Reyner Banham Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Pelican: NY, 1971 (1976), 256 pp., 1976, 1971, 1919
"Gill [moved] towards a simplified clean-edged architecture . . . The use of skinny metal mullions and frames in Gill's windows, like the advanced tilt-slab technique for pouring concrete walls, never seems to imply a desire to prove a point about the Machine Age . . . p. 64.
" . . . the delicious Horatio West apartments in Santa Monica of 1919. Like the earlier Lewis Courts in Sierra Madre, this is a patio scheme, but unlike the broad central court at Sierra Madre, the internal space at San Mo, broken into by arcades on either side, is so narrow that one could easily mistake it for an automobile drive-way. In any case, the great feature of the design is its upstairs living rooms, glazed around three sides to command views of sea and mountains that must have been well worth the rental when it was first built." pp. 65 and 66.
[p. 65 photo of the Horatio West Apartments]