminating in a poolpavilion. In a Woolf house. as in 1930S houses by Paul R. Williams andJames Dolena, the axis might focus on either the living room or a polrgo-nal reception area.

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BorninAtianta shortly before World War I, John Woolfwas the son ofuni-versity professors on both sides of the family. After obtaining his architectur-al degree from Georgia Tech in T929, he spent several years working for theNationalPark Service. He came to Los Angeles in 1936 in the hope of gettinga part in the movie Gone with the Wind. He didn't get the part, but. as a conso-lation,he later managed to meet more show business celebrities, as clients,than most actors ever do. His roster included well-known names from theentertainment industry and the society columns, such as Cary Grant, lillianGish,Mae West, John Wayne and Norton Simon. A passage in a Palm BeachLife article gives a sense of a representative Woolf Client. A Woolf-designedsummer home in Palm Beach is a '''place to unwind, to realize peace andquiet' says the diminutive, vivacious Nina 'Puddin' Neal Dodge de Witz whodividesher time between her Palm Beach Bay Club house, her condominiumin NewYork City, her farm in Minnesota and the ranch in Colorado Springs."

Woolfs acquaintance with the famous was not a peripheral issue to hispractice.Two well-known women aided him in launching his career: the pio-neering American interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe, a.k.a. Lady CharlesMendl (who had been introduced to Woolf by George Cukor), and comedi-enneFanny Brice. Brice commissioned the young designer to build a smallGeorgianRevival guesthouse, This building led to a number of other enter-tainment industry commissions including a Georgian remodel for IraGershwin and another for Manhattan socialite Hugh Chisholm. In 1940,Woolf remodeled Chisholm's small house at 520 Beverly Drive in BeverlyHills,adding a mansardlike roof and a front porch the length of the frontfacade.The porch, decked with wrought-iron trim, was inspired by the archi-tectureof New Orlean's French Quarter.

Interior decorator rames Pendleton saw the Chisholm house and askedWoolf to design his own house at lOp Beverly Drive. It was this house that~stablishedWoolf's reputation as a designer. According to Tim Street-Porter10 his bo k f vii>. a The Los Angeles House, "It was modeled on drawings 0 pa ionslOVers ·U th thar es, shown to the architect by Elsie de Wolfe." Much larger an eChisholm h > h > > fW elf'souse, it as the archly elegant facade characteristic a 0

work, and bears the eccentrically detailed elements inspired by neoclassicalandRe

gency precedents that became his trademarks.ba The Pendleton house has a three-bay configuration-with the central

yoffset toward the front and containing a centrally placed entrance. The

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The IIItralll:t hln ol thB 1956 tampbtll Building on Malrose

Place in Wast Hollywood by .10M Woo" hu the Ippearl~ce Ind

the i1etaili~~ of a ffillYieset, ~s yolume is defin~d by the elterior

walls ~ffheapartments a!ld offiees, and it is connected 10 the

DUlside throu~h ks large lronl doors and ellipsoi~al skylight.

Togeth!r with til! llianu althe base of Ihe wall lhese features

suggest In ~tdoor space. Howe'ler the hall also /las some 01 the

features of an interior chandeliers using O'Ierhea~ and semicircu-

lar wrooglrt~ron bak:ooies that intlll~e into the !-pate as though

they were stair lan~ings. On a~lI thro~~h the entranee to theapartment illlwimnUng pool.

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semi-circular entrance portico is supported by the slender, manneristicRegency colonnettes that delighted Woolf: There is a low, oval niche con-taining an urn on either side of the entrance and a single long. narrow win-dow in each of the end bays. The house opens up to a pool at the rear. Therelative blankness of the front facade, made stiffer and more boxyyetby themansard roof, gives the impression of hauteur the decorators sought. Theblank facade focuses attention on the delicate, capricious detail ina manner

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similarto the 1930S work of Southern California architects George VernonRusselland Douglas Honnold.

