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, 1910, 1909, 1897,
"Before the [Holly Sefton Memorial Hospital for Children, San Diego] hospital and the Scripps building there had been evidences of Gill's initial gropings in architecture; now he had arrived at what was dominant. In . . . 1909, he used monolithic construction in three buildings-a Christian Science Church, Scripps Hall at Bishop's School in La Jolla, and Bishop's Day School in San Diego.
"At the same time Adolf Loos, in Vienna, was preoccupied with similar matters. [Since 1897, Adolf Loos] he had begun a crusade to strip ornament from buildings. In a series of newspaper articles he called down moral judgements on the Secessionists, a group of Viennese architects who had broken with the Baroque tradition but continued to use ornament. However, it is unlikely that these articles reached Gill in the small town of San Diego, although he may have heard rumors of Loos' crusade. While he was with Sullivan, Gill had learned the way the wind was blowing; he was aware of the work of Otto Wagner in Vienna, and Charles Rennie MacKintosh in Glasgow.