Southern California Architectural History

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).

http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/view/search/EXM-N-9542-029~2

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.

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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.

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 to 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).

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.

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.

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).

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 & Architecture which was guest-edited by Pauline Schindler, a longtime friend of his wife, Jean Murray Bangs whom he had first met in 1931. 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.

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 Oyer whose California Arts & Architecture was thereafter 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 the following year and Harris and fiance Jean Murray Bangs, also an occasional contributor to CA&amp;A, became very close friends with his former assistant and successor, Jere Johnson who became publisher in December 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.

Harris’s and wife Jean Murray Bang’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.

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 right) and also had the distinction of being Julius Shulman’s first cover photo (above left). 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 the editorship of 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. Jean Bangs Harris was also listed on the masthead Guest Editor for the October 1939 issue, likely on board to help out during Johnson’s pregnancy. Johnson asked the Harrises to recommend a substitute editor to hold down the fort until she returned from maternity leave 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).

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).

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).

Entenza’s apparently hostile 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).

“The Rancheria of Mr. and Mrs. Cliff May in Mandeville Canyon, California, Cliff May, Builder, Interiors by Paul Frankl, A.I.D.” California Arts & Architecture, August 1939, cover, 24-25. Photos by W. P. Woodcock. (From my collection).

Other notable casualties of Entenza’s coup d’etat were Pauline Schindler’s father Edmund Gibling and Cliff May. Gibling was added to the advertising staff by Jere Johnson in February 1939 shortly after he and his wife moved from Chicago to their Schindler-designed Westwood residence. (See February 1940 masthead later below). Gibling likely obtained the position through Harris’s wife Jean Murray Bangs’ close friendships with both Pauline and Jere Johnson. Bangs had been a Kings Road habitue and confidant of Pauline’s since 1922. Gibling’s last appearance on the masthead was in the March 1940 issue as he, out of loyalty to the Harrises, chose to also disassociate himself from Entenza due to his ouster of Johnson.

Cliff May, who like Harris also had his work championed by Johnson, had five projects featured between his first appearance in February 1938, including his first cover story on his personal residence in the August 1939 issue (see above) and his last appearance in another cover story in the February 1940 issue. (See below). Unfortunately for us all, May’s romanticist Spanish hacienda-influenced ranch houses simply did not fall within the modernist vision Entenza wanted to move towards.

“The Residence of Mr. and Mrs. H. F. Tucker Residence, San Diego, California, Cliff May, Designer and Builder,” California Arts & Architecture, February 1940, cover, 28-29. Photo by Robert Churchill. (From my collection).

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. &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).

In her 1987 oral history McCoy also leaves us a clue regarding the bad blood between Harris and Bangs and Entenza with the comment, “I was writing to Harwell Harris yesterday, telling him this, because he had said some nasty things about John Entenza to Carter Manney, and Manney had told me, and was hurt by them,…” (An interview of Esther McCoy conducted 1987 June 7-Nov. 14 by Joseph Giovannini, for the Archives of Anerican Art, p. 60).

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.

Virtually every source since McCoy’s above erroneous assertions 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 &amp; 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 of some of the anthologized articles and was also a frequent contributor during, and listed on the masthead as Contributing Editor of, Goldstein’s valiant four-year attempt to resuscitate Arts + Architecture in the early 1980s. The pair also collaborated on Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980, by Esther McCoy &amp; Barbara Goldstein, also published by David Travers’ Arts + Architecture Press in 1982. (See my related Selected Publications of Esther McCoy).

Elizabeth A. T. Smith is clearly disingenuous in the opening two pages of her otherwise excellent essay “Arts & 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 & 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 & 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 disingenuously juxtaposed the below January 1938 (left) and February 1942 (right) covers on her opening page to accentuate her point that CA&amp;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 chosen 1932 or 1933 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.

Left, Halliburton Residence by Alexander Levy, Miles Berne photo. Right, Living room by Paul Laszlo, Julius Shulman photo.

A more accurate before and after comparison of the 1940 transition from Jere Johnson’s editorship to Entenza’s would have been to show something along the lines of the above November 1937 (left, before) and December 1941 (right, after) issues or the below August 1934 (left, before) and the September 1941 (right, after) issues featuring covers by Brett and Edward Weston. (See also my Sands of Time: Oceano Dunes and the Westons for more details). Although Entenza’s impact on the magazine during his first year is evident, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as McCoy, Goldstein, Smith and David Travers (see later below), would lead one to believe.

Left, Brett Weston, “Oceano Dunes”, 1934. Right, Edward Weston, “Neil Weston, Boat Builder”, 1935.

Smith’s next essay paragraph begins, “Between 1938 and February, 1939, the date as Entenza’s formal listing as editor on the magazine’s masthead, Arts &amp; 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 &amp; Architecture. (See my related post The Sands of Time: The Westons and the Oceano Dunes for more discussion of Merle Armitage’s articles on modern art in and modernizing influence on California Arts &amp; Architecture beginning in 1932). Secondly, what Smith also disingenuously fails to mention is that this new and improved title page in the February 1940 issue seen below 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. 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 &amp; 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.” As to the statement regarding modern having not touched the pages of the magazine, see the July-August 1932 Neutra CA&amp;A article below announcing the opening of the legendary Museum of Modern Art’s traveling “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition” then on display at Bullock’s Wilshire in conjunction with the 1932 Summer Olympic Games. In it Neutra wrote,

“The old California tradition of a home life half in-doors and half (the better half!) out-of-doors, the friendly openness of domestic architecture to a kind Nature surrounding houses of the Pacific Coast meets with the general trend of new architecture the world over. California ideas of dwelling, so to speak, are practically being accepted in Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna and an abundance of natural aeration and light influx is cherished under climactic conditions which are much more severe than those in California.”

Neutra, Richard, “Exhibition of the New Architecture”, California Arts &amp; Architecture, July-August, 1932.

Two-and-a-half years earlier Pauline Schindler favorably reviewed the then recently completed Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store for the exhibition in CA&amp;A’s January 1930 issue. The article described in glowing terms the new modernist venue and the interiors designed by Jock Peters, John Weber and Kem Weber. Of the store she wrote, “It constitutes an unmistakable advance in the movement of contemporary design. (“A Significant Contribution to Culture: The Interior of a Great California Store as an Interpretation of Modern Life” California Arts &amp; Architecture, January 1930 (PGS). Also see my Foundations of Los Angeles Modernism: Richard Neutra’a Mod Squad for much more on Bullock’s Wilshire).

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 totally inaccurate statement 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 & 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&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 & Garden with a significant portion of the East Coast articles first appearing in CA&A.

Both Harris and Shulman (and many others) have Neutra (and R. M. and Pauline Schindler to a somewhat lesser extent (PGS)) to thank for sparking the initial interest of East Coast editors in West Coast modern residential architecture. Neutra’s pioneering publicity efforts beginning in the late 1920s and 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 & 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.” This was the only source I have found to date that errs on the long side of 1940 but the date “California” was finally dropped was correct. 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&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. Armitage’s modernizing influence on California Arts & Architecture can be seen as early as 1932 with his contributions of articles on modern artists such as Edward Weston, Eugene Maier-Krieg and others for whom he was also simultaneously publishing fine press editions of their work. See my related post ”The Sands of Time: The Westons and the Oceano Dunes” for more discussion on this. Also see my related post “Touring Topic/Westways: The Phil Townsend Hanna Years” for much on Merle Armitage’s modernizing influence on that publication as well.

http://twls.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=190016

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.”