Woolfhada special knack for tiny follies that invited fantasy-tinged inter-pretation.Typicallyhis pool pavilions combine a concavely curving, tentlikeroofwithan inwardly curving entrance and colonnettes attenuated to skele-talproportions. Producer Bob Evans bought the Pendleton house in thet970S and turned the pool pavilion into a screening room.

Duringthe 1940S Woolf played with the gable-ended silhouette of pre-c-CivilWar Southeastern houses, French Quarter wrought-iron embellish-mentand the Mansard roof. Woolf employed the mansard roof far morethan any other period-revival architect in Southern California during the19405 and '50S. Itwas his use of the mansard and his deployment of piquantdetailsagainst expanses of blank wall that captivated his fans, leading to thewidespreadimitation of his style among the Southern California designerdemimondeof the 19605.

Thelocation ofWoolE's office and apartment building on Melrose Place(number8450) made it highly visible to interior decorators, who flocked tothispart of town after World War II. This complex of buildings, construct-ed inthree stages between 1946 and 1956 was itself a pioneering effort in thearchitectureof privacy for Southern California.

TIle dudiD office buildl~g that John Y«IoII designed and buill

ror himseltat ll45tI Melrose P1aca in West HnUr/lllud was widell

admire~ and frequently ~mulate~ bi decnrators. This was the first

building (19451 in which ftwl! uses his pullman door surrDund.

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WDoIfl19S8 R8J!IuldlI!oUIQ al20n Hurtll Rimpau, Ha8uckParl, was often reproduced bi ulher designers and dec~ralors inlos AOlleles.

The rtour ~II\of Jolm 'ItJoIfs Reynold's nijll.'lein lile Hancock ParkOistrict Dllus Angeles pivots arOOn~an IlCt1gonall~ing mnn

This '/WI dlur in ~~ Hilts is oontempilraneoos with tileRevookL!house, 1!155,ooi~fur A1phauzo Bell at 12D7l.eli~ort.Drhring by John lW.

.......-""'~I'~-, -I '

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Leslie drmu~s Moria hOllSe of 1914 3\3.113 Floro Drive, HullywoOO

Hi~s, bears a striking resemblartee lu WlOWS Re~nnlds hnuse,

3323 Dona Rosa DriYe, HollyWlIud Hills, 1965. By and fDr E. w:Spinne~ \'tI1llfs 1958 Re~Mld's house redu~, The Re~nuld's house

was a favor~e icon nf 19503 and '601 decoratDr ~oml builders.

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lThe sheet metal mansard and the 'NJolt door as status signifier

for a gourmel food shop in ~stHollywDod,c. 19B!.(PIlote: Lerry Umotti]

R.l.I. Schindler meel.llhe I'mll dDllrwa~in this 1961 reffiGdelof i

former frve un~ bUllgelowOOJrt inlo a sil'l;llefamily reslde~~e at'm20 UuYtlP1aCl!,~esigned Il~ Dean Reynolds.

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The entrance hall of the T9S6 Campbell Building (one section of theMelrose complex) designed by Wool( has the appearance and detailing of amovie set. Its volume is defined by the exterior walls of the apartments and

offices. It is open to the outside through its large front doors and ellipsoidal

skylight. Together with the landscaping at the base of the walls, these fea-tuxes suggest an outdoor space. However, the hall also has features of aninterior. Chandeliers dangle overhead. Semicircular metal balconies intrude

into the space as though they were projecting stair landings. On an axisfrom the entrance to the apartment unit is a pool. The tight spaces and rel-

atively high density achieved in this complex presaged the town house andcondominium types that came to dominate new construction in SouthernCalifornia after 1970.

TIle most important contribution of Woo Irs office building to the popu-lar architectural vocabulary of Los Angeles was its entrance door, inspired bythe door frame found on the exterior of a Pullman car, with its squared archspringing from the top of the impost. Woolf's door protruded above the roof

in the same manner as those train car doors. Although his Pullman door isonly one of Woolf's variations on the theme of entry-he also designed a

pediment that poked above the roof and a baldachin-like portico--it was byfar the most popular.

