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, 1913
"In 1913, Gill's chance to express himself fully in low-cost housing seemed on the point of fulfillment. He had just completed the Echo Park Court, a group of four-room, well-lighted houses which faced an off-street garden. This was believed to be the prototype of the court system, now so entrenched in California, until Pasadena claimed an earlier one of redwood. Echo Park Court was the urban counterpart of Sierra Madre Court.
"Soon after Olmsted and Olmsted, sons of Frederick Church Olmsted, famous park planner, were commisssioned to lay out the model industrial town of Torrance, to the south of Los Angeles. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. proposed Gill as chief architect. Pacific Electric, Union Tool and Llewelyn Iron Works had received a franchise from the Dominguez Land Corporation for the use of 700 acres near Los Angeles, on which to build shops, a civic center, a railway station and houses for their employees.
"Gill was ready for a major work. By this time his planning had matured to the point where he was perfectly capable of unifying a city. His plot planning in the Scripps Group for La Jolla was a great achievement in the creation of a leisurely and logical flow of space between buildings. He had arrived at a technical mastery over concrete; he had captured the plastic feel of the material, and successfully brought his forms into a single mass. The subject of his architecture was always man, and he had the insight to plan for many as well as one.
"Gill's enthusiasm for the project was so great that he moved his office up to Los Angeles, leaving his young nephew Louis in charge in San Diego. A year went into the planning of Torrance. First to be built was Gill's bridge into the city, then the Pacific Electric Station and one office building. But of the hundreds of cottages planned, only ten were completed.
"According to Frederick Gutheim, who recalled Gill's account of the affair, "The plan had been completely accepted by management and was in the course of execution when difficulties were encountered by the opposition of labor. They objected to the plan itself, from which many traditional work details had been eliminated, because of the extreme simplicity and economy which characterized the dwellings. The climax appears to have been a public meeting in which the design of the dwellings was criticized and the architect faced a hostile and unrelenting audience."
"Work on Gill's concrete houses ceased and wood houses in traditional styles were erected.
"Torrance now (1960) is the major industrial city in Los Angeles County and has a population of 100,000. The Olmsted city plan was octagonal in shape with the city hall at the center; industries were placed in an outer ring. Before the city hall could be built the large site was preempted by the Los Angeles Board of Education, which agreed to operate a school in the new city on condition that the building be erected there.
"Gill's graceful three-arched viaduct is now used to carry freight into the city, and the long, low station is a freight office. No trains were ever visible from the street, for the tracks were behind the station and below street (p. 225) level. Across from the station were two three-story office buildings designed by Gill; they have been razed to make space for parking lots.
"Gill's houses were set back over 25 feet from the street and the house walls extended to form garden walls. The off-street entrance was through an arch in the garden wall-a favorite device of Gill's which loses none of its graciousness with time.
"The porches of the houses are now enclosed, rooms have been added, and the interior wall between living room and dining room removed. The skylights in the bathroom and in the interior hall are the features most appreciated by the owners. Few houses contemporary with Gill's in Torrance are still standing, and those built two decades later are already out of date."