Small Homes Issue, California Arts & Architecture, July 1939. (From my collection).

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 (cover story on his personal residence), 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

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.

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.

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

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 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 likely 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 Braziller Neutramonograph.

“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.” (McCoy Oral History, Archives of American Art).

This, coupled with McCoy’s original close friendship and working relationship with Entenza and later magazine and book collaborations with friends and colleagues Barbara Goldstein and David Travers was likely how the 1938 myth was generated and perpetuated. (For more discussion on this see my Selected Publications of Esther McCoy, Patron Saint of Southern California Architectural Historians).

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 mid to 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 article to increase awareness of the important role California Arts &amp; Architecture played in our state’s rich architectural legacy, to begin to set the record straight regarding the circumstances surrounding the magazine’s 1940 editorial and publishing regime change and to elicit further discourse on the subject. Personally I have become increasingly dismayed with the fact that massive new treatises are still unwittingly being published with much erroneous information surrounding Entenza’s 1940 CA&amp;A palace coup. Recent publication of major magnum opuses perpetuating the above-mentioned inaccuracies indicates that this will be an extremely difficult task indeed.

CA&amp;A between the early 1930s and the actual beginning of the Entenza Years in early 1940 is a treasure trove of material, chronicling the evolution of California’s Modern Movement in both the arts and architecture, 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.

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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 (link to current owner interview after recent restoration) 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 as was work by erstwhile partner R. M. Schindler whom he had recently introduced to Shulman. Neutra 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.

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.

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Life Magazine, April 11, 1949, pp. 146-7. Richard Neutra, Kaufmann House, 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. See the excellent article, “Julius Shulman in 36 Exposures” by Los Angeles Magazine editor-in-chief Mary Melton for a description on how the photo was made.

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 Richard Neutra: The Kaufmann House 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.

“Art: New Shells,” 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 his erstwhile disciple Neutra’s seemingly much smaller “International Style” footprint seen in the upper right corner. The house was intended to be built on a lot near just north of Neutra’s Kaufmann House at 470 W. Vista Chino and just a little east of Albert Frey’s Raymond Loewy House at 600 Panorama Rd. 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.” This block of Palm Springs’ Little Tuscany would have been an even more distinguished architectural neighborhood indeed if Wright’s ‘Boulder House’ had only been built.

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 98^th 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.

American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture by Alice T. Friedman. 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.

Landscape Architecture: The Shaping of Man’s Natural Environment by John Ormsbee Simonds, McGraw-Hill, 1961.

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 while at the same time educating the masses in his unique form of a nature-based modernism he termed “Biorealism” 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.

 

Richard Neutra on Building: Mystery & Realities of the Site, Morgan & Morgan, 1951.

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.

Richard Neutra: The Kaufmann House, Christie’s, 2010.

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:

Kaufmann House Annotated & Illustrated Bibliography

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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: An Annotate & Illustrated Bibliography (Takes a few seconds to download due to file size)

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Exhibition poster (see above and below) scanned from “Jerrold E. Lomax, FAIA: The First 80 Years” a MODAA exhibition catalog published by Studio Pali Fekete Architects. (Zoltan Pali was a former Lomax employee). Originally published in the May 1976 issue of L.A. Architect. (from my collection)

The twelve architects featured in the exhibition were Roland Coate, Daniel Dworsky, Craig Ellwood, Frank Gehry, John Lautner, Jerrold Lomax, Anthony Lumsden, Leroy Miller, Cesar Pelli, James Pulliam, and Bernard Zimmerman. Not all are all household names in the field today but at the time were more than an adequate cross-section to provide a snapshot of what was happening on the L.A. architectural scene.

An all-day conference was held in the Pacific Design Center on May 22 in conjunction with the exhibition. Julius Shulman presented a slide lecture “Los Angeles – The Early Years” followed by morning and afternoon panel discussions featuring half of the participants. (See schedule below). The conference was reported on by Shelly Kappe in the July 1976 issue of L.A. Architect. She included some interesting quotes from British architectural critic Charles Jencks and noted Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman who were both in attendance.

L.A. Times staff writer John Dreyfuss provided an in-depth review of the exhibition in the May 23 issue titled “Work and Philosophy of 12 Architects.” He reported that each architect was provided a 75-foot-long, 5-foot-high rack on which 13 20-inch-square panels provided project photos and firm information. The exhibition also included two slide projectors flashing images of the architect’s projects and two videotape machines providing five-minute discourses on the design philosophy of each participant. Several models augmented the overall display. Dreyfuss also commented on the work and philosophy of each participant. The exhibition traveled to the Aspen Design Conference and Cal Poly Pomona and the 1977 national AIA convention in San Diego.

Dreyfuss followed up with an article on August 14, 1977 titled “The L.A. 12: Good Idea Which Has Gone Nowhere.” Dreyfuss lamented on the lost opportunity formation of this group provided such as: bringing recognition to Southern California architecture, bringing architects together to discuss their work, encouraging and inspiring young architects, generating articles in the professional journals and popular press, and organizing conferences within the AIA and with architects from other cities and countries. Dreyfuss cited as an example how much the 12 architects had learned from each other just by participating in the exhibition and related discussions.

Dreyfuss continued stating that “There is a lack of communication among Southern California architects, a gap that could be filled if the L.A. 12 continued to meet.” This was seconded by Cesar Pelli who left L.A. to become Dean of the Yale University School of Architecture who said “In the East, architects are in close contact with each other. They exchange ideas frequently, both informally and through organizations. This is the key thing. As your thoughts develop, they are being examined.”

“12 Los Angeles Architects” edited by N. Charles Slert and James R. Harter, Photographic Consultants: Julius Shulman and Marvin Rand, 1978, Cal Poly Pomona. (from my collection)

The publication of “12 Los Angeles Architects” (see above) in 1978 coincided with a year-long lecture series “Twelve Architects / Twelve Months” in the Knoll Showroom at the Pacific Design Center sponsored by the Architectural Student Forum of the Student Chapter/AIA of Cal Poly Pomona. My partner Beth Kudlicki fondly remembers this series as she was showroom manager for Knoll during this period. Each of the 12 architects featured in the “The Los Angeles 12″ exhibition lectured in the series. This was possibly a response to the previously-mentioned Dreyfuss article in an attempt to keep the idea of the “L.A. 12″ alive. The above book is extremely scarce and prized by collectors. It includes roughly 15 to 20 pages on each of the participant’s work including transcribed interviews following a brief bio.

In the book Slert divides the 12 architects into four groups: “the Expressionalists” including Roland Coate, Jr. Anthony J. Lumsden, and Cesar Pelli; “The Constructionists” including Craig Ellwood and Raymond Kappe; “The Rationalists” including Daniel L. Dworsky, Jerrold Lomax, Leroy Miller, James Pulliam and Bernard Zimmerman; and “The Experimentalists” including none other than Frank O. Gehry and John Lautner.