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Its simple, continuous outline and its strong identity as an individualarchitectural element allowed the Woolf door to appear contemporary, while

its association with period architecture and palace gates is equally unmis-

takable. Woolfoften used the arch in the same compositional sense as it had

originally been in France, as exemplified by the gates and doorways of I7th.century French architects such as Francois Mansart, whose rnaisons of I642

to 1646 featured a gateway arch that pushes through the roof.

In doing so Woolf was part of a local tradition. Entrance bays articulated as

projecting, semidetached pavilions with high, steep roofs and an exaggeratedverticalemphasis have appeared regularly in Southern California architecture

at least as far back as the 1920S. These buildings range from RudolfValentino's

'9205 Falcon Lair and the 1927 Grauman's Chinese Theater by Meyer and

Holler to small, contractor-designed houses such as the mock-Moorish

T~8 lIkJolf dllorway atlhe D~lefey Apartme"l huilding, SOOArroyo

Drive in Soulh Pasa~e"a, lS5Z, hy Rooert Dfle"haom

The R~B"CY at i'l\ODr1IJIllBOMe Driw in Pa:;ao:llma with a repeah"gWJolfdnorw~y surround motif. PIlato I;. 1951 by 13wence Limolli.

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It ~'II966 M.1nllillnelt~lpartm~nts Dt 11MWJrthSycamoret1errmtrat~ thIi iocoflXlrationof the '/llDlfdoor into apartllll:!llldesi!lll.

lhe 1968 BJ1Ill,\oohouse alm5 Pacifj~ Viewnrive in theHoil'fWODd hills.

• circl191U re_~ng of 953 Manda Avenue,WestHtIIlyw~d.

92 how can i miss you when you won'! go away?

Sprague house built by the Western Construction Company in [920 or the[938 nee-chateau Hattem house by A. G. Bailey. Other local precedents for theform include eyebrow dormers that gently break the roofline, which were usedin residential Southern California architecture during the '30S and ·40s.

But because of the importance of display in Southern California architectureafter World War II, entrances have assumed a special importance. Due to con-temporary desires for increased privacy, entrances are sometimes the only realarticulation in a street facade. Ina land inwhich domestic architecture often pre-sents a blank front to the street and communicates only through its portals, it isnot surprising that Woolfs entranceway symbols became so ubiquitous.

The Woolf arch is an emphatic punctuation mark. Its theatrically exag-gerated height makes the door appear forbidding. Edith Wharton's apho-rism applied perfectly to the Woolf entrance: "the main purpose of a door isto admit; its secondary purpose is to exclude. ~

In the Reynolds house of 1958 in Hancock Park, Woolf combined the archwith a tentlike mansard roof that pops up over the door. The Reynolds housewas no sooner completed than copies of it, and then copies of the copies, beganto appear all over Los Angeles. The tall Pullman door and the added height ofthe mansard gave the strongest possible emphasis to the entry. This partialmansard was economical as well, because only part of the roof had to be cov-ered; the remainder of the roof could be flat and hidden by parapets.

A Woolf-style entrance quickly became a symbol of upper_middle.dasssophistication, used in the same way as the words "decorator" or gourmet"to signify aspirations of wealth and education.

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how can i miss you when you won t go away? 93

Butby the end of the 19605, the pop-up mansard could just as easily havebeen a symbol for cheesy and cheap. Mansards by the yard, in the form ofplywood and batten knockoffs, appeared everywhere, from laundromats,liquor stores and fast-food stands to massive new apartment buildings.

