Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936

(Click on images to enlarge)

Pauline Gibling Schindler, 1920. R. M. Schindler photo. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

R. M. and Pauline Gibling Schindler, Sophie and Edmund Gibling, Dorothy Gibling and Mark Schindler at Kings Road, summer 1923. (Sweeney, p. 93). Schindler Family Collection, Courtesy Friends of the Schindler House.

Pauline Schindler’s mercurial relationship with husband R. M., her penchant to surround herself with artistically-minded, leftist intelligentsia and the creation of a salon-like atmosphere at the Kings Road House are all well-documented in Robert Sweeney’s highly recommended “Life at Kings Road: As It Was 1920-1940″ in the 2001 MOCA exhibition catalog The Architecture of R. M. Schindler organized by Elizabeth A. T. Smith and Michael Darling from which much of the material in this post is gleaned. All references will be denoted by (Sweeney). Sweeney recreated a fascinating story from the lively and voluminous correspondence preserved by Pauline Gibling Schindler (PGS).

I hope to build upon Sweeney’s findings by concentrating more deeply upon PGS’s considerable efforts to promote and market the brand of modernism produced by her notable circle of avant-garde architects, composers, musicians, designers, dancers, artists, writers, gurus and bohemian and radical friends and acquaintances. Her importance to a wider acceptance and appreciation of modern architecture and the arts in Southern California is much under-appreciated as her Kings Road, Carmel and Ojai salons, editorials, articles, exhibitions and lecture bookings generated numerous contacts which resulted in important clients for both her husband and his erstwhile partner and tenant Richard Neutra and others fortunate enough to have been in her circle.

Other useful sources were: R. M. Schindler by Judith Sheine, Phaidon, 2001. (Sheine), The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Volume II: California, edited by Nancy Newhall, Aperture, 1961, (Weston), Dione Neutra’s Richard Neutra: Promise and Fulfillment, 1919-1932, Southern Illinois University Press, 1986, (P&F), Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, by Thomas S. Hines, (Sun-Hines), Richard Neutra and the Search for Modern Architecture, Oxford University Press, 1982, (RN-Hines), and Esther McCoy’s Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys: Letters Between R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, Arts + Architecture Press, 1979, (McCoy).

Pauline Gibling Schindler, from a prominent east coast family (see photo above), studied music for four years at Smith College after which she moved to Chicago and taught music from 1917 to 1919 at Jane Addams’ Hull House, a settlement house for the poor and center for social reformers and intelligentsia (John Dewey was a Trustee). At the time Pauline was there, Addams and Emily Green Balch were founding the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom for which both, on separate occasions, were to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Pauline’s mother became the Treasurer of the League. In 1919, Pauline met and married architect Rudolph Schindler, and moved with him to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. (Much from this and following two paragraphs from Michelle Weiler). Ironically, Richard Neutra would also briefly stay at Hull House upon his arrival in Chicago from New York in March 1924 where he taught children’s drawing classes to earn his keep. (RN-Hines, p. 48-9, P&F, p. 116).

Frank Lloyd Wright appointed Schindler superintendent of his office for the duration of his absences, over a two year period, in Japan where Wright was supervising the construction of the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. At the same time, with a large commission for the oil heiress, Aline Barnsdall, Wright set up office in Los Angeles, which is where the Schindler’s moved in 1920. The next year Schindler set up his own, independent practice. The Schindler’s, in collaboration with Pauline’s college friend Marion Chace and her contractor husband John, built the Kings Road House with financial support from Pauline’s parents. The Kings Road House, writes the architectural historian Rayner Banham, “remains one of the most original and ingenious domestic designs of the present century – and one of the most gratifyingly livable.” It reflects Pauline’s social philosophy, a place of simplicity where people from all walks of life could meet together. Pauline had expressed this kind of open meeting house in a letter to her mother even before she had met Schindler.

During this period, the lifestyle embodied in Schindler’s design for his house was observed by the Schindlers (and the Neutras after they moved in in March 1925) through diet and exercise, psychoanalysis, education, and the arts of music, dance, painting and photography. The outdoor courts were dining rooms and playrooms for their toddlers, who ran free under the sun year round. They slept in the open air, ate simple meals of fruits and vegetables by the fireplaces, and wore loose-fitting garments of natural fibers closed with ties rather than buttons. At their parties, the terraces served as stages for musical and dance performances; in the audiences were many aspiring California artists, actors and writers.

Richard, Dione and Frank Neutra and RMS at Kings Road, 1925. Photographer unknown. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

Former Neutra employee Harwell Hamilton Harris’s very insightful introduction to Esther McCoy’s Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys: Letters Between R. M. Schindler sheds much light on the Sunday evening open houses Pauline organized at Kings Road and the people who attended them, including himself. He wrote, “Poets, playwrights, dancers, photographers and musicians were not the only visitors on these occasions. Socialists, reformers and intellectuals of all varieties were there. The talk was not chit-chat but about revolutionary ideas in all fields. The New, the Advanced. There were no fights because the participants, too, were advanced and so in fundamental agreement with one another. Most were locals; some were habitues; others were ones who came and went. Everyone felt free to bring a friend if he were interesting; it was a way to entertain.”

Former Kings Road tenant Viennese architect A. R. Brandner recalled, “Pauline made the gatherings but it was Schindler who enjoyed them.” The parties were, “…happy times, unique gatherings – the intelligentsia and desperate characters. Pauline preferred a serious party, but when Schindler and Sadakichi Hartmann got together it was glorious fun.” (McCoy, p. 14, 41).

Sadakichi Hartmann, 1917, Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Pauline’s mother Sophie, a frequent guest at Kings Road wrote in a December 16, 1926 letter to her husband,”…when company drops in [Pauline] is a most fascinating hostess. Sunday evening it struck me again how much atmosphere, uniqueness and charm there is about her parties, and what interesting people she collects.” (Sweeney, p. 104).

The marriage was not a peaceful one. Schindler was truly a Bohemian and did not respect the institution of marriage, and behaved accordingly. Pauline had wanted to consider the marriage a legal formality to satisfy her family, but was much more conventional in her response to it than she imagined she would be. (From http://www.ex-tempore.org/ExTempore96/cage96.htm). The painter Conrad Buff, who gravitated in both the Kings Road and Jake Zeitlin social orbits and commissioned Neutra in 1927 to design the garage and entryway for his Eagle Rock house and studio, said of Schindler in his UCLA Oral History, “Schindler, besides being a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, was a very handsome fellow. He was quite a ladles’ man, and part of his business was to make love to all the ladles he could. He had a very interesting wife, but that didn’t bother him. There was quite a group of people that used to meet down at Schindler’s house.” (Buff Oral History).

PGS and RMS’s relationship finally reached the breaking point in late August 1927. Pauline packed up and left with son Mark in secrecy to avoid a confrontation. (Sweeney, P&F, p. 167). She had just weeks earlier written a highly favorable two-part review of tenant Richard Neutra’s Wie Baut Amerika? which was published in the July 30 and August 6 issues of the Los Angeles City Bulletin. This was about the time that Leah and Philip Lovell, RMS clients and Kings Road salon habitues, commissioned Neutra to design what would become his tour de force Lovell Health House which launched his distinguished career. The Neutra’s had previously moved into the Kings Road guest-studio in March 1925 and the Chace wing about a year later. Galka Scheyer, Kings Road guest-studio tenant while apprenticing with Schindler for three months over the summer of 1927, was not only witness to Pauline’s departure but apparently facilitated the Lovell commission by talking to Lovell, Schindler and Neutra about their mutual concerns of who would (or wouldn’t) be working on the Health House design. (Sweeney, P&F, p. 171 and “Braxton Gallery, 1928-1929, Hollywood” by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse in The Furniture of R. M. Schindler, UCSB, p. 87)

Galka Scheyer at Kings Road, circa 1931. (Sweeney, p. 108).

Pauline and Mark’s first stop on what would become an nine-year sojourn away from Kings Road was at Halcyon, a small bohemian community of artists, poets, intellectuals and religious mystics founded by Theosophists in 1903 to which she later frequently returned. She likely learned of Halcyon from English playwright, movie director, actor and literary critic Maurice Browne, a Kings Road lecturer in 1925 (Sweeney, p. 96) and his wife, actress and poet Ellen Van Volkenburg (pen name Ellen Janson) who spent much of 1924 there. (Sun-Hines, p. 325). They also spent time in Carmel as directors of Edward Kuster’s Golden Bough Theater the same year. (See below).

From Carmel-By-The-Sea by Monica Hudson, Arcadia, 2006, p. 85. Note the multi-talented Kings Road salon attendee Carol Aronovici on the left who, wearing his City Planner hat, collaborated with RMS and Neutra on the Richmond, California Civic Center project and other projects under their partnership called the Architectural Group for Commerce and Industry (AGIC).

Ironically, Browne and Van Volkenburg (Janson) were originally involved with Aline Barnsdall, as early as 1915 in Chicago where, in 1912, they had established the Chicago Little Theater, a critically acclaimed experimental troupe inspired by the Irish Players at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. (http://www.robertloerzel.com/misc/littletheatre.jpg). (It is conceivable that Pauine’s friendship with Ellen and Maurice dated all the way back to their Chicago Little Theater days).

Barnsdall, eager to start her own theater company and produce her own plays, offered to build Browne and Van Volkenburg (Janson) a larger, more modern theater whom she commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design preliminary plans for in 1915. Aline put the plans on hold as she moved to California in 1916 and opened a theater in rented space in Los Angeles. She then commissioned Wright to begin Hollyhock House on Olive Hill, the Schindler’s raison d’etre for moving to Los Angeles, originally planning to add a theater later which never came to pass. (From Frank Lloyd Wright: Hollyhock House and Olive Hill by Kathryn Smith, Rizzoli, 1992, pp. 21-23). When the Chicago Little Theater failed the next year Ellen and Maurice headed up theater troupes in both Seattle and on Broadway in New York to much critical acclaim. (NY Times Archives). Pauline also knew Ellen from her early 1920s involvement with one of Aline Barnsdall’s experimental theater group. (Sheine, note 27, p. 283). (Browne Janson)
By 1924, RMS had essentially replaced Wright as Barnsdall’s personal architect. Pauline met RMS’s most important client through the Barnsdall connection as she and Leah Lovell, both radical friends of Aline, met while directing Barnsdall’s progressive kindergarten she commissioned for her daughter and other selected children at Hollyhock House. (Sun-Hines, pp. 142, 156). Through this connection and mutual friends in their circles RMS was hired to design furniture for Wright’s Freeman House owned by Leah’s sister Harriet Freeman and husband Sam. Over 25 years beginning in 1928, RMS designed two guest apartments and other alterations and over 35 pieces of furniture for the Freeman House. (See “Freeman House, 1928-1933, Hollywood Hills” by Jeffrey M. Chusid in The Furniture of R. M. Schindler, UCSB, p. 88). It has been speculated by some that Schindler was having an affair with Leah and/or Harriet which could have contributed to Pauline’s 1927 departure from Kings Road and might have come into play in Philip Lovell’s decision to award Neutra the Health House commission. See both Hines books for the most complete analysis.

Pauline wrote of Halcyon in the March 6, 1929 issue of The Carmelite as, “a strange little settlement with an astounding quality…if you were impervious to a thing called “spirit” which so palpably, almost visible, governs here, you would say that the houses were drab little shacks. And yet again and again…down to Halcyon…will flee from the civilization of cities, people of cultivated minds and tastes, – for a day or a week in Halcyon.

There are Theosophists here, and a temple, – but it is not that which causes it all. It is a quality of universal as light. Can it be a climatic thing, – the radiation at Halcyon of forces from the earth which produce a human type of unusual harmoniousness and serenity, – as the climate of Carmel by contrast produces its inhabitants over-stimulation and cerebral scintillation.” (Sweeney, p. 104).

Janson would later serve as associate editor with Pauline at Dune Forum in 1934 and also have an affair with RMS and commission him to design her a house in 1948-9. (See later in this post). Despite an offer to stay at Ellen’s house for the winter, Pauline left for Carmel on October 19 where she would remain for two the next years.

As she had done at Kings Road, Pauline rapidly assimilated into the Carmel arts community. She soon began contributing an unsigned column, “The Black Sheep”, to the Carmel Pine Cone. (See photo below). Appearing 11 times between November 1927 and March 1928, she described it as a “new critical department which does not promise to behave itself too well,” but that it would be, “young, fearless, honest, and vital.” She focused mainly on music, local issues and events. Pauline was also named drama critic for Carmel for the Christian Science Monitor. (Sweeney, p. 104). Thus, she may likely be responsible for the four late 1920s and early 1930s Monitor articles on Neutra projects listed in my Neutra bibliography. During her tenure at the Carmel Pine Cone, the Harrison Memorial Library designed by Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck was opening on Ocean Avenue. (See below).

Carmel Pine Cone Office and later the Denny-Watrous Gallery, Dolores Ave., M. J. Murphy Builder, Lewis Josselyn photo. Pine Cone Office

Harrison Memorial Library, Ocean Avenue, Bernard Maybeck. Postcard from the internet.

Through her association with the Pine Cone Pauline became involved with Carmel’s new progressive weekly The Carmelite edited by Stephen A. Reynolds, for whom she penned the columns “Stage and Screen” and “With the Women” and other articles with her byline in early 1928. Reynolds initially announced the weekly as, “a periodical which will without fear or favor give voice and light on both sides of a mooted question affecting the artistic or practical in village life.” Reynolds, at odds with the entrenched positions of the Carmel Pine Cone, used his new vehicle as a way to publish politically-charged editorial jibes beginning in February 1928.  Pauline quickly advanced to editorial assistant and and was anticipating becoming managing editor by mid-April. (Sweeney, p. 105). In a May 7, 1928 letter to her father she wrote of The Carmelite as being, “a liberal-radical weekly, in whose pages the visiting or resident intelligentsia, from Lincoln Steffens to Robinson Jeffers, all had a word.” After only 16 weeks at the helm, Reynold’s turned over The Carmelite to Pauline after the May 30 issue.

Seven Arts Building, Home of The Carmelite, George A. Robinson photo.

The Carmelite, July 4, 1928, front cover. (from Sweeney, p. 105).

Under Pauline’s leadership The Carmelite became much more than a local newspaper. It was a leading-edge progressive publication reporting on many of the left-leaning issues of the day, the local arts and literary scene and reviews of cultural events in San Francisco and even far away Los Angeles. She used the paper to express her own artistic and political opinions and promote her personal interests and the work of her friends. She was truly in her element during this period of her life. In a May 7, 1928 letter to her father that she stated that she wrote about half the paper which is probably an understatement based on the issues in my collection. (Sweeney, p. 105). She also featured many of the people from her Los Angeles circle of friends, Kings Road salon participants and former tenants. The paper was headquartered in the new Seven Arts Building on Ocean Avenue in the heart of Carmel (see photo above).

One of the earlier issues under Schindler’s editorship, July 4, 1928, featured on the front page a review of a dance performance and a poem by occasional tenant and regular performer at Kings Road, John Bovingdon. (see above). Music was obviously one of her major focuses. In a front page article later in July, Pauline reported on a visit to Carmel by former Hull House employer, mentor, and major influence on her leftist political beliefs, Jane Addams. Addams was on her way to Los Angeles for four days of speaking engagements and a banquet in her honor at the Biltmore Hotel and then to Hawaii for the Pan-Pacific Women’s Congress and Congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  (“Los Angeles Will Honor Sociologist”, L.A. Times, July 26, 1928, p. I-11). It is likely Addams and Neutra’s paths also crossed during her Los Angeles visit.


Jane Addams, Los Angeles, July 1928. George W. Haley photo for the L.A. Herald-Examiner. Courtesy LAPL Photo Collection.


The Carmelite, March 20, 1929. (From my collection).

PGS reviewed concerts and plays at the Theater of the Golden Bough, the Carmel Playhouse, the Carmel Theater Guild, and Forest Theater, exhibitions at the Denny-Watrous Gallery, published wood block and linoleum cut prints by artists such as early Kings Road visitor and now Carmelite staff artist Virginia Tooker (see above), Esther Bruton, Stanley Wood, Ray Boynton and others. She covered performances by dancers John Bovingdon, Ruth Austin and Grace Burroughs, pianists Imre Weisshaus, Dene Denny, future lover John Cage mentors Henry Cowell (see below left) and Richard Buhlig (see above right), violinist Albert Spalding, and numerous others. She reported on important events, exhibitions and concerts she attended in San Francisco such as her December 26, 1928 review of “The Blue Four” exhibition at the Berkeley Museum organized by Galka Scheyer.


The Carmelite, July 3, 1929, pp. 7 -8. (From my collection).


Schindler published reviews on such events as the the Progressive Education Conference at St. Louis, the sixth convention of the Workers (Communist) Party in New York, a “hunger march” of the National Unemployed workers Committee Movement in London, the World Youth Peace Conference in Vienna, and editorials on subjects like “The Anachronism of Cities” attended by Carol Aronovici, former R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra AGIC partner on the 1928 Richmond, California Civic Center Plan. (see above right).  She also published poetry by Robinson Jeffers, Galka Scheyer, Dora Hagemeyer, reported on visits by Krisnamurti, Ella Young and others and wrote insightful reviews of books that struck her fancy.

In a Nov. 28, 1928 review in The Carmelite, Pauline praised a Richard Neutra lecture on modern architecture she arranged at Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous’s “Harmony House” (see below) and a Dione Neutra concert in another private home. Neutra, she wrote, is “one of the two or three true descendants of the lineage of Sullivan and Wright, to whom architecture is not merely an expression of a civilization but a conditioning agent of future cultures. She found his work and that of his select contemporaries to have “the quality, the feeling of great architecture.” (Sun-Hines, p. 325). The Neutra’s took a week’s vacation for the lecture and concert and stopped along the way to Carmel after a delightful drive along the coast to observe “the strange inhabitants of Oceano.” (P&F, p. 206). The Neutra’s son Raymond recalls his mother Dione “talking about walking in the Oceano Dunes and coming across a naked hermit friend in his hut.” (July 15, 2010 e-mail message from Raymond Neutra to the author). Dione’s description of the two stormy night events in Carmel are recorded in a November 1928 letter to her parents. (P&F, p. 173).


Pianist Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous in their home “Harmony House.”

Denny and Watrous met at a party in the  studio of a mutual friend in 1922. To further their education, they decided to go to New York by  way of Carmel. Here they found a city almost entirely dedicated to the arts.  They returned in 1925 and lived over a garage  while Hazel designed their “Harmony House,” on East Dolores, 4 N. of 2nd. One of the problems that faced  people moving to Carmel was finding a way of making money. Hazel solved this  by designing houses, some 36 of them. They were innovative in design — she drew on the Arts and Crafts movement with exposed beams and redwood on  the interior and board and batten exteriors. Large picture windows, painted shingles and pastel colors for the exterior walls were also featured.

The houses were extremely popular, and introduced a new style for Carmel  architecture. “Harmony House” with its two-story picture window, flanked by two grand pianos (see above) and warmed by a fireplace, became the gathering place for informal recitals, lectures and other gatherings. Here pianist Henry Cowell, future mentor to John Cage and frequent denizen of the aforementioned Halcyon, demonstrated his entirely radical tone clusters and Richard Neutra lectured on modern building design. Pauline Schindler, by then a friend of the duo, regularly attended and reported on these events in The Carmelite, some of which, such as the Neutra lecture, she helped organize.

In 1926 Denny and Watrous founded the Carmel Music Society. In 1928 the official partnership, Denny-Watrous Management, was  launched. In the same year they leased the Theater of the Golden Bough  from Edward Kuster and in twelve months produced a dozen concerts and  eighteen plays routinely reviewed by Pauline in The Carmelite , including Ferenc Molnar’s “Liliom”, Eugene O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones” and Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts”, all recently presented for the first time in English in New York. They then opened the Denny-Watrous Gallery, Carmel’s first art gallery, using the space to present plays and  concerts, as well as art. Here was the first known American performance of  Bach’s “Art of the Fugue.”  http://www.carmelresidents.org/News0303.html

The Carmelite, March 20, 1929, p. 3. (From my collection).

In 1929 Hazel Watrous became associated the Seven Arts Press which printed The Carmelite. (See above). In 1935 Denny and Watrous established Carmel’s now-famed annual Bach Festival, a continuing highlight of the town’s social season.

The Carmelite, March 20, 1929, front page. (From my collection).

Pauline published wood block and linoleum cut prints by Esther Bruton (see above), Virginia Tooker (Carmelite staff artist and early Kings Road visitor), Stanley Wood, Ray Boynton and others. She published a Special Robinson Jeffers issue featuring his poetry, and also published poems by Dora Hagemeyer, wife of photographer Johan Hagemeyer, long-time friend of Edward Weston (see above), and erstwhile Schindler House tenants Galka Scheyer (see below) and John Bovingdon (see earlier).

Poems by Galka E. Scheyer, The Carmelite, July 3, 1929, p. 9. (From my collection).

Robinson Jeffers, Carmel, 1929. Edward Weston portrait from Weston’s Westons: Portraits and Nudes by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. (From my collection).

Pauline had a review of Robinson Jeffers’ poetry published in the prestigious literary journal Transition edited by Eugene Jolas in 1929 in which she called him “a major American poet.” She was also likely responsible for the article “American Nature Photos” featuring Edward Weston’s work in the same issue. Weston, (see portraits below) one of the earliest recruits to the Schindler’s Kings Road circle with his first enthusiastic visit recorded as being in May 1922, became a lifelong friend. (Sweeney, p. 92).

Edward Weston circa 1940s. Ansel Adams Portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/ Right, Weston portrait by Peter Stackpole, Life Magazine, May 1, 1936. Life Magazine

“Edward Weston on the Way” by Pauline Schindler, The Carmelite, December 26, 1928, p. 2. (From my collection).

Tired of city life, Weston moved to Carmel in early January 1929, trading spaces from a temporary stay in fellow photographer Johan Hagemeyer’s studio in San Francisco to renting his Carmel summer studio. Pauline’s article “Edward Weston on the Way” in the issue above announced the impending arrival of another friend from her Kings Road salons and soirees. Weston described the move at length in his Daybooks. (Weston, pp. 99-108). Pauline published Dora Hagemeyer’s poetry periodically in The Carmelite. (In 1923 Hagemeyer opened a portrait studio in San Francisco and also built a summer studio in Carmel which soon became a meeting place for artists and intellectuals. It was there that he met Weston, who encouraged Hagemeyer to further his career in photography). Weston and Hagemeyer had a falling out in late 1929 over the studio lease agreement. Weston then moved his studio to the Seven Arts Building upstairs from The Carmelite‘s offices in January 1930. (See photo below).

