1910-1920 McCoy 1960

Esther McCoy Irving Gill 1870-1936 Five California Architects, 1960, Reprinted in Marvin Rand Irving J. Gill: Architect 1870-1936, Gibbs Smith, Publisher: Salt Lake City, UT, Design, Ahde Lahti; Photographs, Marvin Rand, 2006, 238 pp. pp. 219-227, 2006a, 1916, 1910s,

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     "Architecture was a broad subject to Gill; it included garden and interior decorations as well as structure. From the first he was enchanted with the natural growth in the canyons, the hedges of geraniums, the windbreaks of eucalyptus, the bougainvillea burning with color on cottage roofs. Eloise Roorbach wrote in the Architectural Record, December, 1913, that Gill "artfully embodies the permanent principles in the straight line and circle, then starts the impermanent principle embodied in the vines and creepers, to move across the face of the buildings, graciously breaking their severity."

     "He worked a great deal with Kate Sessions, who had come to San Diego to teach Latin in the High School, and stayed to open a nursery on a small piece of land, now part of Balboa Park. Her 1905 planting for one of the Lee houses on Seventh Street is still almost intact. A certain unity in the planting of San Diego was due to her interest in native plants and her sturdy importations, and to Gill's constant efforts to simplify the garden.

     "Today some of his houses are entirely covered with the Bignonia tweediana which he envisioned as tracery, and the Ficus repens meant as embroidery now strangles many a pergola. But when a gnarled and twisted leptospermum trunk and lacey foliage is glimpsed through the clean lines of an arch in Scripps Hall at Bishop's school, Gill's ability to extend architecture into planting becomes beautifully clear.

     "He liked the dark glossy greens of pittosporums and the Coprosma baueri as screens, or as cool depths to look into from porch or terrace. The trim on his houses was invariably dark green, borrowed from his plantings. One of his favorite effects came from massing red geraniums near the house.

     "The geraniums, in Eloise Roorbach's words, "took a second blooming upon the walls of the rooms," because Gill devised a paint which reflected color. What first appeared to be monotone walls were sensitive surfaces which received the impressions of all colors inside the room and [in the garden]. The paint was a mixture of primary colors, added to white. By varying the proportions of the pigment, a wall could be keyed to the blues, the violet, or any color he wished.

     "Colored tiles in geometric Arabic patterns appeared often in his gardens. They created a rich effect and at certain hours of the day their colors danced on the walls. Living in one of Gill's houses was "like living in the heart of a shell," Eloise Roorbach said.

     "Although Gill's social architecture was less well known than his other work, it was a continuing interest throughout his career.

     "He had built residences for most of the wealthy families in San Diego, and designed churches, schools, and public buildings-all of which were financially rewarding-but his greatest satisfaction came from poorly paid ventures in low-cost housing.

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     "Soon after Louis entered his uncle's drafting room, Gill made an interesting purchase. Searching for a quicker and cheaper way to handle concrete, he bought some equipment from the United States government which had been used, without great success, in the construction of tilt-slab barracks during the Spanish-American War. His first opportunity to try it out was on the Banning House [1910] in Los Angeles.

     "Sunset magazine described the curiosity of the neighbors as they watched men wheelbarrow loads of concrete onto a huge table, tilted at a 15-degree angle by supporting jacks. On the table were rows of hollow tile-the forms for the wall. They were divided by 4-inch vertical steel bars which served for reinforcement, as well as a traffic way for the wheelbarrows in dumping the concrete. Metal frames for doors and windows were integrated into the forms. When the concrete had cured, (p. 223) it received a top coating of fine cement. After this step, the neighbors observed a wall, "smooth finished and complete with window and door openings, projecting window boxes and small balconies, raised to perpendicular by means of a single little donkey engine. They kept on guessing as the house took form in simple cubic units, the walls rising sheer and roofless without cornices or trim of any kind."

     "Gill used tilt-slab construction even more successfully in the 1913 Women's Club, La Jolla, an exquisite building with superbly planned gardens. In 1914, he-now in partnership with Louis Gill-added another building to the expanding Scripps group, the Community House for the playground, and raised walls 60 feet long.

     "There were low-cost structures, as were Gill's later slab-tilt houses in Los Angeles. But since the equipment often stood idle for weeks at a time, he had difficulty in finding contractors to build for him. He finally formed the Concrete Building and Investment Company, to develop the slab-tilt system for low and medium cost houses. However, it was not a success, and Gill lost heavily in the venture.