John Woolf's most legendary feat, one that has received some degree ofattention within the official culture of architecture, was the highly transgressiverehab of a house designed by Los Angeles architect Craig Ellwood. It was builtas Case Study House No. 17 in 1955 as part of Iohn Entenza's program ofbuilding Modem houses and popularizing them to the public with tours andpublication inhis Arts and Architecture magazine. While the the original client"had some doubtful moments about the house, and the manner in which itwasto be furnished, such as the glass and steel and the hard beds and coconutchairs," fohn Woolf and his son Robert were not so shy about expressing theirdisinterest in the spartan interiors and immediately ripped them out.

They remodeled the house (purchased as a white elephant "fixer"] in1962 by opening up the center and adding Doric columns over the steelposts, "In order to give this beautifully made contemporaneous building apatina of age." House Beautiful magazine had no reservations about theresults: "In the enchanted hour of dusk one might be reliving the past in acolumned villa ofBasae or among the temples of Paestum.' To be fair to thebreathless House Beautiful writer, the remodel did emphasize the neoclas-sicism of the building inherent in the original Miesian design. The "before"~nd"after" versions of the interior courtyard differ more in the style of detail-mgoftheir rooms than in their spatial composition.

fohn Woolf died in 1980 and his firm now operates under the directionh'

IS son Robert Koch Woolf, who was adopted by Woolfwhen Robert was anadult. The firm's work after 1970 lacked the sure touch and the knowingrestraint of earlier designs.

wallace neff

One of the signs that academia has finally embraced revivalism with the~alUeenthusiasm that the public has long held for it is the spate of publish-109 on period revival architects such as Wallace, Neff and the Texas region-

\,,

Craig Ellwood's elile Sludy heuse #17. at 9554 Hldd~n Yaney

Road in ClJldwllt~r C81lJ01l, in its original stale as a temple of

modernism. (Pholo: Jason Hailey]

case Sludy hDuse #11 transformed beyond recognnion in 186~

Dy Juho Woolf as a temple in the HoltywDOORetlency RaYiul slyle.

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94 how can I miss you when you won't go away?

A IlIlGSIII the .cIle 0' I Misslo". The ODlong!rexlant SUl~~n~

8f)'1nt BWiy nouse 0' 192J, bv 'ltalla~e Neff, ill Si~ta Ana Canyon.

[Photo: 'leory l HUlllington Librlf)' lod Art G~llerYI

alist John Staub, The work displayed in Alsen Clark's bookon Neffoffersanobject lesson: it is not the choice of architectural vocabulary that guaranteesa high level of design, but rather how that vocabulary is handled,

In his monograph on Neff, Alson Clark quotes Aymar Embury jj.ads

tinguished East Coast architect and author writing in the 1920S, Emburypraised architects of the time because he believed they were becomingmore adept at adapting traditional elements to modem uses, EastCoastperiod-revival architect William Adams Delano preferred to think ofall ofhis work, however flavored by this or that style, as modern, because itwasdesigned to suit contemporary needs and taste. Neff chose to callhiswork"Californian" to emphasize the primacy of the time and place of his build·ings' construction over the time and place of their stylistic origins. [nEad

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how Can i miss you when you won't go away? 95

Neffwas most unhappy when forced to copy, as was the case with onecommission,the Villa Sol d'Oro in Sierra Madre. The client required Nefftomodelin part after a building attributed to Michelangelo, the VillaCollazinearFlorence.

Neffdesigned some zoo-odd houses, most of them in period revivalstyles,and many of them for entertainment-industry celebrities Amongthemwere vast spreads such as the Susanna Bixby Bryant ranch house of1927inSantaAna Canyon. He equipped it with enough towers and arcadestohumbleany of the California missions.

Someof his buildings, such as the George O. Noble house of 19z7, areas romanticallyoverripe as Gloria Swanson's house in the movie SunsetBoulevard,Neffs now-demolished Harry Culver house of1928 could havestoodin for the decaying Spanish Colonial Revival house that plays a lead-ingrolein Robert Plunkett's satiric novel, My Searchfor Warren G. Harding.The Culver living room chandelier looked heavy enough to double as awreckingball, while the fireplace mantel could have passed for a baroquecathedralscreen and the notched corbels supporting the gallery resembledtheprows of a fleet of Viking boats.