Johan Hagemeyer, 1928. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Pauline kept steady tabs on the comings and goings of Weston and various combinations of visiting sons in the pages of The Carmelite. (see above). In the March 27, 1929 issue she reported on a serious Brett Weston accident while riding with long-time Weston patron and book designer Merle Armitage. Brett suffered a compound fracture when his horse threw him and rolled over onto his leg. (“Personal Bits”, by Pauline Schindler, The Carmelite, March 27, 1929, p. 3).

Lewis Josselyn photo.

In 1927 Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter came to the U.S. and by chance to Carmel, where Steffens, looking for a quiet place to work, decided to settle. They bought a house from the artists Cornelis and Jessie Arms Botke on San Antonio near Ocean, which they called the Getaway. Steffens referred to it as a “refuge for any poor s.o.b. in a jam.” They lived there from 1927 to 1936. Typically, having avoided all of his friends by moving to a remote locality, he next invited them all to come visit. Their house became a gathering place for intellectuals far and wide. Robin and Una Jeffers and Edward Weston became their close friends. Winter and Steffens became contributing editors to The Carmelite beginning in 1928. Being used to the excitement of New York, Winter’s involvement with The Carmelite made living in “the sticks” bearable. Winter recalls in her 1963 autobiography And Not to Yield, I became absorbed in the job. I was a journalist at last. It began to take all my time; when Pauline was away I did all her jobs.”  (For more on Winter and Steffens and Carmel in the 1930s see “Ella Winter: Gallant Fighter” by Connie Wright http://www.carmelresidents.org/News0505.html).

Ella Winter, 1932. Edward Weston Portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Describing Pauline’s impact on the village’s intelligentsia Winter continued, “She was the divorced wife of an Austrian architect in Los Angeles she always called Aramess – later I discovered they were his initials, R. M. S. – and she was in many ways the moving spirit of the village…Pauline had to be modern about everything, but in her undifferentiating enthusiasms she sometimes saw further than the rest of us. When her friend Galka Scheyer came in 1928, with pictures by Paul Klee and the Blue Four that people laughed at and wouldn’t think of buying, Pauline said Klee could be understood in either poetry or music. She was the first to introduce us to Dada, surrealism, Schoenberg…This “crazy nut” as we thought of her, kept everything at a boil, the sensible and the ridiculous all mixed up.

“But she’s crazy in the best sense,” Harry Dickinson maintained; and it must be said that Pauline achieved a good deal. She started our art gallery to show the work of local painters and exceptional photographers, Edward Weston, Edward [Johan] Hagemeyer, Ansel Adams; helped set up a music society that became celebrated, with international artists stopping on their way from Los Angeles to San Francisco to perform in Carmel; and it was Pauline the flibbertigibbet who sparked off our weekly, The Carmelite…The whole village was drawn into The Carmelite’s orbit. At studio parties they didn’t discuss psychoanalytical plurality or “the inevitable polarity of thought,” but the paper, its style and vocabulary, its make-up, illustrations, circulation.”

In January 1929, contributing editor Lincoln Steffens tried to gain control of The Carmelite and turn it over to his wife Ella Winter. Pauline published Steffen’s letter to the editor in the January 23 issue: “There are rumors in circulation of a conspiracy…to oust me and my gang from the Carmelite. We are leaving of our own free, mechanistic will. You have always been glad to have us do all the work we would, as long as what we did was up to the high-flying standard you kept mentioning…” Taking exception to her lack of business acumen and flighty editorial style, Steffens continued, “I lifted up my highbrows and thought such an editor would be happier if she had the time to dance and sing and compose music and music criticism unhindered by and unhindering the mere business of journalism…” (Sweeney, p. 105).


Lincoln Steffens, Carmel, 1929. Edward Weston portrait from Weston’s Westons: Portraits and Nudes by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. (From my collection).

A comparison these two mastheads indicates who Steffens’ “gang” members might have been. Left is from the December 26, 1928 issue and right is from March 20, 1929. The additions of trusted friends Edward Weston, Galka Scheyer, and Richard Neutra from the Kings Road circle after Steffens’ and Winter’s departure and financial help from her father gave Pauline the strength to continue publishing for eight more months, maintaining The Carmelite‘s undeniably high editorial standards and crisp graphic design and modern typography. (See example below).


Announcement for a special issue devoted to modern architecture from the March 20, 1929 issue, p. 6. (From my collection).

A June 12, 1929 entry in Edward Weston’s Daybook describes a drive into the valley with “Paul” (Weston’s new nickname for Pauline Schindler to her great delight) and dinner with her and Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous. The evening’s conversation was on how to run the Carmelite, and its aspirations. Weston wrote, “I, being on the editorial staff, had to listen in until after midnight though bed called me, having retouched all day. Village gossip about the divorce of the Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter. A letter from Una Jeffers, written on the train, again expressing their pleasure in the portraits. And a catalogue from Film und Foto – Stuttgart (see below): they reproduced my head of Galvan, and published my article, hung 18 of Brett’s photographs and 20 of mine. I sent 20 from each of us.” (This was a very important avant-garde traveling exhibition Richard Neutra organized America’s contributions for and provided the entree for Weston to be included. The installation was designed by El Lissitzky who also designed Neutra’s 1930 book Amerika which featured a cover photo montage which included a Brett Weston photo and internal photos by both Brett and Edward). http://www.answers.com/topic/film-und-foto). (Weston, pp. 102-3).

Film und Foto exhibition catalogs, 1929, Deutschen Werkbunds, Stuttgart. El Lissistzky cover designs. Film und Foto

Right, Manuel Hernandez Galvan, 1924. Edward Weston portrait from above exhibition catalog.

On September 16th, the Steffens “gang” finally wrested control of The Carmelite from Pauline. The meeting she called to hopefully garner badly needed financial support turned into a palace coup. The September 20 issue of the Carmel Pine Cone reported in an editorial titled “Torn From the Arms of its Mother”, “Coolly, almost coldly then, the deal was put through. New papers were drawn, strictly legal: a pen was placed in the shaking hand of Mrs. Pauline Schindler; “Sign on the dotted line,” came the command. And Mrs. Schindler signed.” The Carmelite folded for good in December 1932.

A September 20, 1929 entry in Weston’s Daybook references Pauline’s freelance work and a peek into the Carmel social scene she was undoubtedly involved in. “Up at 4:00 and in my darkroom straightening prints from work of yesterday and the day before: work which was strenuous enough to put me to bed at 8:30. At last I have been printing the peppers. I had to have an excuse to do them for conscience’s sake, for orders are still behind: the excuse was Pauline’s request for several prints for Vogue. But I notice that instead of printing just one, I found it necessary to print five, – for selection! Well, they are gorgeous, – the strongest things I have done, outside of some portraits… A big mask party planned for tomorrow night, which Ramiel [McGehee] is engineering. Over fifty invited from all walks of life: Pebble Beach and Highlands Society to Carmel Bohemians! I am in the excitement only as a spectator: until the night!”

Weston’s Daybook entry for October 27, 1929 reads, “…Dr. and Mrs. Lovell arrived wanting to take Brett and me to a football game. Another day lost, at least for work. Friends arrive here on their vacation, and in vacation moods. One cannot always deny them.” This visit occurred just four days after receiving the certificate of occupancy for their new Neutra-designed Health House near Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

PGS left Carmel a short time later but returned to visit often, especially for exhibition openings such as Edward Weston’s at the Denny-Watrous Gallery. For example, Weston had a retrospective exhibition at the Denny-Watrous Gallery in July 1931. Pauline’s review “Weston in Retrospect” was published in the July 29th issue of The Carmelite indicating she was still actively participating in Carmel events although no longer officially associated with her old pride and joy. (See the 1946 MOMA exhibition catalogue The Photographs of Edward Weston edited by Nancy Newhall, p. 36).

For a period of years she gravitated between the Theosophist communities of Halcyon and nearby Oceano and Ojai where Mark was in enrolled in the private Ojai Valley School from October 1932 to June 1937. (Sweeney, p. 111). The Schindlers and Neutras were both involved with people associated with the Krotona Institute of Theosophy headquartered in Beachwood Canyon until it moved in 1926 into a complex of buildings near Ojai, California, designed by Robert Stacy-Judd. (Krotona Colony in Hollywood).

Renowned Indian mystic and guru Jiddu Krishnamurti also set up shop for his Order of the Star sect in Ojai the same year where he was visited by wealthy Theosophist supporter J. J. van der Leeuw, brother of future Neutra VDL Research House financier C. H. van der Leeuw in 1928. (See article below). J. J. van der Leeuw gave numerous Theosophical lectures around Los Angeles during visits in 1924, 1928 and September 1931. (Los Angeles Times). He could very well have crossed paths with the architect as his Industrialist/Theosophist brother had visited Neutra in Los Angeles during May 1931 to view the Lovell Health House and Neutra’s other projects and lecture on “The Future of Modern Factories” at an Electric Club meeting at the Biltmore Hotel. (See “Architecture to be theme of Dutch Speaker”, L.A. Times, May 18, 1931, p. I-3).

Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1928, pp. 1-2. From ProQuest.

Jiddu Krisnamurti, ca. 1920s. Photographer unknown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti


Pauline lived in Ojai intermittently living in a series of rented cottages. From this base she continued to visit Santa Barbara, Halcyon and the Oceano Dunes settlement of Moy Mell. She also traveled to Santa Fe, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. During her periodic stays in Los Angeles she lived briefly on Hillcrest Road  and also occasionally stayed at Kings Road for brief stints between the comings and goings of tenants in the guest-studio and/or her wing.

In early 1930 Pauline submitted a six-page article, “Samuel House, Los Angeles, Lloyd Wright, Architect”, to Architectural Record which was eventually published in  in the June 1930 issue. She also submitted photos and an article on the Kings Road House to the same publication which was rejected. This prompted an angry letter of protest from RMS. Oddly, Kings Road, arguably the most iconic house modern house in the country was not published until 1932. (Sheine, p. 261).

PGS authored an article, “The Suburban Home Moves Out of Doors“, featuring RMS’s furniture designs which was published in the May 1930 issue of  The Small Home. Later in the year she had an article published in the highly-regarded literary journal Pagany: A Native Quarterly. Editor Richard Johns frequently featured the work of  Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and many other legendary poets and authors thus Pauline, as was her custom, was keeping famous company indeed.

Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1928, p. III-23. From ProQuest.

In January 1930 Pauline had an article “A Significant Contribution to Culture: The Interior of a Great California Store as an Interpretation of Modern Life” published in California Arts & Architecture. The article described in glowing terms the new Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store and the interiors designed by Jock Peters, John Weber and Kem Weber. PGS was undoubtedly aware of the December 1928 “Decorative and Fine Arts of Today”exhibition seen in the L.A. Times ad above when writng the article. The Bullock’s show featured the work of the RMS, Richard Neutra, Kem Weber, Jock Peters, Edward Weston and many others and was organized by Kings Road salon regular and UCLA art teacher, Annita Delano (also in the show) and Eleanor Le Maire for Bullock’s Department Store’s downtown Los Angeles location while Bullock’s Wilshire was under construction. (See ad for same above). This exhibit was probably the genesis for her upcoming exhibition plans discussed next.

Exhibition Poster for “Contemporary Creative Architecture in California”, UCLA April 21-29.

In the spring of 1930 Pauline decided to organize and curate a traveling exhibition of Contemporary Creative Architects (Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Jock D. Peters, John Weber, Kem Weber and J. R. Davidson) for the Western Association of Museum Directors, write a book featuring their work and act as their agent for booking lectures. Nothing ever came of the book project. (McCoy, p. 58). The “Creative Contemporary Creative Architecture in California Exhibition” was on display at UCLA from April 21-29 and the related Symposium featuring speakers Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler and Kem Weber took place on April 27th. (See above exhibition poster featuring Pauline’s trademark typographic design). Los Angeles Times art critic Arthur Millier, also in Pauline’s salon circle, gave the important show a lengthy and generally favorable review, “Building for Our Age:  California Designers of Modern Style Architecture Distinguished From Those Who Imitate” in the April 27th edition. Pauline’s visionary curatorship of this show is extremely important as it preceded the New York Museum of Modern Art’s seminal and legendary 1932 “Modern Architecture” exhibition by a full two years.

Millier wrote, “…this exhibit at U.C.L.A. is not of a school of modern architecture, but represents the work of thinking artists each trying to design creatively for the present age. He continued later with, “…this is still an ungrateful field in which these architects are plucky pioneers. So far, in this country, there is no public demand or interesst in the modern house which does not borrow its style from a past period. They swim upstream and are men of ideas and ideals. Whether their work is good or imperfect it is honestly conceived and of a different breed to the imitation French-modern stuff that is issuing copiously, just now, from the draughting-rooms of academic architects who regard the whole modern idea as a temporary fad.” He adds insightful critiques of each man’s work and included a Will Connell photo of Kem Weber’s light fixture for the Sommer & Kaufman store in San Francisco, a Mott photo of John Weber’s auditorium lounge at Bullock’s Wilshire, a Brett Weston photo of the clock face at Bullock’s Wilshire designed by Jock Peters, the facade of the San Francisco skyscraper at 451 Sutter St. by Miller & Pflueger, an interior of Schindler’s Lovell Beach House and Willard D. Morgan photos of Neutra’s Lovell Health House and J. R. Davidson’s facade for the Hi-Hat restaurant on Wilshire Blvd.

An excerpt from Pauline’s opening statement for the exhibition, printed in “Modern Architecture Shown” in the April 20 edition of the Los Angeles Times reads, “Based upon the principle that form follows function; influenced by the work of Louis Sullivan and of Frank Lloyd Wright, and by the logic of the machine age, modern architecture strongly tends toward a structural integration, a freedom from applied decoration, a reduction of forms to their essence.” The exhibition would move to the California Art Club at Barnsdall Park in June 1930. From there it traveled to the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, The Portland Art Association and the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery. (Sheine, p. 256).

PGS organized a lecture series around the exhibition that was offered to a wide range of societies and clubs in the greater Los Angeles area in 1930 and the various cities the show traveled to. In Los Angeles, lecture announcements (see below), pamphlets and individual speaker letters were sent to the Friday Morning Club, the Ebell Club, the Los Angeles City Club, the Hollywood Women’s Club, the Engineers Club and likely others. The pamphlet reads: “A new architecture has come into being in our time and is moving toward fulfillment … It is not a mere style. It is profoundly based. But it is necessary that it be understood for an imitative pseudo-modernism blurs the clear line and confuses the layman.”

Partial piece of R. M. Schindler lecture announcement in conjunction with the Contemporary Creative Architecture in California Exhibition, 1930. Designed by Pauline Schindler. (From Framed Space).

RMS’s letter read, “The more I see of the reaction the so-called ‘modern architecture’ causes at large, the more I can perceive the confusion this new style is creating in the minds of the public and the experts. Nobody seems able to distinguish between sincere contemporary work and the atrocities of the fashionable fakers. It is urgently necessary to explain the real meaning of the movement and to give the public a vocabulary thru which to understand it intelligently … I am not a professional lecturer but find myself forced to undertake such educational efforts as a matter of self defense.” (From Framed Space)

Harry Braxton Gallery, 1624 N. Vine, Hollywood, R. M. Schindler, 1929. Viroque Baker photos. (From Sheine, p. 144). Note the Schindler-designed Braxton Chair in the right photo.

There is evidence that PGS was collaborating with Galka Scheyer’s efforts to market the “Blue Four” as the Braxton Galleries (see above) was consecutively exhibiting Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Feininger and Klee from March through May, 1930. R. M. Schindler designed the “ultra-modern” gallery next door to the Brown Derby at Hollywood and Vine for art dealer Harry Braxton which opened in September 1929. The nexus for the commission was none other than Pauline’s now close friend Galka Scheyer who introduced Schindler to Braxton. Scheyer probably knew Braxton through her connection to Edward Weston and art dealer Howard Putzel, as well as with Sam and Harriet Freeman, whose house guest she was in 1930 before staying again at Kings Road in 1931-32 in the Chace wing. An agent without a gallery, the shrewd Scheyer was eager to associate with Braxton’s establishment, as she had with the Oakland Art Gallery in the Bay Area, to both mount exhibitions of the Blue Four and other avant-garde artists and to gain entree into Hollywood’s elite emigre circle. Schindler was also commissioned to do frames for some of her clients including Louise and Walter Arensberg. (See “Braxton Gallery, 1928-1929, Hollywood” by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse in The Furniture of R. M. Schindler, UCSB, p. 88).

L.A. Times art critic Arthur Millier gave the avant-garde space a rave review with a September 15, 1929 article “‘Ultra’ Gallery Arrives: Hollywood Sees ‘Modern’ Spaces and Angles as Background for Art.” The inaugural show included carved wood reliefs by frequent visitor to Pauline’s Kings Road salons, Peter Krasnow. RMS and Richard Neutra had recently collaborated with Krasnow on the design of a major commission for a ceremonial cabinet for Temple Emmanuel-El San Francisco described in a July 28, 1929 L.A. Times article “Krasnow’s Work Shown” as “an unusual thing of wood and glass which houses vestments and religious objects.” Krasnow carved the panels which were applied to the sides of the chest. Weston was shown the chest in December 1928 after which he wrote in his Daybook, “”I take my hat off to you Peter, for a superb piece of work both in conception and technical execution. Tears came to my eyes,…” (Weston, p. 98).

Galka Scheyer quickly booked her “Blue Four” for a series of individual shows in March and April 1930 immediately following a show of Krasnow’s close friend (see images below) Edward Weston’s photos all of which were also favorably reviewed by Millier. Weston had a concurrent show open Febraury 8th at the Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. It seems logical that Pauline and Galka coordinated their efforts to draw bigger crowds to and enhance the impact of their related exhibitions.

Left, Peter Krasnow, 1929. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography.  http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/ Right, “The Photographer” (Edward Weston), lithograph, 1928, by Peter Krasnow. (From “Naturally Modern” by Victoria Dailey in LA’s Early Moderns, p. 78).

Scheyer and Schindler likely continued to coordinate their exhibitions and lecture bookings as their “Blue Four” and “Creative Contemporary Architecture of California” exhibits traveled the circuit of Western Association of Art Museums. (See “The Impact From Abroad: Foreign Guests and Visitors” by Peter Selz in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950, p. 102). As an example, either Pauline or Galka booked a lecture for RMS on the relationship of architecture to the Bauhaus at the Oakland Art Gallery in conjunction with Scheyer’s April-May 1930 Lionel Feininger exhibition. (See “Modernist Photography and the Group f.64″ by Therese Thau Heyman in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950, p. 249). 

Edward Weston’s Daybook indicates that on April 7, 1930, Galka Scheyer, traveling between the Braxton Galleries and Oakland Art Gallery Feininger shows with Mark Schindler, visited him in Carmel for two days and critiqued his print of fish and kelp from Point Lobos. Weston wrote that she [Scheyer] was a “dynamo of energy”; her insight was “of unusual clarity”; she had “an ability to express herself in words, brilliantly…she is an ideal go-between for the artist and his public.” (Weston, p. 151-2). Weston’s account of a February 2, 1927 costume party hosted by Peter Krasnow, is indicative of the closeness of his friendship with Scheyer. He writes, “…Galka Scheyer begged my leaather breeches, putees, pistola and Texano, so I got in exchange her outfit even down to panties, and a marvelous make-up job to boot. As a ravishing woman I was a success with the women. (Weston, p. 3).

An expanded version of the Pauline’s exhibition under the title “Contemporary Architecture, Decoration and Store Design” was exhibited at the new Plaza Art Center (see photo below) in October 1931 in the old Italian Hall Building’s newly remodeled second floor gallery space run by the Plaza Art Club. (See “Roundabout the Galleries”, L.A. Times, Oct. 11, 1931). An August 16, 1931 Los Angeles Times article, “Plaza Art Center to Open”, mentions R. M. Schindler’s plan to remodel the building’s arcade shops. (Embassy Restaurant and Arcade, 1931 project, see Schindler by David Gebhard, p. 200). Muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, after consulting with Richard Neutra and Sumner Spaulding on fresco techniques, completed his Mural “Tropical America” on the side of the building in 1932. (See photo below). (See Eric Merrill’s excellent blog post for more on Siqueiros and Neutra’s involvement with the California Art Club).

Italian Hall, Plaza Art Center, Olvera Street as it looks today. Note the 1932 David Siqueiros mural “Tropical America” on the side of the building.

The same participants were included in an exhibition at the New York Architectural League from April 18 to 25, 1931. Pauline’s curatorial work bringing together this group for the West Coast traveling show prompted Joseph Urban, who had been in contact with RMS since 1922, to write to show organizer Ely Jacques Kahn on December 12, 1930, “group of at least seven California architects, including Schindler, Neutra, Peters, Davidson, Webber [sic], Wright, are willing to send drawings for Architectural League Exhibition. Will be valuable stimulus to the progressive movement East. Can we give them a good room or alcove for them to show effectively together?” (Sheine, p. 256). This show also preceded the 1932 MOMA exhibition by a year.

After initially agreeing to be part of the West Coast exhibition, and despite Pauline’s praise of his groundbreaking work and heartfelt recognition of his influence on her husband and Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright angrily requested to be removed from all future showings. He had apparently heard through son Lloyd, who had refused to participate, that the exhibition was being titled “Three Architects of International Renown” or as he later described it, “Frank Lloyd Wright middle, Neutra right, Schindler left” or as “Christ crucified between two thieves.” As he explained it in a letter to Lewis Mumford, “All novices, in the nature of the Cuckoo, have not hesitated to lay their eggs in my nest…” (Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest, p. 393 and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water by David Hoffmann, p. 88).

In an April 15, 1930 letter from Frank Lloyd Wright to Pauline Schindler, in response to her letter asking him to participate in the exhibit in Los Angeles, Wright wrote, “While many of my sworn adherents and generous admirers have in the past profited considerably by my work and by my own clients, – I can remember no such instance ever happening to me concerning them or theirs. Richard [Neutra] is evidently gone head over heals, – Le Corbusier, Rudolph, too. It is a pity. But there is nothing to be done about it. I suppose I shall have to turn on them myself and show them up soon.” (Sheine, p. 42.). Much on the correspondence with Frank Lloyd Wright can also be found in Sheine.