Nicholas Pyle’s insightful foreword analytically compares the similarities and differences of the L.A. 12 with the New York 5 (Meier, Hejduk, Eisenman, Graves and Gwathmey) and the Chicago 7 (Tigerman, Booth, Nagle, Weese,  Freed, Beeby and Cohen). He characterizes the New York 5 as “jockeying for a favorable position in the great cultural free-for-all while the Chicago 7 were trying to attain a separate identity from their city’s monolithic architectural establishment.”

Pyle continues, “The L.A. 12, however, are not trying to achieve either an established style or an anti-establishment coup. They are already designers of considerable influence and achievement, including in their number heads of schools of architecture and principles for design in large established firms. They might be said to exemplify the highest ideals of the architectural mainstream. Their crusade, such as it is, seems not to be on the behalf of themselves. Rather it is to illustrate their conviction that the profession of architecture can without overthrowing its traditional values successfully serve the interests of the marketplace.”

He closes with “The concern that the L.A. 12 express in this book is an appeal both to the decision-makers that are overseeing the increasing disarray of our world and to the designers and future designers who are beginning to feel adrift in it. The role of architects is still to provide the physical world with beauty and order.”

The L.A. 12 were a somewhat random selection of architects which gave us a snapshot of Southern California architectural design sensibilities in the mid-1970s. In future blog posts I intend to revisit a series of other historical California architectural exhibitions and the architectural discourse they might have generated in their day. Stay tuned.

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McCoy was also respected in the academic community for her work as a contributing editor for Arts & Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Zodiac, Lotus, Global Architecture, Domus, Perspecta, Journal of Architectural Historians, and many others. Following is a chronological walk down memory lane with a selection of some of her better known architectural exhibition catalogs and monographs.

McCoy began her career as an architectural historian with a piece on her employer titled “Schindler, Space Architect” which was published in the Fall 1945 issue of Direction (see above), ”a cultural magazine with a left-wing slant and anti-fascist bias” published by Marguerite Tjader Harris, the daughter of a wealthy munitions manufacturer. (Haller, p. 26). From 1937 until 1945 Mrs. Harris edited Direction, the left-wing journal of the arts she founded with the support of Dreiser. In 1944 Harris (see below), who had also carried on a long-time intimate relationship with architect Le Corbusier, and her son moved to Los Angeles where she became, like McCoy, one in a long succession of Dreiser editorial assistants.

Theodore Dreiser, Helen Richardson, Marguerite Tjader Haris and son at the Dreiser’s Kings Road home, 1944. Photographer unknown (Esther McCoy?). Courtesy Theodore Dreiser Papers, Penn Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Strongly attracted to Dreiser as was McCoy, Harris had an off and on intimate relationship with Dreiser from the time of their 1928 meeting until 1944 when he finally married Helen Patges Richardson, his companion of almost 30 years. In addition to typing and editing drafts of his work she acted as a sort of ‘spiritual advisor’ to Dreiser while he completed his penultimate novel The Bulwark, published posthumously in 1946. Harris is also likely the model for the title character of ‘Lucia’, one of the fictional sketches in Dreiser’s A Gallery of Women, published in 1929. (For much more on the Richardson-Dreiser relationship and his Gallery of Women see my “Edward Weston, R. M. Schindler, Anna Zacsek, Lloyd Wright, Reginald Pole and Their Dramatic Circles“). Interestingly, McCoy’s Direction piece on her employer and Dreiser’s Kings Road neighbor Schindler, coincided with the last of Paul Rand‘s 23 distinctive covers for the prestigious publication over a seven-year period. (Haller, pp. 26-31).

McCoy was just beginning her architectural writings when she penned “The Important House” for the April 17, 1948 issue of The New Yorker. It is a humorous, fictional account of a Shulmanesque architectural photographer staging a modern house for an important photo shoot. McCoy had begun collaborating with Julius Shulman for the first time a few months earlier for the article, “A Servantless House Meets Three Needs” on R. M. Schindler’s Presburger House for the November 23, 1947 issue of the Los Angeles Times Home Magazine.

The New Yorker article is important as it is a fine early example of  McCoy’s ability to harness her considerable literary talents to her new-found profession as an architectural critic and soon-to-be historian and must have been a big confidence booster for her. The L.A. Times article is also significant because it initiated a 40-year collaboration between the two Southern California modernist icons which resulted in close to 200 McCoy articles with Shulman photos appearing in a global array of publications, not to mention Shulman’s lion’s share of the images in the books discussed below. My related article, A Case Study in the Mechanics of Fame: Buff, Straub & Hensman, Julius Shulman, Esther McCoy and Case Study House No. 20, is a good illustration of the fame-making capability of this dynamic duo. Every architect worth their salt in the 1950s and 60s knew that McCoy’s and Shulman’s skills and close association with Arts & Architectureeditor John Entenza could open many doors for them. Their joint work for Harwell Hamilton Harris disciple Gordon Drake has similarly kept his legend alive. (See also The Post-War Publicity Partnership of Julius Shulman and Gordon Drake: Gordon Drake: An Annotated &amp; Illustrated Bibliography).

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, while still transitioning into her architectural historian career, McCoy continued to write prize-winning fiction evidenced by her short story, “The Cape” being published in the October 1949 issue of Harper’s Bazaar and then anthologized in Martha Foley‘s highly prestigious The Best American Short Stories 1950 (see above). To be anointed with publicatio in either the annual O.Henry Prize Stories anthology or The Best American Short Stories anthology, started in 1915 under Edward O’Brien and continued by Foley from 1941 through 1977, was a major highlight of any writer’s career and must have given McCoy’s ego a huge boost.

McCoy, Esther, “The Pepper Tree,” California Quarterly, Autumn 1953, pp. 3-30. Cover illustration and illustrations in McCoy’s “The Pepper Tree” by Morton Dimondstein. From my collection.

The California Quarterly, a relatively short-lived early 1950s literary review, hoped “to encourage writing that faces up to its time – writers who recognize their responsibility to deal with reality in communicable terms.”  McCoy’s moving novella in the Autumn 1953 issue (see above) took a poignant look at a second generation Japanese American family in California during World War II who lost their family business, heritage and dignity and were forced to relocate to an internment camp. The contributor’s notes highlighted her rapidly growing resume

thusly,

“Esther McCoy has published fiction in The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and a number of university publications. One of her stories was included in [Martha Foley's] Best [American] Short Stories of 1950. She is on the editorial advisory board of Arts &amp; Architecture, and recently wrote two issues for them on Mexican architecture. She is at present working on a series of studies on California indigenous architecture and the work of the early moderns; some of these have been published this year in Arts &amp; Architecture.” (p. 2).

Presaging her 1956 “Roots of California Contemporary Architecture” exhibition and 1960 book Five California Architects (see later below) in a July 1953 Los Angeles Times Home Magazine issue featuring the evolution of the California House (see above), McCoy illustrated Greene &amp; Green’s Culbertson House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House, R. M. Schindler’s Kings Road House and Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House, all with photos by Julius Shulman. This was the first article in which she contemplated a chronology of the beginnings of California modernist architecture.  McCoy’s inspiration possibly came from Lewis Mumford’s Roots of Contemporary American Architecture (see below) which referenced the work of Greene &amp; Greene, Bernard Maybeck, Irving Gill, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Richard Neutra. There is also correspondence between McCoy and Mumford beginning in 1953 in her papers at the Archives of American Art.