Courtyanlas 1iYi"9 room, poDI IS hearth; \hi patiO 01 the

ArthUl' K. Bouma house in Palm Sprln~l, IJJWJIIICI Hef1. 1933.jPllOto: Henry E. Huntingtun Libral'/ and Mt Galltry]

I

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HellrJ F.llIIdlll\lo 1'tu1lSl.Holmby Hil", Los AlllIeIet. 1939.Alight secolllHltJry ~iCII O~! !ob5tlntial firsl-slory base.Neffs buildingsoften had the 1>en~eDfhaYingItle uppelsttJrytlIrety lucked i~under tile mes.

(Photo: HenryE Hunl~nn Library.OOArt Sallery)

96 how can i miss you when you won't go away?

Neff's architecture could be playful, and certain of these playful elementsbecame his trademarks. One of them was an exterior staircase with a solidbalustrade that stepped up in a series of setbacks. Sometimes he combinedthis stair with one or more columns resting against the wall. If there wasmore than one column, they would both have the same circumference butwould vary in height because of the rise of the stair run. Neff was also fondofplacing a column dead center in the gable end of a low-pitched roof,so thatthe column appears a piece of sculpture or an icon.

His tile roofs were often either very steep or very shallow-so shallow, infact, that some of them could not be built and finished in the same manner

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how can i miss you when you won't go away? 97

nowbecause they would not conform to present-day building codes. Hisfairy-tale-likeplay with scale sometimes makes his high roofs appear crush-inglylarge, as they do in the Stanley W. Imerrnan house of 1936 in BeverlyHills.Some of the residences with low-pitched roofs have a heavy-liddeddrowsiness,created by pushing windows or loggias tight against the eaves,asNeffdidwith his George Miller (1938) and Henry Haldeman (1939) hous-es.Theexaggerated proportions of Neffs roofs were emphasized by his pen-chantfor horizontality, which he expressed in a variety of quite dissimilarprojects.Several of his buildings, such as the King Vidor house no. 2, haveafrontfacade composed of a single, long, low-pitched gable end, similar toMcKim Mead & White's shingle-style low house of 1886-87_

While some of Neffs buildings sprawled out into the green and goldCalifornialandscape, like the San Marino home of Arthur K. Bourne, othershadplans that were basically formal and symmetrical, such as the M.L.HWalkerhouse of 1923. Neffs easy Southern California familiarity with theoutdoorsfound expression is his patio and courtyard spaces, which weresometimesplanned as part of the entrance sequence. His Arthur K. Bournehouseof 1933at Palm Springs is a model of a desert oasis. Its courtyard hasthefestiveyet dignified air of a Pompeian villa. Syrrunetricalcolonnades withsturdy,Tootsie-Roll_like proportions flank the sparkle of the swimming pool

10615 Bellagio Road, Bel-Air. 163B. A tradRional domestic vucab-

ular1 abstra8ted in Neffs Geel'!le lliller house. n was laler owned

by Cary Grant an~ BarDara Hulten. Phew courres~~ltha Henry E.

Huntington library ind Art Ballef'/.

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I

98 how Can i miss you when you won't go away?

Thi, po:;t-l'llJrfdWar II Bnu~ Artl houle in Hancock Pari!, bui~ i~19621cr Buckingham Homes, was de!i~lIlid by WallacB Neft

and its bordering bands of verdant lawn. Equally engaging is Neff's incor-

poration of a second-story mirador, a small lookout room and loggia for taking in the sweep of desert valley and mountains.