In an April 30 letter Pauline asked Wright for permission to plan a lecture series for him in the West. She wrote, “Let me explain to you why I concern myself so actively with architecture: my own first contact with it was simultaneous with a central ecstasy, so that it has the equivalence and force with me of some critical emotional impression of childhood which dictates the direction of life.” (McCoy, p. 58). After turning her down she wrote back, “There is nothing I can say except that I love you profoundly for the majesty and meaning of your work, that I should have been utterly proud to serve it…”

A July 28, 1930 letter from her father Edmund reveals the financial state she usually seemed to be in. “What have you been doing young lady to bring about a ponderous flood of bills? Am enclosing August check and will send an additional $50 about the middle of the month…Let’s consider ourselves in conference going over your business affairs and analyzing present conditions and prospects. This with a view to whether any part of your plans need modification, or here or there reshaping.” (McCoy, p. 60).

Pauline had also written to Neutra while he was on his world tour after moving out of Kings Road asking for permission to represent him in a series of lectures. In a December 1930 reply from Cleveland near the end of his tour Neutra wrote, “Dear Ghibeline: Am ready to be managed by you and grateful naturally…Not usually interested in chapter AIA meetings. More in laypersons, who might be our clients…Richard.” She then successfully arranged for a Neutra speaking engagement in Chicago through a former Smith College classmate. (McCoy, p. 60).

About this time PGS wrote Edward Weston trying to interest him in doing a book of his photographs. He replied quoting from her letter, “‘Let’s do a book on Edward Weston.’ I do not think he has had the nationwide publicity to warrant a publisher’s interest. They are not in business except to make money. My love and greetings, Edward.” (McCoy, p. 59). (Weston’s first monograph would be produced by his friend and patron Merle Armitage in 1932). Weston presented Pauline a portrait of Diego Rivera made in Mexico in 1924, possibly around this time. (McCoy, p. 60, n.d.).

Diego Rivera, Mexico, 1924. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Not long after returning from Carmel, probably in early 1930, Pauline rented Frank Lloyd Wright’s Storer House on Hollywood Blvd. where she stayed for over a year. While there she sublet an entire floor to Brett Weston where he established his first photographic studio.  Weston wrote in his Daybook on February 21, 1931, “…it took me over an hour on the bus from Pauline’s, who lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house [Storer House] in the foothills. Brett has his studio there, so I stayed with him rather than Flora. Paul, I got to know and appreciate better than ever, to really love her.” (Weston, p. 204). In note 31, p. 247 in his Wright in Hollywood: Visions of a New Architecture, Robert L. Sweeney writes, “Mrs. Schindler had earlier justified moving into the house to her father, who was supporting her: she was there as a caretaker, paying a nominal sum each month; the house was to serve as a “background” for work she was “planning to do, – which involves an active association with four or five modern architects here, and which has the purpose of selling their design services to the rest of the world.”

Brett Weston, 1931. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

In a  March 1, 1931 letter to Frank Lloyd Wright’s wife Ogilvanna from the Storer House (see photo below), Pauline wrote, “the room in which I sit writing is a form so superb that I am constantly conscious of an immense obligation to mr. wright. when my small son, – eight years old, – was feeling very tender toward me one day he said, “muv, i love you so much…as i love this room.” such superlative joy it gives us both. like a drama of sophocles, a violin sonata of haendel.” (From Wright in Hollywood: Visions of a New Architecture, Robert L. Sweeney, p. 63). This letter could have been an attempt to mollify Wright after his refusal to participate the previous year in her “Creative Contemporary Architecture in California” exhibition and lecture series plans. It is hard not to see the irony (and the psychological interplay in her relationships with RMS and Wright) of Pauline’s staying in Wright’s Storer House with young sun Mark so close to Kings Road and just scant years after possibly accompanying RMS on the below photo shoot.

Storer House, 8161 Hollywood Blvd., 1924, Frank Lloyd Wright. R. M. Schindler photo. From Wie Baut Amerika? by Richard Neutra, Julius Hoffmann, 1927, p. 61. (From my collection).

Pauline had also been trying to arrange lectures by Neutra and Schindler at the Denny-Watrous Gallery in Carmel. Hazel Watrous guaranteed either a $25 fee, replying, “Schindler has a mastery and charm, Neutra has ideas about mass production. I’ll leave the choice to you…We have arranged with Galka Scheyer to have her exhibit here in June. Edward Weston has been showing his prints for several weeks.” (McCoy, p. 60). Pauline then arranged for a Schindler lecture on September 7th. Weston took great exception to the treatment Schindler suffered at the hands of his patron John O’Shea after his gallery lecture. “Schindler bore himself with dignity, he was a gentleman, the others were not. I admit John O’Shea had been drinking, good, – one’s character is revealed with a few drinks. After the lecture he made disparaging remarks, even indulging in personalities in a loud voice standing near Schindler, head turned toward him, face in a leering mask. Disgusting! I sat down and wrote The Carmelite an article giving full vent to my feelings, not using names, but several offenders were plainly enough indicated.” (Weston, p. 187).

Soon thereafter, John O’Shea invited Weston to a stag party which he tried to get out of but finally attended. He wrote in his September 17th Daybook entry, “I spent my evening trying to keep them off art and keep my temper. Dickinson said, “Weston is too serious!” But they were the serious ones – that [Carmelite] article had a sting! I was sober enough to sit back and watch the others, especially John: and his face revealed much. I saw a man, soured, cynical, negative. Perhaps he knows he can never reach the heights he tried for. A fine painter, but nowhere near a great artist. I feel sorry for him, but that does not excuse his childish nonsense.”

In April 1932 Hazel Watrous asked Weston to write a review for The Carmelite for the Denny-Watrous Gallery John O’Shea exhibit and he agreed writing, “I sweat doing it, – because to a degree I had to resort to evasion…” Hazel, Dene, John and wife Molly all asked him to do the review. “Each one of these friends has not only been very kind to me, but has helped materially to raise my economic status. Of course I am trying to excuse my guilty conscience.” (Weston, p. 211-2).

“Carmel Hours”, Pauline Schindler, Touring Topics, November 1931. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

Pauline’s above 1931 slice-of-life story “Carmel Hours” with Edward Weston photos depicting a day in Carmel and surrounding area was published in editor Phil Townsend Hanna’ Touring Topics. (See my related post Phil Townsend Hanna). The article mentions many of her old friends and haunts and gives insight to her memorable days spent editing The Carmelite in 1928-29 where, in my opinion, she was at her creative best and was probably most happy.

Schindler continued to get mileage from her exhibition into 1932 as Creative Art’s editor Henry McBride published her “Modern California Architects” in the February issue. The five-page article included photos of RMS’s Wolfe House on Catalina, Neutra’s Lovell Health House, and The Bachelors, Ltd. Haberdashery by J. R. Davidson and also described work by Lloyd Wright, Jock Peters and Kem Weber. She wrote of Neutra, “His work is the coolest, the furthest removed from stylization or a conscious esthetic. It is the most closely related to the neue Sachlichkeit of contemporary Europeans.” Of RMS she opined, “Schindler’s work is particularly lyric, an utterance of a definite life feeling. It is profoundly organic, the parts moving into the whole by transition of an inner logic.”

PGS was successful in placing an early 1932 three-page article, “Group Offices for Physicians, Los Angeles; J. R. Davidson, Designer” in the August 1932 issue of Architectural Record. A January 8, 1932 L.A. Times article, “Printing Lecture Booked” announces a lecture, “Modern Typographical Design” by Pauline under the auspices of the USC Extension Division as part of a class in modern printing design. Examples of her work appear above in layouts in The Carmelite and her 1930 poster for the “Creative Contemporary Architecture in California” traveling exhibition.

Pauline’s activities were centered in Ojai between 1932-35. Mark was attending the Ojai Valley School between October 1932 and June 1937. She lived there intermittently in a series of rented cottages. From this base she traveled to Santa Barbara, Halcyon and the nearby Oceano Dunes settlement of Moy Mell. There were numerous connections between Carmel and Halcyon and Oceano which Pauline seemed destined to be involved with. The Neutra’s may have been the first to tell Pauline about the Oceano Dunites whom they observed on there way to Carmel in November 1928 for their previously mentioned lecture and recital. Pauline also reviewed concerts by avant-garde pianist Henry Cowell who frequently collaborated and stayed with John Varian (see below) and wife Agnes in Halcyon. Irishman Varian was an amateur musician, mystic poet and ardent Thesophist, prominent among the Halcyon sect known as “The Temple of the People.” (See below).

John Varian, Halcyon, 1920s. Ansel Adams Portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Edward Weston’s Daybook provides another link between Cowell and Halcyon with this August 24, 1930 entry, “Last night to Henry Cowell’s New Operetta, “the Building of Bamba,” given at the Forest Theater: So poorly produced that one could hardly say whether it had possibilities or not. Many of the cast were from Halcyon, colony of mystics. I have my doubts about the esoteric when it does not include the aesthetic! I certainly would not have gone to an opera, disliking stage bellowing, – worse combined with acting, even if the bellowers are good: these were awful, – most of them, but I had hopes this might be a new note, or new music from Henry. But no, much of it sounded like old church hymns poorly sung.”

Another close friend of the Varian’s was Irish poet and mystic Ella Young who, after emigrating from Ireland in 1925 to escape imprisonment for supporting the Irish Republican Army, lectured widely across the United States and taught Celtic mythology and Irish history at U. C. Berkeley before settling in Oceano. Ella’s audiences were enthralled – not only by her great knowledge but also by the beauty and romance of her words. She became an important literary and spiritual figure in California, much as she had been in Dublin, influencing people like poet Robinson Jeffers, photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston (see portraits below), artist John O’Shea, and composer Harry Partch. She found her faeries again in the sacred land of Point Lobos and in the isolation of her cottage garden on the dunes of Arroyo Grande . http://www.thesunsraven.com/dsellayoung.html

Ella was responsible for introducing her lifelong friend and fellow Irish Republican Army supporter Gavin Arthur, grandson of former President Chester A. Arthur, to the Varian’s, through which he discovered the Oceano Dunes. (see below). Arthur settled in the Dunes in 1930 with the vision of forming a utopian society of like-minded individuals there. Ella would visit often and christened the Dunite settlement Moy Mell, Gaelic for “Pastures of Honey.” She could feel the rhythms of the Dunes and the vibrations in the individual coves.

Chester Allen (Gavin) Arthur III, Moy Mell, 1932. Photo courtesy of Dr. Rudy Gerber. (From The Dunites by Norm Hammond, p. 56).

Another interesting link between Carmel and Halcyon-Oceano were previously mentioned painter John O’Shea and his wife Molly mentioned earlier. They had a place in Carmel Highlands at which Edward Weston first met Ella Young on February 22, 1930 while doing the O’Shea’s portraits. The O’Sheas also spent a lot of time in Halcyon with their friends, the Varians. Weston wrote in his Daybook of the O’Shea sittings, “With them was Ella Young, who impressed me more than any of the party.”(Weston, p. 142). Young also accompanied Taos art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and her husband on a visit to Weston’s studio on February 25th. Luhan and Young visited again on March 25th after which Weston entered, “…Ella Young with her and I asked for a sitting, because I admire her and because her portraits may sell. Ella Young believes in fairies, – and of course that would appeal to me, anything unorthodox does…” Young sat for her portrait on March 31st. Weston wrote of the occasion, “Then I did that fairy-like person, Ella Young, with good results.” (Weston, p. 149).

Left, Ella Young, Carmel, March 31, 1930. Edward Weston portrait. Right, Ella Young, 1929, Ansel Adams Portrait. Photos courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

Ella Young’s cottage in Oceano, 2008. Denise Sallee photo. http://www.thesunsraven.com/dsellayoung.html

Ella Young sat for both Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, both of whom were very impressed by her persona and beliefs. Some very interesting interviews of Ella Young herself, and Gavin Arthur and Ansel Adams specifically pertaining to Young and her circle can be listened to at the following link. http://www.dunescollaborative.org/EllaAudio.html

Gavin Arthur invited part-time Halcyon resident and Kings Road habitue Ellen Janson mentioned earlier and  friend Pauline to be assistant editors of his new publishing venture, Dune Forum. Pauline’s first recorded visit to Moy Mell was in September 1933. (Sun-Hines p. 325). The initial six-page “Contributors Number” (see below) published in late summer 1933 included an opening one-page editorial by Gavin describing the Dunes, their psychological importance being halfway between the two West Coast metropolises of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the aims of the magazine and solicitations for contributions of material from like-minded individuals. Later in the issue he describes the Dunes lifestyle in much detail.

Oceano Dunes, Drawing by John O’Shea. Front Cover, Dune Forum Contributor’s Number, circa August 1933.

Editorial Headquarters for Dune Forum, Moy Mell, 1933-4. Courtesy Schindler Family Collection, Friends of the Schindler House. (Sweeney, p. 111).

Ella Young then described Gavin and Janson:

“Gavin Arthur will make a good editor primarily because he is so man-sided and has such wide views and sympathies. His life is colored too with memories of many people and many places; he has known labour leaders and royal dukes, has looked from the view-point of both, yet kept his mind free. Always an agnostic; poet, rebel, sailor, gentleman, vagabond; born a westerner; cosmopolitan yet proudly a Californian; eager to test, to experiment,— his whole life has been lived in the spirit which motivates this magazine. Such a project has been his life-dream.

Ellen Janson is a recognized poet whose work has appeared in such magazines as the London Mercury, Harper’s, Vogue, Poetry. Born and brought up in Seattle, she is a westerner of the modern generation, tall, free, forward-looking. Although she has spent just enough time in London, Paris, Berlin, New York to be thoroughly cosmopolitan, her heart has always been on this Coast, her home in Los Angeles, her chief inspiration in the Dunes. Her exquisite taste, her sure sense of beauty, will bring to the Dune Forum a distinction of which it will have the right to be proud.”

Bust of  Ellen (Van Volkenburg) Janson, 1931, by Sir Jacob Epstein. Ellen Janson

Janson can be seen in the below 1948 photo on the deck of her Schindler-designed home during the most serious period (late 1940s and early 1950s) of their likely long-term relationship. Schindler apparently previously received the steep hillside lot in payment for design of the Laurelwood Apartments. (Sheine, note 27, p. 283). Janson also wrote the first significant Schindler biography in 1938 which was later included in a “book” he assembled compiling all of his published written articles, a map, notes, a directory, and a list of works which was sent to various publishers in the late 1940s, including Peter Blake at the Museum of Modern Art to try to promote interest in a monograph of his work. (Sheine, p. 265).

Ellen Janson, 1948, Janson Residence, R. M. Schindler. Photo courtesy of the Architecture and Design Collection, UC Santa Barbara. (From The Architecture of R. M. Schindler, p. 164).

Janson also dedicated her self-published collection of verses, Poems, 1920-1949 to RMS, “For Michael, Who Makes All Things Possible.“  The book was printed in a small edition of 100 copies for distribution to her friends; with a short foreword by Ella Young, and with the book design by Schindler and dated “December, 1952″ on colophon. Copy 69 was sent to the Skolnicks, Schindler’s last clients, signed and inscribed by Janson on the colophon: “For Mr. & Mrs. Skolnick [sic] — In memory of R. M. Schindler, who built their beautiful house, and mine also, and who designed this book — Ellen Janson”. She sent the book to the Skolniks with a Christmas card in 1953 in which she wrote, “Dear Skolnicks [sic], I still haven’t told you how much I appreciated your kind note, after Mr. Schindler went; but I know you will understand why I have been so long in answering. It is very hard for me to adjust to being without him. Yet the wonderful inspiration that he always was to me still remains … I am sending you, under separate cover, a copy of the book of my poems that Mr. Schindler had printed during that last year of his life. He designed the cover himself, so it is especially precious to me because we made it together. I don’t know if you care for poetry, but I am sure you will like having it, if only for his sake. Sincerely, Ellen Janson”. The card had RMS’s last holiday note included on a blue 3X5 card which read, “From a snowy / mountain top / Best & Warmest Wisches [sic] / R M Schindler”. (From Vashon Island Books).

Arthur closes the Contributors’ Number with acknowledgments to: John O’Shea who did the cover drawing, Ella Young, Leone Barry, and Harwood White; and for the promised co-operation of Jack Conroy, Lincoln Steffens, Robinson Jeffers, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Sara Bard Field, Charles Erskine, Scott Wood, J. Paget Fredericks, Marie Welsh, Roderick White, Stewart Edward White, and the many other good friends of the Dune Forum.

All seven issues of Dune Forum are available in their entirety in PDF format on-line at Dune Forum.

Oceano Dunes, 1933. Chandler Weston photo. Front cover, Dune Forum Subscribers’ Number, Fall 1933.

Pauline’s first appearance on the Dune Forum masthead as Associate Editor is in the Subscriber’s Number which was published some time in the fall of 1933. (See below left). Her opening editorial in the same issue can be seen below right. She also wrote an article called “Note on the Contemporary Arts” in which she wrote, “Mies van der Rohe in Germany designs a building which says exactly what Chavez in Mexico writes in a sonatina. There is not a superfluous line or tone in either.” She continues on music, “Edgar Varese tells in sound playable orchestrally, of the impact of the electrons in the swirling vortex of the atom, the splitting, the explosions, the shock. In this moment of music (the composition called “Ionization”) he transcends the factor of scale between human being and atom, takes us within the atom (whose interior dynamic necessarily half-deafens us).”

This number also included a Chandler Weston cover photo, the first of three published by Weston family members, poetry by Ellen Janson and letters of support for the new venture from Henry Cowell, Mary Austin, Havelock Ellis, Lincoln Steffens, William Carlos Williams, Jack Conroy, Sara Bard Field and many others. Pauline’s editorial expertise and contacts gained while running The Carmelite came into strong play in making Dune Forum the quality publication that it was.

About this time Pauline was having an affair with Los Angeles Daily News reporter Pat O’Hara. (See Letters from John Cage to Pauline Schindler). It is likely that she met O’Hara at Moy Mell. Pat was introduced to the Oceano Dunes through Dunite Elwood Decker, whom he met at a party in Ojai, where a number of the Dunites would periodically make there way to attend events by previously-mentioned Jiddu Krishnamurti. Pat had gone to Ojai to visit some nudist friends when he met Elwood at a party in late 1931. Elwood read Pat some of his poems about the dunes which inspired Pat to visit. Pat found his way to Moy Mell and quickly became good friends with Gavin Arthur around the time of the creation of Dune Forum.  Finding a ready-made Irish community of previously-mentioned painter John O’Shea, John Varian and Ella Young, an Oceano resident and long-time friend of Arthur from their days together in Ireland supporting the Irish revolt. (Gavin Arthur Interview About Ella Young)

Pat O’Hara, circa 1934. Courtesy of Dr. Rudy Gerber. (From The Dunites, by Norm Hammond, p. 62).

The January 22, 1934, issue of Time Magazine published an article about Arthur and his new magazine. “At Moy Mell, near Oceano, Calif., halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, appeared last week the first Subscriber’s Number of the monthly Dune Forum, to “express the creative thought of America looking not toward Europe but toward the West.” Editor of Dune Forum is Chester Alan Arthur Jr., 33-year-old grandson of the 21st President of the U. S. Five years ago Editor Arthur worked his way around the world on S. S. K. I. Luckenbach, for “material.” In March 1932, his wife sued him for divorce for non support, said ”he just wouldn’t work.” Under the pseudonym of Gavin Arthur which he uses to create an ”independent name,” Editor Arthur last week thought he had ”sufficient financial backing and . . . literary support to make Dune Forum the outstanding magazine of culture and controversy in the West.” Time Magazine

Westways, February 1934. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

Pauline wrote the above article, “Oceano Dunes and Their Mystics” in the fall of 1933 and submitted it to editor Phil Townsend Hanna’s Touring Topics to hopefully help market Dune Forum. By the time it was published in February 1934, the magazine had changed it’s name to Westways and Dune Forum was into it’s third issue. The article describes the Dunes and surrounding environs and local inhabitants including Ella Young and Gavin Arthur and the impending publication of Dune Forum. I speculate that the two people saluting the sun on top of the Dunes are nudists Elwood Decker and Pat O’Hara who had to don bathing suits for the photo shoot. One of them, most likely O’Hara, wrote a “Rejoinder” to Loring Andrews’ article “Nudism – What Is It?” for the January 1934 issue under the nom de plume “A Goofy Nudist.”

The January 15, 1934 issue of Dune Forum above featured a cover photo by Brett Weston and an editorial by Pauline titled “North South” in which she reports on a school to be designed by Richard Neutra and Krisnamurti’s impending visitation to Ojai. The issue also contained poetry by Ella Young and an article on Communism by Ella Winter, who succeeded Pauline as editor of The Carmelite. Her page 5 contributor’s bio reads, “Ella Winter is known to many as Mrs. Lincoln Steffens. She is a writer and lecturer highly valued by the Communist Party. She is the author of “Red Virtue”, and represents The New Masses in California.”

The February 15th issue features a Willard Van Dyke cover photo of the dunes. Edward Weston, a longtime friend and mentor of Van Dyke and fellow Group f.64 member along with Ansel Adams, visited the Dunes with him for the first time just weeks earlier, more than likely through his connection with Pauline, to obtain cover photos for this and future issues.

Willard Van Dyke, 1932. Edward Weston portrait. Photo courtesy of Center for Creative Photography. http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/

The opening editorial reviews Ella Winter’s article in the previous issue, “In Carmel, Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter seemed equally convinced that unless every intelligent person throws himself body and soul into the Communist Cause we will soon have a Fascist Terror in this country that will put both Mussolini and Hitler into the shade…” and references composer John Cage’s first visit to Moy Mell and includes his “Counterpoint” to Roderick White’s critique on “Modern Music.” Poetry by John Varian was published posthumously. This may have been about the time Pauline’s relationship with Pat O’Hara temporarily ended and her affair with John Cage began. Cage stayed at Kings Road at the end of 1933 and staged concerts there which might have been where they met. (Sweeney, p. 110 and Sun-Hines, p. 325).

Cage attended the February issue editorial meeting at Moy Mell and possibly began the affair with Pauline shortly thereafter. Cage visited Pauline in Ojai on several occasions in early 1935 and dedicated his 1934 “Composition for Three Voices” to her. Their affair is documented in the letters at the following link. (http://www.ex-tempore.org/ExTempore96/cage96.html) The letters indicate a couple references to Pat [O'Hara] thus John was likely aware that Pauline may have been seeing him concurrently. They also discuss mutual composer friends such as Henry Cowell, Richard Buhlig, Schoenberg, Edgar Vardse and others.