Roots of Contemporary American Architecture by Lewis Mumford, Reinhold, 1952.

Another likely source of inspiration for McCoy’s 1956 ”Roots of California Contemporary Architecture” exhibition and 1960 book Five California Architects (discussed in detail later below) was the 1951 “A Guide to Contemporary Architecture” (See below) compiled by USC School of Architecture graduate students Frank Harris and Weston Bonenberger under the direction of Dean Arthur B. Gallion. The guidebook was a seminal publication as it was the first to focus solely on modern architecture, much of which was being produced by USC School of Architecture graduates. Likely to have served as a resource for McCoy’s initial exposure to most of the architects she later featured in her work, the guide’s introduction paid homage to the “roots” of California modernism with discussion of Bernard Maybeck, Greene & Greene, Irving Gill, Frank Lloyd Wright, R. M. Schindler, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Gregory Ain, Raphael Soriano and the Case Study House Program. All photographs in the guide were provided by longtime McCoy collaborator Julius Shulman. The Alvin Lustig cover design also presaged McCoy’s 1984 highly ambitious Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980 designed by graphic designer Joe Molloy. (See much later below).

Five California Architects, Praeger, 1975. Brett Weston cover photo of Schindler’s Wolfe House on Catalina Island, 1929. (From my collection).

 

McCoy’s work on California’s five pioneering modernists proved to be so popular that the above second edition was published by New York’s Praeger Publishers in 1975. Likewise, the ensuing scarcity of this edition prompted Hennessey &amp; Ingalls to come out with yet a third edition with the same cover artwork which continues to steadily sell to this day.

Richard Neutra by Esther McCoy, Braziller, 1960. Julius Shulman cover photo. (From my collection).

Masters of World Architecture : Five Volumes : Water Gropius : Richard Neutra : Louis Sullivan : Oscar Niemeyer : Eric Mendelsohn

 

 

McCoy next tackled the Richard Neutra monograph published by Braziller in 1960. (See above). The richly illustrated essay length bio of Neutra was included as part of Braziller’s second boxed set (see above) in the Masters of World Architecture series, fittingly alongside his early mentor Eric Mendelsohn, taproot of Los Angeles modernism Louis Sullivan whom Neutra spent some poignant moments with in 1924 just before his death, and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, undoubtedly another strong influence on Neutra’s early development. (For more on Neutra and Sullivan see my “R. M. Schindler, Richard Neutra and Louis Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats“). McCoy’s Smithsonian Archives of American Art oral history contains some very revealing anecdotes regarding her troubles working with Neutra to get the book published. As an example, she was extremely frustrated and almost had a major falling out with him while working on the book.

“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).

McCoy expands on this in her Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys. (See later below). One can’t help but wonder if these difficulties shaded her opinion of Neutra in her later work. New York Times critic Allan Temko said of Neutra and McCoy in his period review,

“And what shall one say of Neutra? Here, obviously, the editor faced a difficult problem. Neutra is one of the most sensitive designers in the world, and very early, when there was little modern architecture anywhere, he produced buildings such as ”Health House” and projects such as bis circular school that belong with the best work of the entire movement. Yet he ranks clearly below the great masters with whom he is placed in this series, and it is interesting to note that Esther McCoy, the very competent architectural writer responsible for this essay, has litte to say of their work in the Twenties and Thirties which far overshadowed Neutra’s. Furthermore, as another critic has remarked, Neutra’s “plateau” in recent years has showed signs of becoming a “plain.” Yet It remains a lofty plain dotted with handsorne buildings, and it is to this level now, at the very least, that our new architects must aspire with modesty but unshakable confidence.” (Temko, A., “Five Men Who Built on a Lofty Plain, New York Times, January 1, 1961).

Case Study Houses, 1945-1962 by Esther McCoy, Hennessey + Ingalls, 1977. Julius Shulman cover photo. (From my collection).

As mentioned above, I have not been able to find any McCoy writings citing her analysis as to why Schindler and any of the others Smith mentions in her essay were not included in the program. In Harris’s and Shulman’s cases at least, (and possibly Ain’s per Denzer) the invitations proffered by Entenza were turned down for reasons stated elsewhere herein. (See Smith, Elizabeth A. T., “Icons of Mid-Century Modernism: the Case Study Houses,” in Case Study Houses, Taschen, p. 9 and Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary by Anthony Denzer, p. 170).  I also hypothesize that Drake, an obvious candidate for the program because of his wide national awards exposure and international publication beginning in 1947, either was not invited or turned down the invitation due to his witnessing firsthand the 1940 Harris-Entenza falling out while in Harris’s employ. The evidence is compelling that Drake likely joined Harris’s boycott of Entenza’s Arts & Architecture despite the prestigious publicity he knew he would be forgoing. (See my analysis in The Post-War Publicity Partnership of Julius Shulman and Gordon Drake).

An Exhibition of the Architecture of R. M. Schindler by David M. Gebhard, The Arts Gallery University of California Santa Barbara, 1967. (From my collection).

Gebhard came out with the first full-scale study on Schindler in 1971 which appropriately included a preface by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who professed a lack of understanding of Schindler’s work in a 1940 article  and who, along with sidekick Philip Johnson, chose not to include Schindler with Neutra in the seminal 1932 Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, dooming Schindler to play second fiddle to Neutra for the rest of his career.Hitchcock closing sentence in the foreword reads, “I am glad that this Foreword gives me an opportunity to make some redress for the narrow-minded approach to Schindler, and indeed to modern architecture in California more generally, of a generation ago.” (“An Eastern Critic Looks at Western Architecture”, California Arts & Architecture, December 1940, pp. 21-23, 40).

“In the meantime, after the death of Pauline Schindler, Kathryn Smith asked if I would abet her in removing Pauline’s papers to her place for safekeeping, as she expected to start a book on Pauline as soon as the one on the Barnsdall house was on the press. She especially wanted to keep them away from Tom Hines, for she considered that he would weight his sympathies to Neutra and away from Pauline. Kathryn still has the Pauline Schindler papers, which include material on Wright and also an unpublished novel, the protagonist of which is Schindler. Any [writer of a] study on Schindler as well as Wright should be aware of this material.”

The reader is directed to Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism, 1900-1970 by Thomas S. Hines and R. M. Schindler by Judith Sheine to compare the latest findings on the controversy from Neutra and Schindler scholars’ perspectives. President of the Friends of the Schindler House, Robert Sweeney‘s version in his delightful 12-page pamphlet, “The Lovell Houses” created in conjunction with a 2003 MAK Center tour of same reads,

“Lovell’s failure to continue with Schindler is likely to remain an enigma, though all parties attempted some form of explanation. Neutra recalled in his autobiography that there had been “some earlier unfortunate misunderstandings” between Schindler and Lovell and that “Both men steadfastly rejected even the idea of collaboration.” Dione Neutra tried to correct the record in her husband’s favor in her 1986 anthology of letters, but her scenario seems incomplete. Lovell himself was equivocal in explaining the circumstances. Leah Lovell, writing in 1958 to Esther McCoy, stated: “I could tell you things about the early days of Neurtra [sic] and Schindler as I knew them, but perhaps that would be better left unsaid.” Schindler interpreted Neutra’s actions as a matter of survival.” (Sweeney, Robert, “The Lovell Houses,” MAK Center, 2003, p. 5).

