Irving Gill (Part 1)

Contrary to architectural mythos, the subordination of ornament--the neue Sachlichkeit--was not first realized in Vienna or Glasgow, Berlin or Oak Park, but in the sleepy, seaside hamlet of San Diego, California, where architect Irving Gill, began practice in 1893, following a brief stint in the legendary Chicago office of Adler & Sullivan.

Aided by one of his early partners, William Hebbard (who also emanated from the great Chicago seed pod), and possibly influenced by an early job stabilizing the ruins of the Mission San Diego de Alcala, Gill began offering minimalist interpretations of established styles as early as the late 1890's.  The improvisational Gill may have also gained from "primitivist" Frank Mead, a student of Andalusian forms, who joined the firm in 1905 and with whom Gill briefly partnered in 1907.  

Solo by 1908, and pursuing a style without definite historical precedent, the ever inventive Gill who experimented with new materials (concrete, magnesite) and methods (thin wall, tilt-slab construction), was labeled a cubist and a secessionist by an uncomprehending press.  

That nothing so fresh was produced along the Eastern seaboard for a whole generation is a manifold cause for astonishment, though perhaps Gill was liberated by San Diego's isolation and freedom from architectural precepts.   While the office building had undergone a streamlining, courtesy of the Chicago gang, Gill's brand of austerity--particularly in the domestic arena--was unprecedented.

Irving Gill's architectural legacy is unmatched in San Diego, where the majority of his projects can be found, and where he died in 1936.  Gill fostered a series of inspired disciples, largely arts and crafts geometricists, including his nephew Louis Gill, Lloyd Wright, Hazel Waterman, and Emmor Brooke Weaver.

The San Diego Heritage Association's Annual Historic House Tour, on Saturday, March 21st, is featuring four Gill and Hebbard designs, on Balboa Park adjacent Seventh Avenue.  For more information and tickets, go to www.SOHOSanDiego.org.

Block Changers

It's nice to be associated with architectural masterworks, bag hefty commissions, bask in reflected glory.  But my greatest source of professional satisfaction is representing buyers on block changers, typically long neglected, tenant-occupied dwellings, spewing adverse impacts.

While it's important to shepherd the comings and goings of swans, neighborhood trajectories are altered most by the passage of ugly ducklings.   Because seldom is an entire block guilty of impiety; instead, a single residence is the source of horn honking, the feral cat population, late night shenanigans.

Bad apples put to compost.  "The Christmas House" lay vacant after evicting a deadbeat tenant, vandalized and collecting refuse.  At "La Casa Azul" people slept two to a bed, and in bunks, in violation of occupancy restrictions.  The yard grew wild and brown (photo is post trim).  

Homeownership may be a right, but it's also a responsibility.

Screen Savers

Death of a Model

Most good listing agents have a signature touch, be it catered brokers opens, property specific web-sites, or staging preferences.  I've a trade secret too: marketing images incorporating animals.

I've featured half a dozen dogs and cats, in backyards, amongst tall grass, splayed across the kitchen floor, balled on a comfy chair, exhibiting happiness, vulnerability; engaging.

While I've yet to outlive a client, a couple of my most irresistible subjects have passed.

Here's hoping for a doggie and kittie heaven.

1880's/1920's/2000's

Periods of prosperity, each with deflating finales.

The booms encouraged American weakness: love of magnitude, a penchant for land gambling, deplorable waste.

But after the love is gone?

The 1890's delivered a decade of unmatched eclecticism, exotic 

revivals, rusticism, the Chicago School, new forms of expression, the basis of modern architecture.

In the 1930's a machine aesthetic, best exemplified by the Streamline Moderne--the continued development of those ideas first engendered in the late nineteenth century, tamped the fantasy and romance that infused America's bucolic post war period.  

The late 2000's?  

To Be Continued....

The Awful Tower

While less tall than the U.S. Bank Tower or Aon Center, L.A. Live's 54-story hotel and condo complex nonetheless dominates sightlines, immodestly isolated on downtown's Southwestern edge.

The sleekly framed Q-tip mass, designed by big project poobahs Gensler, is the latest big city skyline marring "signature structure," joining the ranks of San Francisco's One Rincon.

Checkboarded in blue tinted glass, the structure rises, exclamation point like, along the 110 freeway, defying scale, defiling scale.

Valentine's Day