The first letter references his February visit to Moy Mell and was written on the back of his “Counterpoint” typescript written for the February issue. It reads:

“Dear Pauline:

Gavin gave me Roderick White’s article and asked me to answer it and it somehow gave an impetus with the attached result. Hazel [Watrous] and Edward [Weston (most likely his first visit to the Dunes)] have not yet returned and Mary [McMeen], acting secretary to Dune Forum], Don [Sample, Cage's companion], and I are having dinner tonite at the Dunes with Gavin [Arthur]. Probably by tomorrow we will leave as Don is very anxious to get settled. Dr. Gerber was over last nite and proved very stimulating. Henry Okuda made sukiyaki. The pump stopped working according to Don, W.C.’s up the Western Coast cease functioning as we approach.

Love to you and Mark.

John.

How’s Mozart?

Don sends his love too and thinks of you often”

John Cage at Black Mountain College circa late 1940s. From various internet sources.

Pauline also included in this issue estranged husband RMS’s important three-page piece, “Space Architecture” which described his architectural design philosophy. After reading her other writings I can’t help but think that she had a hand in editing this article.

The March 15th number features another John O’Shea drawing of the Dunes on the cover, another article by Ella Winter, “Outside Agitators” on farm labor activism, and an article by Henry Cowell, “Double Counterpoint” critiquing Roderick White’s and John Cage’s articles on modern music in the previous issue.  “Four Dune Poems” by Ellen Janson, and “Los Angeles: The Ugly Duckling” a love-hate critique by editor Dunham Thorp were also included. Pauline’s issue-ending two-page article, “The Guilty Liberal” was basically a call-to-arms for liberals to make their voices heard more loudly.

The April 15th issue cover featured a recent Edward Weston photo, likely his first published photo of the Dunes, and presaged his now iconic 1936 Oceano Dunes portfolio. Also included are poems by Gavin Arthur and fellow Dunite Hugo Seelig, and numerous articles by editor Dunham Thorp.

Ansel Adams, 1933. Willard Van Dyke portrait. (From “Modernist Photography and the Group f.64″ by Therese Thau Heyman in On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art 1900-1950, p. 249).

The May 15th number, which would turn out to be the illustrious publication’s last, featured the above Ansel Adams cover photo. In this issue Pauline placed Richard Neutra’s three-page article, “Balancing the Two Determinates of Creation” which discoursed upon architectural functionalism. She was also likely responsible for Dr. Alexander Kaun’s article, “With Trotsky in Prinkipo” being published. Kaun commissioned Schindler to design a beach house for him in Richmond that same year. Kaun’s contributor’s bio reads, “Dr. Alexander Kaun is Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of California in Berkeley. It was last summer on his way back from the Balkans that he had this interview with Trotsky.”

Coincidentally, Pauline’s influence was beginning to pay off for both Neutra and RMS as Neutra’s house for Galka Scheyer in the Hollywood Hills and Schindler’s Kaun beach house in Richmond were being completed just about this time. (See below photos). This same year Neutra was also finishing up on a second-story addition to a town house in Hollywood for Rosalind Rajagopal, caretaker and secret lover of Krishnamurti and later founder of Happy Valley School, whom he met through C. H. van der Leeuw, financier of his VDL Research House. Rosalind and Galka Scheyer also became close friends at about the same time. Scheyer gave painting classes to Rajagopal and renowned ceramicist Beatrice Wood, also a big Krisnamurti follower, who moved to Ojai just to be near him. Wood and Krishnamurti also played major roles in establishing Happy Valley School which was attended by Raymond Neutra and Erica Weston, Brett’s daughter. (July 23, 2010 e-mail message from Raymond Neutra and Lives in the Shadow With J. Krishnamurti by Radha Sloss, Universe, 2000, p. 136).

Galka Scheyer House with painting by Lyonel Feininger, Hollywood Hills, Richard Neutra, 1934. Arthur Luckhaus photo. From RN-Hines, p. 117.

Kaun Beach House, Richmond, 1934, R. M. Schindler. Uncredited photo. From “A beach house for Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Kaun, Richmond, Calif. R. M. Schindler, Architect”, California Arts & Architecture, May, 1937, p. 26. (From my collection).

Rajagopal Remodel, Gower St., Hollywood, 1934, Richard Neutra. Raymond Neutra photo. (Raymond Neutra Photo Archive)

In his Daybook, Edward Weston mentions a January 3, 1929 dinner party he attended at Kings Road a week before his move to Carmel hosted by the Neutra’s which included Greta and J. R. Davidson and the Kauns, “…I like Richard Neutra so much, and found Kaun and the others stimulating, so the evening was a rare gathering I do not regret. Even the showing of my work was not the usual boresome task. Neutra is always keenly responsive, and knows whereof he speaks, Representing in America an important exhibit of photography to be held in Germany this summer (see reference and covers of the Film und Foto exhibition above), he has given me complete charge of collecting the exhibit, choosing the ones whose work I consider worthy of showing, and of writing the catalogue foreword to the American group.” (Weston, p. 102-3).

The issue also included an Ella Young review of John O’Shea’s April 23-May 21 one-man show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Arthur paid Young a fitting tribute in her contributor’s bio, “Ella Young needs no introduction, having herself introduced the editors in the initial number. She it was who christened this oasis Moy Mell which in Irish means the “Meadow of Honey”—the part of the Celtic Heaven world set apart for poets. She is likewise the Godmother of the Dune Forum.”

Depression era financial reality finally set in and publication ceased after the May number. Gavin Arthur left Moy Mell shortly thereafter. The next place he pops up in print is the November 26, 1934 issue of Time Magazine in which an article, “Recovery: Utopians Eastward” reports on the whereabouts of Arthur and Dunham Thorp after Dune Forum folded earlier that year. They had moved to Utopian Society founder Eugene John Reed’s Greenwich Village apartment in New York. “Men strange to the janitor had indeed been climbing the stairs to visit the new tenants of No. 23 Barrow St., Apartment 4 C. Greenwich Village. The chief tenant was Eugene John Reed, 47, who was once a partner in an investment banking house in Denver. His co-tenants were Chester A. Arthur Jr., 33-year-old grandson of the 21st President of the U. S., and Dunham Thorp, onetime editor of a literary magazine (Dune Forum) in California. All three had taken up residence in Greenwich Village with a small table, some wicker chairs, a few cots. Thus did Utopia move East.” (Time Magazine)

The last significant event to take place at Moy Mell occured on Christmas Day, 1934. Although accounts differ somewhat, it appears that Gavin met world-renowned Indian mystic and spiritual master Meher Baba on a trip to Los Angeles earlier that year and invited him to come to the Dunes for a visit. Baba did indeed pay a visit with eighteen of his followers, including Norina Matchabelli, wife of Georges Matchabelli, known for the popular perfume brand. Norina had previously arranged for a special cabin to be built for Baba, but he chose instead to stay in Gavin’s cabin. Gavin, by then in New York was not there to host Baba and his entourage. (See below).

Meher Baba, sixth from the left, and entourage at Moy Mell, Christmas, 1934Meher Baba, sixth from the left, and entourage at Moy Mell, Christmas, 1934. (From Rogue Knights Blog).

Pauline’s next modernism marketing activity was acting as guest-editor for the January 1935 issue of California Arts & Architecture. Editor and publisher George Oyer courageously entrusted her to select the entire content and verbiage for the twenty pages of material she included. She editorialized on the masthead page where she was listed as “Associate Editor of This Issue” and under a photo of the spec house in Westwood her parents commissioned from RMS, “This issue of California Arts & Architecture has for its special subject that contemporary movement in architecture which is called “modern”…Contemporary creative architecture*, which for lack of a truly definitve word we call “modern”, is organic, based upon principles of structure and spirit profoundly realized.” (See entire editorial below left). *(The same title Pauline used for her 1930-32 traveling exhibition mentioned above).

California Arts & Architecture, January 1935, Modern Architecture Issue, guest editor, Pauline Schindler. (From my collection).

This was the first issue of a magazine in Southern California dedicated entirely to modern architecture and also included work by Richard Neutra (Lovell Health House, VDL Research House, Koblick, Mosk, Beard and Sten-Frenke Residences), R. M Schindler (Oliver, Gibling and Wolfe Residences), J. R. Davidson (The Bachelors’ Haberdashery and Wilshire Blvd. Shops), Kem Weber, Lloyd Wright (Jobyna Howland Residence), Jock Peters (L. E. Sheperd and Gilks Residences with photos by Chandler Weston), Morrow & Morrow (Henry Cowell Residence), Hunter & Feil (Gude’s Shoe Store) and a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright, “Modern Architecture Acknowledges the Light Which Kindled It” by Pauline Schindler. (See above right). Harwell Hamilton Harris was featured with a two-page spread of his 1934 Pauline Lowe House and an article under his byline, “In Designing the Small House.” Pauline also included a slightly reworked version of RMS’s “Space Architecture” with two photos and floor plans of his Wolfe House on Catalina Island.

Publisher George Oyer’s editorial in the same issue titled “California – As We See It” reads, “For some months we have been considering the advisability of recording some of the work of our California modern designers. To the layman, the term modern applies to any house or building with dominating horizontal or vertical lines: to any shop front with polished aluminum or bronze wainscoting. The term modern applied to architecture and interior furnishings has but a vague meaning….It is quite impossible to show all of the distinctive work of our outstanding architects, nor are we able to include in this issue the work of all of our California modernists. In the selection of photographs and articles we are grateful to Miss Pauline Schindler for her able assistance. Whether or not you like it, is beside the point. It is here so we acknowledge it.”See my related post at the following link. http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/california-arts-architecture.html

PGS was successful in producing an even more extensive guest-edited theme issue on “The Modern Movement in Architecture” for the December 1935 issue of Architect & Engineer which featured Richard Neutra’s Galka Scheyer Residence, VDL Research House, Ring Plan School and Corona Avenue School in Bell with accompanying articles “Comparative Studies on the Construction and Cost of the Activity Classroom” and “A Revision of the Concept of the School Building: A New Plan for California Schools” and Koblick Residence in Atherton with the article “Problems of Pre-Fabrication.” Work by RMS included the articles, “Furniture and the Modern House: A Theory of Interior Design”, and the Wolfe (with Brett Weston photos), Oliver and Buck Residences. This entree enabled RMS’s follow-up article “Furniture and the Modern House” in the March 1936 issue of the same magazine.

The Museum of Modern Art’s Philip Johnson finally recognizing the importance of what was happening in California, organized an exhibition “Contemporary Architecture in California” which ran from September 30 to October 24, 1935 which included work by Neutra, Schindler, William W. Wurster and others. The exhibition traveled to 20 other locations from 1935-1939. Still feeling the sting of being left out of MOMA’s 1932 Modern Architecture Exhibition, Schindler almost dropped out of this show when he read Arthur Millier’s September 15 Brush Strokes column in the Los Angeles Times , “An exhibit of models, plans, photographs, of recent work of California modern architects, with special emphasis on Richard J. Neutra, is announced by New York’s Museum of Modern Art for October 2 to 24.” Ernestine Fantl of MOMA reassured him that was not the case and he decided to remain in the show. (Sheine, p. 256). This show was undoubtedly influenced by Pauline’s 1930 “Contemporary Creative Architecture in California Exhibition” and triggered by the January 1935 California Arts & Architecture Modern Architecture Issue she guest-edited.

Pauline’s gradual shift from Socialism to Communism evident in her Dune Forum editorials resulted in her in 1935 writing for the Western Worker, “the Western Organ of the Communist Party USA” as she coined the publication in an August 30, 1935 letter to her mother. She had also just spent the previous month with Mark at Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas which was subsequently investigated by the Arkansas House of Representatives as a “Communist” organization. (Sweeney, p. 111). Soon thereafter Pauline returned to Kings Road for good. She had finally tired of her vagabond existence and was ready to settle down. She would communicate with her ex-husband and house-mate RMS by letter for the rest of her days at Kings Road until his 1953 death. (Sweeney). At one time Pauline had expressed an interest in doing RMS’s biography but that would have been hard to accomplish communicating only via letter as they had chosen to do.

The last, but not least, luminous benefactor of being in Pauline’s circle was Esther McCoy who began working for RMS as a draftsperson at Kings Road in 1944. She was introduced to Kings Road a few years earlier by Schindler neighbor Theodore Dreiser (see below), became intrigued by the house and befriended Pauline. She was encouraged to apply for the drafting position by Pauline who heard RMS had an opening due to his draftsman going off to war. (McCoy Oral History). In my opinion, this event turned out to be the symbolic passing of the baton from a writer who was trying to create history through her promotional work of the modern movement and chronicling its events as they occurred to another who was destined to be Southern California’s first serious historian of modern architecture.

RMS and Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Jefferson Art Gallery, Santa Monica, 1945. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

McCoy (see below) began her illustrious career with her apropos first article, “Schindler, Space Architect”, published in the Fall 1945 number of Direction and the rest as they say is “History.” (See “Being There: Esther McCoy the Accidental Architectural Historian” by Susan Morgan, in the Spring 2009 issue of the Archives of American Art Journal, pp. 24-26 for a more detailed account of McCoy’s genesis as an architectural historian and her first architectural article. Morgan has a McCoy biography in progress and is publishing an Esther McCoy Reader to be released this fall.)

Esther McCoy, 1944. (McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art)

PGS’s driving need to be at the forefront of progressive thought and salon mistress of all things modern in the arts and architecture landed her in some very interesting positions indeed and allowed her to befriend an extremely interesting and influential circle of artistic luminaries. Her wandering existence between 1927 and 1936 and Mark’s enrollment in at the private Ojai Valley School would not have been possible without the continued financial support of her father Edmund. He not only provided funds for land purchase and construction of Kings Road and loans when RMS’s clients’ fees were late in arriving, but also supported RMS with commissions for their Westwood spec house in 1925-28 and subsequent 1935 remodel and for two unbuilt residences in the 1940s.

Edmund also subsidized Pauline’s editorial efforts at The Carmelite. He helped with the rent for her stay at Wright’s Storer House and most likely all of the other places she leased while away from Kings Road. Thus the Giblings’ unflagging support of their daughter enabled her efforts to widen the understanding and acceptance of modern architecture, the avant-garde arts and progressive social causes. Her accomplishments were remarkable considering RMS’s constant string of infidelities and sometime lack of cooperation. The members of her inner circle, including RMS and Richard Neutra who received numerous commissions through her salon contacts, exhibitions and articles; Edward, Brett and Chandler Weston; Galka Scheyer; John Cage; Esther McCoy and countless others, benefited significantly as did we all for the rich modernistic tapestry she wove.

It is my hope with this post to spark further research into the life and times of the enigmatic free spirit of Pauline Gibling Schindler whose modernism marketing efforts and editorialism during the late 1920s and early 1930s are sorely under-recognized and under-valued. I would greatly appreciate any feedback on this post and any leads to further related material.

Pauline Schindler at Kings Road, November 1941. Courtesy Schindler Family Collection, Friends of the Schindler House. From “Life at Kings Road: As It Was 1920-1940″ by Robert Sweeney in the MOCA exhibition catalog The Architecture of R. M. Schindler organized by Elizabeth A. T. Smith and Michael Darling.

Neutra’s “Skyline Apartments” Penthouse, Westways, 1934

Westways, 1934. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

I ran across the above article yesterday while researching something else. It’s a project that I have never seen before in all my years of Neutra research.  Barbara Lamont, frequent architecture and housing contributor to Westways Magazine, in this article, “California Castles in the Air”, described numerous recently built penthouses in Los Angeles and the increasing trend towards building more. She describes and includes a photo of the home of Mr. James Oviatt atop his Oviatt Building in downtown Los Angeles, a photo of the Norman-French penthouse at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Blvd., and references penthouse units at the El Royale on N. Rossmore, the Taggart, Highbourne Gardens, Sunset Towers, the Piccadilly, the La Belle Tour, and the Chateau Elysee in Hollywood. The article discusses why in a city with so much land would people “resort to crowded Manhattan’s expedient of building houses on top of other houses?”


Lamont then goes on to list the advantages penthouses bring such as reduced maintenance costs, convenience for traveling, concierge service and nice surroundings. She then questions the need for so much space in a penthouse and says there could be many more of them if they were smaller. To illustrate her point, editor Phil Townsend Hanna commissioned Richard Neutra to draw a sketch and floor plan for a modern one-bedroom penthouse to be used in the article. (See above). The “Skyline Apartments” drawn on a Hollywood hillside slope with a view towards the ocean include Neutra’s plan with a “small, efficient kitchen, snug dining-room, spacious living-room, and single bedroom no larger than comfort demands.”


“The last requisite, modernity, is supplied by the lines of the house design, which are low, racy and dynamic, with clean-cut angles and wide sweeping curves. The design calls for plenty of roof space, so the occupant can live and sleep out of doors. The house is, in fact, a country home in the middle of a city, with fresh air and high seclusion.”

Beach Apartments (Project), 1926, from Richard Neutra: Buildings and Projects edited by Willy Boesiger, Editions Girsberger, 1950. (From my collection).

Neutra’s unbuilt 1926 Beach Apartments above, his highly successful 1927 Jardinette Apartments and other unbuilt apartment projects under the auspices of the Neutra – Schindler AGIC partnership in the late 1920s, not to mention his Rush City Reformed skyscrapers, are a strong indication of the significant amount of thought Neutra had given to high density planning and apartment design by the time of the above article. Also interesting is the fact that the “Skyline” penthouse design was quickly usurped by apprentice Raphael Soriano for his 1936 Lipetz House in Silverlake.

Lipetz House, Silverlake, Raphael Soriano,1936. From Raphael Soriano by Wolfgang Wagener, Phaidon, 2002. Julius Shulman photo. (From my collection).

The above Lipetz House by Soriano has a remarkably similar floor plan down to the semi-circular living room with floor-to-ceiling windows and grand piano. See above and my related post at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/julius-shulman-chronicles-1936.html for more Neutra projects exhibiting this particular semi-circular design element. Also see my post on Phil Townsend Hanna’s Touring Topics – Westways editorship and it’s impact on Southern California modernism at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/03/touring-topics-westways-hanna-years.html.

Julius Shulman Chronicles: March 15, 1952

Los Angeles Times Headline, March 15, 1952. From ProQuest

Heavy rains on the ides of March, 1952 resulted in a major and rather disastrous life-event for photographer Julius Shulman, his family and his beloved home at 7875 Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills. He had met architect Raphael Soriano March 5, 1936, the same fateful day he met Richard Neutra, befriended him and in 1947 chose him to design his home and photography studio which has since become City of Los Angeles Historical Cultural Monument No. 325. (See my related post at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/julius-shulman-chronicles-1936.html).

Shulman house under construction circa May 1949. Julius Shulman photo from “Julius Shulman: The Building of My Home and Studio”, Nazraeli Press, 2009. (From my collection).<

Construction began on the house in May 1949. From the above photo it can be seen how heavy construction equipment including this bulldozer was needed to carve out a building pad from this steep, two acre parcel in Laurel Canyon. Shulman, wife Emma and four-year old daughter Judy moved into their steel-framed dream home on March 5, 1950, fourteen years to the day after the official beginning of his professional architectural photography career. (See my related post at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/julius-shulman-residence-7875-woodrw.html).

First publication of the Shulman Residence in “A Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Southern California”, edited by Frank Harris and Weston Bonenberger, designed by Alvin Lustig, 1951. (From my collection).

The above photo of the house was taken shortly after moving in circa 1951. Note the landscaping just beginning to become established. Daughter Judy can be seen looking out the sliding glass door. The Shulman’s felt privileged to live in their Soriano home as Shulman states in his autobiography “Julius Shulman: Architecture and Its Photography”, “An unexpected bonus was thrust into our lives: Soriano was the foremost pioneer in designing steel-framed structures in his world of architecture. How fortunate for us, for during successive decades, seismic activity left us untouched.”

Julius Shulman being taken to the hospital on a stretcher with a broken leg after a landslide occurred in the heavy rains of March 15, 1952. Los Angeles Examiner photo from http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/EXM-N-9542-029~1

A torrential rainstorm on March 15, 1952 created massive runoff from the slope behind the Shulman home which overwhelmed the newly-planted landscaping and brought down tons of mud, boulders and debris crashing into the garage and rear of the house. Shulman’s valiant attempt to shore things up to keep the slide from entering the house resulted in a broken leg and a wet ambulance trip to the hospital. His log book indicates he was out of commission for close to five weeks until the leg had healed well enough to get back on his feet. At the time Shulman was averaging about one-and-a-half assignments per day so he took quite a hit to the pocketbook as well.

Landslide damage resulting from the heavy rains of March 15, 1952. Julius Shulman photo from “Environment and Design in Housing” by Lois Davidson Gottlieb, Julius Shulman, Photography Consultant. (From my collection).

Landslide damage resulting from the heavy rains of March 15, 1952. Julius Shulman photo from “Environment and Design in Housing” by Lois Davidson Gottlieb, Julius Shulman, Photography Consultant. (From my collection).

Shulman quickly recovered from his broken leg, repaired the house and attacked the hillside with a vengeance building retaining walls out of stacked concrete. He then planted countless other varieties of vegetation that have long since fully matured as seen in the photo below. Over the last 58 years the grounds have grown into a forest of redwood, eucalyptus, jade, and agave, cut by trails that lead to the property’s edge.

Shulman House from the hillside above. From “Julius Shulman Does His Own House” by Julius Shulman and David Tseklenis, Nazraeli Press, 2008. (From my collection).

In a December 29, 1978 letter to Soriano from his autobiography Shulman writes, “Our home seems to accelerate in spirit and excitement as the years pass by. We finally have the living area especially, furnished in a most friendly and enveloping manner. The garden is even more exciting for Olga (Shulman’s second wife) has transformed it into a flowery retreat. The above added to the density of our jungle of trees makes this home in my estimation the most complete in every respect. Of course, that is particularly so because we use it twenty-four hours a day. We are home at least four to six days each week so you can imagine how indebted we are to you for having made it possible; a rare feat for an architect. I say that because with the passing years I truthfully have seen very few complete homes. So much is done for architectural trickery or the decoration is an obvious attempt to gild or to impress people and too often the gardens are manicured and stiff, formal statements.”

One can hardly fault Julius for creating his jungle. He was bound and determined to not have a repeat of the scary events of March 15, 1952. He also just loved his garden and never tired of proudly showing it off to each and every visitor to his studio and home.

California Arts & Architecture: A Steppingstone to Fame: Harwell Hamilton Harris and John Entenza: Two Case Studies

(Click on images to enlarge)

California Arts & Architecture, March, 1940, Weston Havens House, Berkeley, 1941, Harwell Hamilton Harris. (From my collection).