After the heyday of the 19205 and the difficult years of the Great Depression,Neff, like most other period-revival architects, did not get the same number orsize of residential commissions that he had received before the war. He triedto keep up with changing public taste by modernizing his designs, but for themost part his Modern work was not as accomplished as his period-revival

work. A few of his postwar buildings are downright embarrassing.Neff was on surer ground with his more traditional postwar commis-

sions. Some of these jobs continued to come his way in those years, given

to him by clients who liked the look of his earlier work. His Eugene Allen

house of 1968 was patterned after his Joan Bennett house of some 30years earlier. Similarly, his Ralph Chandler house of 1963 gives the

impression that it could easily be a Beaux Arts neoclassical product of 50or 60 years earlier.

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how can i miss you when you w o ot go away? 99

Onlyat the rear facade is the true vintage of the house revealed-behinda serenescreen of tall columns, the irregular shape of the house is baldlyexpressed.The higgledy-piggledy mismatch of regimented colonnade torearfacadecan be interpreted as either ironic or as deliberately naive andawkward.It recalls similarly puzzling disjunctures in the work of JamesDolenaandJohn Woolf, Neffs fellow, post-World War l I revivalists. Whileitmaybetempting to label these lapses as precursors of postmodemism, itisequallylikely that they were caused by last-minute client demand or byconfusionabout executing period-revival architecture at a time when agree-mentabout the rules that govern it had broken down.

a brief note on james dolena

James Dolena is best known for his Georgian Revival, Federal andHollywoodRegency mansions of the 1930S, such as those for actor WilliamPowelland actress Constance Bennett. The much-remodeled FarmersMarketat Fairfax and Third in Los Angeles is probably his most promi-nentlysitedwork. He joined with Robsjchn Gibbings to create the opulentHildaBoldtWeber house in Bel-Air of 1936-38, later owned by hotel man

•• Oolena's 1960 VirtUe hDuSil al216 OakhUrst OrlYe in~~ . IBeverly Hilla. Classicism reliucOO \0 the Dar~ bones: s~mrneln&a

cnmpDs~ion, a concai~ entrance aod flaokin~ Kalian cypress,

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The IIlClIle 01 JIIIIes Dolelll's Fnd Propltet hoUSII in Brnrly

Hilla probably dates from the mid 1950s anticipatirJjj tile jlO,ll

modemism Df the 1970, !nd 'BOS.1Plloto: Henr;o E, Hunlingtonlibrlr;' and M Galler;o)

c-

The grou ...... 'iOCll plan of Dolr:na's Prop~bDuse elsu has aHin~lie.! 10 '20s jlOSlfJlll(f~m design in ns plal'ful geometr;' and use of

Ihick walls 10 dafine sp!U_IPhota: Henry E. Huntington Ubr!r;'and .rt GlJler;o]

..-".

"",' -i.r ".:~'.'-"-'--_ ..

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tC,,'.t::_ /

I111"I.-tr--"~~

-I

Pavilion of tho George Cukor rlSidelw8. lI!Idatell JamBS D~lenl.

(Photo: H~~ry E Huntington Library and Art Hillery)

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The 8oldl_er house at 106448ellagiu Road in BelAir,1936-38 is the lar~8st of the Debonair [jeDr~ian, Rege~cy,an~

Federal revival houm whiGhestatllished James llelena as 8 fasl\-ionable domestic arcMed for the well to ~o in the 1930s, [Photo:Henry E. H~nlinglon Ubrary and Art Gallery]

102 how Can I miss you when you won'! go away?

Conrad Hilton. Dolena's wryly elegant house for director George Cukorwasa collaboration with decorating legend William Haines.

Dolena's work after World War II retained the use of blank walls andsym-metry in both plan and facade. His use of isolated period details, such ascolumns and the Woolf doorway, against this kind of spare backdrop wasdose to the spirit of decorators' work, as in the 1960 Virtue house at 218

Oakhurst Drive in Beverly Hills. The Virtue house is a simple, three-baysymmetrical box with a gently curved, concave entry bay.

Dolena emigrated to the United States from Russia at age 17, graduatedfrom the Chicago Art Institute in 1910 and began working on his own inCalifornia in 1929. He died in 1978. His drawings are housed at theHuntington Library in San Marino.