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
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" . . [Gill] could not have been influenced by the work of [Adolf] Loos because Loos' first opportunity to put these theories into practice did not come until 1910, with the Steiner house in Vienna. This house, whose facade curved so awkwardly into the roof, and whose stark rear elevation lacked any feeling for scale, showed Loos to be more of a polemicist than an architect. His architectural performances never quite shed the paper on which they were drawn. In contrast, Gill was first of all a builder; his first forms grew out of structure. His development of cubic masses in the Holly Sefton Hospital [1909], however, revealed a definite relation to the Cubist painters.
"He expressed his beliefs in the May, 1916, issue of The Craftsman, "There is something very restful and satisfying to my mind in the simple cube house with creamy walls, sheer and plain, rising boldly into the sky, unrelieved by cornices or overhang of roof . . . I like the bare honesty of these houses, the childlike frankness, and chaste simplicity of them."
"How did San Diego receive this reduction of the house to its simplicities? There were rumblings about "shoebox houses," but Gill's sincerity produced a feeling of trust. According to Louis Gill, he was not only interested in every aspect of the design, but had a passionate interest in saving the client's money.
"Eloise Roorbach, who often wrote of his work in The Craftsman, told me, "People of wealth liked him for his forthrightness and honesty. His ideas had great refinement, although he often expressed them roughly. He didn't deify his work, but when he made a plan he stuck to it."
"According to Lloyd Wright, "He didn't win his clients to his style by any sociological arguments, but by his great charm."
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"[Irving Gill] He was the first West coast architect to give attention to company towns, barracks for laborers, housing for the unemployed, and that vast segment of the population who had to be content with hand-me-downs. His favorite of all his designs was the 1910 low-cost garden court for Sierra Madre.
"This phase of his career began in 1908 when he built two contiguous houses on a two-acre tract he had bought for experimentation. The land, cut by canyons, appeared to be useless, but to Gill the rise and dip of the terrain added to its beauty. A single house was already on this land; he had built it for himself about four years earlier. It marked the beginning of his dissatisfaction with the standard framing and plan and also reflected a simple and austere way of living. For example, in the ceiling of the main room there were hooks by which the bed was lifted during the day.
"The units in his first venture in group housing were flush with the street. as was customary in the Mexican house, where there were no setback requirements. The garden wall and house wall formed a continuous surface. The front door of each house was a gate in an arch of a high walled garden. Here, for the first time, the possibilities of a variety of outdoor living spaces on a narrow canyon ledge were explored. Each house expanded through French doors to a brick terrace; one portion of the terrace was roofed, another shaded by a vine-covered pergola, and the remainder was an open garden.
"The walls were mainly of 1 x 4-inch construction, but in some he used 1 x 12-inch uprights, butted together, lathed over and plastered. He also tried out Maybeck's scheme of plastering over burlap, according to Lloyd Wright.
"The houses had a Mediterranean feeling: casement windows outset from the cement plastered walls, and lattice work copied from iron gratings. The floors were concrete, a material which pleased Gill because of its relation the earth floor. He had first used the concrete floor in 1894.
"In the December, 1915, issue of Sunset magazine, he wrote, "If half the thought and time and money had been expended on perfecting the concrete floor that had been spent on developing wood from the rough board sidewalk to fine parquetry flooring, everybody would want concrete. (p. 224) To overcome the popular prejudice against concrete floors is the business of the architect."
"He mixed color with the cement, "usually tones of red and yellow, red and brown or yellow and brown, slightly mottled. Tempered by the gray of the cement these colors produce neural tones that are a splendid background for rugs and furniture. When quite dry the cement should be cleaned with a weak solution of ammonia and water, given two coats of Chinese nut oil to bring out the color, then finished with a filler and waxed like hardwood. Well done, this treatment gives an effect of old Spanish leather."
"In 1910, when Gill designed his [ ], a colony for low-income families on a square block of land in Sierra Madre, he followed the same scheme as the 1908 houses, a continuous wall flush with the street on the north and west sides. One cottage was separated from the next by a long shallow porch intended for lounging or sleeping. On the south and east sides were cottages spaced in such a way that they did not interfere with garden areas or light and sun for the row houses.
"Each unit had its own private garden, leading into a community garden, with a large pergola in the center. Less than a third of the land was used for dwellings.
"There was a reverence for the individual in the plan that has never been equalled in the field of minimum housing. For years it stood as a superb example of site planning, until its meaning was changed by the construction of additional cottages in the communtiy garden.
"Gill had demonstrated that he could build a good house at a price which would allow a landlord to rent it for a nominal sum. But the court was such a success that rents were fixed beyond the means of the workmaen for it was designed. Gill was angered by this turn of events because it thwarted his hope of benefitting the low income groups always ignored by architecture. Gill believed that these groups had the reputation of being poor householders because no one had ever taken the trouble to design houses that would help them be orderly. They were used to badly arranged and poorly lighted kitchens. In many of Gills minimum houses he placed the kitchens on the front, and built drains in the concrete floors so they could be washed easily. Both kitchens and baths were skylighted, and had five coats of white paint on the walls. There was a sense of compassion at work, in plan and in detail.