The above cover of the March, 1940 issue of California Arts & Architecture featuring a cross-section of Harwell Hamilton Harris’s masterpiece, the Weston Havens House in Berkeley, represents a major milestone in his life as well as John Entenza’s. For Harris it marked the end of his very productive involvement with the publication most responsible for establishing his career. For Entenza it heralded the beginning of his long and illustrious editorship of a publication which had been evolving since 1935 into one of the most respected purveyors of modernism in the country. The story of  this watershed event in the history of the magazine and the lives of the men unfolds below.

“Harwell Hamilton Harris” by Lisa Germany, University of Texas Press, 1991. Cover photo, staircase in the Weston Havens House, Berkeley, by Henry Bowles, 1985. (From my collection).

For a detailed look at Harwell Hamilton Harris’s life I strongly recommend the Lisa Germany monograph “Harwell Hamilton Harris”, University of Texas Press, 1991 (see above) featured in my recent post on Harris http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/harwell-hamilton-harris-houses-of.html and from which I obtained much of the following material (to be cited below as “Germany”). Also see Esther McCoy’s “The Second Generation”, Gibbs Smith, 1984 (McCoy SG) for a very insightful chapter on Harris. Harris’s oral history, The Organic View of Design Oral History Transcript” is also another great source of material on his life and can be viewed online at at  http://www.archive.org/details/organicviewofdes00harr (UCLA). For material on John Entenza I recommend “Case Study Houses 1945-1962″ by Esther McCoy (CSH), Barbara Goldstein’s “Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years” (Goldstein), “Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses” edited by Elizabeth A. T. Smith (BFML) and Taschen’s  “Arts & Architecture: The Complete Reprint 1945-1967.”

Harwell Hamilton Harris was born on July 2, 1903, in Redlands, California. Harris moved to Los Angeles in 1923, where he transferred from Pomona College after his second year to Otis Art Institute to pursue his studies in sculpture and painting. He also studied under noted abstract colorist Stanton MacDonald-Wright beginning in 1925. A visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House circa 1927 suggested by fellow sculpture student Ruth Sowden, who was then having a house built by Lloyd Wright, and immediately afterward viewing Wright’s Wasmuth Portfolio at the L.A. Public Library was an epiphany for him to study architecture instead. At the age of 25 he applied to University of California Berkeley to that end and was accepted for the fall of 1928. (McCoy, SG).

Meanwhile another Otis student told Harris about Richard Neutra’s Jardinette Apartments then under construction in Hollywood. Noting the architect’s address on the project sign, Harris went Schindler’s Kings Road House where he received another indoctrination in modern architecture and met both Schindler and Neutra. Ironically, it was Wright’s Wasmuth Portfolio that also influenced both Schindler and Neutra to emigrate to the United States to meet Wright and begin their brilliant careers. Neutra, needing help at the time, convinced the impressionable Harris that he would learn much more by going to work for him and taking night classes than he ever would in college. He canceled his plans for Berkeley and immediately started working in the Schindler House drafting room on completing the finishing touches on the working drawings of the Lovell Health House. (McCoy SG).

Germany, p. 30.

Moderne Bauformen, August, 1932, Lovell Health House. Willard Morgan photo. Courtesy Neutra Papers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

While working for Neutra alongside Gregory Ain until 1933, Harris learned the importance of publishing one’s work in furthering one’s career from master publicist Richard Neutra. The publicity Neutra generated must have been very influential and inspiring indeed as he had at least 250 articles published all over the world featuring the Jardinette Apartments, his ground-breaking Lovell Health House, all of the various manifestations of Rush City Reformed, the Vienna Werkbundsiedlung Model House, and Neutra’s personal residence, the VDL Research House during Harris’s employment. Harris also saw how Neutra’s ability to get his built and unbuilt projects globally published established a foundation from which to build his practice.

Wie Baut Amerika? by Richard Neutra, Julius Hoffmann, Stuttgart, 1927. (From my collection).

Amerika: Die Stilbildung des Neuen Bauens in den Vereinigten Staaten by Richard J. Neutra, Verlag Von Anton Schroll, Wien, 1930. Photo montage includes images by Bret Weston. (From my collection).

Neutra’s 1927 book “Wie Baut Amerika? and 1930 book “Amerika” (see above) must have instilled a sense of pride in Harris to be working for some of such international renown. Neutra also published an article under Harris’s byline in the April 1930 issue of Die Form “Ein amerikanischer Flughafen” describing the Lehigh Portland Cement Airport Design Competition which was also incorporated into Rush City Reformed. During this period, Harris became familiar with the principles of the Modernist movement and served as secretary of the American chapter of the Congrés Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) which was headed by Neutra. Harris and Ain prepared various elements of Rush City Reformed for Neutra to present at the 1930 CIAM III conference in Brussels during his well-received year-long world lecture tour following completion and extensive publication of his Lovell Health House.

Die Form, April 15, 1932. Ring Plan School, Rush City Reformed, Richard Neutra. Courtesy Neutra Papers, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

Harris was also witness to how Neutra was able to parlay this recognition into inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal Modern Architecture: International Exhibition in 1932. (See exhibition catalog below). Harris worked on the Lovell Health House model below which was included in the MOMA exhibition.

Under Neutra’s direction Harris also played a significant part in bringing the show to Los Angeles. The exhibition needed monied local sponsors to guarantee a venue so Neutra assigned Harris and Ain the task of calling businessmen for support. Harris called John Bullock and convinced him to become one of the directors of institutions subscribing to the exhibition (listed as such in the below catalog) and the show opened in his recently opened art deco showplace, Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store, in the summer of 1932. (Germany). Neutra published a review of the exhibition in the July-August, 1932 issue of California Arts & Architecture which included a photo of his Lovell Health House. The show garnered much local coverage with 20 articles in the L.A. Times beginning in February through August 20, 1932 coinciding with the closing of the Summer Olympic Games also being held in Los Angeles. (“International Stylists’ Designs Thrill Crowds“, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1932, pp. 16-17).

Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, catalog edited by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell-Hitchcock, Museum of Modern Art, 1932. Lists Mr. John G. Bullock, President Bullock’s Inc. Los Angeles as one of the Directors of Institutions Subscribing to the Exhibition. (From my collection).

Lovell Health House Model. From Pencil Points Special Neutra Issue, July 1937, p. 413. (From my collection).

Neutra enlisted Harris to build the above Lovell Health House model for an exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry for which he was paid $600 in 1930. The model eventually made its way to a museum in Rockefeller Center in New York. (“Life and Shape” by Richard Neutra, p. 259.)

Harris left the Neutra office in 1933 to establish his own independent practice in Los Angeles. His first commissions were for small homes based on the modular modernist principles he had learned from his mentors, Neutra and Schindler. His first significant built project, the Pauline Lowe House (1934) in Altadena, was first published in the October, 1934 issue of House Beautiful, one month after Neutra’s first appearance in the same magazine with his Sten-Frenke House.

Harris’s association with Richard Neutra’s circle paid big dividends as he was included in the January, 1935 special modern architecture and design issue of California Arts &amp; Architecture which was guest-edited by Pauline Schindler. Harris was featured with a two-page spread of his 1934 Pauline Lowe House and an article under his byline, “In Designing the Small House.” This was possibly the first issue of a magazine in Southern California dedicated entirely to modern architecture and also included work by Richard Neutra (Lovell Health House, VDL Research House, Koblick, Mosk, Beard and Sten-Frenke Residences), R. M Schindler (Oliver, Gibling and Wolfe Residences), J. R. Davidson, Kem Weber, Lloyd Wright, Jock Peters, Morrow &amp; Morrow and a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright, “Modern Architecture Acknowledges the Light Which Kindled It” by Pauline Schindler.

This same cast of characters (minus Harris) were the subject of a traveling exhibition “What is Modern Architecture?” with venues at UCLA, the California Art Center at Barnsdall Park and the Plaza Art Center during 1930-31. (“Art Club Presents Exhibition: Contemporary Creative Architecture To Be Shown”, L.A. Times, June 22, 1930 plus many other articles). This small tribe of early L.A. Moderns seemingly headed by Neutra were in a constant struggle to spread the gospel of Modernism to the uneducated masses as a means to drum up commissions. Harris must have been thrilled to have finally been included with this crowd and their gradually growing portfolio of built work.

Publisher George Oyer’s courageous January editorial, “California – As We See It” reads, “For some months we have been considering the advisability of recording some of the work of our California modern designers. To the layman, the term modern applies to any house or building with dominating horizontal or vertical lines: to any shop front with polished aluminum or bronze wainscoting. The term modern applied to architecture and interior furnishings has but a vague meaning….It is quite impossible to show all of the distinctive work of our outstanding architects, nor are we able to include in this issue the work of all of our California modernists. In the selection of photographs and articles we are grateful to Miss Pauline Schindler for her able assistance. Whether or not you like it, is beside the point. It is here so we acknowledge it.”

Esther McCoy wrote in “The Second Generation”, “The small band of Moderns was fortunate in having California Arts &amp; Architecture to publish its buildings.” (SG, p. 42). Likewise, Lisa Germany states on p. 71 of her 1985 University of Texas exhibition catalog Harwell Hamilton Harris, “Throughout the 1920s and ’30s and into the ’40s, the California House became widely known as the latest in residential design. During these years the magazine California Arts &amp; Architecture was the sounding board for all things Modern, particularly those having to do with architecture.” She goes on to list the seminal January, 1935 modern architecture issue and many soon to follow articles as examples.

This issue met with much negative criticism in the East Coast establishment architectural press with H. Van Buren Magonigle, FAIA writing in the March, 1935 issue of Pencil Points dismissed the movement in California as a “flurry.” “Modern houses, he wrote, looked alike wherever they were built, and nothing about them suggested a home. They do not seem to be built for real people leading real lives.” He further chastised the editorial advisory board’s AIA members for their involvement. (McCoy SG, p. 42). Modernist architect Irving F. Morrow whose work was also included in the January issue penned a full-page rebuttal to Magonigle’s on-going tirade against modern architecture in the June issue.

California Arts & Architecture, January, 1935. Pauline Lowe House, Harwell Hamilton Harris. (From my collection).

Harris gained much favorable publicity when his Lowe house design was plagiarized as an entry in the 1934 General Electric Small Homes Competition by architects R. Paul Schweikher and Theodore W. Lamb who won the $2,500 first prize. After seeing the news of his stolen design winning the competition in April 1, 1935 issue of Time Magazine Harris convinced California Arts & Architecture publisher George Oyer to run an expose in his May issue. The article, “Concerning Competitions” compared the almost identical floor plans and nearly verbatim descriptive language and concluded, “While Messers. Schweikher and Lamb win the money, we still insist that a “Californian Wins HONORS in National Competition.” Oyer concurrently sent his article to other publications and Architectural Forum (“California Charges“, June 1935, p. 42) and Aperitif (“What constitutes Plagiarism?” by Pauline Schindler, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1935) published similar pieces garnering overwhelmingly favorable national publicity for Harris over the scandal.

From that point on, Harris was the fair-haired boy of California Arts & Architecture which thereafter was the first to publish all of his work. (UCLA, p. 130). The November, 1935 issue featured Harris’s Graham Laing House under the title, “A Frank Lloyd Wright House with a Hat On.” (See below). Oyer died shortly thereafter and Harris and fiance Jean Murray Bangs, also an occasional contributor to CA&A, became very close friends with his former assistant and successor, Jere Johnson who became publisher in 1936. It didn’t hurt that their offices were by then on the same floor at 2404 West 7th St., Los Angeles. (UCLA).

It was also about this time that a young writer named John Entenza stopped by Harris’s office to meet him, intrigued by the Lowe House and subsequent scandal he read about in the pages of CA&A in January and March. (Germany, p. 53, UCLA, p. 129). Coincidentally, during 1935 Harris was also designing a house for Stella Gramer, law partner of Entenza’s father Tony.

California Arts & Architecture, November, 1935. Graham Laing Residence, Harwell Hamilton Harris. (From my collection).

Harris’s personal residence, the award-winning Fellowship Park House completed in 1935, won the 1936 House Beautiful Small House Competition, First Prize in the 1937 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Institute Competition (outdoing two houses by Neutra), and received an Honor Award from the Southern California Chapter of the AIA firmly establishing his reputation in California. The house was first published in the March, 1937 issue of CA&A seen below and was thereafter widely publicized in the local and national press.

California Arts & Architecture, March, 1937. Fellowshio Park House, Harwell Hamilton Harris Residence. (From my collection).

John Entenza, still impressed by the Lowe House and possibly having received positive feedback on Harris’s design skills from Stella Gramer, came back a year later to commission Harris to design and build him a house. In the interim, the house Harris had designed for Gramer, was not built as she instead won in a raffle former Harris mentor Richard Neutra’s “Plywood Demonstration House” which was on display at the highly publicized 1936 California Home and Garden Exhibition on Wilshire Blvd. The six houses exhibited were given away at the end of the show with the winners only having to own a lot to move their house onto. Gramer had Harris oversee the movement of the house to her lot at 427 Beloit Ave. in Westwood, design the foundation, rebuild the fireplace and make other adjustments necessitated by moving a house. (UCLA, p. 130, Germany).

Coincidentally, Neutra’s house was the subject of Julius Shulman’s first published architectural photograph which appeared in the July, 1936 issue of Architectural Forum. See my related blog post at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/julius-shulmans-first-published.html

Around this time an unlicensed Harris was summoned to court to answer charges brought against him by a private inspector for the State Board of Architectural Examiners known among architects as “the bloodhound.” Stella Gramer, hired by Harris to defend him, “made mincemeat of the bloodhound.” (Germany, note 27., p. 213).


Entenza, discussing his housing requirements with Harris as they were touring his Fellowship Park House, said with tongue in cheek, “This is the kind of house I don’t want. But because you could design this house, I know you can design the house I do want.” Even though Harris had developed his own redwood siding-based, outdoor-friendly language by then, he produced something to Entenza’s liking along the lines of Neutra’s International Style. (Germany). Harris’s next contact with Stella Gramer came when Entenza used her to negotiate the contact with the builder Harris brought to him.

The following excerpt from Harris’s 05/18/1989 letter to Esther McCoy is very revealing and becomes important later in this post. “John had practically no money. He was living rent-free in a house his father, Tony Entenza, was keeping a congressional district from which he ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress every two years. On the basis of my drawings he asked for a bid from a young contractor I brought to him. He talked to his father’s law partner, Stella Gramer (Stella was more like a son to Tony that was John). When the contractor brought his bid into the Entenza office where John, Stella, and I were waiting, John and Stell took the contractor into the back office leaving me sitting out front. After what seemed an extremely long time the three of them returned, the contractor looking sober and unhappy. Just how Stella operated on him I don’t know but the full contract figure was only $3,120.00. It’s a figure I never forgot. There were no extras.”(Source: Author Susan Morgan who is currently editing a collection of McCoy’s writing about Los Angeles that will be published autumn 2010. She also has a book in progress about McCoy’s life and work).


Excerpt from an 11/08/1987 Harris letter to Esther McCoy, “Stella Gramer had done the dirty work for John when it came to completing the contract with the builder of my house for John. In the case of the contract for John’s house, John and I sat in the outer office and the contractor was taken into Stella’s office; when they came out the contract document had been altered and signed for only $3,120, which was considerable less than the earlier figure. John looked and acted and probably felt entirely innocent…Jean admired Stella as a lawyer. Jean always said that what she wanted in a lawyer was a fighter and not a legal expert who told her why something couldn’t be done…” (Source: Author Susan Morgan).


Thus, Entenza’s first appearance in the pages of CA&amp;A came with the below left article in July, 1937 issue which featured a rendering and floor plan of Harris’s design. Quoting from the article. “That it be masculine and smart, were the requirements for this beach house for a bachelor playwright. So here it is, as smartly turned out as the season’s new cars, and a man’s house, every inch of it.” Harris’s design was clearly influenced by Neutra’s 1932 house built as part of the Vienna Werkbundsiedlung demonstration housing project (seen below right) while Harris was still in Neutra’s employ with the circular elements of Neutra’s recently completed Von Sternberg, Sten-Frenke, and Lewin Residences possibly thrown in for good measure. Fellow Neutra apprentice Raphael Soriano’s 1936 Lipetz House, his first realized solo project,  also echoed a similar look.

Above left from California Arts & Architecture, July, 1937. Above right from Lisa Germany, p. 68 and courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art. (Both from my collection)

Harris’s Helene Kershner House appeared a month later in the August, 1937 issue of CA&A (above left) followed by the Marion Clark House (above right) in Carmel-by-the-Sea in the March, 1938 issue. (Both from my collection).

The completed Entenza House made it’s CA&amp;A debut in the May, 1938 issue. (See above left and right from my collection).

Harris’s house for Greta Granstedt appeared in CA&A in July, 1938 and his Mr. and Mrs. George C. Bauer Residence in August, 1939 (above left (renderings by Whitney Smith) and right from my collection).

California Arts & Architecture, January, 1940. (From my collection).

The January, 1940 number, an extremely important issue in editor-publisher Jere Johnson’s legacy, featured the Kershner House living room lighting (above left) and also had the distinction of being Julius Shulman’s first cover photo (above right). Johnson was by then beginning to recognize the value of Shulman’s eye in enhancing the magazine’s image and gave the fledgling photographer his first opportunity to appear on a cover, no doubt providing a huge boost to his confidence and marketing ability for future work. See my related post at the following link. http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/julius-shulmans-first-cover-photo.html Harris’s work was also included or mentioned in a few other miscellaneous issues in 1939-40. Having learned Neutra’s publicity lessons well, Harris by this time was quite established and well-known through his articles first appearing in CA&amp;A and then being picked up by the editors of other regional and national publications which had reciprocal subscriptions.

Ironically, January’s issue was also to be the last under Johnson, who was by then very close friends with the Harrises. Johnson named frequent contributor Harris to the magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board beginning with the October, 1939 issue based on his rapidly growing national reputation. She was pregnant and needed someone to run the magazine temporarily for her while she went on maternity leave. She asked the Harrises to recommend a substitute and they suggested John Entenza. (Germany, p. 217, note 9). Entenza’s name first appears on the masthead as editor in the February, 1940 issue.

The March, 1940 issue, again pictured below right, Entenza’s second as caretaker editor, has on the cover a cross-section of Harris’s most renowned project, the Weston Havens House in the Berkeley Hills. Little did Harris know at the time but this would be one of his last CA&A appearances as he and Jean would within a few months have a falling out with Entenza over the way he was to gain control of the magazine from their dear friend. The Harrises sincerely believed Johnson had been cheated by Entenza’s lawyer father and his aforementioned partner, Stella Gramer who they believed had put undue pressure on Johnson to sell. (Germany, note 2, p. 217). In the interim, they introduced him to east coast magazine editors at Architectural Record and Architectural Forum and the directors of the Museum of Modern Art in an effort to get him started on the right foot. (Germany, note 4. p. 217).

The March cover reflects a new masthead design with new font. Also never before had a CA&A cover included a cross-section of a project. Comparing with the January, 1940 issue below left with the Julius Shulman first ever cover photo of Paul Laszlo’s Rosenson House illustrates that Entenza’s influence was quickly having an impact on the magazine. Entenza would stick with this masthead until hiring Alvin Lustig in early 1942 to design a makeover which first appeared on the April, 1942 cover. (See later in this post).

The intervening February issue, Entenza’s first at the helm as supposedly the temporary editor, contained a more boldly structured title page (see later below) and also the first appearance of his monthly editorial column “Notes in Passing” which opened with his strength with insightful reviews of recent new plays debuting in Los Angeles. Entenza worked in an MGM experimental film production unit from 1932 until 1936 when it folded due to the depression. (Goldstein). Also a playwright before accepting the CA&A post, he had limited success on the Hollywood stage with his comedy-drama “A Notorious Lady” starring Laura Treadwell having a nice run at the Vine Street Theater in the summer of 1935. (‘Notorious Lady’ Player Has Three Varied Careers’, Los Angeles Times, Jun 15, 1935, p.5).

Entenza’s changes to the title page, creation of his “Notes in Passing” column, and his new cover masthead design his first two months on the job as custodial editor were quite remarkable in my opinion and presaged his ambition and desire to find a way to acquire the magazine. He was like a dog marking his territory and signaling that he was ready, willing and able to take over, not only as editor, but also as publisher and as quickly as possible.

Harris stated in his 1985 oral history, “[Entenza] acquired [CA&A] with very little money, just as he built his house with very little money. Largely on account of the pressure that his father, and particularly his father’s partner, a young woman, I’ve forgotten her name for the moment, [Stella Gramer] for whom I also designed a house which wasn’t built. For her I did move a house that Neutra had built as an exhibition house. Anyway, they were able to put pressure on various ones, whether it was on a contractor to build a house for John or on others to acquire the magazine for him. It was our feeling that Jere had really been cheated in this. That caused our break with John. So when a little bit later he was starting his Case Study program and asked me to design a house for the magazine, I refused to do it.” (UCLA, p. 129).

The apparently unsavory (to Harris and Johnson) takeover was complete by the June-July issue when Johnson’s name no longer appears on the masthead. By August the physical separation was also complete as Entenza had moved the magazine’s offices from the same floor as Harris’s in the Elk’s Club Building at 2404 West Seventh St. to 3305 Wilshire Blvd. where he held court until he sold the magazine to David Travers in 1962. Entenza first offered to sell the magazine to Harris most likely because of his initial recommendation of him for the editorship and expressed interest in the magazine’s continued well-being at the time of the ownership change. (UCLA, p. 132).

Harris’s by now considerable national reputation, soon to be further enhanced by his March, 1940 profile, “Houses by Harwell Hamilton Harris” in Architectural Forum and global Havens House publicity, prompted Entenza to keep him on the masthead as an Editorial Advisory Board member. Harris’s name was finally removed in the May, 1946 issue when his refusal to participate in the Case Study House Program probably became apparent.

Excerpt from an 05/18/1989 Harris letter to McCoy, “Jean and I were good friends of Jere Johnson who was the owner and editor of C.A. &amp;A. My office and the C.A.A. offices were on the same floor of 2404 West Seventh Street (across from Westlake Park (later McArthur Park), and each of my houses was published in C.A. & A. before it appeared elsewhere. At length Jere told Jean she was expecting a baby and she didn’t know who to get to run the magazine while she was out of the running. Knowing that John could at least write and probably edit, we immediately suggested him for the job. At the time John knew very little about Architecture, so his only contribution at the very beginning was “Notes in Passing.” John took it over and Jere never got it back. We never knew the details of the takeover. I suppose Jere was too chagrined at her foolishness to want to talk about it. Stella was very sharp and undoubtedly directed John’s maneuvers. This ended John’s and our friendship.”  (Source: Author Susan Morgan).