All the above, and numerous other scenarios, ring hollow to me in some manner as if the authors were beating around the bush to avoid offending living relatives. My personal choice for the version of the story that makes the most sense is put forth by Gary Marmorstein in his “Steel and Slurry: Dr. Philip M. Lovell, Architectural Patron” in which he theorizes that Leah Lovell, like her sister Harriet Freeman, was having an affair with Schindler during his preliminary design for the Lovell’s town house. Mamorstein wrote,

“The “whole story” remained a mystery to students of architecture for years, but its central crisis was, in fact, all too human. “Schindler had a habit of having the wives of clients fall in love with him,” Dione Neutra recalled in 1978, describing a not uncommon dynamic between builder and client. Leah Lovell fell hard for Schindler. Their affair dated back to the days when the Lovells were routinely at King’s Road and may have simply reached boiling temperature while discussions about the Los Feliz house were underway.

Whatever its genesis, the affair seemed to be just another conquest for Schindler and something far more painful for Leah Lovell. Compared with Dr. Lovell, who was usually the largest physical presence in the room, Schindler must have appeared small and arty. It doesn’t take an ounce of admiration for The Fountainhead, however, to acknowledge that an architect can be a powerful, highly sexual figure as he designs structures that make everyone and everything else appear tiny.

Dr. Lovell had no elixir, drugless or otherwise, for having been cuckolded. All he could do was turn his back on the preening Schindler and turn instead to Richard Neutra to build his house in Los Feliz. Neutra demurred-it was a thankless position to find himself in-and played diplomat as he persuaded the two factions to come together to talk. Grudgingly, Lovell was willing to accept Schindler again as principal architect, provided Neutra run interference.

That arrangement didn’t last long. Schindler, declaring he didn’t want the work but probably just fed up with the intensifying scandal, bowed out. He told Neutra, “If you don’t take the job, Lovell will give it to somebody else.” Vacillating, Neutra was finally talked into accepting the commission by the Austrian emigree Galka Scheyer, whose impressive art collection – Klee, Kandinsky, etc. – inspired a wide circle of Los Angeles architects. (According to Dione Neutra, Mrs. Scheyer subsequently became another Schindler mistress.)” (Mamorstein, Southern California Quarterly, Fall/Winter 2002, p. 254). 

This is also the version that longtime Schindler and Neutra friend Conrad Buff would have believed as he reminisced in his oral history,

“Schindler had built a house on Kings Road. Schlndler, 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 Schlndler’s house.” (Buff, p. 123). (For more on the relationship between the Buffs, Neutras and Schindlers see my “Richard Neutra and the California Art Club“).

Marmorstein’s version also coincides with my hypothesis that Pauline Schindler’s angry departure with the couple’s son Mark the same month all of the above drama was taking place was likely related to her witnessing, or finding out about a scenario such as this. She and Leah had met at Olive Hill where RMS was working on Aline Barnsdall’s Hollyhock House and had started and ran a school together in the early 1920s.  Likely already aware of her husband’s dalliances with Leah’s sister, and by then also an RMS client, Harriet Freeman, this could likely have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back. (Two Journeys, p. 39. See also my Pauline Gibling Schindler, Vagabond Agent for Modernism for more details).

Likely based on McCoy’s lengthy analysis of Neutra’s winning of the Lovell town house commission in Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys, renowned Neutra scholar Thomas S. Hines and noted Schindler scholar Judith Scheine agreed that Schindler would not have worked on the Lovell Health House design under Neutra’s lead under any circumstances despite reading Neutra’s August 24, 1927 letter to wife Dione, an excerpt of which read,

“…Now let me tell you a few facts about myself. I had a good talk with Lovell and proposed quite successfully an agreement with which he has, however, not yet signed. He wants to retype it with a few changes. He gave me in any case an adequate down payment. I have brought him now so far that he feels no personal grudge against Schindler and has nothing against it that he participates in the design. To be sure, he apparently wants me to be responsible for everything.” (See Richard Neutra: Promise and Fulfillment, 1919-1932, Selections from the Letters and Diaries of Richard and Dione Neutra Compiled and Translated by Dione Neutra, p. 168. See also cited in Hines, pp. 76-77 and Scheine, pp. 66-67).

Letter from R. M. Schindler, June 15, 1931 regarding settling of accounts from their partnership including Schindler’s significant work on the Lovell Health House. Courtesy UC Santa Barbara Art Museum Architecture and Design Museum Schindler Collection.

The above letter from Schindler to Neutra regarding the settling of accounts from their partnership days before Neutra’s departure on his world tour seems to clearly indicate that Schindler did indeed perform a significant amount of design work on Lovell’s town house. Schindler acknowledges receiving an $800 check from Neutra for partial payment of his design work on the project. The letter further strongly suggests that this commission was not the cause of the Schindler-Neutra schism. I contend that the real breaking point came out of Schindler not being included in the seminal 1932 “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition” curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and then having to witness all the publicity surrounding the show when it traveled to Los Angeles in conjunction with the 1932 Olympic Games. (See for example my Richard Neutra and the California Art Club for much on Schindler’s and Neutra’s 1931 joint classes at Chouinard and publicity surrounding the MOMA exhibition). Obviously influenced by her closeness to both Schindlers*, McCoy either overlooked this very important letter while editing Schindler’s correspondence for this book or purposely did not mention it because it spoiled what she possibly believed was a better story, likely the former. Thus another McCoy myth was born. (*Author’s note: McCoy’s friendship with Pauline is further evidenced by their joint visitation to close Schindler family friend Edward Weston’s Wildcat Hill on November 4, 1949.)

McCoy’s narrative, selected illustrations and selected letters bring to daylight the struggles of these early Austrian emigres to gain a foothold in Los Angeles and their failed friendship and efforts to lay a foundation for the rich modernist heritage that we enjoy today. The Harwell Hamilton Harris introduction alone is worth the price of the book if you can find a copy. I cited from it heavily in my article Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936.

 A. Quincy Jones: A Tribute exhibition catalog, Cal-State Dominguez Hills, 1980. (From my collection).

Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980, Esther McCoy &amp; Barbara Goldstein, Arts + Architecture Press, 1982. Book design by Joe Molloy. (From my collection).

The above Guide to U.S. Architecture: 1940-1980 co-edited with Barbara Goldstein was the first of its kind to take a national look at modern architecture. The book was also published by Travers’ Arts + Architecture Press. The selections are divided by region and accompanied by images from professional photographers including Julius Shulman, Ezra Stoller, Hedrich Blessing, Morley Baer, Marvin Rand, and others. McCoy concurrently was on the masthead of editor Goldstein’s Arts + Architecture as Contributing Editor after Goldstein brought the magazine back to life between 1981 and 1985 and also contributed an essay to Goldstein’s Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years (See later below). Goldstein’s editorial offices happened to be in the Schindler Kings Road House(see below) where McCoy also worked as a draftsman for Schindler between 1944 and 1947. (See opening photo).