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     "Up to the time of the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Diego, which opened in 1915, Gill prospered and achieved his purpose without great resistance. But his work was considered a threat to the rising school of atelier architecture in San Diego. "A dangerous kind of work," Elmer Gray, the Pasadena architect, called it in a letter to Bertram Goodhue.

     "Nevertheless it was assumed that the buildings of the Exposition, which was to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal, would be in Mission style, and that Gill would be the chief architect. The chairman of the Grounds and Building Committee was George Marston, a wealthy department store owner; Gill had designed a house for him in 1904, and one for his daughter in 1906. Also on the committee was Julius Wagenheim, who had commissioned Gill, in 1904, to design a half-timbered house.

     "As the idea of the Exposition grew, the more grandiose it became. In 1910 Olmsted and Olmsted were commissioned to lay out the park on a site donated by George Marston. Other architects were considered for the post of chief architect, among them John Galen Howard, head of the School of Architecture at the University of California, and Myron Hunt of Los Angeles. But at the end of 1910, Gill was still favored.

     "Then on December 28, 1910, Bertram Goodhue wrote to Elmer Gray, the former partner of Myron Hunt, about "a position I want very much indeed, but I have just heard that it is not for me. I wasn't at first going to tell you what it is, but I think I will change my mind as follows: the post is the directing architect of the San Diego Exposition . . . They have a perfectly lovely problem and one which Olmsted thought I was better fitted to deal with than any other architect, thanks to my studies of and book on Spanish Colonial architecture in Mexico. Needless to say that I am bitterly disappointed at the turn affairs have taken and it is equally needless to ask you to regard this information as approximately confidential and not to take any hand in it unless you think the circumstances warrant you in so doing."

     "When he received the letter, Gray called his former partner, Myron Hunt, who telephoned at once to San Diego. Hunt's call occurred at the moment the Building Committee was meeting. As a result Goodhue was summoned to San Diego; he arrived three weeks later prepared to design all the Exposition buildings. The people of San Diegto were delighted with "such a distinguished gentleman who had made such a deep study of Spanish Colonial . . ."

     "Gill with other San Diego architects lent their services to the fair and continued to do so for a while after Goodhue took over. Gill's departure had nothing to do with Goodhue. By chance he had discovered certain graft in buying supplies for the buildings, and was so enraged that he walked out. "He could never put up with any sort of dishonesty," according to Louis Gill, who recalled similar actions on the part of Gill's stern Quaker father.

     "Gill would not have remained anyway, for when Goodhue was asked by the Building Committee to select a local architect as an associate, he brought out his own staff from New York instead. They took charge after Goodhue returned to his office in the East. One of his associates, Carlton Winslow, remained in California after the Exposition work was completed. In the late twenties he designed a chapel and a Spanish Renaissance tower at Bishop's School to replace a square forthright one of Gill's.

     "A difference of opinion arose between Goodhue and the Olmsteds over the location of the Fair buildings. The Olmsteds preferred a knoll at an edge of the park, because of its accessibility to visitors, while Goodhue who was more interested in dramatic effects, wanted to create a Spanish-Mexican village in the center of the park. When the problem was taken to the board, the members supported Goodhue and the Olmsteds withdrew.

     "However, Goodhue did recognize Gill's importance. In a letter to Elmer Gray, dated December 29, 1914, he wrote, "I do think that he has produced some of the most thoughtful work done in the California of today, and that for the average architect his theories are far safer to follow than mine or even perhaps yours."

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     "The house for Miss Ellen Scripps in La Jolla, planned in 1915 and finished in 1916, followed the Dodge house chronologically. And it marked the end of Gill's classic simplicity, a style which had already been modified in the Dodge house. The Scripps house did not make any new statements in form or materials or plan. It was not experimental, but rather it summed up a period of Gill's thinking and feeling. It was bold but not imperative, tranquil but with no touch of softness.

     "Since the death of Miss Scripps, the house has been occupied by the La Jolla Art Center, and numerous alterations have obliterated Gill's work. This could not have been an easy task, for it requires a pneumatic drill to destroy a Gill building-and a lack of understanding of his work.

     "After 1916, Gill gave up his practice in San Diego. There was little work for him in Los Angeles outside of remodeling and he was often busier with experiments than in his drafting room. One day Eloise Roorbach found him in the back yard of his Los Angeles office, on Ninth and Figueroa, working on some concrete 2-inch by 4-inch's.

     "Although he was a modest man, Gill was aware of what he had accomplished, and knew that he was part of a movement to simplify structure. While his time was finding little use for him, he watched others in the United States and Europe discovering some of the essential architectural qualities he had realized, and put into practice 10 to 15 years earlier."

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017