Despite having all of his previous work published first in CA&A, Harris never again submitted material to Entenza for publication. His reputation secured, from that point on he focused his considerable Neutra-taught publicity skills on national and international publications.

Harwell Hamilton Harris on the grounds of the State Fair of Texas construction site of his House Beautiful Pace Setter House, Dallas, 1954-55. Photo by Squire Haskins. Frontispiece from Germany. Courtesy, Architectural Drawings Collection, Architectural Planning Library, University of Texas at Austin.

Harris’s recollection runs counter to virtually all sources and citations regarding Entenza’s gaining ownership of California Arts &amp; Architecture. The version most people have come to believe is that Entenza bought a bankrupt magazine from Johnson in 1938. I speculate that this misinformation traces back to Esther McCoy’s seminal writings on the Case Study House Program and the legions of writers who followed deferring to her portrayal due to her close and long relationship with Entenza. Thus, a myth was born.

McCoy met and befriended Entenza in 1932 while both were struggling writers and long before either envisioned a career related to architecture. She became a regular contributor to Arts &amp; Architecture in 1950. Entenza began listing her on the magazine’s masthead as an Editorial Advisory Board member in January, 1952 where she remained during his tenure as publisher and editor. Entenza was also instrumental in McCoy’s obtaining a Ford Grant in 1964 which enabled her to pursue her studies and writings on young architects. (From McCoy’s Oral History at the American Archives of Art). McCoy also received two grants from the Graham Foundation then under Entenza’s directorship to conduct the research which led to her book “Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys: Letters Between R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, Letters of Louis Sullivan to R. M. Schindler.” (See acknowledgments in same). Coincidentally the book has a lengthy and very well-written introduction by none other than Harwell Hamilton Harris in which he recounts his introduction to Neutra and Schindler and their influence on his career.

In the introduction to “Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses 1945-1962″, McCoy’s going away gift to her long-time friend and editor who was leaving Los Angeles to head Chicago’s Graham Foundation, she states, “Beginning with [Entenza's] editorship in 1938…”. In her groundbreaking “The Second Generation” of 1984 she states, “By 1937, when Harris was designing the Entenza House, George Oyer had turned the unprofitable California Arts & Architecture over to his associate Jere Johnson, who asked Entenza to be guest editor when she took a leave of absence to have a child. (Subsequently, Entenza bought the magazine and soon dropped California from the title.)” In her essay, “Arts & Architecture: Case Study Houses” in the 1989 MOCA exhibition catalog  “Blueprints for Modern Living” McCoy states “Entenza bought the magazine in 1938 but it was two years before he assumed the full task of editing. At that point he threw out the eclectic work and dropped the regional bias along with the word California from the title.”

Virtually every source since McCoy’s citations has used 1938 as the beginning of the magazine’s “Entenza Years.” Barbara Goldstein in her introduction to her “Arts &amp; Architecture: The Entenza Years” states that “Entenza published and edited Arts &amp; Architecture from 1938 until 1962.” She later confusingly writes, “…and later, through his father’s law partner (Stella Gramer), he began working as an editor of California Arts & Architecture magazine, a rather stolid provincial publication…” Later in the introduction she states, “By 1939, it was beginning to publish a substantial amount of modern architecture…” McCoy also contributed the essay “Remembering John Entenza” to this publication as well as authorship to some of the anthologized articles and was also a frequent contributor to, and on the Editorial Advisory Board of, Goldstein’s valiant four-year attempt to resuscitate Arts + Architecture in the early 1980. The pair also collaborated on “Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980″, by Esther McCoy &amp; Barbara Goldstein, Arts + Architecture Press, 1982. See my related post at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/02/publications-of-esther-mccoy-patron.html

Elizabeth A. T. Smith is clearly disingenuousness in the opening two pages of her otherwise excellent essay “Arts &amp; Architecture and the Los Angeles Vanguard” in the essential 1989 MOCA exhibition catalog Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses which she also edited and which also contains McCoy’s aforementioned essay “Arts &amp; Architecture: Case Study Houses.” She states in her opening paragraph, “From 1938 until it ceased publication in September 1967, Arts & Architecture encapsulated a world view that was intensely modern in all areas of the arts and social sciences.” She starts the next paragraph with, “Upon purchasing California Arts &amp; Architecture in 1938, publisher John Entenza gradually began to change its direction.” The next paragraph begins, “A look at California Arts & Architecture of the pre-1938 era is instructive to better appreciate the changes wrought by Entenza.”

Smith juxtaposed the below two covers on her opening page to accentuate her point that CA&A up until 1938  “Featured for the most part luxury homes, traditional in style, it included only a smattering of modern work.” This statement would have been correct had she used 1935 instead of 1938.

From “Arts & Architecture: The Vanguard Years” by Elizabeth A. T. Smith, in “Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses“, p. 144.

Smith’s next paragraph includes,  “Between 1938 and February, 1939, the date as Entenza’s formal listing as editor on the magazine’s masthead, Arts & Architecture began to address modern subjects, particularly architecture and interiors, more extensively, albeit alongside traditional work. In November 1938 the magazine announced a new departure, of publishing lower-cost houses, with the first of a series of features on “Small Homes of the West.”

Unfortunately Smith was a full year early on the date of Entenza’s editorship and appearance on the masthead so credit rightfully belongs to editor and publisher Jere Johnson for the “Small Homes of the West” series announced by future Case Study House architect Sumner Spaulding who was a long-time member of the publication’s editorial advisory board. If Smith had only gone back a couple more years she would have also seen the “Small House Series” begun by editor Mark Daniels in April of 1936 which ran the rest of that year. Below are the articles announcing the 1936 and 1938 series.

California Arts & Architecture, April, 1936 and November, 1938. (From my collection).

Smith muddles matters even further by then stating, “The presence of new editor John Entenza was strongly felt in the February 1940 issue of California Arts &amp; Architecture, which featured a bolder, restructured title page and the first lengthy article published on art. The issue also contains the first of Entenza’s “Notes in Passing” columns which were to become a regular feature…” Firstly, this was in no way the first lengthy issue on art in California Arts & Architecture. Secondly, what she also disingenuously fails to mention is that this new and improved title page also boldly lists “Publisher, Jere Johnson” directly above Entenza on the masthead and lists her again as “Published by Jere Johnson, 2404 West Seventh Street, Los Angeles, California” elsewhere on the page and that this issue is the correct first appearance of Entenza on the masthead as editor, not February 1939 as she mentions earlier. (See below title page). This also contradicts her earlier statement that Entenza purchased the magazine in 1938. These totally unnecessary manipulations of the facts do not do justice to Entenza’s otherwise truly remarkable and legendary achievements.

California Arts & Architecture, February, 1940, title page. (From my collection).

David Travers, who purchased the magazine from Entenza in 1962, writes in his introduction to Taschen’s “Arts & Architecture: The Complete Reprint 1945-1967″, “By 1933 the Great Depression had starved it down to 30 pages and subsequently into bankruptcy, where John Entenza found it in 1938. Modern had yet to touch the magazine.” In rebuttal to this misinformed statement, an average page count from 1935-39 reveals: 1935-36 pp; 1936-40 pp; 1937-42pp; 1938-42 pp; and 1939-40 pp.. Comparably, the page count under Entenza grew to the high 50s during the height of the Case Study Program advertising bonanza between 1945-50 and then quickly tapered off to slightly less than CA&A prior to his takeover in early 1940. Below I will refute once and for all the apparent historical revisionism that “Modern had yet to touch the magazine” stated by Travers and implied by Smith.

Travers also writes “Although aware of it, the East Coast professional and trade press – Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, AIA Journal, House &amp; Garden – had largely ignored the West Coast Revolution in residential design until the 1950s.” This is also a confusing statement as in Harris’s and Shulman’s experience, having their work appear first in CA&amp;A opened doors to this same East Coast press (see citations elsewhere in this post). Until 1940 when he cut ties with Entenza, all of Harris’s work first appeared in CA&amp;A and virtually all of the same work was shortly thereafter picked up by the East Coast editors. Shulman also had close to 150 articles with his photographs published in CA&A-A&A prior to 1950, 100 in Pencil Points-Progressive Architecture, 75 in Architectural Record, 110 in Architectural Forum, and 60 in House &amp; Garden with a significant portion of the East Coast articles first appearing in CA&A.

Both Harris and Shulman (and many others) have Neutra to thank for sparking the initial interest of East Coast editors in West Coast modern residential architecture. Neutra’s pioneering publicity efforts of the early 1930s resulted in prior to 1950: 100 articles appearing in CA&A-A&A, 50 articles in Pencil Points-Progressive Architecture, 80 in Architectural Record, 125 in Architectural Forum, and 40 in House &amp; Garden. CA&A more than any other regional publication in the country kindled East Coast editor’s (and architects) love affair with West Coast work.

Lisa Germany, who must be given credit for bringing the apparently distasteful circumstances surrounding the change of ownership of CA&A to light in her Harris monograph, cited 1938 as when the takeover occurred. (Germany, P. 127).

Noted architectural historians David Gebhard and Harriette Von Bretton wrote in their excellent “L.A. in the Thirties: 1931-1941″, Peregrine Smith, 1975, “In February 1941 John Entenza took over as editor of California Arts &amp; Architecture, and by 1943 he had recast the magazine into an open propoganda vehicle for the new architecture. A similar change occurred in architectural photography with the  emergence of Julius Shulman as dominant interpreter of the new architecture.” (p. 153). Also in note 103 on p. 157 they state “For the February 1944 issue, Entenza dropped “California” from the magazine’s name, suggesting that it had fully attached itself to the Modern International Style.” Many authors must have been confused with so many conflicting dates present in the literature from so many respected historians.

I have found only one source to date which correctly identifies the month of Entenza’s ascension to the masthead which is Victoria Dailey’s well-researched essay “Naturally Modern” in the highly recommended L.A.’s Early Moderns. She states in end note 72 on p. 99 that “after careful examination, I did not find Entenza listed as editor until the February, 1940 issue.” I personally have in my collection a complete run of the magazine from 1935 through 1940 and I concur with her findings that February, 1940 is indeed Entenza’s first appearance on the masthead. There is also much material on Neutra and Harris in Natalie Shivers’ essay, “Architecture: A New Creative Medium” in the same book. Harris was indeed one of  “L.A.’s Early Moderns.”

Dailey also favorably and accurately discusses the evolution of CA&A from a luxury magazine aimed at a genteel reader to a journal advocating modernism in all its forms beginning in 1935-36 under the editorship of architect Mark Daniels who remained until 1938. Beginning in 1935 the magazine took a marked turn towards featuring the small, modern house. Dailey writes, “California Arts & Architecture underwent a redesign in 1936. The change in appearance was striking.” She likened CA&amp;A‘s conversion to the one taking place at Touring Topics under Phil Townsend Hanna’s editorship attributing the makeover possibly to modernist art collector and book designer Merle Armitage’s membership on the CA&A‘s Editorial Advisory Board from 1933 to 1938. See my related post “Touring Topic/Westways: The Phil Townsend Hanna Years” for much on Merle Armitage’s positive influence on that publication as well. http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/03/touring-topics-westways-hanna-years.html.


The above are a sampling of CA&A covers from 1935 through 1937. CA&A was ahead of the national editorial pack in terms of “modern” graphic design, layout and content. The use of cover illustrations and photos of modernist architecture began in 1935. It would be years before such national journals as Pencil Points, Architectural Forum and Architectural Record began using cover illustrations and/or photos. See the examples of their “plain wrapper” period covers below.

The below right July, 1937 Pencil Points Neutra Issue cover was it’s most progressive design to date undoubtedly influenced by Neutra himself. Ironically, Pencil Points had progressed from publishing the Magonigle diatribe against the modern architecture presented in CA&amp;A‘s January, 1935 issue to running an an entire issue devoted to Neutra’s hard-edged “International Style” work only two-and-a-half years later. A year-by-year comparison of the national journals and CA&amp;A during this period clearly shows that CA&amp;A led the way in providing coverage of the modern small single family home and the percentage of its pages devoted to same. Again, Harris’s work was influential in this being the case.

Above left, Architectural Forum, July, 1936. Above right, Pencil Points, July, 1937. (Both from my collection).

What critics of the pre-Entenza CA&A are usually guilty of is not comparing apples with apples, i.e., publications of the same time period as I do above. Graphic design evolves just as does architectural design and architectural photography for that matter and comparisons must be made within the context of these evolutionary processes. Another consideration critics don’t always take into account is that there just wasn’t a whole lot of modern architecture to publish in the mid-1930s. It took a while to catch on as they say. The true test of a publication is in the courage of its editorial staff to publish material that will influence the direction of cutting-edge work which CA&amp;A certainly began to do with the January, 1935 issue. The fact that the East Coast press always wanted to publish Harris’s work after it first appeared in CA&A is a good case in point. (Germany, note 3. p. 217).

Following is a year-by-year look at the “Modern” small house content of CA&A. Besides the January Special Issue on Modern Architecture & Design, 1935 also featured Harris’s Graham Laing Residence, and other smaller modern houses by Case Study Architects William Wilson Wurster and Richard Neutra, Edgar Bissantz,  Eugene Weston, Jr., Milton J. Black, Cliff May, H. Roy Kelley, Erle Webster &amp; Adrian Wilson, Winchton Risley, Miller &amp; Warnecke, Donald McMurray, Thomas D. Church (landscape), Frederick L. Confer, Lilian J. Rice, Kenneth Wing, John Byers &amp; Edla Muir, and others.

In 1936 editor Mark Daniels embarked upon “The Small House Series” in April which featured a different aspect of small, affordable, modern house design in each issue for the rest of the year. Architects whose crisp, contemporary, non-revivalist smaller homes were featured included: H. Roy Kelley (A House of New Ideas), Earl T. Heitschmidt (Las Palmas Demonstration Home), Eugene Weston, Donn Emmons, editor Mark Daniels, Donald D. McMurray, Charles O. Matcham, Milton J. Black, Edgar Bissantz, Roland Coate, Miller &amp; Warnecke, Ralph C. Flewelling, Donald B. Kirby, Kenneth S. Wing, Winchton L. Risley, Kenneth A. Gordon, Earl R. MacDonald, Erle Webster &amp; Adrian Wilson, Frederick L. Confer and others. Future Case Study House architect Sumner Spaulding and furniture and interior designer Paul Frankl were by then on the magazine’s editorial advisory board.

Besides Harris’s Fellowship Park, John Entenza and Helene Kershner Houses, CA&amp;A in 1937 featured contemporary small homes of modernists R. M. Schindler (with Julius Shulman photos), future Case Study House architects Richard Neutra, William Wilson Wurster and Kemper Nomland, Milton J. Black (with Julius Shulman photos), Paul Frankl, Paul Laszlo, Douglas Honnold, Van Evera Bailey, Mario Corbett, John Byers &amp; Edla Muir, Garrett Eckbo, Thomas D. Church, Harold J. Bissner, Leo Bachman, Harold G. Spielman, Charles O. Matcham, Garrett Van Pelt &amp; George Lind, Eugene Weston, Jr., Floyd Brewster, Edgar Bissantz,  H. Roy Kelley, John Ekin Dinwiddie, Manfred De Ahna, Charles A. Hunter, Carleton Winslow, Wesley Eager, Harold G. Elwell, Arthur L. Herberger, Winchton L. Risley, Lyle Nelson Barcume, Curtis Chambers, Miller &amp; Warnecke, Palmer Sabin, Erle Webster &amp; Adrian Wilson, Alexander Levy, Edward Weston photo of Robinson Jeffers, and much more.

CA&amp;A‘s 1938 issues featured Harris’s Marion Clark House in Carmel and John Entenza House, and other contemporary small house designs by Case Study architects Sumner Spaulding, William Wilson Wurster, and Richard Neutra (with Julius Shulman photos), Paul Frankl, Kem Weber, Paul Laszlo, William Lescaze, John Porter Clark, Douglas Honnold, George Vernon Russell, Cliff May, Theodore Criley, John Hudspeth, Garrett Van Pelt &amp; George Lind, Erle Webster &amp; Adrian Wilson, Charles O. Matcham, Cliff May, Harold J. Bissner, Eugene Weston, Jr.,  Edgar Bissantz, Hart Wood, Homer Rice, H. Roy Kelley, Ralph Flewelling, Milton J. Black, Meyer &amp; Holler, Wesley Eager, Pacific System Homes, Leo Bachman and “Small Homes of the West Series.”

1939 featured Harris’s essay on his most important design element,”Wood,” his George C. Bauer Residence and a photo of the fireplace in his Campbell House, a continuation of the “Small Homes of the West” series, a special Small House Issue in July, and small contemporary homes by Case Study architects Richard Neutra (with Shulman photos), William Wilson Wurster, Kemper Nomland and Sumner Spaulding, Lutah Maria Riggs, Paul R. Williams (prefabricated model home and furniture), Alvar Aalto furniture, Paul Laszlo (with Shulman photos), Kem Weber, Paul Frankl, Cliff May, John Porter Clark, James R. Friend, John Byers &amp; Edla Muir, Francis Joseph McCarthy, Mario Corbett, Douglas Honnold &amp; George Vernon Russell, Donald Beach Kirby, Ralph Flewelling, Wurdeman &amp; Becket, Gardner Dailey, Theodore Criley, Joseph Weston, Harold J. Bissner, Frederic Barienbrock, Lockwood de Forrest, Ralph Cornell, Arthur T. Raitt, Adrian Wilson, Winchton Risley, Theodore Criley, Arlos Sedgley, Robert Dennis Murray, Wesley Eager, Carroll Sagar, Clarence W. Mayhew, Paul L. Burkhard, Kersey Kinsey, Meyer &amp; Holler, L. B. Scherer, John Knox, Warren Vesper, William Allen, Vincent G. Raney, L. Frederick Richards, Brewster &amp; Benedict, Charles A. Hunter, Robert H. Ainsworth, Allen G. Siple, Doris Suman, Chester J. Carjola, Allen G. Siple, H. Roy Kelley, Henry W. Howell, Ulysses Floyd Rible, William Mellenthin, Kenneth A. Gordon, Georgius Y. Cannon, Raymond M. Kennedy, Paul Hunter, Caro M. Brown, Paul D. Fox, Kenneth A. Gordon and others.

Thus, early 1940 was a distinct parting of the ways between the Harrises and John Entenza. Thanks to CA&amp;A‘s George Oyer, Mark Daniels and Jere Johnson, Harris’s reputation was already firmly secured. The Weston Havens House seen in the opening cover and below soon became Harris’s most publicized project and opened doors for him everywhere. The preliminary cross-section on the cover was its only CA&amp;A appearance. When his inverted-gabled tour de force was completed in 1941, Harris took a page out of Neutra’s publicity book and began sending off the iconic Man Ray (see below), Maynard Parker and Roger Sturtevant photos of the house to a plethora of global publication editors. Multiple photo layouts of the house soon began appearing in publications such as Life Magazine, House Beautiful, Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, AIA Journal, Magazine of Art, American Builder, Architectural Design, House &amp; Home, Revista de Arquitectura, Nuestra Arqiuitectura, Byggmastaren, Studio, Pageant, Household and many others. For more information on the house and its now iconic and National Register of Historic Places status go to the following link http://www.havenshouse.org/family_history.html

Weston Havens House, Berkeley, 1941. Man Ray photo. http://twls.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=145774

Havens House, Berkeley, 1941, from “The Second Generation” by Esther McCoy. (from my collection).

Later Harris projects continued to appear in the above publications and others including Sunset, Pencil Points, Progressive Architecture, Practical Builder, Interiors, New Republic, Harpers, Mademoiselle, Ladie’s Home Journal, House &amp; Garden, Better Homes &amp; Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Women’s Home Companion, Time, Holiday, Costruzione Casabella, Kentiku Sekai, El Arquitecto Peruano, Architects’ Journal, Architectural Review, and many others. Harris also had his work anthologized in most of the important period books compiling modern architecture and interiors and exhibitions and catalogs of same. It is interesting to note that Harris’s name does not appear once in the index to Taschen’s “Arts &amp; Architecture: The Complete Reprint 1945-1967″ despite A&amp;A contributing editor Esther McCoy’s championing of his career in “The Second Generation.”

Harris’s CA&amp;A ending was Entenza’s beginning. When Entenza became caretaker editor in February, 1940 he must have immediately seen the potential of what the magazine could become. Even though it was already ahead of the editorial curve modernistically speaking, he more than likely envisioned taking the magazine to new heights. He obviously knew the “modern” pedigree he was being entrusted with as he had met Harris a couple months after the seminal January, 1935 modernism issue was published. He must have felt a sense of pride to see his Harris-designed house featured in both 1937 and 1938. It was thus probable that he had subscribed to the magazine and knew quite well the direction it had been taking from 1935 onward.

It is not a stretch then to speculate that Entenza soon began strategizing with his father and Stella Gramer how to gain control of the magazine from Jere Johnson. They were successful in the takeover by May and the rest, as they say, is history.


Building upon his predecessor’s foundation Entenza immediately began imposing his modernist sensibilities and taste to take the magazine to the next level. CA&A provided the outlet his creative talents needed to blossom. He had clearly found his calling and made the most of the opportunity Jere Johnson, through Harris, had provided him. No matter the circumstances surrounding the change of ownership, with the ends undoubtedly justifying the means in his mind, CA&A was clearly headed on a path to immortality. The above covers are a sampling of Entenza’s strong first year’s editorial output. One of his earliest covers, September, 1940 (top left) featured an Arthur Luckhaus photo of Richard Neutra’s 1938 Lewin Beach House in Santa Monica which shares similar design elements with his Harris-designed personal residence less than a mile away.

Recognizing early on that the powerful visual language resulting from the combination of Neutra’s architecture and Shulman’s photography would facilitate marketing his notions of modernism and help increase circulation, Entenza started to feature their work on a regular basis. The August, 1941 issue (top right) features an Anikeef cover photo of Neutra’s Davey Residence on the Monterey Peninsula.  The back cover Klearflax Duluth carpet ad in the February, 1941 issue (middle left) with a Shulman photo of Neutra’s Ward Residence at Lake Hollywood illustrates how Entenza began parlaying their work to generate much-needed advertising revenue. The November, 1941 issue (middle right) features a Shulman cover photo of Neutra’s Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. The December, 1941 issue (bottom left) features a Shulman cover photo of a Paul Laszlo-designed interior.

