Southern California Architectural History

(Link to the Bibliography at the bottom of this post)

Introduction

Beth Kudlicki and I have been blessed to have lived in Buff, Smith & Hensman’s Dorsey House in Playa del Rey since 2000. The house was completed in 1983 and received a Pasadena-Foothill Chapter AIA Award of Merit Award in 1984. We never tire of living in this wonderful house as we continue to enjoy fresh nuances which the change of the seasons and weather bring to the lighting patterns and shadows in the house interiors. We did not know that much about the firm when we bought the house, only that we immediately knew we wanted to move in. I soon thereafter began to collect material on Southern California’s modernist architectural history. I quickly learned the importance of the Buff & Hensman legacy while researching a book on Julius Shulman’s cover photos which inspired me to compile a bibliography of the firm’s published work.

A logical starting point for me was to perform Buff & Hensman; Buff, Straub & Hensman; and Buff, Smith & Hensman searches in my 8,000 item “Julius Shulman Annotated Bibliography.” The search resulted in 250 articles with Shulman photos of Buff & Hensman projects. Shulman has logged close to 50 assignments on Buff & Hensman projects over the years for various clients ranging from the architects 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 Buff & Hensman to a global audience. Building upon my Shulman listings, exhaustive searches were also done in the Buff & Hensman archives courtesy of Dennis Smith, on ProQuest, Los Angeles Times Historical, RIBA, Avery, WorldCat, WilsonWeb, Art Index, Google and many other databases and sources resulting in well over 450 items discovered to date.

I am also in the process of compiling a Buff & Hensman Project Database which will list all of the firm’s projects, built or unbuilt, by year and job address. I hope that this effort will then make it easier for Buff & Hensman fans to find the still-existant work and foster future preservation efforts of same. My starting point for this effort was the “Chronology of Projects” compiled by James Steele and Alex Moseley included in the back of Buff & Hensman by Donald C. Hensman and edited by James Steele with introduction by Alex Moseley. To complete the work I am in the process of doing a tube-by-tube search of the plans in the Buff, smith & Hensman office to locate the individual project addresses. Once that effort is finished, I plan to merge that information into this bibliography chronologically by year as described below.

Structure of the Bibliography

Entries in the bibliography are chronological with divisions by year followed by a list of the year’s projects (when the above-mentioned database is complete) and finally, annotated bibliographical items published during the year. I have also included thumbnail images of the covers featuring the firm’s work. I have not taken the time to edit items from the Shulman bibliography that contain work by others in addition to Buff & Hensman. Readers may find it interesting, however, to see what company the firm was keeping in these group articles. Illustrations are from my personal collection, the firm’s archive, or from various internet sources and credited in the adjacent bibliography listing.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dennis Smith who has allowed me unfettered access to the firm’s archives in Pasadena and Don Hensman’s nephew Mark Troughber for sharing his extensive collection.

Link to the Bibliography

Buff & Hensman: An Annotated & Illustrated Bibliography

Other Links of Interest

For a recent post on my blog Southern California Architectural History see “A Case Study in the Mechanics of Fame: Buff, Straub & Hensman, Julius Shulman, Esther McCoy and Case Study House No. 20” at:

http://socalarchhistory.blogspot.com/2010/01/three-amigos-conrad-buff-iii-calvin.html

For more on the firm go to:

http://www.buffsmithandhensman.com/

For more on Calvin Straub and his Arizona work go to:

http://www.modernphoenix.net/straub/calvinstraubarizona.htm

For more on Case Study House No. 20 and Buff, Straub & Hensman visit the blog:

http://casestudyhouse20.blogspot.com/

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Conrad Buff III (1924-1988)and Donald Hensman (1924-2002), and associates Calvin Straub (1920-1988, partner from 1956 to 1962) and Dennis Smith (40 year employee, partner since 1988 and president upon Hensman’s 1998 retirement), have been a major presence of modernist understated elegance on the Southern California landscape for the last 60 years. Buff & Hensman’s first of many cover appearances in the L.A. Times Home Magazine was an August 31, 1952 three-page spread of their mountain A-frame cabin for Buff’s well-known parents. They shortly thereafter burst onto the scene (with Calvin Straub) with their iconic post-and-beam Case Study House No. 20 for designer Saul Bass in Altadena in 1958. (see below).

Oct. 15, 2005 Tour Brochure (28 pp.), Friends of the Gamble House, Pasadena & Foothill Chapter – AIA, and USC School of Architecture, Julius Shulman Job 2675, Getty Research Institute. (from my collection).

This house, so expertly captured for the pages of ten separate issues of Arts & Architecture magazine in 1958 by Julius Shulman, was featured in at least 150 other publications over the years according to my Buff & Hensman Annotated Bibliography. It has been featured on numerous books and magazine covers and is included in any book featuring the Case Study House Program. Case Study House No. 20 (with Julius Shulman’s assistance) firmly established Buff & Hensman’s legacy.

Another publication that fans and collectors should seek out is “Buff & Hensman” edited by James Steele with photographs by Julius Shulman published by the USC Architectural Guild Press in 2004.

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

This compilation remains the most in-depth monograph on the firm’s work to date and includes an introduction by two-time B&H homeowner Alex Moseley, and a preface by USC School of Architecture Dean Robert Timme and highlights the history of the firm’s almost exclusively residential work. An illustrated year-by-year chronology of projects and index are included in the back-matter. The partner’s post-war years as student’s and faculty at USC are discussed as is the importance of Julius Shulman’s photographs in preserving and enhancing the firm’s standing in the pantheon of Southern California Architectural History. Being a Buff & Hensman homeowner, you can expect many mare posts on this blog on their work.

Two links of note are included to direct the reader to the Buff & Hensman website http://www.buffsmithandhensman.com/
and  Buff & Hensman Facebook Fan Page which I established today to provide a forum for discussion and display of the firm’s work. 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buff-Hensman/247064621136?ref=ts

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