In the Harris chapter, in addition to the innacuracies surrounding Entenza’s acquisition of CA&amp;A mentioned earlier, McCoy, chose to remain silent on the important role Harris and his wife Jean Murray Bangs played in providing the entree for Entenza’s temporary editorship of CA&A in February 1940. She also does not discuss their subsequent falling out with Entenza regarding his hostile takeover of the magazine from their dear friend Jere Johnson the following May which precipitated Harris’s post-war refusal to participate in the Case Study House program. Obviously knowing of Entenza’s rift with Bangs and Harris, one can’t help but wonder if McCoy held off publication of this book until after Entenza’s 1984 death out of loyalty or whether it was purely coincidental.

Again, McCoy’s virtual silence on the outspoken Bangs and her considerable influence on her husband’s career in this chapter is deafening. Similarly, despite having obvious insight into Entenza’s reasoning, McCoy chooses also not to discuss Ain’s overt omission from the Case Study House Program.

For further reading and research on the book’s subjects I recommend The Architecture of Gregory Ain by David Gebhard, Harriette Von Bretton and Lauren Weiss, Harwell Hamilton Harris by Lisa Germany,  Gregory Ain: The Modern Home as Social Commentary by Anthony Denzer and Raphael Soriano by Wolfgang Wagener. Germany must be credited with first shining light on Harris’s and Bangs’ facilitation of Entenza’s temporary CA&A editorship and Harris’s subsequent refusal to paricipate in his CSH Program. She also uncovered much new material on Bangs’ role in rediscovering the work of Greene & Greene and Bernard Maybeck. Denzer provides the most insightful analysis of Ain’s non-involvement in same. Denzer also tactfully seconds Germany’s findings on Harris’s refusal to participate in the program ”because of personal differences with Entenza’s business practices.” (Denzer, p. 169-170).

McCoy, Esther, “1945-1960, The Rationalist Period,” in High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design, Whitney Museum, 1985.

Due to her ever-increasing stature as a chronicler of West Coast modern design, the following year McCoy was honored with a request to include an essay for a major East Coast exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York, High Styles, Twentieth-Century American Design. McCoy’s chapter, “1945-1960, The Rationalist Period,” featured the work of her by then longtime friends, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Sarinen, R. M. Schindler, Isamu Noguchi, George Nelson, Case Study Houses from the pages of John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture, and much more.

McCoy’s last major piece was the essay “Arts &amp; Architecture Case Study Houses” commissioned for the above catalog for the renowned Blueprints for Modern Living exhibition on the Case Study Houses which was mounted by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art with financial support from McCoy’s longtime benefactor, the Graham Foundation , the National Endowment for the Arts, and others.  This exhibition catalog was published in both hard and soft cover editions with the hard cover now being extremely scarce and is absolutely essential to any Southern California architectural history fan. It is a compilation of essays by McCoy, Thomas S. Hines, Helen Searing, Kevin Starr, Elizabeth A. T. Smith, Thomas Hine, Reyner Banham, and Dolores Hayden published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name presented at the Frank Gehry-designed Temporary Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art, October 17, 1989 – February 18, 1990. McCoy died in Santa Monica in December, 1989, just weeks after the exhibition opened.

See my comments above and article ”Steppingstone to Fame” for an analysis of McCoy’s perpetuation of the 1938 Entenza CA&A takeover myth in her otherwise excellent catalog essay “Arts & Architecture Case Study Houses” and catalog editor and exhibition organizer Elizabeth A. T. Smith’s similar collaborative errors regarding same in her also otherwise insightful piece, “Arts & Architecture: The Los Angeles Vanguard.” At the time of her death McCoy was widely beloved and recognized as the doyenne of Southern California architectural historians and her efforts continue to bring international recognition to California’s architectural legacy to this day. McCoy was recognized by the AIA for efforts on the behalf of architects with an Honorary Membership and received a Distinguished Service citation by the AIA’s California Council.

Arts & Architecture: The Entenza Years edited by Barbara Goldstein, Essay by Esther McCoy, MIT Press, 1990. (From my collection).

Barbara Goldstein’s 1990 tribute to John Entenza, Arts &amp; Architecture: The Entenza Years was also in a sense a tribute to her friend, collaborator and mentor McCoy and was also financed in part by a grant from the Graham Foundation, likely through McCoy’s connections with Carter Manny. (Also see Steppingstone for more Entenza Myth analysis). Goldstein honors McCoy with a cover byline for her paean “Remembering John Entenza” and writes the following on her in the Ackowledgments, “I spent many enjoyable hours with Esther McCoy discussing, among other subjects, Arts & Architecture and John Entenza. She acted as my conscience and energy-source throughout the project until her death late last year.” This book was originally released in hard cover by the MIT Press and like almost all of McCoy’s work is still in print in soft cover with the same cover art work through Hennessey & Ingalls.

After reading the above, one might ask, “Why the obsession with the myths discussed herein, i.e., the date and circumstances surrounding Entenza’s takeover of California Arts & Architecture and Harwell Hamilton Harris’s non-participation in his Case Study House Program; that McCoy was the first to rediscover the work of Greene & Greene and Bernard Maybeck; the Ellwood Myth; and the Lovell Health House Commission Myth?”

Personally I have become increasingly dismayed with the fact that massive new magnum opuses are still unwittingly being published with much erroneous information, but mostly about the misstatements surrounding Entenza’s 1940 CA&A palace coup. I am hoping with this piece to spark discourse which will drive a stake through the myths’ heart and finally turn the tide towards accuracy in future publications referencing Entenza’s canonization and the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of California Arts & Architecture. The knowledge that Harwell Hamilton Harris’s (and his wife Jean Murray Bangs’) intimate involvement with CA&A and his witness to and unique insight of the details surrounding how and when the magazine changed hands and his subsequent refusal to participate in Entenza’s Case Study House Program is beginning to make a toehold in the historical lexicon thanks to Lisa Germany and Anthony Denzer but more work needs to be done to further elucidate and gain a wider exposure for the actual facts.

The above publications are all collector’s items and appear in any self-respecting Southern California architect’s library. Since most of McCoy’s work was indeed pioneering, her biases towards Entenza, Schindler and Ellwood and against Neutra in particular should be contextually cited and forgiven as she started the ball rolling on the historiography of Southern California modernist architecture and laid most of the foundation for others to build upon. I am currently compiling an annotated and illustrated bibliography of the published work of Esther McCoy of which the above work is just a tiny sampling which I hope to post in the not too distant future, so stay tuned. I have located over 800 articles to date.

Perhaps Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown sum up the essence of McCoy’s work best with,

“Gratuitous polemics, sensational substitutes for serious analysis that promote the writer’s cleverness over the subject’s talents, play no role in McCoy’s critical approach. Her architect-subjects have found a recorder and analyst who, despite her presence as a participant in their history, does not intrude on their story. By trusting the intentions of her subjects and becoming the servant of her art, she shows herself to be a profound critic and an exquisite artist. But perhaps the most significant contribution of her work here is its timeliness – and therby in the end, its timelessnesss.“ (“Re-Evaluation: Esther McCoy and The Second Generation,” Progressive Architecture, February 1990, pp. 118-9).

Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader edited and with an essay by Susan Morgan, East of Borneo Books, 2012.

There is good news forthcoming for Esther McCoy fans as author Susan Morgan is hard at work on, Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader (see above) which will collect much of her literary fiction and non-fiction in addition to her architectural criticism and will be released in November. She is also laboring away on a separate biography which I’m certain will be a best-seller and further enlighten us on McCoy’s simply fascinating legacy. The extremely busy Morgan co-curated with Schindler House Director Kimberli Meyer the Esther McCoy exhibition Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design (see catalog below) which debuted at the Schindler House September 27, 2011 as part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 festivities sponsored by the Getty.

Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design by Kimberli Meyer and Susan Morgan, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2011.

Most would have to agree with renowned Los Angeles architect and former dean of the Yale School of Architecture Cesar Pelli’s assessment of McCoy in a 1984 New York Times interview that she was ”the pre-eminent writer of California architecture. Our knowledge of Southern California architecture has been primarily formed by her research, her first-hand knowledge and her writing, which is so precise and passionate.” (“Esther McCoy is Dead; Architecture Critic, 85″, New York Times, December 31, 1989).

Esther McCoy Resources

Esther McCoy Papers, Archives of American Art

Esther McCoy Oral History (research hint, download to Microsoft Word to facilitate searching and/or create a searchable pdf if you don’t have time to read the entire document).

Blueprints for Modern Living Exhibition

Being There: Esther McCoy, the Accidental Architectural Historian

Esther McCoy New York Times Obituary

Esther McCoy Tribute by Paul Goldberger 

Hennessey & Ingalls

A Case Study in the Mechanics of Fame: Buff, Straub &amp; Hensman, Julius Shulman, Esther McCoy and Case Study House No. 20 for a look at the fame-making capability of the dynamic duo of McCoy and Shulman.

California Arts &amp; Architecture: A Steppingstone to Fame: Harwell Hamilton Harris and John Entenza: Two Case Studies for an in-depth analysis of the “Entenza Myth.”

Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism, 1927-1936 (for the role Pauline played in McCoy’s career launch).

Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design

The Dodge House, 1916 written by Esther McCoy and directed by Robert Snyder.

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Woodbury University’s School of Architecture and the MAK Center are co-sponsoring a memorial symposium honoring Julius Shulman. The event will take place on Sunday, February 21st from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the MAK Center For Art & Architecture at the Schindler House. The Enduring Contribution of Julius Shulman includes a cocktail/hors d’oeuvres hour and speakers who will share their memories of Shulman, his impact on their careers, and the built environment of Los Angeles. The schedule for the evening and details for attending are attached below.

For more information, contact www.MAKcenter.org or call (323) 651-1510.

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Readers are referred to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buff,_Straub,_and_Hensman and “Buff & Hensman” edited by James Steele published by the USC Architectural Guild in 2002 (see below) for background material prior to the design of Case Study House No. 20, 1958, Saul Bass House, 2275 N. Santa Rosa Ave., Altadena.

The team of Conrad Buff III (USC 1952), Calvin Straub (USC 1943) and Donald Hensman (USC 1952) joined forces from 1956 through 1961 for a very fruitful span in their careers. Buff & Hensman had previously teamed up while still in their formative undergraduate days beginning in 1948. Straub, former Buff & Hensman instructor and mentor in the post-and-beam design vocabulary and now teaching colleague, recommended that they form the partnership to avoid competing for the same jobs. (Steele, p. 24).

Straub (with erstwhile teacher and partner, USC School of Architecture Dean Arthur Gallion) was the first of the team to use Julius Shulman’s services on his Sedlachek Residence at 3385 N. Beverly Glen Blvd. (Shulman Job No. 491, June 1, 1949).  By this time Shulman’s photos had already appeared 125 times in the L.A Times Home Magazine, thus he had no problem getting the work published under his byline in the November 27, 1949 issue with the title “The house with the swinging walls” which included 9 of his photos. (see below).

Straub’s personal residence on Sunny Oaks Circle in Pasadena completed in 1950 was also listed in the 1951 “A Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Southern California” edited by Frank Harris and Weston Bonnenberger, with design by Alvin Lustig, and with all photography by Shulman. Shulman’s marketing skills were highly evolved by the late 1940s as were his relationships with a wide variety of publication editors. He had learned how to create a steady stream of income from his back-catalog of prints, especially for architects whose work he admired. His exposure to Richard Neutra’s masterful and relentless self-promotional techniques and contacts developed with editors Neutra courted all came into play as he resold the prints from many of his assignments to the same publications. 

Shulman later placed Straub’s Sedlachek House with Architectural Forum and again in the April 1952 issue of House & Home in a 4-photo article titled “On a Los Angeles hillside: three-level house.” This was the period that Shulman’s Raphael Soriano-designed residence was under construction so he was undoubtedly hustling everywhere he could to finance that project for which he reportedly paid cash. He had at least a dozen feature articles with his byline published in L.A. Times Home during the late 1940s and early 1950s before the sheer volume of his workload precluded continuing authorship.

Revered architectural critic and freelance writer Esther McCoy was a go-between with Shulman and R. M. Schindler during her days as Schindler’s draftsperson in the mid-1940s. Shortly after leaving Schindler’s employ, beginning in 1947, she and Shulman started collaborating on articles for such publications as Madamoiselle, Living for Young Homemakers, L.A. Times Home Magazine and Sunset. 

McCoy stated in her Smithsonian oral history that all of the Los Angeles architects wanted to appear in the L.A. Times Home and Sunset Magazines. (see http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/mccoy87.htm p.65). Through McCoy, Sunset commissioned Shulman to photograph Straub’s Brandow Residence for a June 1955 article titled “This is truly a garden house.” (Job No. 1877, 11-02-1954 and 01-09-1957). The article was later anthologized in Sunset’s “New Homes for Western Living” in 1956. Shulman pitched the Brandow house yet again to another frequent collaborator, Barbara Lenox, who produced  a 4-page L.A. Times Home Magazine cover story titled “This house was built to fit its landscape” which ran in the April 10, 1957 issue. (see below).

During this period McCoy highlighted two of the firm’s principals, Calvin Straub and Conrad Buff in her widely followed “What I Believe…A Statement of Architectural Principles ” monthly column featured in the L.A. Times Home Magazine in the mid-1950s. Straub appeared in her April 17, 1955 column which also included three Julius Shulman photos of his work. Her feature on Buff followed in the May 5, 1957 issue. 

The Brandow House was on display once again the following month in the highly publicized and well-attended “Arts of Southern California – Architecture” exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art. The 40-page exhibition catalog was a veritable “Who’s Who” of Southern California’s best modernist architects including Thornton Abell, Welton Becket, Jones & Emmons, Ray Kappe, Killingsworth, Brady & Smith, Carl Maston, Richard Neutra, Palmer & Krisel, Pereira & Luckman, Smith & Williams, Raphael Soriano and others. Again, two-thirds of the photos in the exhibition catalog were provided by Shulman. This must have been a heady time indeed for Straub.