I have included the November, 1942 cover of the Architectural Record to illustrate how Entenza, like his predecessors, kept California Arts & Architecture in the forefront of graphic design by influencing respected national publications to finally start including photos on their covers. Shulman, like Harris, found that appearing first in CA&amp;A opened doors to the east coast establishment journals as this cover photo of Raphael Sorianos’ Glen Lukens House had previously appeared in CA&A‘s August, 1940 issue. Apparently the Architectural Record editorial staff concluded that it was still too risky in 1942 to start with more than a thumbnail image.

The Eamses and John Entenza on the site of their future homes, Case Study Houses 8 & 9 in Pacific Palisades. From Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, MIT Press, 1995, p. 105. Photographer unknown. (Copyright Lucia Eames Demetrious dba Eames Office).

Entenza was soon blessed with Charles and Ray Eames moving to California from Cranbrook in 1941 and very shortly thereafter beginning to contribute to the magazine before the end of the year. Entenza was brilliant to immediately befriend them and take advantage of their considerable talents to enhance the magazine’s image. Recognizing the trends in modern magazine design and to ensure that CA&A stayed ahead of the pack, Entenza recruited the talented graphic designer Alvin Lustig in 1942 to give the magazine a fresh look with a new masthead logo and font which would continue to be used until the magazine’s demise in 1967. Entenza took this opportunity to begin phasing towards a more national focus in the hopes of increasing advertising revenue by dramatically reducing the font size of “California” and finally eliminating it altogether with his February 1944 four-year anniversary issue.

Reminiscing to his biographer Lisa Germany, Harris, generally liked what Entenza had done with the magazine and admired the Case Study program but thought dropping “California” from the masthead was a mistake. “Jean and Harris believed the magazine’s strength had been its regional bias – the way it showcased the distinctive aspects of California design.” (Germany, p. 128).

California Arts & Architecture, February, 1942. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/searchimages/images/image_8654_22633.htm

A sampling of Ray Eames’s cover designs for 1942. From “Eames Design: The Work of the Office of Charles and Ray Eames” by John and Marilyn Neuhart and Ray Eames, Abrams, 1989. (From my collection).

Ray Eames’ whimsical, abstract artistic cover designs also began to appear in 1942 through 1944. Note in the above page from “Eames Design” an example of how ubiquitous the attribution of Entenza’s ownership of the magazine as 1938 has become.

Another fortunate circumstance of Herbert and Mercedes Matter moving to Los Angeles in late 1943 for wartime employment with the Eamses was like manna from heaven for Entenza. Herbert was also immediately put to work at CA&A on article layouts and cover designs. My related post “Herbert and Mercedes Matter: The California Years” http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/03/mercedes-and-herbert-matter-california.html goes into great depth about the happenings at Arts & Architecture from the early 1940s through 1946 and the beginnings of the Case Study House Program, the advent of which would cement Entenza’s place in history as the visionary that he was. Entenza’s greatest strength as an editor was his keen ability to recognize talent and charmingly cajole that talent to further his particular modernist vision at a very economical cost. His recruits such as Shulman, McCoy, Ray and Charles Eames, Alvin Lustig, Herbert Matter and the Case Study House architects were rewarded with listings on the masthead,  the prestige of  being published in one of the most cutting-edge publications in the country and future commissions for work by others. In my opinion, John Entenza and George Nelson were the two most influential editorial tastemakers of the twentieth century.

Readers steeped in the lore of modernist literature might be left then with the question, “Why does virtually every article on the Case Study House Program and/or Entenza and Arts & Architecture magazine published to date cite Entenza’s era at A&A beginning in 1938?” I theorize that Entenza was probably guilty of historical revisionism by implying to McCoy over their close 52-year friendship that his magazine ownership coincided with the publication of his Harris-designed house in 1938 and she probably took him at his word when penning her 1962 “Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses 1945-1962.”  This is puzzling since McCoy was normally a stickler for accuracy on dates in her work. As an example, she was extremely frustrated and almost had a major falling out with Neutra while working on her 1960 Brazillier Neutra monograph. “Well, he wanted–now, for another thing, he wanted me to put the date of the Lovell house in 1927, and I said, “That isn’t true.” I told him I’d had a check through the records at City Hall and got the date of when the drawings were filed and when the building permit was issued, and this was 1929. And then, finally, he said, “Yes, but I like 1927, that was the year that the Barcelona pavilion…” And then a couple of other things, too. He wanted it to be that yea.” (McCoy Oral History, Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/mccoy87.htm ).

Elizabeth A. T. Smith’s “Arts & Architecture and the Los Angeles Vanguard” essay in “Blueprints for Modern Living” is even more troubling since a more thorough analysis of CA&A‘s evolution, I believe, would have altered her impression of the years leading up to Entenza’s involvement, despite the seemingly purposeful inaccuracies in the dates of her Entenza editorship and ownership attribution. Her disingenuousness appears intended to enhance the aura surrounding the extent of Entenza’s makeover of the magazine. The Entenza story is quite compelling enough, in my opinion, without her revisionist spin, which results in the total dismissal of the courageous editorial work Oyer, Daniels and Johnson had performed between 1935 and early 1940, well ahead of the national editorial curve, chronicling the evolution and growth of our modernist regional architects and their designs for affordable contemporary single family residences.

David Travers’ statements in his Taschen “Arts & Architecture: The Complete Reprint” introduction are equally mysterious. His misinformation could only have come directly from the mouth of Entenza. Why else would his successor disavow the rich heritage and forward looking modern legacy which California Arts & Architecture epitomized from January, 1935 until the May, 1940 change of ownership? It is unfortunate that Travers had evidently not seen any issues from the late 1930s for virtually every month delivered something of interest for modernistas. In any event, we are all the richer for this wonderful publication having the glorious run that it had.

It is my intent with this post to increase awareness of the important role California Arts & Architecture played in our state’s rich architectural legacy and to begin to set the record straight as to when and how the magazine changed hands. CA&amp;A between January, 1935 and the actual beginning of the Entenza Years in early 1940 is a treasure trove of modernist material ready to be explored and written about. These early issues truly show that California was indeed leading the nation in the production and publication of modern, affordable residential architecture. Recognizing the notable accomplishments of Entenza’s predecessors in no way detracts from his legendary, iconic achievements from early 1940 onward, on the contrary it enhances them. I also hope that authors who have previously published work unwittingly using 1938 as their nexus for Entenza’s canonization help try to correct the record in future work.

Julius Shulman Chronicles: 1936

Julius Shulman self-portrait circa 1934. From Vest Pocket Pictures by Julius Shulman, Nazraeli Press, 2006. (From my collection).
This is the first of what I hope to be a lengthy series of posts covering the career of Julius Shulman. I will be profiling his significant life events and presenting a chronological documentation of his assignments and published work. Since 1936 was Shulman’s first year as a professional photographer I will cover the entire year in this inaugural post. For in-depth information on Shulman’s early years I highly recommend “A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman” by Joseph Rosa, Rizzoli, 1994, “Architecture and Its Photography” by Julius Shulman, Taschen, 1998, and the Julius Shulman Oral History Interview at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art conducted by Taina Rikala De Noreiga at Shulman’s home in the Hollywood Hills on January 12, 20 & February 3, 1990.
Kun House, 7960 Fareholm Dr., Hollywood Hills, Richard Neutra, 1936. Photo by Julius Shulman, Feb. 1936.

Since 1929 Julius Shulman had been knocking around the UCLA and California Berkeley campuses auditing courses and living off of his meager income selling his campus photos in the bookstores while searching for something to spark a career interest. Shulman returned to Los Angeles from Berkeley in February 1936 still uncertain about his future.

Most fans of Julius Shulman’s architectural photography are familiar with the story of his fateful March 5, 1936 introduction to Richard Neutra. The legend goes that Shulman met and befriended an employee of Richard Neutra’s who happened to be rooming with his sister Shirley in the Silverlake area near Neutra’s office. In late February 1936 said friend invited Shulman to tag along on an inspection of Neutra’s Kun House then nearing completion. Shulman brought along his now famous vest pocket camera and a tripod and snapped about 6 images of the house and construction site. (see above). Shulman made a set of prints and gave them to his friend who in turn showed them to Neutra. Shortly thereafter his friend told him that Neutra liked the prints and wanted to meet him. The fateful meeting took place on March 5, 1936 in Neutra’s Silverlake office. (Rosa, p. 42).

Neutra inquired about Shulman’s background and his work and purchased the Kun House photos from him on the spot. He asked Shulman if he would be interested in other assignments and the rest as they say is history. Neutra obviously recognized the young photographer’s potential and likely relished the opportunity to influence his evolution in the field, and probably at a rate that was initially much less than he was currently paying for Arthur Luckhaus’s services.

Neutra gave Shulman a list of other projects to take a look at which included recent Neutra apprentice Raphael Soriano’s nearby Lipetz House which Shulman visited the same day meeting Soriano at the site. (Wolgang Wagener, Raphael Soriano, Phaidon, 2002, p. 79). From Shulman’s Oral History, “Neutra said, pointing up at the hill above the lake, at the south end of the lake, “Why don’t you drive up there and meet Soriano, who is there every day supervising the construction of the house?” I drove up that afternoon, met Soriano for the first time. We became good friends. And strange, we started our respective careers that same year. And I did pictures of the house when it was completed.”

Soriano recalled the March 5, 1936 meeting with Shulman in his oral history  “Substance and Function in Architecture Oral History Transcript” “You know, Shulman started out photography when I started my first house. He came in with a Brownie one day, said, “Oh Soriano, look! I’m Julius Shulman, a photographer, and I’m just starting out, too; can I photograph your house?” I said, “Sure.” He had a Brownie.”

Julius Shulman’s 1933 birthday gift, a Kodak “vest pocket” camera. From “Julius Shulman in 36 Exposures” by Mary Melton, Los Angeles Magazine, January, 2009. Dan Winters photo. http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=12432

Shulman writes in his autobiography, “At the location I met Soriano, sitting on the newly carpeted living room floor eating lunch. I shared a sandwich with him, and described my meeting with Neutra, which surprised him. Neutra, he stated, was a tyrant with photographers. That utterance was followed by him asking, “Would you photograph this house when it is completed?” Not only did I photograph the house several months later, but subsequently its publication in this country and abroad served to showcase Soriano’s design and my talents.”


Lipetz House, Silverlake, Raphael Soriano, 1936. Julius Shulman photos, 1936 (From “Raphael Soriano” by Wolfgang Wagener, Phaidon, 2002

Left, National Steel Housing Corp. Exhibition House, 1934, Richard Neutra from Pencil Points, July Special Neutra Issue. Right, John Entenza House, 1937, Harwell Hamilton Harris from “Harwell Hamilton Harris” by Lisa Germany, University of Texas Press, 1991.

Soriano’s Lipetz House above exhibits the same semi-circular design elements as Neutra’s above left 1934 National Steel Housing Corp. Exhibition House (unbuilt) and recently completed Sten-Frenke and Von Sternberg Houses in Santa Monica and Northridge. Harwell Hamilton Harris, another former Neutra apprentice, would echo this same semi-circular pattern in his above right 1937 John Entenza House near Neutra’s 1934 Sten-Frenke and and 1938 Lewin Houses in Santa Monica. (See my related post http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/california-arts-architecture.html).

Neutra’s unbuilt “Skyline Apartments” seen below in a 1934 Westways article was the most obvious influence of all on Soriano’s design for the Lipetz House, down to the grand piano in the semi-circular living room.See my related post at http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/neutras-skyline-apartments-penthouse.html.

Westways, 1934. Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.

Most likely through his association with Neutra, Soriano’s Lipetz House was chosen as one of the buildings to be presented as representative of American modern architecture in the American Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition which ran from May 4 through November 25th. (Wagener, p. 41). Neutra did not pay his apprentices much but he did help them get published and exhibited early in their careers as he did for Harwell Hamilton Harris in the seminal January 1935 Modern Architecture issue of California Arts & Architecture and Soriano in the Paris Exposition and later group articles. (http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/california-arts-architecture.html).

Neutra was quoted in the July 1937 Special Neutra Issue of  Pencil Points article with the byline of one of his then assistants, Henry Robert Harrison, “You know yourself that I am proud of whatever a young man gets out of an association with me as: Peter Pfisterer from Switzerland, Gregory Ain and Harwell Hamilton Harris from Los Angeles, Stanley Vallet from St. Louis, Raphael Soriano from Greece, Elbert Brown from Texas, Carl Conrad from Pennsylvania, Marshall Shaffer, and yourself.” (Henry Robert Harrison, “Richard Neutra: A Center of Architectural Stimulation”, Pencil Points Special Neutra Issue, July, 1937, pp. 410-438).

Note that the same semi-circular design element is present in the U.S. Pavilion postcard below. Neutra’s Scholts Advertising Agency, Bell Avenue School, Beard and Kun Houses were also on display. He was awarded Bronze Medals by the French Government for the latter three projects.“California Architects Receive High Honors from France”, Los Angeles Times, Sep 18,1938, p. V-2.

Not only did Soriano thus have the distinction of his first project being exhibited in the same venue with his mentor Neutra but also alongside Alvar Aalto’s Finnish Pavilion, Albert Speer’s German Pavilion and Pablo Picasso’s iconic “Guernica” to a paid audience of over 35 million people, heady stuff indeed for the fledgling architect. (See postcards below). There is a good chance that selected Shulman’s photos of the Soriano’s Lipetz House and Neutra’s Kun House were also on display in the exhibition although I have yet to verify this. If they were, it was probably unbeknownst to Shulman as he does not mention this in his autobiography or oral history.

U.S. Pavilion at 1937 Paris International Exposition, Paul Lester Wiener, Charles H. Higgins and Julian Clarence Levi, Associated Architects. http://lartnouveau.com/art_deco/expo_1937/pavillons_pays2/pav_usa.htm

Entrance to the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

Basque shepherd and Raphael Soriano resting durina a walk with Shulman. Julius Shulman photo, 1936. From “Architecture and Its Photography”, p. 295.

Shulman would soon befriend Soriano and entrust him with the design of his personal residence in the late 1940s.

In the following weeks Neutra introduced Shulman to other like-minded modernist architects including his former partner R. M. Schindler, fellow European emigre J. R. Davidson, and another former apprentice Gregory Ain.(Rosa, p. 42).

Thus, Shulman’s assignment log book was quickly becoming a virtual listing of the eventual pantheon of modernist Southern California architects. Neutra and his circle were clearly the vanguard for the wave of modernism beginning to break in Southern California in the mid to late 1930s. Shulman was about to become a prime member of the group as they doggedly proselytized their gospel of modern architecture through the editorial pages of California Arts & Architecture, Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, Pencil Points, and through their messiah Neutra’s hard-earned contacts with the European and global architectural press, to the rest of the world. (See my related post http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/california-arts-architecture.html).

Architectural Forum, July 1936. Plywood Demonstration House, 1936, Richard Neutra. Photo by Julius Shulman, circa April 1936. (From my collection).

Shulman’s first published photograph was of Neutra’s Plywood Demonstration House designed for the California House & Garden Exhibition located at 5900 Wilshire Blvd. which I documented at the following link. (http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/julius-shulmans-first-published.html). The house design won the $1,250 second prize in the 1935 General Electric Competition. This top image above right by Shulman appeared with the bottom Mott Studio photo and 2 Arthur Luckhaus photos above left in the July 1936 issue of Architectural Forum and this photo and/or others also appeared later the same year in the September issue of American Architect & Engineer and the October issue of the Japanese architectural journal Kokusai Kenchiku.

My 5,000 item Neutra Annotated Bibliography indicates that he had already published at least 500 articles all over the world by the time he met Shulman, mostly with photographs by Willard D. Morgan until circa 1932 when Morgan moved to the east coast, and then by Arthur Luckhaus. Shulman’s first year ended with the 3 known assignments and 3 documented publications mentioned above. He may have photographed some of the work that was published in 1937 in 1936 which I will speculate upon in future posts.

Shulman’s record-keeping was sketchy in his formative years thus some early assignments went undocumented. I have found close to 100 articles in which he received photographic credit which were not recorded in his log book. Shulman became so busy by 1947 with new assignments and orders for reprints of previous jobs that he had to devise a system for easy retrieval of past work. Thus the dates of these early assignments are not always available and Job Numbers are sporadic as Shulman tried to recreate a listing of his earliest work after-the-fact. I will be drawing heavily from my 8,000 item Shulman Annotated Bibliography and 8,000 item Shulman Project Database to prepare future posts. Now that Shulman had created a toehold for his future in 1936, the next year would be much more productive as his client base started to grow.

Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman Now Available on DVD

For all you legions of Julius Shulman fans the long awaited DVD of “Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman”  is now available. Go to the following link and place your order now.
http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/store/

While at the site also check out film maker Eric Bricker’s excellent blog at http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/blog/ to get the latest news on the film. I was fortunate enough to have met Eric while researching a book I was working with Julius on which will capture all of the covers his images have graced over the years. I have found 800 to date. Eric included half a dozen covers in the film and gave me a nice credit as “Image Consultant.” The film, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, has won numerous Film Festival Awards and just aired on Sundance Channel Monday evening. This is one of those classics that you will never tire of and will watch repeatedly over the years.

Glamourized House: Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House: An Annotated & Illustrated Bibliography

Click on images to enlarge.

Life Magazine, April 11, 1949, pp. 146-7. Richard Neutra, Kaufmann House, 470 West Vista de Chino, Palm Springs, 1947. Julius Shulman Job No. 093, 1947. From the Journal of Architectural Education, November, 1993, “Glamourized Houses”: Neutra, Photography, and the Kaufmann House by Simon Niedenthal. From my collection.

The above iconic 1947 Julius Shulman image of Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House presaged the dynamic duo’s entree into the Pantheon of modernist architecture and photography. Arguably the most iconic architectural photograph ever taken, it is by far both men’s most published work.

Shulman and Neutra circa 1950. From “A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman” by Joseph Rosa. From my collection.

The following February 3, 1947 Time Magazine article (excerpt) was the first significant publicity referencing Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House in Palm Springs and was a harbinger of the impending global publicity blitz orchestrated by Neutra and his primary photographer, Julius Shulman.

“Art: Homes Inside Out”
Excerpt from the February 3, 1947 issue of Time Magazine

“The name Richard Joseph Neutra means nothing at all to most Americans. Of all architects who have made their reputations in the U.S., Richard Neutra ranks second only to lordly Frank Lloyd Wright. Last week publishers in Italy and South America were planning books about Neutra. And an issue of the French magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, devoted almost entirely to him, had reached the U.S. Neutra has done as much as any modern architect to prove that glass, steel and concrete are practical, if not cozy.

His wide, white houses perch perkily on the hills around Los Angeles where he lives, and they alter more distant landscapes too. He is versatile enough to have designed both a moated desert mansion for Movie Director Josef von Sternberg and an elaborate system of low-cost schools and hospitals for Puerto Rico. Neutra’s buildings are pondered and imitated (especially in technical details of construction) by architects around the world. Says noted French Architect Marcel Lods in L’Architecture : “[He] is already a classic and will be more so tomorrow. Neutra offers us an infinitely precious message.”

Inside-out House. To deliver that message, Vienna-born Neutra (pronounced Noytra) had come a long way from his first assignment in 1915: a tea house for the fortress of Trebinje, Herzegovina. Neutra came to the U.S. in 1923, sat at the feet of famed Skyscraper Architect Louis Sullivan, the father of modern, functional architecture and the teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Neutra met Wright at Sullivan’s funeral in 1924. Soon afterwards, with his wife and mother-in-law, he paid a long visit to Wright’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin. Neutra named his eldest son for Wright, went forth to preach the gospel of modern architecture on lecture tours which took him from Rome to Tokyo. He long ago fashioned a style of his own, and made mass housing his main interest.

Now, at 54, Neutra is designing a Palm Springs desert hideaway for Pittsburgh Millionaire Edgar J. Kaufmann, whose famed house in Bear Run, Pa.—designed by Wright—overhangs a waterfall. Compared with Wright’s cantilevered castle-in-the-air, Neutra’s Kaufmann house will be down to earth, with the low-flying flat roofs, glass walls and furnished terraces of a house turned inside out. To make life as smooth outdoors as in, the four courtyards will have walls and floors piped for summer cooling and winter heating.”

Courtesy Neutra Archive, Dept. of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. From Christie’s Auction Catalog below.
After reading the above letter from Neutra’s most famous patron, Pittsburgh department store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., one would not think that the Palm Springs desert house Neutra designed for him would end up being one of the most publicized in architectural history, but that is exactly what happened. Architectural Forum editor Henry Wright also penned Neutra a self-serving letter dated June 17, 1947 stating that Kaufmann had agreed with him that the house only be published in Life and Architectural Forum domestically. Neutra knew that this commission was his best work yet and wasn’t about to let his client’s wishes stop him from launching the most ambitious publicity campaign of his career. For a more in-depth analysis if the early publicity of the Kaufmann House see the Journal of Architectural Education, November, 1993, “Glamourized Houses”: Neutra, Photography, and the Kaufmann House by Simon Niedenthal.

Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, June 15, 1947. Fist publication with Shulman photos. From the Journal of Architectural Education, November, 1993, “Glamourized Houses”: Neutra, Photography, and the Kaufmann House by Simon Niedenthal. From my collection.

To counteract this slow roll-out in the U.S., Neutra devised a campaign to publicize the house heavily overseas, drawing upon the dozens of editors he had courted with his previous projects. Per an agreement with Kaufmann, he did not mention the owner’s name and disguised the location as being in the “Colorado Desert.”

Beginning in June, 1947 through 1950 the Richard Neutra Kaufmann House with Julius Shulman photos was featured in Architects’ Journal and Architectural Review, (Britain), Metron, Casabella and Domus (Italy), Marg (India), Arkitekten (Denmark), Architekt (Poland), L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui and L’Architecture Francaise (France), Baumeister (Germany), Revista de Arquitectura (Buenos Aires), Kokusai-Kentiku (Japan), and Arquitectura (Mexico), not to mention numerous articles with which it was grouped with other Neutra projects. Including the opening Life Magazine spread, Neutra’s publicity quest was so successful that it catapulted him to the cover of Time Magazine‘s October 15, 1949 issue.

Time Magazine, Oct. 15, 1949. Richard Neutra and preliminary floor plan of Kaufmann House. From my collection.

Sidebar:

Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr. was in the U.S. Air Force Intelligence Service at the time the senior Kaufmann commissioned Neutra to design the house in 1946. When he returned from the service he was ‘outraged’ that his father had turned to an architect other than Wright.

In his book Fallingwater, Kaufmann, Jr. states with the benefit of many years of detachment, “It fell to me to talk of the way this would appear in relation to Fallingwater. The Neutra house would be interpreted as a rejection of Wright, and Wright would be the first person to react. My father agreed to withhold his name from publication of the new house, and during Wright’s lifetime it was known merely as “a house in the [Colorado] desert”, as the local area, curiously, was called.”

In his essay text for the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition catalog “The Kaufmann Office: Frank Lloyd Wright” Christopher Wilk cites Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer’s “Master Drawings from the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives”, “Despite harmony between Neutra and Kaufmann and the bestowal of several awards upon the new house, the large number of unprotected windows and plate glass walls left the house too exposed to the desert sun. The Kaufmann’s therefore turned to Wright for an alternate scheme in 1951.” (See below).


Aerial perspective, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Boulder House (unbuilt) for Liliane and Edgar J. Kaufman, Sr., Palm Springs, 1951. Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. From Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect edited by Terence Riley, Museum of Modern Art, 1994. From my collection.

In the above Boulder House rendering, Wright condescendingly contrasts his bold grand organicism with Neutra’s seemingly much smaller “International Style” footprint seen in the upper right corner. Hoffmann writes, “The house of boulders was never built, and perhaps was more nearly intended as a chance for Wright to show what he might have done had E. J. Kaufmann not gone to Neutra: the difference, that is, between “organic” architecture and the International Style, or what Neutra chose to call his “biorealism.”Wilk states, “His ‘Boulder House’ surrounded by desert rocks and with a plan based upon circular motifs (including a moat-like swimming pool) was not built, perhaps owing to Edgar Kaufmann’s ill health – a prime reason for his spending more time in the desert climate – or difficulties with his marriage. Wright referred to the design as a rare and beautiful thing. One of my very best.”

Bibliography Introduction
(excerpted from the bibliography retrievable at the link below)
All photos by Julius Shulman unless noted. Click on image to enlarge. Full credits given in the bibliography at the bottom link.

I would like to acknowledge Julius Shulman for the inspiration to create this bibliography. As I gradually became an avid fan and collector of material pertaining to Southern California modernist architecture over the last few years, I grew to appreciate the great importance of Shulman’s legacy in chronicling its evolution and growth. I also started to realize the ubiquitousness of his images in the architectural literature and on the covers of same. I approached him a few years back and asked if he had ever thought of doing a book which would collect all of the covers from books, shelter magazines, and architectural journals that his photos have graced. He liked the idea and invited me up to his idyllic Raphael Soriano-designed studio in the Hollywood Hills. After an introductory chat he told me to open the doors to his closet and pull down some of the dusty old 8X10 Kodak film storage boxes from the top shelf. They were stuffed to the gills with clippings and tear sheets he had saved over the years from various articles containing his photos. As we rummaged we found numerous covers he had long forgotten about and which I had never seen.

Thus began a journey on which there seems to be no end. Julius gave me much encouragement and allowed me free reign to browse, and catalogue his studio archives. He also graciously shared with me his assignment log book which contains over 7,000 records and counting as he continued to work beyond his recently-celebrated 98th birthday. He introduced me to important historians, film makers and archivists and regaled me with anecdotes on his assignments and clients. To date we have uncovered over 800 covers on which his photos have appeared. Julius has chosen the title “Julius Shulman Covers Up” for this effort and uses it with an impish twinkle in his eyes. While conducting my exhaustive search for Shulman covers I began compiling an annotated bibliography of all the publications his work has appeared in. It has become a labor of love which now approaches 8,000 items. It has also provided focus to, and facilitated, my collecting efforts.

Slim Aarons photo, 1970.

The history of Shulman’s relationship with his first and most important client, Richard Neutra, is well-known. Neutra was eminent in international architectural circles prior to his introduction to Shulman but it was Shulman’s artistic style that exhibited Neutra’s work in a way that truly focused a viewer’s attention on the evolution of modern residential architecture in Los Angeles and Southern California. Their collaborative body of globally-published work greatly enhanced both their reputations and established Southern California as a modernist Mecca for American and foreign architects alike, as well as critics, journalists, historians and enthusiasts of the genre.

Neutra and Shulman’s careers are so intertwined that one really cannot be researched without the other. Therefore, while I was assembling Shulman’s bibliography it made sense to me to concurrently create another for Neutra. This has led to a Neutra annotated bibliography comprised of over 5,000 entries to date, about 40% of which contain Shulman photos. Likewise, roughly 30% of Shulman’s bibliography items contain photos of work by Neutra. Neutra’s proficiency at self-promotion is evidenced by the over 2,000 articles containing Shulman photos resulting from only about 225 assignments. Neutra always ordered 10 sets of prints, split them up and distributed them to editors all over the world and ordered many reprints of selected projects.

Neutra’s Kaufmann House is one of the most important icons of Southern California Modernism. It is arguably exceeded in significance by only Neutra’s Lovell Health House and/or R. M. Schindler’s Kings Road House. Julius Shulman’s photographs have played a momentous role in establishing the house’s iconic status and it is both men’s most published work. The reader is referred to an excellent essay by Simon Niedenthal which appeared in the November 1993 issue of the Journal of Architectural Education “Glamourized Houses: Neutra, Photography, and the Kaufmann House” to obtain a sense of Neutra’s early eagerness to broadly publicize his masterpiece balanced by Kaufmann’s desire for a slow roll-out in the national press and journals. The article goes into depth regarding the creation of Shulman’s “glamorous” image and the importance photography plays in an architectural monument achieving iconic status. Also noteworthy is Christie’s “Richard Neutra: The Kaufmann House” May 13, 2008 auction catalogue for its photos and illustrations and contextual historic background information.

My bibliographic software is easily searchable and sortable. Recent searches of my Shulman and Neutra bibliographies for the Kaufmann House turned up over 500 hits which segued into this publication. Neutra’s relentless and strategic efforts to universally publish all of his work resulted in over 150 articles referencing the Kaufmann House (almost exclusively with Shulman photos) from its completion in 1947 until his death in 1970. Only 70 articles are documented from then until the purchase of the house for restoration by Beth and Richard Harris 25 years later. From 1995 to date there have been close to 275 articles resulting from the publicity surrounding the restoration efforts by the Harrises and their restoration architects Marmol & Radziner, and the rekindled interest in Neutra’s work by architectural historians, Palm Springs Modernism, architectural preservation and modernism in general, and publicity surrounding the recent Christie’s Realty International auction.

No bibliography is ever truly complete, especially one involving the work of publishing dynamos of the likes of Richard Neutra and Julius Shulman. This bibliography collects Kaufmann House-related items from all existing Neutra bibliographies and books by or about Neutra and countless modern architecture histories and anthologies. Despite my exhaustive on-line database searches, cover-to-cover journal and magazine searches at local research institutions and libraries, Neutra and Shulman archival searches at the UCLA Charles Young Research Library and Getty Research Institute, respectively, there is yet much material to be mined on these two idols of modernism in the research libraries of the world. Consequently this document should best be viewed as an attempt to stimulate further in-depth research on the Kaufmann House and possibly provide a starting point for a book on the subject. It is my intention to periodically update this compilation as new material continues to be uncovered. Internet searches for the Kaufmann House uncover thousands of additional references. Suggestions for improvements and submissions of new items are always welcomed. My contact information is on the title page.

Link to Bibliography:

"Modern Patrons" Richard King and Carol Soucek King: Living by Design in a Classic Arroyo Buff & Hensman

Carol Soucek King graciously hosted members of the Southern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians for a leisurely tour and conversation with the Society’s “Modern Patrons” organizer John Berley last Saturday, May 8, 2010, between 10AM-12PM. Husband Richard King, seen below, was unable to attend due to a prior commitment to attend graduation ceremonies at Woodbury University where he has been a long-time trustee.

 Modern Patrons, Richard King and Carol Soucek King. November, 2005 issue of Arroyo. (photographer unknown)

This event a was nice followup to the March 28th Pasadena Heritage Spring Home Tour “Buff & Hensman: The Art of Modernism”, (see tour brochure cover below)

 Tour Brochure for “Buff & Hensman: The art of Modernism”, Pasadena Heritage, March 28, 2010 (Cover photo of the Bea Residence by Jim Staub)

Following is a link to the latest SAH/SCC Newsletter announcing the event http://www.sahscc.org/SAHSCC%20News%20MaJu%202010.pdf.

SAH/SCC organized this very successful event as part of their “Modern Patrons” series which was a very special opportunity to visit the Buff & Hensman King Residence “Arroyo del Rey” adjacent to not so dry Arroyo Seco beneath the monumental Highway 134 over-crossing in Pasadena. (See image below). Built in 1979, the King Residence is a superb example of Buff & Hensman’s melding of architecture and landscape in a most unusual setting in the Arroyo. In March 2009, the Pasadena City Council officially designated the Kings’ home a Historic Monument.

King Residence, Buff & Hensman, Pasadena, 1979. (Photographer unknown)

Saturday was a rare chance to experience the house and surrounding gardens, pavilion, and creekside gazebo and also to learn firsthand from Carol how she and husband Richard came about hiring the architects to create a place of serenity and refuge in a spectacular setting. In the monograph Buff & Hensman (USC Guild Press/Balcony Press, 2004), author Don Hensman recalls the King Residence as “a deceptively straightforward floor plan (that) is balanced without being superfluous.

Thompson/Moseley Residence, San Marino, 1959, Rick Barnes photo. (from my collection).

Neutral stucco walls complement the natural wood trim of the sunken living room. In fact, the home feels more like sculpture than structure. We designed the artscape and landscaping to connect three structures, blending them into the natural surroundings.” (The above monograph contains a nice 6-page spread on the King Residence). Carol informed the intimate group attending Saturday’s event that their 1.5-acre compound was executed in three phases during which the undertaking led to a very close friendship with Conrad and Don.

Also major USC patrons, the Kings hosted a memorable symposium “The World of Buff & Hensman” on November 16, 2008 at which the formal announcement of the donation of their fabulous home, “Arroyo del Rey”, a prime example of Buff & Hensman’s work, to USC School of Architecture for use as an events center and the acceptance by School of Architecture Dean Ma were made. The Kings are also providing a generous endowment for the compound’s maintenance. Thus, the home and surroundings will be preserved in perpetuity and in the future will be known as “The Carol Soucek King and Richard King Center for Architecture, Arts and the Humanities/University of Southern California.”

Announcement card for November 16, 2008 Symposium. Photo by Julius Shulman who was in attendance and made an impromptu speech during the event. 
 
 Photo by John Crosse.
In the photo above, SCC/SAH members gathering around in the King living room to listen to Carol and John Berley discuss the King’s close relationship with Conrad Buff and Don Hensman and the design process from which their home and grounds evolved.
John Berley and Carol Soucek King in conversation. Photo by John Crosse.
Carol obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree (English Literature) and Doctorate of Philosophy degree (Communications) from the University of Southern California.  She also studied at Cambridge University in England.  She later earned her Master of Fine Arts degree (Drama) from Yale University. After graduation she worked as Editor of the Lifestyle Section of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Drama Critic for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. She then became Editor in Chief of Designers West magazine from 1978 to 1993. Since then she has devoted much of her time to writing design-oriented books from the home. Her twelve published books range from her first, “Empowered Spaces” [PBC International, 1993], to Unique Homes [HarperCollins-Collins Design, 2006]. (See the image below). In her “spare” time Carol also convenes “The Salon on the Spiritually Creative Life.”

Photo by John Crosse.

Understandably, many of the above books feature the work of Buff & Hensman.
Above is the title page for Carol’s soon to be released “Under the Bridges at Arroyo del Rey”. Illustration by Miller Fong. The following link connects you to her impressive Author’s Page at Amazon where you will see that most of these titles are becoming quite scarce. http://www.amazon.com/Carol-Soucek-King/e/B001HMQQPI/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1273609216&sr=1-3

 Designers West, Vol. 30, No. 12, October, 1983. Modesto Lanzone’s San Francisco Restaurant, Interior Design by Teresa Pomodoro, Russell Abraham photo.

Back issues of Designers West edited by Soucek King are also becoming increasingly rare and quite collectible. The above issue contains a spread of Beth Kudlicki and my Buff & Hensman home in Playa del Rey, the 1983 Harry Dorsey Residence with Julius Shulman photos. We also have a 6-page spread in the above “Buff & Hensman” monograph.

For a related post I did last January on Buff, Straub & Hensman go to http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/01/three-amigos-conrad-buff-iii-calvin.html

I have an Annotated and Illustrated Buff & Hensman Bio-Bibliography in the works which currently contains over 500 articles. Also under way, with the assistance of remaining firm partner Dennis Smith, is a Buff & Hensman Project Database. Stay tuned.

For a related link to John Berley, Project Manager of Frederick Fisher Partners Annenberg Community Beach House project in Santa Monica see http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/annenberg-community-beach-house-at.html


Annenberg Community Beach House at Santa Monica State Beach, Frederick Fisher Partners, 2009

Beth and I were out and about yesterday checking out a couple amazing open houses (a $12 million Ed Niles House on Loma Linda in Beverly Hills and Eric Owen Moss’s iconic 708 House in Pacific Palisades) and happened to be driving down PCH past Fred Fisher Partners’ Annenberg Community Beach House at Santa Monica State Beach and decided to pop in and take a few photos. The building was reviewed in the October 25, 2009 issue of the L.A. Times by L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne who also deemed  the Beach House as one of the Top ten Buildings of 2009 in L.A. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/25/entertainment/ca-notebook25/3 See also my recent post on Fisher’s formative years in conjunction with his ongoing exhibition “Frederick Fisher: Thinking by Hand” at the Edward Cella Gallery. http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/04/frederick-fisher-and-venice-rat-pack.html

(Click on images to enlarge)
Beth Kudlicki photographing the signage. John Crosse photo.

Aerial photo of the original Marion Davies Estate commissioned by William Randolph Hearst and designed by Julia Morgan in 1929. Photographer unknown.

 Marion Davies guest house designed by Julia Morgan in 1929. John Crosse photo.

Beach House entrance. Photo by John Crosse.

Architect William Krisel’s 1973 Ocean Towers condominiums can be seen atop the bluff in the background. Film maker Jake Gorst featured the towers in some fascinating time-lapse footage in the recently released “William Krisel, Architect” documentary. http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/02/william-krisel-architect-los-angeles.html

Above is a historical photo of the Davies beach front pool. Note the columns echoed by Fisher Partners in the new facility below.

Photo by John Crosse, 05-09-2010
Another historical structure can be seen on the bluff top in the top center of the above photo, i.e., A. Quincy Jones’s elegant 1963 Shorecliff Tower Apartments (now condominiums) with structural engineering by Richard Bradshaw. Next door to the north of Shorecliff is William Krisel’s Park Plaza Condominiums into which his first mentor, Paul Laszlo moved when they were completed in 1975. Directly west of these two high-rises on the beach just south of the Annenberg Community Beach House lies Richard Neutra’s 1935 Lewin Beach House with 1998 Steven Ehrlich addition. Also very close by within walking distance are Richard Neutra’s Barsha and Sten-Frenke Residences and Steven Ehrlich’s 1991 Ehrman-Coombs Residence. So bike or walk down to the beach, bring a picnic, do a walking tour and soak it all in.
North facade. Photo by John Crosse.
View from the second level deck looking through the community meeting room windows. Photo by John Crosse.
Stairway up to the first floor meeting rooms. Photo by John Crosse.
Second floor deck overlooking the pool and ocean. Photo by John Crosse.
The above deck would be a fabulous place to chill out and read a book on a lazy summer afternoon.
Hallway between the main building and the northerly exhibition space and meeting areas. Photo by John Crosse.

The Annenberg Community Beach House project manager for Fisher Partners, John Berley also happens to conduct the “Modern Patrons” series for the Southern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and organized a wonderful event Saturday morning at the Richard and Carol Soucek King Residence in Pasadena designed by Buff & Hensman in 1978. He is also involved in the firm’s other Annenberg Foundation Trust Projects in Palm Springs, i.e., the restoration of the Annenberg’s Sunnylands Estate designed by A. Quincy Jones and the new visitor’s center which is rapidly nearing completion.

Relatedly, on Saturday afternoon at his gallery on Wilshire across the street from LACMA, Edward Cella hosted a salon titled “Restore, Refresh, Renew: New Desert Projects” where Janice Lyle, Director of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands (http://www.sunnylands.org/) discussed the Annenberg Estate restoration and new visitor center and how the new 200-acre compound and surrounding grounds are envisioned to be used. Sidney Williams, Curator of Architecture and Design for the Palm Springs Art Museum (http://www.psmuseum.org/councils/architecture_and_design.php) lectured on the legacy of modernism in the greater Palm Springs region and current efforts to preserve, restore, and interpret this legacy within the dynamic community context. She broke the exciting news to the group that plans are under way to acquire E. Stewart Williams’s 1960 Santa Fe Federal Savings Building on Palm Canyon Drive for use as exhibition space and storage for their growing architectural archives.

Santa Fe Savings Building, Palm Springs, E. Stewart Williams, 1960. Photo by Julius Shulman, Job No.3466, 12-08-1962. http://www.psmodcom.com/pix/Architects%20Pix/WilliamsPix/SantaFeExt-Mini.jpg

To learn more about A. Quincy Jones and Sunnylands I recommend picking up a copy of “Sunnylands: Art and Architecture of the Annenberg Estate in Rancho Mirage, California” edited by David G. De Long. (See below). To learn more about the Annenberg Foundation and growing portfolio of cultural centers and activities go to http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/

Image from Amazon.com.

The historical connections of Frederick Fisher Partners and A. Quincy Jones now run quite deep. The firm works out of the historic Jones & Emmons office building (see rendering above) at 12348 Santa Monica Blvd. which they sensitively restored to period pristineness. How ironic (and appropriate I might add) that they be the firm to restore the A. Quincy Jones-designed Annenberg Estate’s Sunnylands compound and design the new visitor’s center. On top of the Community Beach House and Sunnylands projects, Fisher Partners is also restoring A. Quincy Jones’s iconic “The Barn” on Pico Blvd. in Century City for the Metabolic Studio, an arts program affiliated with the Annenberg Foundation. See the Sam Lubell article, “Century City Pastoral” in the 03-12-2010 issue of The Architect’s Neswpaper at the following link for more details. (The Barn)

The Barn, A. Quincy Jones Residence, Century City, 1966. Los Angeles Times Home Magazine, 05-22-1966. Julius Shulman Job No. 3988, 02-11-1966.

    
Thus it appears that Fisher’s decision to move his firm into the restored Jones & Emmons offices has paid off in a big way with the resultant Annenberg Foundation commissions. It is also quite coincidental indeed that the Annenberg Community Beach House is in such close proximity to Jones & Emmon’s Shorecliff Tower Condominiums. 
All this seems to cry out  to me for an exhibition on Jones whose last show was a tribute curated by Esther McCoy at Cal-State Dominguez Hills shortly after his passing in early 1980. What better place for a Jones exhibition than an inaugural show in the soon to be acquired Santa Fe Federal Savings Building in Palm Springs where Jones is revered for his desert work. February, 2012 Modernism Week seems like a great target to shoot for unless other plans are already under way for that date. For my related post which references A. Quincy Jones’s Plam Springs work see http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2009/12/paul-r-williams-and-quincy-jones.html.

"John Lautner: An Annotated and Illustrated Bio-Bibliography" compiled and annotated by John Crosse

Chemosphere, L.A. Times Home Magazine, April 30, 1961. Julius Shulman Job No. 3152, March 6-7, 1961. (from my collection)

Feb. 2010 John Lautner Foundation reprint of the Journal of the Taliesin Fellows Issue 18, 1995 edited by Louise Wiehle and Frank Escher with new material added (see bibliography below). Courtesy of Judy Lautner.

Introduction

The 2008 Hammer exhibition “Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner” and Getty-Hammer Symposium “Against Reason: John Lautner and Postwar Architecture” created a flood of publicity and generated much renewed interest in Lautner’s life and work. The traveling show is currently on view at the Palm Springs Art Museum after an interim show in Glasgow, Scotland. This motivated me to look deeper into the literature for information on this unique and creative genius.

A logical starting point for me was to perform a “Lautner” search in my 8,000 item “Julius Shulman Annotated Bibliography” prepared while researching a book on Shulman cover photos. The search resulted in 275 articles with Shulman photos of Lautner projects. Shulman has logged close to 75 assignments for Lautner projects over the years for various clients ranging from Lautner himself to book and article authors, magazine editors, newspaper reporters, exhibition curators, homeowners and realtors. He also used his considerable marketing skills and contacts with publishers and editors to help spread the gospel of modernism according to Lautner to a global audience.

This bibliography compiles my Shulman-Lautner findings with the excellent bibliographic foundation laid by Ludolf von Alvensleben in the 1991 Viennese exhibition catalog “John Lautner: Architect: Los Angeles”, and “John Lautner, Architect” with text by Lautner and edited by Frank Escher, and the John Lautner Foundation web site. Listings were also gleaned from the end notes in “The Architecture of John Lautner” by Alan Hess and “Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner” edited by Nicholas Olsberg, et al.

Building upon these sources, exhaustive searches were also done on ProQuest-Los Angeles Times Historical, RIBA, Avery, WorldCat, WilsonWeb, Art Index, Google and many other databases and sources resulting in well over 1200 items discovered to date. Feedback on ways to improve this compilation and submittals of new items I have undoubtedly overlooked are always welcome as I intend to update this bibliography periodically.

Structure of the Bibliography

Entries in the bibliography are chronological with divisions by year. Each year begins with a brief chronology of important events in Lautner‟s life followed by a list of the year’s projects and finally, bibliographical items published during the year with my annotations. I have compiled the chronology and project lists from the ones provided in the aforementioned Ludwig von Alvensleben exhibition catalog and Lautner-Escher monograph, the 1999 Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange “John Lautner” monograph edited by Peter Gossel, the 2008 “Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner” exhibition catalog edited by Olsberg, the 1998 “The Architecture of John Lautner” by Alan Hess and the project database prepared by Tycho Saariste available on the Lautner Foundation web site. I also have not taken the time to edit items from the Shulman bibliography that contain work by others in addition to Lautner. Readers may find it interesting, however, to see what company Lautner was keeping in these group articles. Illustrations are from my personal collection or from various internet sources and credited in the adjacent bibliography listing.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Judith Lautner for her review comments and contribution of numerous items included herein and her continuing devotion to maintaining the Lautner Foundation web site. http://www.johnlautner.org/

Bibliography Link:

John Lautner Annotated & Illustrated Bio-Bibliography (Takes a few seconds to download due to file size)


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Contact

Besides making a public comment below, feel free to contact me privately if you wish at jocrosse@ca.rr.com