All three partners were still teaching at USC at the time the Bass commission was realized in 1957. Braced with his previous publishing success with Shulman, it seems probable that Straub was instrumental in the firm hiring him to photograph the Bass House model as Buff & Hensman had not used Shulman prior to this. This extremely prescient commission was completed on August 25, 1957 as Shulman Job No. 2450. 

It is fun to speculate how BS&H and the Bass House caught the eye of John Entenza for use as House No. 20 in his Arts & Architecture Case Study House Program. Had Entenza been aware of the firm’s work through Shulman’s photos of Straub’s work, had he seen B&H’s work in L.A. Times Home Magazine with photos by others, had he seen Straub’s Brandow House in the above Home cover story, had Shulman and/or McCoy recommended the firm, had the firm approached Entenza, and/or did Saul Bass approach Entenza? 

In any event, recognizing the well-established relationships between John Entenza and Julius Shulman (listed as A&A staff photographer on the masthead since 1942) and Esther McCoy (frequent A&A contributor and listed on the masthead as an Editorial Advisory Board member since January, 1952), it can easily be assumed that when the invitation came to participate, BS&H leaped at the chance. They probably had very little trouble convincing well-known graphic designer Saul Bass and his wife to offer up their home to the rigors of what participation meant in the form of tours and public open houses.

Case Study House No. 20 was designed, scrutinized and publicized to the world through the pages of Arts & Architecture Magazine throughout 1958. The firm had gradually been making a well-respected name for itself but nothing catapulted the trio to instant fame like being featured as Case Study House Program architects in Arts & Architecture, the chic, avant-garde magazine of the era subscribed to by all the modernist leaning architects and designers of the day.

Photos of the model and a floor plan appeared in the January 1958 issue of A&A as the beginning salvo in Entenza’s well-orchestrated publicity campaign. (see below).

The Arts & Architecture roll-out continued with a two-page spread in July with 11 uncredited construction photos, a floor plan and rendering. (see below).

The next appearance was three pages in the September issue which included 5 Art Adams construction photos and a landscape plan by Eckbo, Dean & Williams (see below) and list of Merit-Specified products used in construction and furnishing of the house plus 3 pages of ads for various products.

The October issue included a Shulman photo announcing the upcoming public open houses. The A&A publicity reached a crescendo with an 11-page article in the November issue featuring 22 Shulman photos (Shulman Job No. 2675, 09-22/25-1958). Ads followed sporadically over the next year but by then the publicity baton had been passed by Shulman to other respected, high circulation publications.

November 1958 was a big month for BS&H with the above cover story also appearing in the November 30 issue of the L.A. Examiner Pictorial Living Magazine. Shulman’s contacts again paid off as he had previously collaborated with long-time friend Dan MacMasters on 13 feature stories in both the Times Home Magazine and the Examiner Pictorial Living going back to 1951. This 6-page cover story “Pavilion under the Pine” included 11 Shulman photos and a floor plan.

Shulman was also able to use his position as west coast contributing photographer for House & Garden to position CSH 20 on the cover of the February 1960 issue as part of a feature titled “New Life for a Cherished Tradition: Wood” for which he also contributed photos of BS&H’s Edwards Residence and others.

Published by Reinhold, 1962 (from my collection).

CSH 20 received a nice 12-page spread with 10 Shulman photos and other illustrations in Esther McCoy’s now classic groundbreaking compilation of program dwellings completed through 1962 Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses 1945-1962 published by Reinhold. (see above). Shulman provided the lion’s share of the photography. The book is still in print with the third edition available at Hennessey & Ingalls.

Other large spreads publicizing the house mainly through the marketing efforts of Shulman included: the March 1959 issue of House & Home (12 photos), the March 2, 1959 issue of Bauwelt (7 photos), the December 1959 issue of Pacific Architect and Builder (5 photos), Book of Homes 16 (1959, 7 photos), the June 1960 issue of House & Home (“15 AIA Award-Winning Custom Homes, 6 photos), the June 1961 issue of Bauen + Wohnen (14 photos), the 1962 book Einfamilienhauser in den USA (5 photos), the 1962 book The Modern House, U.S.A.: Its Design and Decoration (4 photos), the 1963 House & Garden Building Guide (An Experimental Design in Wood with 10 photos), and the 1964 book Beautiful Homes and Gardens in California (6 photos of CSH 20 and also 1 photo each of the firm’s Mirman and Frank Houses, and 4 of the Thompson House).

Additional significant appearances of Case Study House No. 20 are in the very important 1989 Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses organized by Elizabeth A. T. Smith and published by the MIT Press in conjunction with the much-publicized exhibition of the same name on display at the Temporary Contemporary of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles from October 17, 1989 to February 18, 1990 and the massive Case Study Houses: The Complete CSH Program 1945-1966 by Elizabeth A. T. Smith, edited by Peter Goessel and epilogue and principal photography by Julius Shulman published by Taschen in 2002.

My Shulman and Buff & Hensman bibliographies list 70 publications in all of Case Study House No. 20, the latest being the 2009, 25-Year Anniversary abridged edition of Taschen’s Case Study Houses edited by Elizabeth A. T. Smith. (see below).

Julius Shulman’s first assignment for Buff, Straub & Hensman, Case Study House No. 20, was definitely a watershed event in the firm’s history. It was a harbinger of the recognition and accolades to come resulting from 44 subsequent assignments including Case Study House No. 28 that Shulman performed for the partnership, the last being the 1984 Schultz Residence in Pasadena. These assignments resulted in over 200 articles and 40 covers in a wide variety of publications. The Shulman-BS&H combine netted 60 feature stories and 10 covers in L.A. Times Home Magazine alone. 

One can’t help but wonder what fate would have provided the partners if they hadn’t hooked up with Shulman on that eventful day in 1957. The same can be said for Pierre Koenig, Albert Frey, Raphael Soriano, Gregory Ain, and yes, even Richard Neutra. We are all the richer and more appreciative of our Southern California architectural history and legacy because they did.


Closing Sidebar

Case Study House No. 20 had fallen into a major state of disrepair over the years as documented by Ethel Buisson and Thomas Billard in their The Presence of the Case Study Houses published in 2004 by Birkhauser. The CHS 20 chapter heading “Sacred Temple, Aged Body” said it all and was backed up by 8 depressing images of the decay. Thankfully, preservation-minded new owners lovingly restored the house to respectability in time for the October 15, 2005 tour celebrating the firm’s work. (see catalog above). 

I attended this tour and spent a couple of memorable hours in the house entranced by how evolved a simple post-and-beam grid/framework could become. It was amazing to me how the alternating indoor and outdoor sections and use of glass could elevate the senses. Their addition of the circular design elements in the plywood vaulted ceiling/roof panels and brick fireplace added a new slant to the post-and-beam design vocabulary. That visit cemented this house in my memory bank as my favorite among all of the Case Study Houses. Kudos to the new owners!


Also highly recommended is the Shelly Kappe chapter Calvin Straub (Buff, Straub, and Hensman) in:

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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